Archive for 2016

Glowering is a side project ov the tr00 and totes brutes invokator of gore noise havoc, Bobby Maggard. This time however, Bobby puts aside his hacksaw and bloodstained apron in favour of a pentagram-topped staff and a severed goat’s head hollowed out to make a snug little mask, as black metal is the theme of the day. But this ain’t no ordinary romp through black metal, no sir. It’s quite annoying actually, because a few…

It’s been a while since the last Gwen Stefani solo album, and being a No Doubt fan and enjoying the bands last release (Push and Shove), I was interested to hear how this new solo effort would sound, and mainly the vibe it’d have this time around. Opening track “Misery” is a great introduction to the album; and in regards to the route the album goes down, this album is an awful lot less R’n’B/hip…

As far as doom metal goes, Cathedral have always been one of my favourites. They were the band that introduced me to the genre in my youth, and therefore have always occupied a soft-spot in my blackened heart. Heading up to London Forum to catch the band’s final show was something that will stick with me forever. The disbanded warriors of gloom have a varied and interesting back catalogue ranging from the downright heavy to…

This double CD package brings together a bunch of old splits and demos from the prolific, blackened grinding thrashers Nunslaughter, as well as a bevvy of live tracks. The splits and demos are fantastic, and I will surely review them on their own with the material from the respective splitting bands, but I just want to cast some light on this little package as I got my hands on a copy recently. Do you love…

I was recommended this band to check out, and having known literally nothing about them I was interested to hear what was going on. The LaFontaines are a very difficult band to pigeonhole; I’m finding myself presented with rapping, smooth sounding vocals, riffs, indie guitar licks, lovely guitar tones amongst really big sounding anthems. What a mental combination! On paper this shouldn’t work, it really shouldn’t… however these guys have seemed to pull it off…

The Jesus Lizard are one of those bands that I had been meaning to check out for all eternity but never seem to get around to listening to (until now, obviously). I picked their Goat record to try out at random, simply because the art looked kinda cool and abstract so I just dove in and went for it. Anyway, I’m not sure if it’s just because I’ve taken so long to jump onto this…

Just quickly gonna put dibs on a review of this seeing as there’s three of us writing now (four if Kristian gets off his ass and follows up with more). Darkthrone’s The Cult Is Alive marked a turning point in the band’s career; effectively buffeting their sails with a healthy second wind that easily saw them extending their legacy by another ten years or so. Let’s face it, by the late 90s / early 2000s,…

I’d never heard of Gnaw Their Tongues until I saw them live at Roadburn and I was almost instantly blown away by them (I say them – it’s just one guy making so much horrible music from his basement). A mix of black metal and noise would probably be the best way to describe this but then again so would two people screaming at you when the sound of the world ending at million miles…

Closed Casket is surely the definitive Esham record – I love absolutely everything about it; the sound, the lyrics, the samples, even the artwork (for some reason). Closed Casket captures a slice of Detroit “suicidalist” lifestyle in the smog of the early 90s, during that perfect period when Esham was still dank as fuck but not dropping references to the man down below every 20 seconds. I tend to categorise Esham into two categories –…

I’ll admit this was actually my first time listening to a full ELO studio album, having only really been familiar with the singles (i.e. the greatest hits) of the ELO brand, but I’ve been meaning to check this lot out for a while. This is a really great sounding album, it sounds like I’m listening to a big, iconic classic rock record despite this being a moderately new release – it just has that kind…

Enema Shower are a groovy goregrind/porngrind (yadda yadda) band from Slovakia, playing in a slow but funky style of danceable filth. The vocals are low, thick ‘n’ heavy (see what I did there, y’know, because it’s porno grind!), the guitar work is like razorwire despite the slow speed and the drums possess the satisfying piccolo ping that one expects from musical circles such as this. These three guys (and one girl) seem to have a…

I need more stuff like this in my life! I stumbled across this little hardcore punk gem last month, and haven’t been able to get enough of it. It’s not exactly aeons long with six tracks clocking in at just over eight minutes, but it’s a dirty ride, with a proper old-school production style. The bass drum is so fat, and whilst the guitars have Dead Kennedys written all over them, the riffs are busy…

I went into this release not sure what to expect, but what a fun record! Opener “Double Trouble” immediately sets the mood with John Lydon’s spoken intro; a catchy number with a catchy, repetitive bass line and an indie pop guitar sound. There is a similar vibe and sound throughout the whole record, instrument-wise, mixed in with angst-ridden yet humorous vocals and lyrics from Mr Lydon. I think what really draws me in to this…

I know these are bootlegs but fuck, the sound quality absolutely fuckin’ sucks. It sounds like a bunch of low quality mp3s jingling their wateriness all over the place. That being said, it is great to hear all these Psychopathic Records affiliated artists all in one place, and kinda reminds me of an extended Dark Lotus, more than anything. The Twiztid guys really bring it on this record, and the odd contribution from Esham is…

Bloodlung were a sludge band from South Wales who called it a day a year or so ago. As a result, free copies of their Roach album filtered out and I got given one at band practice when Judas Cradle used to rehearse at One Louder studios in Newport. I don’t usually listen to metal stuff in the car on the way home because a.) I’m usually sick of hearing guitars by that point and…

Considering how much I listen to goregrind I always seem to let to the big ‘uns slide right on by….*sigh*. Anyway, this fucking amazing goregrind record was released last year by Bizarre Leprous and is a new project of Ex-LODH/SMES vokill puke bucket Erwin De Groot and one Kirill Maestro, who – according to Discogs – played guitars and programming in a band called Jaga-Jaga Massacre (who I’ll definitely be keeping an eye open for…

(Words by Burra, Porth’s last hope for redemption) I’ll be honest, I went into this album not expecting a great deal, and with the mindset it would never be another Mechanical Animals (for me Marilyn Manson’s finest hour). However, I was actually quite surprised by this record; it holds itself up quite well as an album. I think it is definitely the best thing to come out of the Marilyn Manson camp, in recent years…

It’s a word that gets thrown around a lot these days but fuck, Cult Of Occult are heavy. From the crushing guitar to the viscous vocals and the pounding drums it’s almost too much at times but it never stops being amazing albeit in a thoroughly unpleasant way. Five Degrees Of Insanity (as can you see from the album cover) is about a man slowly losing his mind – which is a pretty good description…

So today (“today” being a month or so before you all see this post) I was casually browsing through The Graveyard (what I call iTunes on my PC since Spotify came along) and I stumbled across this forgotten relic; it had completely slipped my mind that Sleep had done a $neaky little EP for Adult Swim, and top it off, I find out this shit came out in 2014! 2014!!?? Holy fuck… Anyways, on with…

Acoustic Wizard is, perhaps unsurprisingly, an acoustic tribute band to Electric Wizard. I could never in a million years have expected this to work, but fuck, it totally does. If anything this project proves that there is real weight to the riffs that Electric Wizard have pioneered, rather than them being yet another crap band playing really slowly and smothered in distortion. I guess this is one of those things where I really can’t say…

Filth is the second album from Texan death metal legends Waco Jesus. The fact that it shares a title with Swans’ debut is easily overlooked once you’ve gotten a good eyeful of that sleeve cover – this shit is fucking nasty. Now, death metal thrives on being offensive and sick and gory and can often be quite unkind to women (lol), but Waco Jesus are either doing an excellent job of satirising this or they…

Sad Strange Beautiful Dream is a solo album from Taking Back Sunday guitarist/backing vocalist John Nolan. I’ve been meaning to give this a listen for a while, after being a fan of Taking Back Sunday since the beginning as well as enjoying the Straylight Run project, so I thought I’d actually sit down and give it a good listen. This is a very mellow and minimalist album. I actually find it quite refreshing and laid…

Look at all that lovely sand! Well, one assumes it’s sand – like the coloured sand you hammer into crappy glass bottles on family holidays to the beach. No? Well fuck you. Cycle is a pulsing, circular throb of a noise session, that loops and dives into waves of repetition and (yes) cycles; the palpable worm Ouroboros in wave format, writhing itself in undulations of sonic ecstasy. Yeah. At least, that is what part one…

American Head Charge are one of my favourite surviving memories from the early 2000s nu-metal explosion. Their sound owed more towards industrial than straight up nu-metal and therefore they seemed to survive the nu-metal cull that crept in overnight sometime in 2003. They continue to be a big draw live, mainly as a nostalgia trip for most, but they haven’t dropped a record since 2005’s The Feeding, 11 years ago. There was an EP in…

As debut albums go this one is certainly one Pvris can be proud of – what a remarkably strong album that could easily be a greatest hits album rather than that of a debut release, and from such a young band. Opening track “Smoke” is an incredibly good opener and one that shines through as a live set opener for the band too (which I can confirm after being lucky enough to catch them live)….

Caustic layer upon layer. Saxaphone meets blastbeat. Noisecore meets lounge. Rumba, oompah, slide, shake, swing, mosh, grind, kill. Disco Volante; secret songs, leftfield, experimental, techno, disco, rock, electronica. Sophomore, confusion, exclamation, subtlety, song within a song within a groove within a phrase within a suite. Mr. Bungle’s second record is by far their most difficult to get into. It offers a level of inaccessibility that is surprising even for a band whose sole purpose seemed…

I feel like I have an overwhelming urge to trepan my skull in order to fully envelope my conscious with the buzzing, numbing industrial stomp of Pharmakon’s “music”. I’m joking of course, but it kinda feels like the human brain alone isn’t powerful enough to digest this disgustingly intense mix of industrial, power electronics and ambience. Pharmakon is not afraid to balance the serene and low-key alongside the bashing, crashing havoc of sheer noise, and…

I was introduced to Strapping Young Lad when I was in sixth form. Angela Gossow-era Arch Enemy were touring the UK and SYL were main support, so my friend Gavin sent me some tracks of theirs over MSN Messenger (those were the days, eh?) and within seconds I was like – “errrr…fuck this Arch Enemy shite”. The first track I was sent was “Shitstorm”, track 3 off this intense, industrial, almost symphonic death metal beast…

Having considered Weezer’s Blue Album a fantastic debut and one of the best of its era and genre, as well as a being a big fan of their earlier releases (yet admittedly my attention dipped somewhat in and out of Weezer’s more recent releases), I was very keen to hear if Weezer would really grab my attention with the self titled “White Album”. This is overall a very upbeat sounding Weezer album, and also one…

This is a strange one: I’ve never really considered myself a fan of Coheed and Cambria – in fact, growing up alongside the “emo” trend in high school, hearing Coheed’s high-pitch croons would send shivers up my spine. But then, with Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through The Eyes Of Madness came a maturity that took a while to sink in, although it added a progressive element to Coheed’s already…

Nonentity is a grating, deafening displaying of analogue harsh noise broken down in to three consumable parts. The first part hisses and belches the way good noise should, before the second track “Abuse” provides us with a break that, in all honesty, seems to come a little bit too soon. The third part kicks back in for a final 15 minute push through a seascape of bubbling static bliss. I find myself trying to loop…

Scumpulse are a crusty black metal band from Edinburgh, all the way up in Scotland – that distant and mysterious land just above the flat and boring desperate shithole that is mainland England. Broken Reflection is a nifty little tape single (can’t remember the last time I saw a tape single, I’ll be honest) featuring two tracks ov blackened crust in the vein of Skeletonwitch-meets-Darkthrone-meets-Discharge (yeah that’s a subgenre of crust now, okay?). The title…

What I usually associate with Ramleh is an unstoppable barrage of power electronics and barked vocal eruptions. Which is exactly what we’ve got here. This does not disappoint. Catching them live with Godflesh a few years ago literally (and physically) blew me away. I am, however, pleasantly surprised by the static, choppy, experimental nature of how 31/5/1962 – 1982 starts off, which leads into a much more digestible forty minutes or so than the more…

Martyrdöd are one of them crust bands that have somehow managed to partly transcend the restrictive confines of the d-beat genre and turn into a full fledged metal band in their own right. Don’t get me wrong, there’s quite a few crust bands playing these days with melodic riffs and song structures, but none quite manage to mix soaring metal melodies with messy d-beat drumming as well as Martyrdöd have. Melody has been slowly creeping…

Very, very spicy goregrind, my friends. Lo-fi blast fest featuring members of Super Fun Happy Slide. Unsure exactly what is going on in that album art and I don’t really want to know, either. Oh, the clogged drain, how she gurgles so eloquently…