Archive for January 2018

Of the two things that I never thought would go well together, football and thrash metal are high on that list. I suppose the insipid hooliganism and tribalist subtext to the football psyche (sorry football fans!) goes hand in hand with the one-dimensional attack of thrash metal. That would be true of course, if RDP didn’t expertly blend in hardcore punk influences too, giving the record a chaotic edge akin to the works of D.R.I….

It should feel like I’ve been waiting since the dawn of time for new Akercocke material, but with the Antichrist Imperium and the incredibly excellent Voices, my fix has been kept somewhat at bay. However, to the die hard Akercocke fanatic, I imagine this is somewhat akin to taking methadone instead of heroin, so it is an enormous sigh of relief that I can now lose myself in the blissful, all-encompassing abyss of the group’s…

Blackstar is a strange trip; a trip tinged by sadness, although that particular sadness was steeped in strength and ready to face what lay beyond. It isn’t everyday that you get to hear a record put out by a man who knew that he was dying (inb4 the general existential dread that comes with the knowledge that we are all slowly dying lol). This in itself should cut an interesting enough scenario, but things were…

Azealia Banks keeps popping up in the media due her somewhat erratic and bizarre behaviour. Naturally, this led me to actually check out her music, remembering “212” from a few years ago being a bit of a banger, with rude lyrics and intense Euro-style techno instrumentation. Broke With Expensive Taste is a bit of a mixed bag, if I’m honest. It reminds me of Lady Gaga’s debut album, which was also desperate to try and…

Cracking Morrissey album, this! The strongest sounding Morrissey album since 2004’s You Are The Quarry, very easily so in my opinion – yeah Christ, I really enjoyed this one. Great sound here, especially from the very grand opener “My Love, I’d Do Anything For You”, with its horn section coming into play, adding to that nice big band vibe. I keep going back to this one – a definite favourite! I won’t waffle on about…

A decade ago (Jesus Christ…) I tried (and failed) at running my own record label. I have done it again for fun once or twice since, but cutting out tape covers in my house is a bit different from trying to press vinyl and organising massive splits. Anyways, I failed miserably at it, but I did get my hands on some awesome music. This here was a CDr re-issue of an atmospheric Italian death metal…

Falling Early, Falling Often is a lesson in pure, unfiltered USA sludge mania. Channeling that Eyehategod school of combining time-warped Sabbath groove with downtuned desperation, Noothgrush’s dirty sound shines like a revealing black light through the dry, crisp and restrained production job which dominates most of the tracks on this collection. (Why is a lot of doom produced this way, is it to cram all of that riff in when recorded at what I can…

Tell you what, this has been on my review-list for over three years. I initially added it on when they were announced for a Temples Festival line up way back when. The initial review fell under the bus when some seriously dodgy accusations were made against the main man in Enabler by their ex-bass player. Now all that has blown over somewhat, I have finally decided to crack open the ancient draft file of this…

You gotta love Richard D. James, right? Often imitated (attempted, at least!) and discussed, but instantly recognizable and stands in his own little microcosm. Orphaned Deejay Selek came out around the same time as Syro, and honestly, I still spin this a lot more than I do the Syro record. There is something much more imminent about this; the way the opening tracks pulse and drive makes you just want to get up and go,…

(Excuse the lo-fi art today, can’t find anything with high enough resolution!) This is a barking mad, rabid display of hardcore punk power. Strong Intention’s music is underpinned by what seems like genuine disgust and anguish at the American work-a-day life, which sets them apart from their peers in a sea of similar bands. Songs like “Model Citizen”, “Consumer Sucker” and “Economic Outpatient” are perfect examples of this malice utilized to deliver scathing punk noise…