MORTAL INCARNATION – ‘LUNAR RADIANT DAWN’

Sombre, DUSKy Death Doom Metal from Japan. These two tracks squeeze sanguine granite atmosphere from every moment of their running time – sepulchral obelisks of heavy as fuck Death Doom, laden with masterful riffs full of complexity, an immense Bass sound, lots of interesting detail in the excellent drumming, flourishes of keys or synths accenting melody beneath the riff arrangements and the brutally low crushing vocal is also peppered with moments of spoken word – blasting Death Metal and funereal processions of nihilistic Doom, perfectly married with bleak and deadly melodies. Some of the transitionary mid paced chugging parts in ‘A Dismal Propagation into Decay’ will have you headbanging until your eyes fall out! Fucking awesome. It’s like they’re able to marry the UK Death Doom scene’s strongest elements, being the gothic melodies and grandiosity of the later works of the Peaceville three, but with all of the savagery, riffcraft and deathly atmosphere of those band’s demo eras. I’ve been on a huge Death Doom kick of late, and Mortal Incarnation’s two tracks here represent some of the best sounds the genre currently offers. Don’t sleep on this one.

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LUXURY ELITE – ‘101.7 WAVE II’

luxury elite is a Vaporwave project from Kentucky, who has produced some of my favourite sounds the genre has to offer. ‘101.7 WAVE II’ is late-night lo-fi Vaporwave apotheosised. A blissful yet melancholy drive through the nostalgia field, languorous saxophones and electronic bass line lubrication, twinkling shimmer beats and slowed chopped n screwed vocal arrangements, soft pastel sunshine, mid 90’s infomercials and advertisements, smooth jazz and consumerist culture cuts. Each short track combines to create a sense of FM station hopping throughout the running time. The music is extremely well selected, sitting between true incidental Muzak consumerist commentary and silken Jazz/Funk grooves to nod your head to in your sun lounger. Vaporous and romantic, sarcastic and earnest, luxury elitle perfectly surmises a whole (internet)genre here. A work of excellence from a master of her craft. Wavy as fu(n)k.

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ROYAL JELLY – ‘QUEEN’

Naturalist Gorenoise from Canada. Ambience, insectoid blast beat alpha signalling, insect communication chatter Gore blasting, Brutal ambient sheen of Guitars, chittering worker drones, bubbling vocal pheromone emanation, emitting of hyper intense blasting scientific Gorenoise pollen. Moments of traditional song structure appear from within the shape of the living hive, creating little moments of sonic euphoria nestled inside the cut up harsh Gorenoise husk. Pulverising, alien and cold. Royal Jelly is one of the more fascinating and valuable genus’ to have emerged from the bloated URL of Gorenoise online. They remind me a bit of NX5’s stuff, like Menometrorrhagia or Active Stenosis. Fuck this rules. It would appear this EP is the last of a trilogy, so I’ll definitely be checking put the precursive chapters to this fascinating work.

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FOETAL NECROPSY CS

Putrefied Goregrind from BC, Canada. Foetal Necropsy is another project of Goregrind hero Andy Ringdahl. These tracks have been released as a split tape with Mankind’s Devastation, and a split with Botched Anastomosis J Pouch, too. So they’ve been doing the rounds for a little while now. Punk as fuck Goregrind, rednecked and inbred, Autophagia inspired and furiously retrograded and damaged. Vocal shifted spew, trashcan snares, gruesome Guitar maulings, blast beats and knuckle dragging Mince, muddy recording quality. DIY Goregrind made by a devoted maniac. This one is most similar to Pyoderma Gangrenosum and Reekorrhoea, to my ears. Filthy, Punk, Lo-Fi as fuck. Andy, if you’re reading this, we want to hear those Sewage Splatter tapes releases in full, and we want that Emetic Garbage compilation! We need that shit!!

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MAGIC MOSS – ‘VOLUME 01’

First offering from Magic Moss (newly formed London psych rockers featuring old hands from GNOB and Derelics) which I picked up on cassette a short while back. I’m not keen on reviews that go track by track, but seeing as there’s only two here, I’m going to indulge in some hypocrisy and do just that. Side A contains the glitterboot stomper “English Rose”, which lithely swaggers about with its blocky riffage and reedy organ, hearkening back to early 70s UK glam but with a lysergic glaze. Flipside track “We Are The Ones” clatters along at a fair old pace, parading a great wailing vocal and bubbling synth, while both keyboard and guitar get a blistering solo apiece. If whacked-out garage rock that reeks of incense and peppermints is what you dig, “VOLUME 01” is a deftly delivered one-two punch that your ears deserve. Hopefully “VOLUME 02” won’t be far off.

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SWALLOWED SELF TITLED EP

Three tracks of disturbed Death Doom from Finland’s Swallowed, portentious, horrific and deadly. Swallowed play primordial pre-genre-codification Metal of Death, rife with doomy slow passages and thrashing mania, with lots of influence from Autopsy and Winter. Choking vocal bile and madness, swirling nightmare riffs and portal dark shifting tempos. Lumbering and crushing, wild eyed and feral, with a dreadful and disturbing atmosphere. Swallowed would even further abstract their Death Metal sound into psychedelic occult territory with their full length record ‘Lunarterial’, but here they maintain more adherence to Death Doom form. Blackened and caustic, slimy, primitive Death Metal. Essential.

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KNIFER SELF TITLED CS

Hard Rock from Brisbane. Motorhead and Leatherface collide for a rollicking, drunken affair. Classic warm-sounding Guitar licks, mid paced punk rhythms, throaty vocal tear, awesome Bass twang sound, backwater Rock to be enjoyed with lots of cheap beer and hash. 4 tracks of Proto-Metal danger and Rock n Roll minimalism. Knifer hone their sound into a straight razor of frill-less headbanging and drinking, with masterfully consise bluesy soloing, drumming full of badass fills and details, and songs drenched in memorable hooks and vocal menace. An absolute ripper – don’t sleep!

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WILLIAM HUTSON – ‘SPECTRALITIES’

William Hutson’s Spooky loops – live to tape manipulations, sound FX from open source spooky sounds melted down into horridly slimy harsh soundscapes. Bizarro melted Halloween masks and bubbling sugar pumpkins, cackling Dracula heads loop horrors, howling winds, skittering vermin and tittering demons, sinister sermons from unknowable ministers of fear. Shrieks of terror, plundered dialogue sampling, whinin’ cats and moanin’ ghouls! A thick, nasty fog of horror sound for the creatures of the night, creepy cuts from the bat’s bell tower. Kitsch, cursed sounds for the Halloween sound fanatic. It’s hideous!

Deathbomb Arc

DECOMPOSED – ‘THE FUNERAL OBSESSION’ EP

Sardonic, rotten Death Doom EP from underrated UK band Decomposed. Two masterful tracks of morbidly sorrowful Doomed Death Metal dripping with atmosphere and crushing hooks, extra-low growl vocal exhortation, extra-heavy rhythms shift from mid paced stomp to crawling despairing doom, mournful riffs and sonorous leads destroying your feeble soul. Dense and morbid Death Doom. The recording quality is just right, drums booming and echoing away under the weight of the crushing strings. Decomposed’s full length album ‘Hope Finally Died’ is a great record, one that I hold in high esteem amongst the very best albums the UK Death Doom scene has produced, and I’d not checked the EP out so I’m glad I did! Rotten and gory but also sepulchral, atmospheric and sombre. Fucking great! I think I actually prefer the version of ‘At Rest’ on this EP than the album version. This got a 12″ reissue on the excellent Me Saco Un Ojo records, and the CD reissue was handled by the also excellent Dark Descent records – if it’s available, grab a copy. Get into it!

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RIDE FOR REVENGE / SATANIC TORMENT SPLIT

Three tracks of Finnish Black Metal madness from Ride For Revenge and Satanic Torment – rudimentary rituals of lunar satanic sin! Ride For Revenge peel your worthless flesh with hypnotic, regressive ritual Black Metal, sub Noise Rock abuse and horror, derelict Bass-heavy satanic ritual abuse with demented torturer vocal. Foul, base and primordial, inarticulate and incensed! Then Satanic Torment rake your exposed guts with Black Punk Noise, equally derelict and ugly in it’s obscure occultism and sub-Rock instrument abuse. Croaking necro vocal hate, rhythmic hypnotism and primitive riffs. Fantastically cruel, bestial split – if you enjoy Beherit, Flipper, Abruptum or Drunks With Guns, don’t hesitate! Grab yourself a 7″ and a shirt from Fuck Yoga. Those demonic tormentors and impaled babies adorning your sinful torso are sure to offend and upset the neighbourhood children.

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CAPTAIN THREE LEG – ‘NIGHTLY DESECRATIONS’

This album was my introduction to Captain Three Leg, and I loved them right away. I had come across the awesome Mortville Noise Blog by that point already, I think, but this was the first Captain Three Leg music I heard. This was released as GK#28 – I can’t link directly to the downloadable GK release because Grindcore Karaoke has been in some form of stream-only disrepair or abandon for quite a few years, and consigned to the WayBack Machine. A damn shame, that. C3L here present 99 tracks of heavy, crushing Grindcore from several recording sessions across a few years, a format that many of their releases conform to. Blasting Grindcore with very low and harsh burp-ish vocal, chaotic whirlwind guitars with plenty of slimy riffs and chugging parts, grinding Bass, choice samples and of course lots of blast beats. Down-tuned and pulverizingly heavy, girthy and gory. There’s a nice balance between catchy head banging riff parts and Noisegrind blurts of chaos across these tracks. Captain Three Leg are masterful at this particular kind of down-tuned not-quite-Gore Grindcore. This release is also notable as being the first C3L release to feature ‘printed’ lyrics, which Andy makes some sense of on the Grindcore Karaoke release notes. I’ll quote him just here –

“A note about our lyrics and the lyric writing process:
This is the first time any of our lyrics have been made available. In the earliest days we didn’t even bother writing lyrics and just faked them, but over time we started writing stuff down so it didn’t sound like we were just going “rrrrrr, grrrrrr, grrrr!” over our music. We’ve never been an issue oriented band; these lyrics really do exist only to fill up space and nothing more. Grindcore in itself is pretty silly. Playing music as fast as possible, pretending to be angry about something, screaming at the top of your lungs is all pretty silly, especially when done by a bunch of people in their mid-30’s or older. At this age, unless we’re singing about how we don’t have any money leftover after paying our mortgage, we’re struggling to find things to write about. We always write our music first, and then lyrics a great deal of time later. We wrote about the most ridiculous and extreme scenarios imaginable knowing nobody would be reading our lyrics. A lot of our song ideas come from real-life news stories exaggerated to make for a better story. Just as often, a 3 to 5 second sample from a movie will dictate what the song will be written about and leave us scratching our heads trying to come up with lyrics to match. As a result, most of our lyrics are quite dumb, especially so considering we didn’t think anyone would ever see them or be able to make them out. These lyrics were never meant to be taken seriously; they’re offensive for the sake of being offensive, stupid for the sake of being stupid. Even with this disclaimer, I’ve chosen to withhold some of the lyrics from being printed as some were just too stupid/offensive. Through years of listening to this sort of nonsense, you might be able to make some/all of them out, but the cloud of doubt comforts me somewhat and I hope we’ve done a good enough job of making them indiscernible to the listener. They aren’t important anyway. They’re only words and exist as a place holder for growling and gurgle noises.”

If you’ve not checked out Captain Three Leg, remedy this circumstance immediately and start their huge discography in the same place I did.

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REPRESSION ATTACK – ‘ALTAR OF DESTRUCTION’

Russian Stenchcore misery. Deathly Crust/Stenchcore, taking influence from Sacrilege, Axegrinder, Hellbastard, old Bolt Thrower, you know the sound. Downcast and furious, switching tempos from slow crushing to mid pace cruising Thrash, with metallic chugging and catchy punk riffs, strangled guitar solos, desperate ghost of war vocal and a fucken filthy sheen of apocalyptic despair and post-human Killing Joke desperation. Miserable and memorable Metalpunk, battle hardened Stenchcore. Humans in chains upon the Altar of Destruction. Dig it, mutie!

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HAUNTED DEMO

New Jersey Death Metal band Haunted with their 20 minute demo from 1992. Warped, obscure, chunky Death Metal demonicism from beyond the darkness. Blasting drums, gnarly and violent riffing, awesome Bass sound and brutal low vocal exhortation. Evil and cryptic, blackened, dissonant and totally brutal and pulverizing. Old school USDM with New York Death Metal style and a pre genre-category Brutal Death Metal sound, commanding, abominable and overlooked. Sits in an interesting place sound-wise between Suffocation’s early blasting and Morbid Angel’s labyrinthian riffing. Fuckin’ killer! Grab a cassette from their bandcamp page while you still can.

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SWEET JONNY – ‘LIVE AT THE LAB’

Other than a public swimming pool which is home to a few mediocre waterslides, Sweet Jonny are the only thing about Burgess Hill worth noting. They’re particularly good live, so what a result it is that their newest release is a live studio set. Featuring a selection of as-of-yet unreleased curios and rarities (apart from fan favourite “Carpe Diem”, presented here in a much beefier version than the one on their sophomore EP “Softcore”), it demonstrates the band at their rawest and most intense as they rattle through the 5 tracks in less than 15 minutes, resulting in a short, sharp blast of searing garage rock that’s full of scraggly guitars and piledriving drums; the ideal backdrop for frontman Tom Backshall to sneer and bark his signature brand of guttersnipe poetry. I’ve seen scores of bands come and go in south east England over the years, but this scuzzy lot are the sole constant. Good on ’em, long may they reign.

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DESERT STORM – ‘OMENS’

Heaving, writhing stoner metal from Oxford’s Desert Storm, their second release on APF Records. “Omens” is crammed almost to the rafters with burly riffs, forceful vocals and drumming that swings like a hanged man at the gallows; but there’s room here for more diversity than in your average stoner record. They’ve got an acute sense of dynamics, and the quiter acoustic moments (sometimes augmented by tastefully placed piano) sit beautifully in amongst the heavier passages. In fact, it’s these quiet moments that allow the album to really shine, so much so that they choose to close it with “Rebirth”; a haunting acoustic number replete with folky harmonies and an elegiac lead vocal delivery. As expected from a band that tours as much as they do, Desert Storm is a seriously tight unit that grooves together magnificently, and this latest record of theirs further shows they’ve got the songwriting chops to match. Grab it.

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ELEPHANT TREE – ‘HABITS’

Elephant Tree’s second LP must have surely been one of the most highly anticipated follow-ups on the UK stoner/doom underground in recent years. The bar that they set themselves with their eponymous debut album in 2016 was incredibly high, and everybody I know who is in a band on the scene couldn’t wait to see what they’d do next. I think it’s fair to say our expectations have been met, and then some. Partly eschewing the bluesiness of their previous records for an almost hymn-like songwriting approach, while upping the psych quotient with a palette of pulsating synths, sighing strings and the reverb-soaked vocal harmonies that are their trademark, “Habits” is an elegant, slow-moving cruise across the cosmos, the gargantuan riffs and sheer density of the tones providing the thrust. Strange how music this heavy can make you feel so goddamned weightless. Their knack for beautiful melodies shines throughout, even in the album’s darker moments, such as the sorrowful final chorus of “Exit The Soul”. Unlike so many stoner/doom bands that employ super low vibrations to crush you beneath their sonic mass, Elephant Tree uses them to envelop you in a huge, warm, fuzz-laden embrace. It’s the sound of a band taking great strides of creativity, and I could barely keep the smile from my face for the duration of the record. Music for the soul.

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