DETHRONED EMPEROR – ‘MORAL NIHILITY’

Bloodsoaked Deathgrind cenotaph from the now defunct Dethroned Emperor – no frills, no bullshit, absolutely no quarter. Members have gone on to feature in some of NJ’s most fearsome Metal bands, Altar of Gore and the irascible Siege Column to name just two. Blighted sepulchral Guitars leaden with downtuned, crushing Bass tones carving gnarly, deathly riff patterns and merciless chugs, super no nonsense, tight and heavy lethal drumming matches the Guitars move for move, sick as fukk low throat harsh vocal. A blunt, obstinate, steel girder sledge of priapismic Death Metal wrenched forcefully into a form of Grindcore, furious in misanthropic outrage. Super succinct in style, songcraft boiled down to its essence and stripped of unnecessary repetition or indulgence – just song after song straight to the teeth. Borne out of similarity to Assück, not just sonically; their despondent outlook on humanity here presented with similar spite and vulgarity, but with less overt political pinning. Burly, brutal, imperious and incorrigible. Get obliterated.

N.V.N.M.

MABE FRATTI – ‘SE VE DESDE AQUÍ’

Attempting to pin down the chameleonic music of Guatemalan cellist and composer Mabe Fratti is like trying to knit a hovercraft out of soup. A lysergic concoction of Latinate avant-folk and piquant chamber jazz, it inhabits a strange grottoed dimension where melody is the best friend of discord and pop’s usual rules of engagement are broken with impunity. Psychedelia of the common or garden variety it most certainly ain’t. Departing from the hazy introspection that marked Fratti’s lockdown masterpiece ‘Será Que Ahora Podremos Entendernos’, ‘Se Ve Desde Aquí’ spins a web of more inscrutable allure that centres on the ever-shifting dynamic between order and chaos. Where once her songs were noctilucent billows of variegated sound, here they more resemble a sequence of clockwork Fabergé musical boxes, each one more finely wrought and intricate than the last. Backdropped by clouds of pepper spray synth and efflorescent sax, Fratti’s oblique cello lines spool out in glistening platinized filaments, but it’s her glorious bell-clear voice that’s the real show-stealer, wheeling through the dissonance like a bird of paradise in a vast barbed wire aviary. Comparisons with so singular an artists are near impossible to draw, but if the effulgent esotronica of Camila Fuchs, Jenny Hval’s orchidaceous art-pop or the brambly jazz nouveau of Mirna Bogdanović light your candle, you’ll find much to love here. Stunning.

Tin Angel Records

ENDUSER – ‘SHOTGUN ANTHEM’

A beastly 12″ from the devilish Enduser, released on Painfree Sound in 2005 – a dominating cut of pussy killer Breakcore shock and awe. Jungle breaks skitter in terror as the tension mounts in fervent spiking samples and shifter vacuumed Bass collisions cut to fuck, stepping with swagger and running a burly groove across a gamut of burly breakbeats to devastating head wreck effect, baked into big, fat, fukked up production. The vocal toaster sample is particularly well picked, hyped, damaging and pants-pissingly aggressive. Danceable and destroying in equal measure, like Breakcore should be. Enduser’s Bandcamp page is stacked with releases from across his discography, be sure to spend some time perusing his various wares – that’s how I stumbled across this one. Fucken arse burner!

Bandcamp

OFFAL STENCH – ‘FUMES OF EVISCERATION’

A classic chunk of gory grinding Brutal Death Metal truculence, reissued here with 4 live bonus tracks by Goatgrind Records. Drooling, deadly Brutal Death Metal savagery, fuming with totally barbaric, violent slamming breakdowns seething with slow rolling beatdown energy and heft. Superfast blasting gives way to mangling, slow grooving slams and a variety of other engaging and dynamic beat patterns, tom fills falling down a stairset and roiling double bass rolls, Guitars erupt with primitive riff and chorded blunt sledge matched with sludgy Bass underpinning, super sick low purring vocal brutality. Extra raw and cruel production presence with dry snares and fat, throbbing Bass low end farting and flapping away in a gory slurry. Total cd in a boombox / beers and tabs in a carpark vibe here. Killer shit.

Goatgrind Records

Bandcamp OG / Reissue

CLEARED – ‘OF ENDLESS LIGHT’

It may seem counterintuitive, but the closer music approximates to silence, the more forceful its likely impact. It’s a fact plainly not lost on Chicago-based duo Cleared whose breathtaking new album is the turbid, thrice-distilled essence of quietude, an inchoate foam of dimensionless un-sound that enters via the pores rather than the auditory canal. At a considerable stretch, one COULD argue ‘Of Endless Light’ falls within the parameters of dub techno, but only by implication, its signature rhythm-centric sparsity smeared and splayed to the very brink of breakdown. Proceedings commence with the ultra-refracted blur of ‘First Sleep’ which crests the horizon like a gust of smog across moonlit moorland. Fragments of wounded melody bleed through the blanketing static until decomposition inevitably sets in and the track slowly expires to a mo(u)rning chorus of axes being sharpened on a distant grindstone. By contrast, ‘Pulse’, ‘Dawn’ and ‘Waking Field’ are gorgeously eroded simulacra of Chain Reaction-esque avant-minimalism, dance music passed through a fine-mesh sieve to remove almost every joule of kinetic energy. Kick drums – or rather the muted metronomic clicks that pass for them – are so subsumed by grainy swathes of ambience, they barely register as rhythm. The album’s piéce de rèsistance though is the stunning ‘Blue Drift’, a darkening pall of drone and reverberant carillon bells that rivals Sarah Davachi’s ‘Hall Of Mirrors’ for stentorian solemnity. Step inside; the silence is DEAFENING.

Touch.

LIFE – ‘OSSIFICATION OF CORAL’

LiFE’s most recent full-length album, a pulverizing Crasher Crust bastard sword strike, swung in desperation at planet earth’s capitalist overlords. Hard charging hammer drums churn out lightning quick D Beat barrage and neanderthal Crust Metal rolling gallop, blasting thunderous acrid fuzz Bass mids shot through Guitar fuzzkrieg chorded fury and minor Blues leads of ruin, rudimentary and dynamic metal riffs in punk overkill arrangements, supercrust puke Vocal horror – dramatic terrifying fukked up noize with heavy Peace Punk/Anarcho vibes… a long time staple of the international Crust scene, ‘Ossification Of Coral’ further compounds LiFE’s status as one of the scene-at-large’s most relevant and consistent voices, if not one of the most prolific. A deft balancing act between Punk noise and intensity, and Metal mastercraft and arrangement, leading to orgasmically heavy, wild-eyed results. Extra loud, noisy blitzkrieging Crasher Crust from dying earth’s hell! The Bass tones on this thing need to be heard to be fucken believed!

Acclaim Collective

Desolate Records

Not Enough

 

FAT MAN MIAMI – ‘INNER CITY PARADISE’

A particularly smoooooth blend of atmospheric Funk House and sumptuous Vaporwave from the Fat Man dealer, effervescent shimmer beats and rolling electronic Basslines induce the nostalgia and bittersweet depression. This EP leans a little further away from Yacht Rock and into filtered, hazy House, sumptuously funky beats beneath a gated filter shimmer and sizzling Bass sounds, with the middle track acting as a downbeat interlude between velvety Future Funk-y numbers, each replete with lush nostalgia mania sampling of impossibly sacharine sizzlin’ Pop, Funk and Rock – pink and purple neon lights obscuring the contours on unknown faces in the tropical rain. Calming and introspective, very listenable and groovin’. Altogether too short.

CompactWave

CLEAR CAPSULE – ‘GRAVITY LICKER’

US Intronaut unit Clear Capsule’s first full length album. Beauteously crisp, wavy Post Rock and Shoegaze numbers dense with heavy, bright and loud Guitars, peripheral Trip Hop influences and a soft / brittle contrasting songwriting aesthetic. Shimmering sonorous dude vocal, Billinda Butcher style, aqueous walls of overdriven and sustained yet clipped Guitars, droning melodies full of heft and body, widescreen Bass carrying oxen melody both gruff and grandiose, Drums working out riffs and rhythms both grooving and hulking, with electronics mingling in the palette with human percussion to evoke a sophomoric late 90’s Trip Hop sound. Melodiously rapturous, brilliantly sun-blind and enveloping, reminds me a lot of the crystalline sounds of Tokyo Shoegazer but with more tempo variation – vibrant and melancholic, cosmically ‘down’ and solarian ‘up’ in bursting simultaneity. Splendid.

Mutation Records

Bandcamp

ZOLOA / FOZA COMÚN SPLIT – ‘ESCUADRÓN DE LA MUERTE’

Split release between two of Eduardo Rodriguez’ (he of the indelible Volahn et all) Hardcore Punk bands. Zoloa is a long-standing Crust project, having existed in some form concurrently with Rodriguez’ better known Black Twilight Circle activities. Here they deliver 3 tracks of blasting anti-kommunist Crustcore with an aesthetic similarity to War Metal in certain respects. Filthy delay war Vocal command, wailing acid-fried terrorist leads swarming across terminal chords, terrifying storming Bass and smashing, strongarm drumming relying heavily on stiff, stacked War blasts rather than D-Beats, and meltdown synth shockwave interludes. Reminds me equally of Acrostix and Blasphemy’s ‘Gods of War’. On the flipside is Foza Común, ANOTHER of Eduardo’s affiliated projects, dealing in a marauder Blackened Punk/Hardcore sound with a RAC edge. 3 more tracks – stomping Rock ‘n’ Rolling lashings of Guitar dripping with UK ’82 licks, King Kong Bass violence carrying thuggish melody and a fiendish streak of Oi! within the rhythmic stamp and the barked yobbo Vocal assault. Barbaric and arrogant, a black flick knife of aggression and hostility. Killer split.

Bandcamp

VIRULENT SPECTER – ‘EREMITIC SPAWN OF ABJECT DARKNESS AND FILTH’

Virulent Specter’s 3rd demo, the first of two this year, summoned from far outside the cosy Instablack paradigm in seclusion and shadow. Ghoulish US Raw Black Metal of possession and phantasmagoria – disgusting raw fuzz crush Guitars working whirling phasmic chords ripe with off-kilter melody and cruel droning harmony, nightmarishly base and foul Bass frequencies swarm across the rancorous barre chord riff structures, lurching drums with incredibly heavy flam strikes pummeling out tight, heavy mid-paced marauding stomping beats  full of wickedness, punctuated with unclear appearance of accursed prowling phantom vocal rotating head, spitting rattling highs and blasphemic scornful lows, shimmering with feculent analogue delay. Bass heavy, lurid, horrid and orgiastic Raw Black Metal, writhing in pestilent sonic frequencies and riddled with demonic presences. If Nature truly is Satan’s church, then Virulent Specter is of the forsaken dirt and soil itself.

Esfinge de la Calavera