Posts by SeanO)))

This is one of the those rare pornogrind records where none of the components can be faulted. Everything is absolutely on point. Admittedly, Anal Penetration borrow more from Mortician than they do, say, Libido Airbag, but it’s rare to find something so flawless flying under the pornogrind banner.

Canada’s Quatuor Molinari perform some challenging John Zorn compositions, bringing the terrifying hand that penned such musical atrocities as Naked City’s Torture Garden into the classical world. The menacing soundscapes of freeform jazz translate incredibly well onto the stringed instruments, resulting in a performance that is at times mournful and restrained, and at others, purely fucking unholy in every sense of the word.

I remember my parents had this album on cassette. When I had a bunch of money given to me on my 18th to contribute to my tattoo sleeve, they put the cash inside this cassette case and wrapped it up. Haha! As far as the record goes, its a bridging gap between the Stones’ world famous earlier work and the more divisive mid-to-late career outputs of the 80s and 90s. You can sense the changes…

This record was my first foray into the crazy world of Mr. Bungle. While the true craziness and musical tomfoolery would mostly came later on, this self titled offering is a slightly disturbing trek through ska-meets-metal, with a cheeky undercurrent. I’d love to know what inspired the guys in Mr. Bungle to come together and make music like this. Truly, there is no band like Mr. Bungle, not even with other experimental / avant-garde jazzy…

Well, if there was ever a disgusting ode to a capitalist society and a pointless existence of mindless consumerism, Herby has that all nailed in track one alone. She has really strong flows, some of which are incredibly impressive. As far as substance goes though, this is pretty weak. Come on, girl. 

A bit mid-paced, but very well recorded and catchy. Dare I say this is dad punk at its best? Haha! Either way, Bad Religion are what they are, and this is a good offering. The message is always worth diving into. 

Hi everyone and welcome to the 1000th Lines In Wax post! It’s only taken me over 8 years of inconsistent posting (haha), but we got there in the end. I’m nowhere near completing the list on the A-Z page, and the site has gone through various identity crisis’ in its time, but we are still here, and we are still posting. Nowadays, Lines In Wax is basically a nice archive of the stuff that I’ve…

John Zorn’s maddening orchestrations are brought to life by the massively talented three piece, Simulacrum. The compositions are almost operatic in a space rock / prog kinda way, taking the metal band template to strange new worlds. A glorious journey, but one, that for me at least, doesn’t quite invoke the horrors of the Gilles De Rais story. 

Hit and miss goregrind project from Italy. I love the swampy blur of the drum machine, but in all honesty the vocals and riffs are incredibly uninspired. All the pieces fall into place and at first listen it sounds great, but as soon as you start to dissect (lol) what it is that is going on, it is incredibly repetitive and monotonous. I traded this away a year or so ago, but took some pictures…

Pummelling assault of grinding fury from now legendary outfit, Blockheads. I guess I never really appreciated these guys until I caught them live at NDF 2016 and they absolutely fucking blew me away. Solid record.

Corrupt Fucking System was one of the last records I bough on 12″ vinyl (we’re going back now, mind). I picked it up from the band themselves during their appearance at Temples Festival 2014, so quite some time has past since I bought this! Doom do what they do and they do it well. Crust punk for everyone!

I love all this fucking mental vaporwave / nostalgia stuff. If I was a billionaire I’d buy a townhouse in Amsterdam and spend my days building a library of rare vinyl pressings of stuff like this, along with a sub-basement full of dodgy goregrind tapes. One Hundred Mornings is glorious, chilled-out, laid-back, takes-you-way-back brilliance. I’ll be running out of ways to describe vaporwave soon, but this shit is fantastic. Sold out as fuck on vinyl,…

Its funny, well, not funny, but fuckin’ great to see, how massive Pathology have become over the years. I remember this starting out as some low key project with disgusting zombie art, and that guy from The Locust on the drums. Not that it was bad then, but Pathology has morphed into this project that drops brutal death metal epics. The later efforts, such as Lords Of Rephaim, are much more polished and grandiose, even….

Timeless breakthrough record from one of the more consistent industrial metal bands (early 2000s aside, but that’s an era in music which almost everyone succumbed to). Crisp, clear production – mechanical, precise playing. Heavy as shit. Massive, massive Godflesh vibes vocally, especially on the single “Replica”. The Head Of David cover, “Dog Day Sunrise” is absolutely glorious, and is one of my favourite tracks – and covers – ever made.

A prostitute with a mouth fulla sass gets sent to a woman’s prison work camp where it turns out the guards are sadistic and the camp leader is “experimenting” on the women that work there. Queue all sorts of half-naked debauchery as the girls fight back and give the babyfaced freakazoid Dr. John (yes!) the runaround, with an absolutely insane ending. I haven’t personally for over half a decade, but it might be worth blazing…

Butcher MD are the greatest so it is always awesome to hear more gore from these guys. Distrophy, on the other hand, who I am not too familiar with, offer a much more rustic approach to proceedings. Soupy, Mortician-grade riffed mud and ants-in-your-pants drumming is the order of the day.  Tape now long sold out on Cadaveric Dissolution Records.

A heavy dose of savagery. A lot of death metal influences, but not bogged down in the tropes of that genre. A promising earlier offering from a now well established name in heavy music.

Glorious, regal, underground British doom metal. Think My Dying Bride, earlier Anathema or even 40 Watt Sun. “Rivers” is one of the greatest songs ever recorded.

If you had to distill the sound of the The Streets down into its most marketable and easily consumable form, The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living would be the best way to do it. The record is short, sharp and to the point. It works well with the cocaine fuelled tales of Skinner’s new found fame, and there are some decent bangers here, although this is far from the greatest Streets album ever…

One thing that always strikes me about this record is how short it is. Not that it matters, as it’s packed full of soulful tunes. I love the production; it has that classic warmth of jazz and blues. Winehouse was another one gone too soon, but what are you gonna do?

On the surface of it, The Room is yet another really bad movie about failed romance. There are plenty of them out there, I’m sure. However, what makes The Room so alluring is its creator and star, Tommy Wiseau. I am obviously not alone in this fascination, as the film has enjoyed a cult status for many years and has recently seem a mocku-docu-drama-whatever insight released with James Franco at the helm. As ridiculous as…

Maybe this kinda production style on late 2000s / early 2010s powerviolence and hardcore hasn’t aged all that well, but the music of Weekend Nachos surely has. The group have been quiet for a while now, but 2011’s Worthless stands the test of time, as far as heavy music goes. 

When people think of Dutch exports they think of cheese, clogs and maybe Heineken. In the groovy goregrind world however, Rompeprop puts NL on the map. This gore and watery poo-soaked metallic blast of ridiculousness really needs no introduction. However, if you are new to this kind of thing, I implore you to zip up your wet suit, and put a peg on your nose. It’s going to get messy! 

The pre-Swans outfit that Gira was part of after moving from LA to New York. The history of this man and his revolving door of cohorts is absolutely fascinating and this rare EP is a gross little window into this bizarre world. I’ve heard Circus Mort described as Joy Division featuring Michael Gira. I think that is a pretty apt description. I also get Big Black vibes from this, though. I wonder if Mr. Albini…

Just what the doctor ordered for a nostalgia trip! Never been the biggest fan of this band but their sound has always intrigued me. Cracking percussion and bass playing. And the vocals? Unique to say the least. A great little trip down memory lane. Also, I forgot how much I love the album art for this one.

This was one of the first records I ever heard, and is probably responsible for my life-long interest in hip hop maintaining even as I spent most of my teenage years wallowing in the pits of grindcore. I remember being ten years old, over my friends house (who was the son of my primary school headmaster (that’s elementary principal to you yanks)) roaring with laughter at the contents of “Public Service Announcement 2000” blaring out…

An intoxicating combination of ambient atmospherics and mangled vaporwave. A giant infomercial for relaxation of the mind, body and soul. Fetches a pretty penny on vinyl, and has been repressed in some very tasty looking packages.

Ughhhhhh! Voïvod is like a cigar; when you come across it, it tastes like complete shit. After a while though, you start to realize how fucking brilliant and nuanced they can be. These days I look on Voïvod in a whole new light. Dimension Hatröss is one of the best records in their large repertoire.

Incredibly awful Stephen King story that should have just stayed as a novel. With your active imagination filling the gaps, this might just work. Otherwise, it really hasn’t aged well (and no, I won’t be watching the remake!). I always wondered what happened to Tasha Yar from Star Trek, though.

If Skyrim met Stranger Things. Dragonborn by Lisette

Highly sought after 12″ EP from disappeared (?) pop/rap goddess, Abra. Six tracks, all fairly chill, some a bit raunchy. A decent listen. Not really my usual cup of tea, though. Just wanted to check what the fuss was about.

Carver City is the final studio album by CKY (or the incarnation of CKY that we all know and love). Unfortunately, after this the band split into two tangents; two simultaneous existences – an act that has plagued many bands before when members have departed or separated bitterly. Don’t let that detract from this album, though. (2020 edit: I can’t believe it took me 10 years to write this joke of a review hahah)

Classic lo-def body horror thriller from Cronenberg (M-Mmmmorty). James Woods is a bit wet (reminds me of Weller’s RoboCop) and Debbie Harry, despite looking absolutely fine, leaves a lot to be desired. Nevertheless, its a great movie with some awesome trippy effects.

What I love about this record is that it harks back to the earlier days style of just blasting out 1 or 2 minute short tracks. This keeps you on your toes as The Black Devil jumps from track to track spitting bars and dropping fat bass up on yo ass, fam. There’s a bunch of oldey-worldey samples too, like how MF DOOM does. That isn’t to say of course that it is a short…

Not the best RRR release, but hardly the worst either. Bitch Infection play in the style of Anal Whore, Sperm Swamp etc., where Anus Tumor is a bit more messy. Awful bedroom grindcore all round though. If you’re down you’re down, if you’re not you’re not.

Sextrash bring their trademark hyper-trash, complete with echo chamber production and lewd cover art. Sprinkle in a few twinkly guitar solos, and you’re laughing. This was also released as a side of a 12″ with another band called P.U.S. (not the one from Wales lol), but I cannot hunt a recording of that down anywhere. 

Two of the most veritable noise powerhouses of the current decade collide on a mystical and cataclysmic collaboration album. Passages of droning sludge meet ear-frazzling noisescapes, thundering vocals and pounding drums. The proceedings almost have a spiritual feel to them, although the brutal heaviness helps keep the experience rooted at ground level, exploding in your face. Strong stuff. 

Arnie in the Hunger Games, basically. Insert fire asf female accomplice, terrible bad guys and a pile of one liners and cigars, oh and the chief detective guy from Homicide: Life on the Street, and you’ve got The Running Man. Really, it kinda feels shitty to summarise it like that, but this is an 80s Arnie action movie, and its best to just watch the thing. Or not. LOL.

A tidy little trip through olde worldes invoked by classic rock and or roll. Imagine it… a warm, analogue recording provides caressing guitar riffs with just the right amount of crunch, along with dry, robust percussion. The bass line booms and rumbles front and centre, and the vocals caress you into relaxation along with some sparse keys for good measure. Yeah, it is a bit hokey, but what a bloody enjoyable album. (2021 edit: I was…

Lethally precise slamming brutal death metal goodness from who can only surely now be described as a household name in this kinda stuff? Either way, enjoy!

Playing heavily on nostalgia (both of 2002’s Bethesda Softworks epic, TES III: Morrowind, and that of the vaporwave style of music), Young Scrolls dropped this absolute banger. Not as silly as “Dagoth Wave” or Sheogorath’s rap record, “Neon Vivec” instead showcases the project’s serious musical chops. Neon Vivec by young scrolls

Haunting, mesmerising astral soundscapes are the order of the day. Striving to take you places alien yet familiar, close yet distant, tangible yet effervescent, Seven Movements for M.R.M. is a masterwork in emotional evocation through audio. Words can only say so much, please press play to ascend.

As I am sure many of you are aware, Earache Records went through a puzzling phase in the 90s, signing all sorts of rave, dance, gabba and electronic music to the label. One such short-lived act was Adrenalin Junkies. There isn’t much to say about this bog-standard dance record, other than I got it for next to nothing one day when I was buying a whole bunch of shit from Earache. I’m not even sure…

This was about the time I kinda moved on from Death Grips so I missed this record when it initially dropped. In hindsight, it’s now easily identifiable as the beginning of the band’s rockier, more abrasive sounds. Sure, DG have always been noisy and abstract, but there is a more distorted edge beginning with The Powers That B that permeated every release going forward. 

I’ll admit, I’ve never seen the movie Koyaanisqatsi. It has been on my to-do list for seemingly ages, but I am familiar with some of these tracks from the Watchmen movie that came out in 2009 or whatever. I find these songs hauntingly beautiful, bridging that perfect gap between the worlds of ambient and melody. The soothing leads are rich, sparkling and dense. Vocal reinforcement works in an almost orchestral way, and while none of…

Absolutely solid! Gaahl’s track record is pretty consistent and the new group entitled Gaahl’s Wyrd is no different. Mystical, hypnotic riffs balance somewhere between metal brutality and a freezing atmospheric fog; filling the audible palate with a rich, all-encompassing sound. The drums range from the slightly disappointing “buried-by-the-other-sounds” level blastbeats through to complex tribal rhythms that remind me of the works of Frost. The vocals are commanding, stunning, and contribute excellent finishing touches to this…

Christ, could this be any more metal? Some of the song titles are cringe-inducing levels of 00ber-br00tal1ty but I will say that I am very glad that I went ahead and pressed on. The production is thick and chunky, the band are tight as fuck (the drummer is absolutely spot on, old chum(s)) and the songs are highly enjoyable heavy slabs of brutal death savagery. Maybe not what the doctor ordered, but he’s bringing it…

Well, where on earth has this been all of my life? I absolutely snoozed on this one. Later-era Celtic Frost doesn’t have the greatest reputation, but this is phenomenally heavy. I guess, creating the proto-roots for the Triptykon project in the process. The lyrics are a bit corn-ball, but the delivery is exceptional, the production is dry and on point, and the songs have the weight of a thousand anvils drenched in the blood of…

Homogenic is possibly the most consistent of all Björk records (perhaps the clue is in the name). After the meandering madness of styles on Post, our formidable musical heroine sticks to a classic electronic backbone for her songs on this album. The beats in particular are absolutely outstanding. The synth lines are stunning. The production possesses a clarity that could bring you to tears. I don’t have to tell you about Björk’s vocal performances. Every…

I’ve been looking back recently at a few things that I remember from the nu-metal era, and I have to admit that this is one of the more interesting things that I’ve come across. With the opening track’s first lyrics of “shakaka-pow!” (or some such nonsense), you’d never think this was a mature and well constructed record, which has more in common with  post-hardcore than nu-metal, if I’m honest. I thoroughly enjoyed this one, especially…

The Left Hand Path is one that is admittedly less taken for myself, but you really can’t beat a bit of early Entombed. It really is no wonder that this sound was – and is to this day – so often imitated the world over. That guitar tone is unreal, but lets not let that detract from the stunning bass performance, the fantastic drummer and of course, the vocals. Make what you will of their…

Under The Heptagram is a short, sharp scoot through three fuzz-drenched tracks of d-beat and Entombed worship. It is all over within a matter of minutes, but it is well worth a listen. I’ll be hunting down more of Blind To Faith’s material. 

I broke this out after the news of Keith Flint’s death began to trick into the media. The Prodigy, or more specifically “Firestarter”, was one of the first things I ever truly remember hearing or enjoying as a child. I never fully immersed myself in their music, but once this “best of” came out in 2005 it entered into a regular rotation. I regrettably never got to see The Prodigy live. 

A limited, 1000 copies release of a split between two greats of the Nordic black metal scene. The crunchy fuzz on Mayhem’s studio cut here is outstanding, and lends itself more to the murky depths of death metal rather than the coldness of the blackened variety. Zyklon-B is much more refined and ultra-fast, showcasing the pure breed of industrial black metal (a strange crossover genre in itself, which either works mesmerisingly well or falls flat…

I remember this coming out when I was a wee lad. Back then, I couldn’t really appreciate what was going on, although I thoroughly enjoyed the track “Black History Month”, which I think was the second single off of this album. Since then however, I’ve been able to go back and appreciate what Death From Above 1979 were doing. For a two piece, the band really concocted some all-encompassing compositions and have made some interesting…

Where there is gore, surely grind is not far away. Enter stage right the goregrind / downtuned demo-tape quality death metal masters, Impetigo. The grinding slab that we have here is an EP from 1991, that has been re-released a whole bunch of times, most notably on murky blue/purple vinyl and on a picture disk. This is some pretty savage old school shit, so if you like your metal recorded on a shoestring budget, with…

I find that dungeon synth is often my muse, and mostly accompanies me on my writing. I must extend my thanks then, to artists such as Cernunnos Woods, for providing us with such splendours as Tears Of The Weeping Willow, the magic ambient tapestries of which have accompanied into long introspective forays as I reach that place, that well from which ideas flow. Beautiful stuff.

My God, the drums! The unholy drumming! When will it stop? Never, of course. They sound as thin as a wafer thin mint (just the one!), but blast and rattle us through 35 minutes of brutalising death metal. Dying Fetus are one of the stronger brutal death metal bands. Stop At Nothing seems to incorporate elements of hardcore into the festering mire, as well as a whole bunch of ripping solos. Metal on steroids, tbh.

There is something just so inherently evil about Akercocke’s early work, particularly on the first two records. Perhaps its the air of elegance that the band bring to a genre that is often delivered with the subtly of a war hammer to the face, or perhaps its the smattering of terrifying noises and soundscapes that the band use to decorate their macabre, sexually-charged satanic hymns. Rape… is a dirty, dismal maw, taking heavy inspiration from…

For a long time, M3 was the only OG Mushroomhead album that I didn’t own. Hunting down an OG MRH INC Records version proved nearly impossible before the days of Discogs, and when they did crop up, the discs went for a pretty penny. I ended up getting the 2002 re-issue with the massively improved artwork (this being said I would prefer the OG purely because its the OG, guess I’m a sucker for that…

I remember downloading this when I was a teenager and absolutely fucking hating it, so it was nice coming back 13 years later with a bit more appreciation for anything that isn’t Napalm Death. I was reading a Wikipedia article about Tolkien’s The Silmarillion (night shifts for you) and that eventually led me to this concept album. I can’t say I’m much of a fan of those vocals (to be fair power metal isn’t my…

How I Loved You is beautiful, stunning, eery and lush. A cut of morose sadness dashes the otherwise bright and sun-kissed veins of sparkling instrumentation and twinkling percussion. This was the album that made me fall in love with Angels Of Light; after a few unsuccessful listens elsewhere, everything clicked. “Evangeline” and “New York Girls” have to be two of the greatest songs ever written.

I was inspired to listen to this by my mate Gareth, who has recently caught the group live in concert. Honestly, this record was way better than I expected. Some of the synth sounds are very unique, and the bass sound is fantastic. It is a bit poppy for my taste, but has a dark streak running through it. All in all, a decent listen.

The vibe and theme of this record pretty much sums up the whole knuckle-dragging tupa tupa bullshit of the last two decades or so. Nevertheless, the production is smooth and the riffs are massive, which make for a fun if not entirely and completely unoriginal listen.

There is just something so very special about the music of Patrick Walker. Whilst less metallic in its heaviness than his previous work with Warning, 40 Watt Sun’s debut album possesses its own kind of dense, head-melting fuzz. The way it wraps around the bare bones songs, weaving its way into all of the gaps between the glacial riffs and sparse drumming, is absolutely sublime. On top of all this, the vocals and songwriting are…

It has been a good while since a record has instilled such a physical level of claustrophobic distress within me. Sitting, writing, in a fucking Asda cafe of all places (I was waiting for my car to be MOT’ed), Dark Ages’ ominous journeys through a plague-riddled world crept up and wrapped me in a blanket of suffocating dread. Yeah. Sounds a bit much, but it was fucking great. By the time I decided to get…

Jarboe is just a treasure, having offered so much to Swans in countering the sheer terrifying impact of their music with her lush and iconic vocals and keyboard melodies. In light of this, I suppose, I’ve also found the unhinged lunacy of her solo stuff a bit intimidating in comparison. Anhedoniac is a meandering, hour long trip through hell. It begins with these fantastic Middle Eastern elements to the first few tracks, and trials off…

This is probably the best Rolling Stones record to come out in known modern history. For a band that constantly re-hashes ‘best of’s over and over and over, hearing an album full of blues covers was very unexpected, for me at least. The record lurches into life, and at first seems a bit clumsy, with the Stones showing their age in comparison to the energy of their earlier efforts. After the initial adjustment however, the…

This is a sonic whirlwind of ripping grindcore savagery, to be honest. One of the early purveyors of the powerviolence tag, Dropdead manage to retain that unhinged edge that a lot of later, more polished powerviolence productions miss completely. Pissed off, venomous grind for the thinking man. 

I’m a cynical bastard so its easy for me to see why people complain that ENT isn’t really ENT these days, but the real talk should be about the records that they are releasing and the shows that they are performing. Both of which, I’m glad to confirm (give or take a Dean mishap or six), are still fucking outstanding. This is absolutely savage, like.

Every so often I just gotta come back to early Anathema. Most often, it used to be to Serenades, but as time has gone on, I find myself revisiting this compilation rather than the debut album. Despite the engine of pure brilliance that modern Anathema has become, I do genuinely miss the old doomy Anathema. Honestly, this comp always gets looked over by me, but lets be frank here: as awesome as Serenades is, the…

Man, I absolutely fucking love dungeon synth. If anything makes me wanna re-download TES:III plus a fuckton of custom mods, or start writing a 220,000 word fantasy epic, then one suspects that this is the exact record. Fief is particularly magic, employing a range of instruments that seem authentic to the olde worlde. Yeah, it might be VSTs (or maybe not, I dunno haha), but it sounds absolutely fantastic. There is so much dungeon synth…

More Than Life play that kinda hardcore that has so much youthful energy coursing through its veins. Throw in a splash of something altogether more emo or post- and you should get a good idea of where we’re coming from. The riffs are something else; channeling all sorts of influences (even sounds a bit like black metal in parts) into these morose yet rabid tunes. Love Let Me Go is the band’s debut record from…

Drive Me To Kill You is a fun hardcore punk tinged journey through the sloppy pits of grindcore, brought to you by the guy who runs agzdaredz.blogspot.com, which I got a shitload of noise / grind stuff from back in the day, so kudos to you, my friend. The best part is that I have no fucking clue where I got this CD from, no doubt in one of my trips north, but I’m usually…

There is something unusually uplifting about the rock band / synthesizer combination this record. I guess this is also what makes the album so enduring; the physical – or analog – world meeting the clinical and mechanical world of computers. Couple this with Numan’s bizarre but now trademark delivery and you have an all-round winning combination, that in all realities and existences, needs no introduction.  

(June 2019 edit: this should have been posted years ago, so please excuse the promotional tone in which it is written!) Okay, so here it is, the first release on the new Lines In Wax “label”, the glorious split EP between thrashing Newport grinders and Hereford powerviolence trio Fetus Christ. We’ve been toying with the idea of doing a split for quite some time, so it fit perfectly with the intention to start my label,…

Merzxiu is two back to back 20-minute slabs of experimental noise (are you surprised?) from two of the most experimental and well-respected artists in the entire left field of music. Merzbow, by now surely, needs no introduction. Xiu Xiu on the other hand, play a very unusual blend of styles, but have forayed into the noise world in the past. The two tracks here, simply titled “A” and “B”, are slow, brooding, bubbling, crackling atmospheric…

So, Korn invented dubstep. Oh, didn’t you hear? I wasn’t informed either, but its okay, there hasn’t been any great cultural upheaval; the only thing that the world has missed out on is several more crappy albums like this, where straight-outta-the-box Native Instruments Massive oscillating bass riffs jar awkwardly with mediocre Korn tracks. Y’know what, sometimes…. just sometimes…. it works, but most of the time it really, really doesn’t. Fieldy’s low-hanging bass strings clank horribly…

The filthiest, blasting gore. Sounds more like two sessions back to back (could easily be a split or something) than a gen-up album, but both sessions are highly enjoyable. For fans of disgusting, bloated goregrind. Get it down ‘ew feckin’ gullet, son!

Take it from Agathocles, my friends; grind is indeed protest. Well, not all of it is, maybe just some of it. The protest against over-produced, tired, non-DIY methods seems to come from the punk / crust side of the coin, and that is, perhaps not at all coincidentally, the side of the “Grind Coin” (I might Trademark that) from which the revered Agathocles hail. This is more of what is to be expected of our…

Sextrash play raunchy, messy thrash metal that verges on the edges of insanity. Think Sacrilege, or Hirax, with the “attitude” of Motley Crue and the production approach of a 90s death metal cassette demo. It is honestly, a weird mix. It is almost as if the style of music does not match the cover art that the band have chosen, which I cannot decide is either one of the coolest sleeves I’ve seen or one…

I’ve always found this record to be much gentler than the other Death In June offerings that I’ve heard. That sub-level of sinister atmosphere seems almost completely devoid from these glistening neo-folk hymns. For once, it almost seems like positivity and hope undercuts the morose songwriting, rather than echoes of pestilence, death and sadness. Yes, some of the lyrics allude to some darkness, but generally the vibe is much more twinkly than happy that I…

Through Chasm, Caves and Titan Woods stands apart, for me at least, from the rest of the Carpathian Forest catalog, which is generally a bit more filthy and with a blackened punk vibe. This though… this is wondrous, haunting, mysterious and hypnotically beautiful; not a million miles away from the “magic spell” days of Burzum, back when black metal was transcendental yet didn’t need to declare itself as such, back when it was atmospheric and…

I’d be lying if I said I was anywhere near as enthusiastic about post-OG run Joker’s Cards ICP stuff than I was about everything up until that point. Sure, they had the odd album that was y’know, a bit crap, but after the original saga was complete it almost felt for a while that ICP were trundling forward without a purpose (I’ll get to this in my Tempest review). Furious Fred Fury though (the FIFTH…

Ship Of Fools is a name that I’ve seen thrown about here and there, but I had absolutely no idea that they were an instrumental prog band. Their links to the likes of Cradle Of Filth and Anathema had me thinking that they would be some sort of doomy keyboard offering, but Close Your Eyes (Forget The World) is a cerebral trip through the meandering yet blissful sea of keyboard-driven prog. Some of the tracks…

There is a lot of hype around this lass right now, but spinning this up I can see that all of it is totally deserved. There is something incredibly special about this record. I guess, the genius starts with the production, which is done entirely by her brother, Finneas O’Connell. The songs really pop out of the speakers, the crisp, in your face tracks duck and dive from style to style, led by Billie’s pure…

Two young girls are snatched for a high-paying maniac who is in love with life-sized dolls. A shady biker gang, who is at first a bit skeptical of the idea, soon warms to the $10,000 asking price for the girls, and they quickly kidnap two young hotties from the city. However, despite the premise for all sorts of debauchery, nothing really happens. At all. There is a bit of back and forth between the bikers…

Alternative 4 marked the biggest departure for Anathema from their original doom metal sound. Sure, the melody had continued to creep in on both The Silent Enigma and Eternity, but Alternative 4 jumped ship from metal completely, laying the blueprint for the alternative (lol) rock sound that the band would continue to expand on throughout the rest of the nineties. The production is a little flat, but there are some Anathema classics here. Also, what…

After an exciting but slightly shaky debut, the quick follow-up that was Superbuick really started to show off Mushroomhead’s songwriting chops. Gone are the filler tracks, and the album seems shorter than its predecessor, but the record is only leaner for it. The songs are far more complex and engaging. I listened the absolute fuck out of this album when I was a teenager. My dad bought an original copy of it for me from…

I love Phillip Glass, but he’s probably one of the least-played artists that I turn to. The time was ripe then, for me to finally check out this album with Bang On A Can All-Stars (who I am absolutely not familiar with). What unfolds is two pulse-quickening instrumentals which is basically the same loop going over and over and over but with slight variances. It is tense, yet somewhat relaxing. Kinda like being cranked on…

I recently added “This Corrison” to a whopping playlist that I was working on, so was inspired to finally go back and check out the album that it came from. Some of the other tracks don’t seem to hold up so well compared to it, but “Lucretia My Reflection” and “Driven Like The Snow” are brooding goth classics. The drum sounds on “Never Land – A Fragment” are stunning too. I love the mysterious simplicity…

I remember seeing these play in Abertillery (?) to like, 5 people, which was an interesting experience. I find stuff like this always translates better in a live setting, but Gambling For Gore has a solid sound. There is an interesting edge to the drumming, which adds another dimension to the usual saucepans ‘n’ triggers approach. Make what you will of the pig squeal / grunt kinda vocals (they have both draw backs and entertaining…

Imagine Meshuggah meeting Venetian Snares on a shit virtual reality show. Yeah. I don’t really know where that last bit came from, but I’ve written it now so it is staying in. Quality journalism*, folks! Cut up metal samples meet batshit song structures and a farmyard of vocals. I would expect no less from something found on Grindcore Karaoke. *I use the term very loosely.

Well then, this is just as bad as (if not worse than) I thought it would be. I absolutely love bad movies, as I’m sure frequent readers are fully aware, but I’m more of a creature-FX, fake blood and lots of tits kinda guy, rather than an a Z-list-celeb-loaded, computer generated “we’ll fix it in post” kinda guy, y’know? When it comes to awful CGI rain and/or sharks though, I feel as though there isn’t…

Ahh, tupa tupa death-tinged goregrind, done in the Czech style! There really is nothing else quite like it, for better or worse. It has an interesting tone as it is led entirely by bass a la Necrocannibalistic Vomitorium or Spasm, but don’t expect anything original from Slup’s Mimo Mísu, but if you are here to party, then you are indeed on the right track, traveller.

A gorgeous, lush mass of soundscapes. Think haunting ambient synthesisers suspended unnaturally over atmospheric backgrounds and busy yet unobtrusive samples. Surely the perfect music for reading, perhaps with something futuristic yet densely terrifying, like something by Aldous Huxley.

Dub War, for those that don’t know, were the group that more or less became Skindred. In the 90s they released two or three albums of increasingly diverse ragga/dub infused rock, and whilst – to Earache Records at least – they ended up on the Wrong Side Of Successful, they are still highly regarded. Sure, it all sounds a bit dated now (but so does the first Skindred album), but in a cool way this…

I’ve held onto this little bastard for a very long time…. I’m thinking either one of the editions of Leeds Deathfest (so that’d be 2009 or 2010), where I picked it up for like a quid or something. Obviously, in that time, Cancerous Womb have come a very long way indeed (they have, in fact, unfortunately also expired as a band).

Read aloud, the title of the record sounds like it is something altogether more poultry-based (or is that poultry baste?) but being signed to Amputated Vein of course means that this is a turgid slab of putrid slamming death metal. You know exactly what is gonna come farting out of the speakers, so either press play, or don’t. It’s fucking great, though. (Can you call this an album review? 2019 Ed: sure you can!)

MF Doom’s flows are absolutely unreal. MM.. Food is a short album but every single track is an absolute banger, even the ones which are just shed loads of samples over sick beats. Reminds me to check out the Special Herbs beats series. Its easy to dip in and out of Madvillainy and ignore the rest of the discography, but MF Doom has to be one of the most consistently excellent MCs ever, and MM…..