Planning For Burial / Lonesummer - Split (Music Ruins Lives, 2010)

Planning For Burial - Sleeping In Separate Rooms


DUDES. Fuckin split of the year right here. Gloom & doom bliss from Planning For Burial and unbridled hatred courtesy of Lonesummer on the same motherfucking record. This is the real shit, guys. The best of the best.

PFB's 3 tracks are a bit different than what he put out on Leaving. A little more vocal oriented, maybe a bit poppier & shoegazier, but in the saddest way possible. This is the beautiful Icelandic epic shit you love thrown to the bottom of a well where it turned into a warped depressed beast of buzz, static, & drone. Plodding drums, mournful organs, blackened rumbled, all with a decidedly catchy twist. This dude knows how to mix the gorgeous celestial washes of euphoria with the basement hiding grim neurosis so perfectly. Unbelievably awesome. You will want to listen to this for fucking ever.

Strip all of PFB's happiness and you're left with Lonesummer's neverending brutality. His black noise metal is as harsh as it gets, with no hope for redemption. It's loud as FUCK, reigning blistering chaos. A wall of black metal so dense it becomes noise. The drums & cymbals blast into a homogeneous cacophony, the guitars shred, wail, & buzz, and the vocals are a tortured screeching, totally obscured in pain. But then there are songs like "I Wish I Could Delete Last Night" that are like a slow (black metal) pop song with a legit guitar solo that just might get caught in loop in your head. This guy is totally fucking into it. Bleak, depressing as shit, noisy, hateful, evil, and still utterly fucking beautiful. Anti-black metal that stands high above most other bedroom BM freaks.

There is no way you should let this slip under your radar. If you haven't heard of either of these guys yet (wtf is wrong with you?), they are making what is hands down some of the most amazing masochistic bliss out there. This split is cheap as hell ($6 preorder) and only 100 copies will be made. So get over to the newly minted Music Ruins Lives and grab yourself a copy before it's sold out and you have to go cry to your momma about how your trigger finger is getting sloppy.

Wrnlrd - Death Drive (FSS, 2010)

Wrnlrd - Grave Dowser


Wrnlrd's new bit of what the fuck is coming out soon on FSS. Black? Sure. Metal? Mostly. Scratchy drone, static soul, and whatever else the dude wants to throw in? Obviously. It's less than 20 minutes long but Death Drive is a twisted beast that defies logic & explanation aka pure gold.

It opens innocently enough with a few tracks of buzzing black guitars, blasting & chugging drums, and inhuman Cerberus snarls. The first is pretty straightforward, nothing too out of the ordinary for weirdo black metal, but each track delves deeper into the totally fucking bizarre. There's horn n shit, sludgy grit, buried epic solos, chimes & general wonky-ness.

But by the time it gets to the fourth track, "Luster," it rips out its metal heart and goes for the delicate & dejected solo piano. Definitely not unheard of on a black metal record, but this one seems to be lacking a certain darkness. It sounds almost like it could be found on Lambent Material if Eluvium was feeling sad enough. So obviously it's awesome, just more added weirdness. But Wrnlrd saved the biggest mindfuck for the end. It starts as a droney harmonium/accordion sounding piece, bubbling up from the swamp, that shifts gears into a full blown nightmare of metal fury. It makes no sense and is totally fucking brilliant.

Death Drive is a snack size chunk of insane black metal that's off the fucking wall. Wrnlrd killed it with this new one and FSS is bestowing it upon us in the form of a sweet 10" (or digital if that's your thing (idiot)). Should be out around Thanksgiving, perfect timing for scaring the shit out of your relatives.

Nekrasov - Perishable Things EP (self released, 2010)

Nekrasov - O Fool!


Nekrasov's chaos is the best kind of chaos. Full on black metal noise. This is black metal, certainly, but there's so much fucking noise, too. Massive walls of distorted feedback totally obscure the vocals, riffs of static melt your face, neverending blast beats bore through your skull. The metal is evil and loud, but the noise is fucking brutal. "O Fool!" barely constitutes black metal at all, it's just one big slab of caustic insanity. But it's there, and that's what makes it so goddamn awesome.

A short & sweet EP given away for free by Nekrasov on Bandcamp. Hurry up and download that shit, then hurry up and wait until the next full length comes out on Crucial Blast.

Haiku Review: Lonesummer - Satisfaction Feels Like A Tomb (Starlight Temple Society, 2010)

Lonesummer - I Miss You Still, Ma Bête


Lonesummer
Satisfaction Feels Like A Tomb (download)
/blistering noise squall/
/raw lightning veins course through hell/
/harsh black metal bliss/

Alcest, Have A Nice Life at Cafe Nine (New Haven, CT)

Have A Nice Life is worth a trip or two to see live. Especially if Alcest is playing right after them. Their set in New Haven was much more tight and polished than it was at their live debut in New York. Cafe Nine was a decent place to see them, although the stage was way off in the corner and it was awkward finding a place to stand (lots of poles and stools and stuff).

The best part about seeing HANL in a bar as opposed to The Stone was there were no fucking seats. Yes, I could stand up and rock the fuck out as much as I want. And trust me, that is the only thing you want to do when HANL is fucking melting amps 2 feet in front of you.

Their "mini-tour" is done and most likely won't be playing any shows for a while. But when they do, you should take a note from Katherine who flew out from Colorado just to see them play in Connecticut. I thought taking a 5 hour bus to NY to see them play and immediately catching the 1 am bus back to Boston was crazy? No way dude, nothing compared to Katherine. That girl is fucking hardcore. Applause!

Out of the 750+ photos I shot, I narrowed it down to less than 20. That means they're all awesome. There's a few here and the rest are on Flickr where you can see 'em bigger & better.

Oh yeah, Alcest was cool too.


Have A Nice Life






Alcest

Painforged / Gnaw Their Tongues - A Confession Of Worshipping The Depraved And Perverse Human Psyche... (Shadowgraph, 2010)

Painforged - Grotesque Revelation Of Anthropogenic Atrocitys Through Necrophilia And Cannibalism


The full title of this Painforged / Gnaw Their Tongues split is A Confession Of Worshipping The Depraved And Perverse Human Psyche In An Insalubrious And Pathological Context but Blogger can't handle titles that long so FUCK EM. Anyway...

You should remember An Epiphanic Vomiting Of Blood, the Gnaw Their Tongues album I reviewed a couple years ago, because there is no way you could possibly wash those sounds from your ears. And if you were somehow able to wipe Gnaw Their Tongues from your memory, I'll do you a favor and bring it all back.

This DVD-cased black CD-R split is the sound of your nightmares. Or rather, the sounds of hell. Nobody should ever have nightmares that sound like this. That's just too terrible of a thought.

Painforged's 3 songs (that have song titles just as long as the album title) are the yin to Gnaw Their Tongues' yang. While Painforged makes the blackest doom horror metal, his songs sound like he actually records (or samples) legit torture. Dudes describing the horrific things they're going to do to somebody, men & women being beaten and screaming for their lives, and haunting doom drone thrown beneath it all. Then there's some carnal inhuman vocals and maybe real instruments like drums and shit. Or maybe it's just the sounds of smashing skulls. I don't know. But fuck, man, this is really a metal record of people being tortured. Real or fake hardly matters. It is the most disturbing fucking thing I've ever heard.

So Painforged makes songs that are the sounds of torture, and Gnaw Their Tongues makes the songs to be played during the torture. He's like the conductor of the score to your death. GTT's 3 tracks are just as disgustingly demoralizing as anything else he's done. Cacophonous devil dreams of gut wrenching drones, buried zombie moans, and exploding puppy pinatas filled with acid bile and rusty nails.

Clearly Gnaw Their Tongues' reign of cinematic terror metal still stands. I bet he and Painforged are BFF after this split. They're probably at home comparing who has more satanic snuff VHS tapes. Maybe next time they'll collaborate on a sound/art installation where you lay down inside a coffin, they close it and pipe in their new song that literally makes you go insane and kill yourself. Fingers crossed!

Noise Nomads / Urthquake Split (Spooky Tree, 2009)

Urthquake - Intra Muros


A nice slice of dirty weirdness from the latest batch of 7" splits on Spooky Tree. This one's got Western Mass' self descriptive Noise Nomads backed with Jersey's ambient black metal dude Urthquake. And put together they make for something that's maliciously enjoyable.

Noise Nomad's "Soaked Blanket" is an electronic squawk fest, with a non-stop FXed to oblivion guitar jam shredding over a bed of scratchy synths. Tons of grit and bloop, like the guy's equipment fell into some hidden quicksand and is going all HAL-9000.

Urthquake's piece "Intra Muros" is pure fucking evil. There's a sedated Goblin-esque synth track looped through the entire song that sounds like the bedraggled anti-heroes walking through wastelands on their way to inevitable doom. Buzzing guitars & crashing cymbals in the background, more & more layers of threateningly sinister synths, and no hope in sight.

OOPs: The Mausoleums - Blackened Fawns Cleanse The Earth With Fire (Chinese Workers Labor Union, 2008)

The Mausoleums - Totem Pole


I reviewed this beast a couple years ago and it looks like it's disappeared since then, at least in terms of finding a physical copy. These two years have done nothing to wane by obsession though, because this motherfucker still destroys.

It's like The Mamas & The Papas black metal. You know how Torche became the poster boys for pop metal? Well The Mausoleums are the fucking wizards of speaker shredding blown out black pop metal. Seriously seriously killer.

Download this regardless of your taste in music. It will blow your fucking mind no matter what you like. But you'll probably only enjoy Blackened Fawns if you're into the whole having your mind blown sort of thing.

THE POWER IS YOURS!

Book Of Sand - How Beautiful To Walk Free (self released, 2010)

Book Of Sand - Hidegen Fújnak A Szelek


Awesome news everybody! The dude from Light (Dan) has gone from making fucked up doom metal with Emily to fucked up black metal all by his lonesome (with a little help on the drummin). So Light is officially no more, and not that I'm happy about it, but with 3 kick ass records, they had their time to crush minds with the doom. Now it's time to bring the motherfucking black rain down upon your sorry souls.

The filthy buzz, blast beats, and tortured screams are so refreshing to hear coming from a guy that just recently put out an hour long record of a single piece of glacial sludge. But even though the genres are almost polar opposites in the metal-sphere, there's still so much in common that you can tell the same guy is at work. The vocals haven't changed all that much, which shouldn't be a surprise because the singing in Light sounded like it was coming from a fucking screechy angsty demon and that fits just as well in doom as it does BM. Then there's songs like "The Night And Day Will Pass Away" which for it's breakneck speed is just as creepily foreboding as any Light song.

What makes Book Of Sand stand out amongst the hordes of BM bands is his lack of focus on the necrotic decay, instead finding inspiration in things like veganism and feminism. A BM dude that cares about chicks and animals? Fuckin POSER. Haha. I kid. Not only are animals THE BEST (do you see that bunny up there?) but he's also a whole-hearted supporter of VHEMT (The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement). See how that works? He's SO metal and self loathing that he thinks the entire human race should be wiped from the planet. But seriously though. What the fuck ever. Politics and ideals and moral arguments are all fucking bottom rung when it comes to music. I mean yes, it adds another (possibly cool and interesting) dimension but this guy could prance around in a rainbow tutu sprinkling glitter in his trail, and How Beautiful To Walk Free could be about flowers and marshmallows and it wouldn't make a bit of difference. The fact that he put this album out makes him the coolest motherfucker ever.

Lucky for you, How Beautiful To Walk Free has that same style of glorious hand made packaging that the 3 Light releases had, but they made, like, 5 times as many copies of it. It's still limited though (only 1000 made), so make sure you grab one of these hot bitches. Just look at how badass this packaging is.

Locrian - Territories (At War With False Noise / Basses Frequences / Bloodlust! / Small Doses, 2010)

Locrian - Procession Of Ancestral Brutalism


Where the fuck do you start with a record like this? I guess the first thing I should mention (in case you didn't notice) is that Territories is too much of a monolithic beast to be contained by individual labels or continents. It took FOUR labels to put this thing out. That right there should clue you in as to how fucking massive this record is.

Then there's the fact that this isn't just André & Terrence playing, like most Locrian releases. Nope, they've recruited, like, every awesome metal dude around. Mark Solotroff (of Bloodyminded) on vocals and synths, Blake Judd (of Nachtmystium) on guitar, Bruce Lamont (of Yakuza) on sax and vocals, and Andrew Scherer (of Velnias) on drums. DUDES. We get it. You're trying to make to most badass record ever. No need to go overboard (just kidding, always go overboard please).

What Locrian usually go for is black. You know, black metal, blackened ambience, black doom, black noise, all the black one record can handle. But combine their entire discography's blackness and you still can't muster even a half hearted fight against the epic black hole that's Territories.

This record is fucking incredible. It opens with a super textured lurching hunchback of a song, with piercing squelches of feedback over a gurgling swamp of vocals and noise. The next song chills out a bit with some not-too-scary low end drone played by a mourning sax and commiserating synths, accentuated by spurts of crashing cymbals. But the third song is where they fucking kick it into gear. All out black metal fury that totally fucking annihilates in the most gorgeous way possible. I don't think I've heard them delve this far into the BM yet, and it's so. fucking. good. It's not especially fucked or twisted that way I normally like my black metal, but it's not too straightforward either. They balance the blast beats and wall of buzz with droning static and plodding thunder in a way that makes me think "Why don't they always do this? It's unbelievable." But then I listen to the rest of the record and remember why.

Territories finishes with 3 more songs that really get into some true terror, blackened rumbling, traipsing thrumming, soaring static, and more of that torturous feedback. Clouds roll in and shit gets dark, heavy, and scary as fuck. Helicopters flying in launching tear gas rockets to stop the rioting masses, decrepit malfunctioning machines topple, rusted tetanus infections, doomsday alarms, the demise of our society. And it all culminates with a black metal march of triumph over the decay, proof that even in the Future American Dystopia, no matter how debased and degenerated we have become, it's still going to be fucking beautiful.

Black (Metal) Mixmas

Merry Mixmas cards from the second best Gocco-er ever, Heather Jeany

I made you a mix that will bring holiday cheer to all those around you. Play it loud. Play it hard.

Black (Metal) Mixmas
1. Voltaic Omen - Scream For Fucking Mercy
2. Ash Pool - Penetrated Slave
3. V.E.G.A. - Kill Me
4. Mamaleek - I Wish I Was Dead
5. Flaskavsae - Blood For Their Idols
6. Nekrasov - Mountain Ash
7. L'Acephale - A Burned Village
8. Gnaw Their Tongues - And There Will Be More Of Your Children Dead Tomorrow
9. Striborg - Bleeding Black Tears Of Hate
10. Xasthur - Subliminal Genocide

Haiku Review: Lonesummer / Tinnitustimulus Split (self released, 2009)

Lonesummer - Clouded Eyes And Candlelights


Tinnitustimulus - A Room You Never Use


Lonesummer
Tinnitustimulus
Split (download)

/infinite static/
/black metal, power 'tronics/
/buried under rage/

OOPs: Mamaleek - Mamaleek (self released, 2008)

Mamaleek - I Wish I Was Dead


/download/\mamaleek\

I'm not entirely sure this one is out of print, but I wasn't able to find it for sale anywhere so whatever. Either way, if you end up finding this available, grab it immediately 'cause this shit is fucking awesome.

Yeah, this is more black metal, but it's so much more insane than any other BM record I've heard. Mamaleek is fucking all over the place with some old bluegrass sounds, jazz, spacey ambient, electronic, post rock, and anything else they wanted to throw in there. But even the "regular" BM sounding songs are anything but. Mamaleek is just absolute fucking chaos. Honestly, this is one of my all time favorite BM records. And don't just automatically write this off if you're not into BM because this is so fucked up that I'm sure it will appeal to even those of you just into really weird shit.

For the extra curious, here's the original review I wrote back in April '08.

Voltaic Omen - Hammer Of Witches (self released, 2009)

Voltaic Omen - Invert The Cosmos


I have a soft spot in my heart for the most fucked and wicked black metal out there, along with the equally fucked song titles. Voltaic Omen's Hammer Of Witches tape lends a helping hand royally thrashing my ears and brightening my day with names like "Scream For Fucking Mercy" and what might be song title of the year, "Crypt Fucker" (so concise, so evocative).

Voltaic Omen has some serious hatred in his soul, seemingly directed at me. And you. And everyone else who listens to his filth metal. What I love about this dude is his vocals. They're not the deep throated Cookie Monster growls, nor are they like the screeching eagle demons. He's found some middle ground that will probably please most black metal fans.

With the exception of "Dance Of The Corpulent Witches" and it's toe tapping synths, every song is pure brutality. Furious walls of buzzing guitars and relentless washed out drums. And, of course, some strange beauty emerges from the abyss of evil, which is what makes black metal so fucking enjoyable.

I'm usually torn about which song to put up with a review. My storage space and bandwidth are limited so I try to go for the shorter songs, but "Invert The Cosmos" is so fucking epic and gorgeously twisted that I'm putting that one up. Make sure you fuckers listen to the whole thing. And then if you can find one of the 24 remaining hand numbered copies of Hammer Of Witches, fucking buy the shit out of it.

P.S. Go to his Myspace so you can listen to "Crypt Fucker" then head to his MediaFire to download a brand new song 18 minute song "Kuru Blown" that fucking slays.

Haiku Review: Light - Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever (self released, 2009)

Light - Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever


Light
Life Is Meaningless & Goes On Forever (download)
/relentless hatred/
/falcons screech in agony/
/hopeless plodding doom/

L'Acephale - Malefeasance (Aurora Borealis, 2009)

L'Acephale - From A Miserable Abode (Alt Mix)


Portland's L'Acephale has a new release, Malefeasance, that comes just in time for Boston's summer. The heat is up, the sun is out, and we're finally done with all that fucking rain. Now it's time for some blissful sunshine via L'Acephale's wondrous tunes.

Malefeasance is full of charming upbeat melodies coming straight out of a John Hughes movie. The choruses are catchy as fuck and I swear "Väinämöinen Nacht" has been stuck in my head for weeks. Most of the songs fall somewhere between dance jam and ballad, the kinda of thing that will get played at every single high school prom next year. L'Acephale has really captured the essence of summer with Malefeasance and I guarantee this is the most charming record you'll hear all year.

Haiku Review: Ash Pool - Saturns Slave (Hospital, 2009)

Ash Pool - Origin Of Man


Ash Pool
Saturns Slave
/awesome black metal/
/with fernow of prurient/
/grand blazing brilliance/

Locrian - Drenched Lands (At War With False Noise / Small Doses, 2009)

Locrian - Obsolete Elegy In Lost Concrete


Locrian's first full length of (mostly) new material, Drenched Lands, has been written about on many blogs, some high profile (lookin' at you Brainwashed) and others only slightly bigger than I. Normally when something gets too much exposure, I tend to pass on writing about it for (hopefully) obvious reasons. Unless said record is that good. Good enough to warrant another review on another blog in the hopes that maybe even one more person will hear about it. Drenched Lands is more than worthy of another post. In fact, it demands it.

Drenched Lands is a very very special record that dances along the lines of drone, noise, doom, and black metal and it does it so well without ever actually being really metal. At most I'd say it gets to being dark and heavy but never quite metal. It opens with "Obsolete Elegy In Effluvia and Dross" and has a melancholic guitar riff that sounds like a doomed out Americana. Definitely no metal here. Then "Ghost Repeater" shows up with it's haunting buzzing blackened ambience that drones on for over 10 minutes in the most glorious way possible. And there's a gong! Like one of those giant ones you see in ancient Tibetan monasteries. "Barren Temple Obscured by Contaminated Fogs" starts out straightforward enough, with some creepy droning synths and guitars but then Terence Hannum comes in, wailing over the discordant static with his best BM vocals. Totally fucked. Totally awesome.

"Epicedium," one of my favorite tracks, is mostly guitar, all echoes and feedback, with a synth core that creates a frightening yet laid back atmosphere. And "Obsolete Elegy In Cast Concrete" is probably the most metal track out of the bunch, with relentless strumming and more BM vocals that end up conjuring the same riff from the first song. Somehow they manage to make it edgier, making it one of the best slow moving metal riffs I've heard in a while. It's the kind of riff that's mournful and beautiful at the same time (aka my favorite kind). This is seriously one of the best songs I've heard all year. Fucking dramatic as hell, so epic and gorgeous.

One of the best parts of Drenched Lands is also the only song that's not new material. The last track, "Greyfield Shrines," is a 30 minute masterful monument that is easily one of the best songs on the album and could have a review all for itself. It's labeled as a "bonus track" because it was released as it's own 12" last year. As awesome as this probably sounds on vinyl, I'm sure it's nice to be able to listen to the whole thing uninterrupted, without having to flip the record over. So thanks for that, guys.

I feel like Locrian have really channeled all of their energy into Drenched Lands and it absolutely shows. This is a fucking stunning album that deserves all the praise it's been getting. Now that Locrian have made this ridiculously amazing album, I hope they haven't tired themselves out. They better have something up their sleeves for the follow up.

V.E.G.A. - Alienforest - A Sick Mind's Hologram (Debemur Morti, 2009)

V.E.G.A. - Neongraphite


V.E.G.A. (or Vacuum Era Gelid Atmosphere) are 3 dudes from Italy who challenge my vocabulary and descriptive skills. I've had Alienforest - A Sick Mind's Hologram for a little while now, listening to it probably more than I should, hoping that I would reach some sort of epiphany and be able to describe to you all the craziness of this record. That epiphany never came but that won't stop me from sharing this gem with the world.

Just so you know what ballpark we're playing in, Alienforest is a black metal record (originally their debut, a self released tape in 2000, reissued on CD by Debemur Murti this year). The thing is, there's so much synth weirdness going on, that very often this strays about as far from black metal as a you can get while still retaining the BM label. Usually, BM is scary. Like said band are literally demons spawned from Satan himself, put on Earth with the sole purpose of making the most terrifying music ever. But while V.E.G.A. have some of those nightmarish qualities, they're just so fucked up that instead of being scared, I'm just confused.

There are elements of grindcore, thrash, and death metal, as well as bits of techno, all laid over a black metal foundation. It seems like there's enough bizarre black metal bands out there that you could probably make a sub-genre combining all of the various BM offshoots. But V.E.G.A. take it to the next level and create something that I have literally never heard before and doubt will ever hear again. It's so fucking extreme and weird, which (obviously) means it's that fucking awesome.

My only complaint (and it is a minor one) is that Alienforest is so god damn long. At 1 hour and 10 minutes, it's about as long as a CD can get. Don't get me wrong, when I love something, I'd like it to last as long as possible but Alienforest is different. I have not once been able to listen to the whole thing all the way through in one sitting. Sometimes I get distracted and end up doing something else or just get tired and need to listen to something else or whatever the case may be, I just think this one's a bit too long for one record.

Light - A Million Dead Beneath The Ice (self released, 2008)

Light - When The Flood Waters Come Rushing In


But there’s something that’s telling me this isn’t your momma’s black metal. Maybe it’s more like gray metal.

Full review on diskant.