AXEFEAR – ‘PROPHETIC END’

Following up a despairing, miserably heavy demo last year, Seattle’s Axefear unleashes a hellwave of horrific Metalic Crust on full length ‘Prophetic End’. Stenchcore from yesterday’s collapsed future, Axefear harbors the prophecy of doom within their furiously miserable metallic riffage, ringing the deathknell with roiling midpaced metalpunk chugger apocalypse, looming mournful melodies soar downcast into the abyss, evoking shredded battlestandards from the final conflict, cruising-speed thrash with killer riffs and despairing leads, muscular grinding war Bass and thumping, rocking, vicious drums with blast-forward moments amidst the metalicrust chug carnage, withering expulsions of grind within the more mid-paced bombardment landing like bunker-busters. ‘Prophetic End’ bears a particularly excellent production job, thunderously loud and sculpted, accenting every war-scarred lead and despairing bellow against clean guitar interludes with crowsong choir amidst the presumed dead. If you’ve been following and/or digging on Swordwielder, Cancer Spreading or Moribund Scum, you’re certain to dig this.

Archaic Records

Felopunk

EFFLUENCE – ‘PSYCHOCEPHALIC SPAWNING’

The first full length offering from one-man monstroddity Effluence, a sacrificial mutating slaughter in the name of Death Metal’s boundless, fractal tomorrow. Fusion jazz ‘Free Death’ slam brutality and truculence melts down and spews cosmic space death tech metal abstraction through intense instrumentation and atypical grinding pounding percussive flagellation and battery, amid a nuclear fallout of mind-flaying absurdity. ‘Song’ structures unfurl inconceivably, guitars and bass wrench and vomit atonal chord wall collapse with skronking macro dissonance, immutably deft pinch harms and genetically warped shredder pealing prog death solos, lockjaw intense dexterous drumming veers and careens through exceptionally tight patterns impossible to discern, leading each track through vortex and vacuum with absolute disregard for form, synths, keys, sax and winds loom beneath in abstract deliquescence, appearing within the maelstrom as piques of perfect absurdism, seams bursting with moments of insanely longhaired thousand-eyed progressive tech death expulsion, super low intonated bdm vocalwall and cosmic death warcry vocal battle for host supremacy, piles of writhing blasting grinding viscera toxify and strangulate in surrealist ecstasy. Totality Star Death and horrendous unimaginable rebirth. Megametal.

Bandcamp

CTENIZIDAE – ‘HUMENICIDEG I’

Filthy necrotic Black Noise from the obscure Eerie Silence Productions, shadowrealm of projects such as Ärid, Virulent Specter, Astral Tomb of Yearning, and a few others. Groaning minimal noise loops render a Black Ambient shade, spooky crepuscular tones hover above pulsing spectral presences, daring those mortal to provoke their malignant powers! Rueful, broken dirge synth tones appear from the black mists tape and dire throbbing amplifier sounds, the sombre insanity, black mood of the mourner driven mad in hateful despair, glaring pulses and loops build and mount in sweat dripping nightmare tension and insect hate, rhythmic passages thrum and boil, tapes rolling over into the void, aggravating and haunting, eyes rolling back in the head, capillaries bursting with clotted black blood… suffocating Black Noise, bad vibes from beyond life’s domain.

Eerie Silence Productions

TOADLIQUOR – ‘BACK IN THE HOLE’

Toadliquor returns from total obscurity to unleash a colossal callous shitide of mean Sludge on the aptly titled ‘Back In the Hole’. Doling out metallic, hatefully stoned riffs like methadone cups in the predawn haze, unfurling with poisonous gain like Trouble meets Upsidedown Cross, claws caked in ketamine work delirious, defeated melody, obscure and forlorn, drugged and chugging, metronomic rhythms caustic and violent envenomed with tar black braided Bass, extreme dark vocal scrawl and debased declaration from the pit of ruin. Burdensome, pugilistic, soul destroying and enormous, a hefty toll of nasty Sludge afflicted upon a ruinous psyche unable to bear the strain, delighting in the irresistible pull of negativity. Observe the post-liminal swastika of technocratic banality so brazenly adorning the confrontational album art, the unbearable samsara of experiential abuse and toiling in the absurd, and despair. A real winner.

Southern Lord

WEEPING SORES – ‘FALSE CONFESSION’

Gloriously magisterial Death Doom from NY trio Weeping Sores. Theirs is a chasmic and funereal yet architecturally astonishing sound, a crushed velvet pall of biblically accurate angelic Doom Death Metal. Intricate riffs compounded and roused with Violin suites adorn the bier, stately percussion hammers a funerous drudge deep into the earth with eyes cast upwards in stargazing wonder, vocal a commanding melancholy bellow of extra low death exhalation. Moody and heavy, rousingly gloweringly pensive, graceful and despairing. The earliest (and best) works of the Peaceville three are good touchstones here, as is dISEMBOWELMENT’s forlorn masterpiece ‘Trancendence into the Peripheral’, but Weeping Sores also commands a majestic presence all their own, uniquely poised between beams of piercing light and swathes of vacuous, crushing darkness. Hyperion Death Doom.

Bandcamp

I,Voidhanger Records

NUCLEAR SPRING DISCOGRAPHY

The complete discography of overlooked US snots Nuclear Spring, released on cassette by Doomtown. Members of this band played in and went on to join CREEM, Ajax, La Misma, NOMOS and others, their pedigree sound capturing a perfect nexus of influence between very early Punk Rock and US Hardcore that makes for irresistibly simple songcraft and burly, hard edged fury. Single note Guitar lines scramble for consonance, crusher chords minimalist and brimming with slashing power, Bass and Drums interlock and rock in march stepping, melodious haste, each mostly mid-paced song covered in dude croons, wails and yowls from one male/one female voice, both possessed of sophomoric rage and youthful enthusiasm. Virulently catchy, loud and vituperative, burning with life and incensed at unequal social outcome, and informed by scenes like UK82 and even a little streak of Oi, Nuclear Spring is positively ion charged with Punk Rock power. Rips beginning to end.

Doomtown Records

GROSS LOAD – ‘EXPOSED TO FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE’

A fat gelatinous wad of gore soaked Death/Gore/Grindcore from drum machinegunner Gross Load. Delirious with mongo-grooves and surging soupy gore riffs gushing bubbling liquid ichor, shockingly fluid and dynamic, sinew bound to the steaming drum machine beneath, hammering banging and slamming with rictus tight programmed blasts and tupa-tupa mince/thrash beat breakdowns, unwieldy and clattering, slathered with ultra brutal hamsandwich deth vocal. Deadly and megafast, groovy and girthy. ‘Exposed To Forbidden Knowledge’ reminds me of ANb’s ‘The Glue That Binds Us’ 7″, those tracks featuring a deathly flavour to the riffing and with that absurd and bizarre mondo vocal, an atmosphere of antisocial insanity and insalubrity that Gross Load shovels out here in sloppy, chuggy, gooey bucketfuls. Killer shit! I’ll be investigating their full length offerings next.

Bandcamp

SIMIAN STEEL – ‘MISSING FUCKING LINK’

International ape unit Simian Steel’s first full length, a torment of mean-as-shit Sludge featuring members of Fistula and OG IxM guitarist (and current Bass player in their re-animated ranks) Steve Watson. A pitch black evocation of tar-thick criminal Sludge and Doom caste in cigarette smoke and diesel fumes. Groove-soaked, imposingly syrupy alcoholic riffs of forlorn self-loathing locked into metronomic, battering, pendulous rhythms, heavy handed and thunderous, adorned with extremely Morrow-summoning vocal exhortations, depressions and ululation, the work of under-evolved gruff bastards in thrall to the Iron masters. Caustic, thuggish and cruel.  A direct comparison to another band is about as lazy as it gets, but c’mon, they’re called Simian Steel for fuck’s sake. They’re dancing around an enormous Iron Monkey effigy like the inbred tribes of Kong on skull island! And theirs is a brute, foul worship, their Sludge idol made utterly fucking ugly in their creator’s fearsome image – hideously aggressive, hormonally enraged, teeth bared and feral! A feast of mean-spirits for the terminally unemployable. For my money, a far more appealing proposition than Iron Monkey’s comeback full length.

Black Mold Records

STCLVR – ‘POST SELF ABANDONMENT’

Unkind Power Electronics, Noise EBM and nightmarish Darkwave perverted and decontextualized by some horny masked puck,  a foul, rogue fulminate of scalding alkaline electronics, accurately named by it’s author ‘harsh industrial bedroom pop’. Classic wobbly-signal power electronics vocal fluctuation spits slathered over (curb)stomping darkwave arrangements, pulsating grinding Bass surges and funky thumping kicks, synthesizers purge and ooze pure menace, glowering tyrannical production booms and blats like a motherfucker. Danceable and decimating in equal awful measure. Kitsch, cute and criminal, like being beaten to death by a super sexy leather demon of indeterminate gender. Greasy, perverse and aggressive , dense and autoerotic, ‘Post Self Abandonment’ represents an apotheosis of design in STCLVR’s sound, equally sensual and bared-teeth furious, a cornucopia of fuming paradoxes. Fucking exceptional.

Phage Tapes

Crucial Blast

Bandcamp

TJOLGTJAR – ‘VRUGUUN’

Tjolgtjar’s final record ‘Vruguun’ is a drugged and rockin’ descent into Psychedelic Black Metal hades, and a perfect summation of what makes Tjolgtjar so special. An amazing amalgam of influences making for a formidably unique redneck Black Metal record, drunk on potent ‘shine. King Diamond and Speed Metal, Kiss and WASP, raw Darkthrone and Burzum style Black Metal, Country, Bluegrass and Southern (gothic) Rock,13th Floor Elevators and Roky Erikson, Ted Nugent and Charles Manson, little nods to Post Punk, all manner of psychedelia, Goblin, Synths and Organs, raw and reedy Black Metal Guitars with killer riffing, rasping evil vocal mixed with impassioned singing and Metal wails, wailin’ solos over hard rocking anthems, psilocybin-laced Black Rock and Metal of a completely unique formula. Satanic and Occult, raw and obscure. Some tracks adhere to a more traditional Black Metal composition, others hew closer to 70’s Hard Rock or ancient spellbound Heavy Metal, and others still combine these elements into an incredibly heady listening experience. Slight differences or emphases in production across these 24 tracks amount to a very home-made, underground sound, very high concept and low fidelity. Vruguun is an absolute delight of non traditional Black Metal Magick, deftly handling dirt-rune experimentalism and drunk as fukk anthem bangin’ across it’s running time. Crucial.

Illinoisan Thunder

Super Sargasso

Bandcamp

WRESTLING WITH GLUTTONY: TAKESHITA – ‘DUMMY NOISE’ [2023]

Meet Mr. Garg, the elusive creature behind monikers like Kwashiorkor, Pizza Burrito, and the grandiose Cloak of Displacement. Under the alias Takeshita, he unleashes wrestling-flavored cacophonies on the unsuspecting masses. The album ‘Dummy Noise’ is a bizarre dedication to Yoshihiko, an inflatable sex doll turned wrestling sensation for the Dramatic Dream Team in Japan. Yes, you read that right – an inflatable sex doll in the wrestling ring. Move over, Hulk Hogan.

Further, this record boldly proposes that ‘Harsh noise is Free Jazz’ and tries to prove this daring hypothesis with about an hour’s worth of material. True to form, this high-concept album is a chaotic wrestling match – ‘Yoshihiko vs. Kota Ibushi‘ features crowd noises colliding with spastic drum fills, creating an atmosphere that’s like stumbling upon a band’s wild soundcheck. This opening track is genuinely cool but overstays its welcome at seven minutes. Think of it as the musical equivalent of a wrestler flexing for way too long.

Now, let’s talk about ‘Spinning Head Scissors,‘ where Takeshita generously throws in a bunch of bleeps and bloops, like a digital rendition of a toddler playing with a shiny new toy. It’s not exactly a spectacle – more like the auditory equivalent of finding spare change in your couch cushions. Not groundbreaking, but hey, it doesn’t make you cringe either. A solid “meh.”

And then we dive headfirst into the abyss of ‘Untranspressive Transpression.’ This track features various chopped-up vocals narrating absurdities about a gig in ‘CHICK-A-GO’. It’s like listening to the ramblings of a conspiracy theorist who stumbled upon a thesaurus. Cool concept, but spoiler alert: it’s about as drawn-out as a lecture on the history of lint.

Now we come to the heart of the album, a noise jam called ‘Yoshihiko’s Journey’ that lasts a whopping 16 minutes. Imagine a hypnotic blend of synth flickering, a symphony of beeps and boops, and various noise movements that’ll make your eardrums do somersaults. It’s like Takeshita decided to throw a carnival for your senses, and you’re not just a spectator – you’re getting body slammed by a sex doll.  ‘Yoshihiko’s Journey‘ boldly steps into the ring with the heavyweights, earning a spot up there with the best of Merzbow. Yes, you heard it right – Takeshita is flexing those noise muscles, proudly claiming a throne next to the maestro of cacophony himself

Now the album is running on full steroid infused stream! “Sax Doll” emerges as a standout, with electronic chops, echo-laden saxophone riffs, and a disorienting atmosphere. The sax solo is sliced, delayed, and layered, creating walls of sound that feel both surreal and captivating. Another banger! Takeshita is on the juice!

But beware of ‘Inflatable Sticks & Stones,‘ a track that’s pure filler, a gluttonous addition to the buffet. This is followed by ‘Not a Sex Doll‘ featuring iwkok$10 – a LightningBolt-esque freakout set to noise. The tragedy lies in the sporadic moments of brilliance, drowned out by long passages that sound like simultaneous clashes of disparate tracks that mix like oil and water. It’s like trying to appreciate a Picasso painting while someone’s aggressively playing hopscotch on the canvas. Someone get the editing scissors – trim the fat, trim it now!

‘Yoshihiko vs. Minora Suzuki Dream Match,‘ unfortunately, follows suit as another filler track, lacking substance. It acts as a palate cleanser after the dense freakout before it.

And now, drumroll, please! We reach the grand finale – ‘Yoshihiko’s Siren Call.’ A sparse and ominous soundscape into the abyss of creaking noise and infernal Japanese moaning. It’s like stumbling into a haunted kabuki theater, where the ghostly performers traded their traditional instruments for an arsenal of dissonant noise.  This track is a journey where the lack of a clear rhythm wraps you in a tense atmosphere, gripping your attention like a suspenseful thriller. It’s like Takeshita handed the director’s baton to Hitchcock and said, “Make it weird, but make it captivating.” 

And so the curtains close on this avant-garde spectacle, ‘Yoshihiko’s Siren Call‘ manages to conclude the album on a high note – a note so high, even Mariah Carey would give it a nod of approval. It’s the musical equivalent of the wrestling sex doll deflating in the ring, bidding farewell after a decade of brawling. Picture an entire card of wrestlers solemnly putting the inflatable warrior to rest, as if it were the end of an era. Takeshita, you’ve managed to give a wrestling sex doll a fitting send-off, and for that, we salute you in the most avant-garde way possible.

Overall, ‘Dummy Noise‘ deserves a solid 7.5/10. Cut out the filler tracks, and you’ve got yourself a noise record that’s not just a banger – it’s a sonic knockout waiting to happen.

Available on CD and as digital download here:
https://ruralisolationproject.bandcamp.com/album/takeshita-dummy-noise

UFO BLACK METAL PT. 3: AHULABRUM ‎– ‘THE PHANTOM OF FLATWOODS’ [DEMO 2006]

Step right up, earthlings, as we once again delve into the extraterrestrial escapades of Ahulabrum. Last week, we dissected the second demo of Ahulabrum, and guess what? They cranked up the atmosphere like they were playing at Area 51 at a moonless night. But hold onto your tinfoil hats because, on this demo, they decided to go further and even drop the drums – this is pure perfection. If you’re not equipped with a lightsaber to cut through the thick atmosphere of sonic wizardry, you might get lost in the otherworldly sonic abyss.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get any spookier, there are interspersed ambient tracks featuring spare riffs, bass rumbling, and UFO-themed samples of people talking about their encounters. Because nothing says “out of this world” like a dash of extraterrestrial ambiance.

These tracks presented here aren’t just cooked up in a studio; they’re a concoction of field recordings, electrical effects, feedback experimentation, and the mystical resonance of ancient stereo equipment. It’s like a sonic séance conducted to honor one of the strangest encounters of mid-twentieth century UFO lore. 

You heard right, The Phantom of Flatwoods isn’t your run-of-the-mill album; it’s a concept album, a musical odyssey wholly fixated on the Flatwoods incident. According to interviews, the main guy from Ahulabrum even embarked on a field trip to Flatwoods to record some ambience. No close encounters, mind you, but the resulting recordings went right into this demo.

Ahulabrum did it again, dishing out another dose of audio awesomeness with a release that’s so iconic, even your grandma’s hipster neighbor knows about it. Clocking in at only 14 minutes, you’ll be left panting for more. 

9/10 – A must have!

Check it out here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=edh8sMAcz00

UFO BLACK METAL PT. 2: AHULABRUM ‎– ‘THE TRANSIVITY OF STRANGENESS’ [2006]

We’re back, folks, with the intergalactic rock stars of the UFO Black Metal underground: Ahulabrum. So, buckle up your tin foil hats as we continue to delve deep into their discography.

In this thrilling sequel to their first demo, Ahulabrum doesn’t just crank up the atmosphere – they throw a full-blown black-tie Illuminati gala. They’ve finally decided to grace us with the reverb we’ve all been yearning for since their debut effort. It’s like they realized, “Hey, our music is already out of this world; why not add a touch of intergalactic echo to make it even spacier?” Bravo, Ahulabrum, for giving the people what they didn’t know they needed – a sound so ethereal it makes angels (that are in reality aliens – see pt. 1) question their celestial playlist. This whole demo is like a sonic séance in your dingy basement. You’re down there, casually playing with your ham radio (because who needs regular hobbies when you can communicate with beings from beyond?), and after a day of tuning into Russian number stations, you stumble upon this on some forbidden frequency. It’s the kind of musical revelation that makes you question whether your basement has secretly become a portal to the cosmic unknown.

Walls of tremolo-picked guitars hit you like a sonic tidal wave, a barrage of sound that makes you question whether you’re at a metal concert or caught in the crossfire of an interstellar battle. The drumming? Oh, it’s a delicacy, barely audible, and exclusively composed of low-end non-blastbeat bass drums. Bass licks emerge like unexpected plot twists in an episode of the X-Files, making you wonder if Mulder and Scully are about to pop out from behind the amplifier. Muffled groans, the kind that would make ghosts jealous, serenade you in the background, creating an ambiance that’s part extraterrestrial séance, part black metal opera. And if that isn’t enough to make your auditory senses tingle, radio samples kick in, giving you a front-row seat to the strangest frequencies the universe has to offer. It’s like tuning into the cosmic equivalent of a pirate radio station. In case you were skeptical about the authenticity of these sonic escapades, fear not! According to interviews (because even extraterrestrial musicians do press), Ahulabrum took it a step further. They threw in some childhood tape recordings they made with deconstructed radios.

So, strap in, fellow truth-seekers, because “The Transitivity of Strangeness” isn’t just rich in atmosphere; it can be considered a conceptual journey into the heart of UFO incidents, with every track named after dates and locations of UFO encounters like “September 12th, 1952, Flatwoods, WV.” It’s like Ahulabrum giving you a crash course in extraterrestrial history, with the syllabus including encounters that are semi-famous, almost famous, and maybe famous if you squint a little. After the brief runtime of 12 minutes, you will question if the guy next door is actually an alien spider in disguise. Spoiler alert: he probably is.

Rating: 9/10  – A must have!

Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMbo_DqQQrg

VICTIMS PANEL – ‘SHOW THEM’

Jay Tichy of SIDETRACKED infamy conjures a torrid steely stomp of Black Punk Metal, deeply indebted to Bone Awl and Ildjarn’s bastard lineage but with a myopic locus of influence within Hardcore – searing bleached white Black Metal scaffolded by very reductive stiff stomper beats, slashes of fuzzed, crumpled Guitars form ugly, brooding angles across the eyes, bellowed brooding vocal exhalations atop. Vicious and wicked. Like a foul bilious conjuration of influence between Negative FX, Tinner and Sump. I do feel that the devotional brevity for which Jay is known in his various projects is a little misplayed here, some of these ideas might work slightly better or land harder with a bit more room to breathe, but no matter. This is still a total starching.

Damien Records

MARTÍN ESCALANTE / TETÉ LEGUÍA / WEASEL WALTER – ‘KATYUSHA’

3 long tracks of multi-directional improvisational malfeasance to the destroy the illusion, reality shaking expressions of exuberance, power and lunacy. Totalitarian, maximalist torrent of free improvisation, an explosively intense expression of Free Jazz, a wordless primal scream dialed to 11 and vibrating with humming radioactive power. Delicacy and intonation wither like prone digits in a subzero torrent. Weasel pummels and plummets down the stairs in bursts of terminal velocity, crashing through the firmament with fearsome idiot energy and incredibly dexterous, choppy runs full of off-kilter hyper blast beats and endless rolling double bass. Leguía applies a tormenting, synapse poisoning saxophone performance best experienced behind bulletproof glass, each singing, stinging, screaming volley forced into life, choked and strangled, threatening to destroy your precious inner ear, and Escalante conjures a bass performance of the unfathomable, an iron curtain falling in plumes and rotten ruffles, coiling and piling beneath and amidst the insane percussion. Quieter moments serve to wane the friction and crank up the foul ambiance of these three demons at work(&play). A maelstrom of hyperkinetic aplomb and sweat-soaked interactive fervor, challenging and socially challenged. If you enjoy Painkiller era Zorn, Sissy Spacek or Peter Brötzmann, seek no further. Entirely essential, fun as fuck.

ugEXPLODE

UFO BLACK METAL PT. 1: AHULABRUM – ‘MAGONIA’ [2005]

Step aside, plebeians! It is time to explore the outer reaches of refined black metal tastes. The UFO Black Metal subgenre crash-landed on Earth somewhere around the 2000s and quickly became one of my latest obsessions with its otherworldly mix of cryptids, UFOs, and government shadiness. It’s like the Illuminati decided to form a band, but with questionable production values and fewer secret handshakes.

One band that can be considered a cornerstone of this micro-genre is Ahulabrum – a West Virginia black metal anomaly as mysterious as a cat burglar with a PhD in quantum physics. The lineup reads like a guest list for an intergalactic soiree – Indrid Cold on guitars and vocals, and Vadig keeping the beat like a cosmic metronome. Back in the glory days of 2005 to 2006, Ahulabrum cranked out demos and an EP, all while trying to establish a direct hotline to E.T. Fast forward to the present, where Ahulabrum is making a comeback just in time for the U.S. government to finally admit, “Yeah, we’ve been seeing some weird stuff in the sky.” Coincidence? I think not. It’s almost as if Ahulabrum predicted the government’s U-turn on UFO acknowledgments and decided to ride the extraterrestrial wave.

In this cheeky retrospective, we dive into Ahulabrum’s discography like paranormal investigators searching for the holy grail of black metal. Are their tunes the key to unlocking the secrets of Area 51, or just a soundtrack for alien dance parties? Could they be a psyop run by the CIA to corrupt the most powerful black metal elitists? Join us as we sift through their releases and see if we strike gold or get anal probed

Ahulabrum ‎– Magonia [Demo 2005]

Their debut effort, “Magonia,” from 2005 is the sonic equivalent of a UFO abduction, but with more charm and less probing. This lo-fi black metal gem takes us on a quirky rollercoaster through the unexplored corners of musical oddities. Throughout the brief running time of 21 minutes, a mysterious atmosphere hangs in the air like a UFO over Roswell, and the music is charmingly unbalanced and strange. Their peculiar brand of black metal offered here is almost drumless, with weird, otherworldly percussive sounds that could make even a Martian tap their three-toed foot. The tremolo-picked guitars boast surprisingly low levels of distortion, creating an auditory experience that’s like finding a black metal album in Area 51 – unexpected and slightly disorienting. The whole thing is topped off with genre-typical screeching and incomprehensible samples, because who needs understandable vocals when you’re communicating with intergalactic beings? Similarly, the lyrics are so elusive they make Bigfoot look like a regular on a daytime talk show.

What sets “Magonia” apart is its clever avoidance of black metal clichés. The tracks, appropriately titled after UFO sightings, take inspiration from encounters with entities that have been haunting humanity since the fae were the hot gossip in town. And let’s not forget the name drop – “Magonia” takes its moniker from Jacques Vallee’s “Passport To Magonia,” a must-read for anyone who wants to upgrade their UFO knowledge beyond the typical “little green men” trope. Vallee lays down some truth bombs about UFOs masquerading as faeries and angels throughout history, and Ahulabrum transforms it into a musical séance.

Now, onto the production critique – if “Magonia” had a touch more reverb and delay, it could transport listeners into a dimension where black metal and UFOs waltz together under the celestial disco ball. The dry production, however, gives it an experimental, art-house vibe that screams, “We’re not your standard black metal – we’re the cool kids at the UFO convention.” In the grand scheme of alien encounters, “Magonia” is a cosmic ride worth taking. Ahulabrum’s fusion of black metal and UFO lore is done with such finesse that even skeptics might find themselves checking the sky for flying saucers.

Rating:  7/10

Check it out on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF9Uj2L0oUs&t=213s

BEHOLD THE ARCTOPUS – ‘INTERSTELLAR OVERTROVE’

Hyperbole inducing Fusion Jazz Prog phantasmagoria from Behold the Arctopus. I hadn’t heard anything these guys had produced in a good few years, and in that interim they’ve only gotten stranger, jettisoning their metal carapace and exposing their prone insides to the void’s mutating, corrupting influences. ‘Interstellar Overtrove’ is a post musical sarcophagus of Avant Garde Prog and experimental Fusion Jazz wrought in impossible meter, nerd chin-stroke wank shit gone absolutely Tech Death haywire! Gated to death planed flat e-drums with mental timbral intrigue, firing through insane rhythms as many stringed instruments dance, flitter and pummel Morse code notations with cool, stasis inertia sound, clear and precise like fine silicone dust, a million opaque mathematical meanings and complexities delivered straight into the fucking third eye chakra – never to be decoded or understood! Computational excess, overreach and eventual accidental ignition and burning chrome, all hard disks erased for fear of malignant fractal replication. About as far from ‘songs’ as one might travel. Some stars to guide by might include ‘Three Of a Perfect Pair’ Crimson, Steinar’s spacegrinding Psudoku or perhaps those dry neat jazzer sections on Cynic’s ‘Focus’, distortion eroded and a bizarre and impossible skeletal structure found beneath, perfectly rendered in xenomorphic alloy. Rapturously weird.

Bandcamp

B L A C K I E – ‘CATHARSIS ONLY’

B L A C K I E’s latest release, a short and ear-battering trip continuing the Houston artist’s edgesmashing sound into basically pure Power Electronics territories. The man stands far outside and further beyond Hip Hop’s dogmatic scriptures than most, manifestly evident in the artist’s latent if quiet influence on the mainstream of the genre. Short harsh blasts of ephemeral beatwork kicked and mauled by malign synthesis process to cumulate Power Electronics bitter screen/wall of howling crackling bass frequencies and snowblind white noise, lo-fi bleeding-red productions of surging Industrial textures colliding with contaminated sampling and thumping sub bass kicks, light on easy beats and heavy on dense avalanching noise and awkward loops, over which B L A C K I E screams, yells and cries in brutal minimal sloganeering like a soul possessed. Head crushing banger beats surface at key moments on the record, steaming and hulking, appearing all the more monstrous and bludgeoning for their scarcity, like on ‘mean nothing’ and closer ‘stay elevated’, and B L A C K I E’s furiously introverted self-denigrations and blood drenched personal/political roaring raving vocal hits like a fucking teargas cannister to the dome in this context. Crucial.

Bandcamp

TRICHOMONIASIS – ‘HARVEST OF THE KILLING FIELDS’

Trichomoniasis’ second album released this year, the follow up to the preposterously dense full length ‘Makeshift Crematoria’, which somehow slightly supersedes that formidable effrontery in scope, scale and deformity, if not in length. An abstruse putrefaction of non-linear extra-terrestrial esoteric Brutal Death Metal power, a perplexing grinding riddle of gore soaked ‘free death’ akin to supereon acts such as Encenathrakh, Enmity and Effluence, which abstracts Slamming Death Metal beyond the event horizon of the logical into something entirely volatilely o t h e r, closer to Gorenoise in its impenetrability. Pulsating waves of impossible DETH crash irregularly upon the shores of shattered objectivity, grinding diagonal slamming ‘riff’ spires coil, lurch, drag and burst in impossibly severe oblique patterns, drumming an imperceivable terminal velocity vortex of complex virtuosic brutality, impetuous low(er) vocal tempest like fractal disembodied primal scream, dotted with absurdist samples depicting politically managed biological/ecological malfunction and resultant death, a theme continued from their previous album. My limits of expression are truly tested here – I’m unable to understand what is going on and I can’t help but listen repeatedly. The annihilation of cognition by means of pinch harmonics and hyper ping snare, a practically fucking extra-sensory experience. Terrifyingly stressful, sweat-soaked, face-tripping ego extermination.

Bandcamp

BOXGUTS – ‘DA’BICH​$​’BAJINA’DAWG’ BOXGUTS MIXTAPE #2

Corrupted, morally ambivalent ill Hip Hop from beneath the sewers. A fucking masterful mixtape, culling and cutting from all sordid corners of the Boxgut’s collective discography, with tracks pulled from a slew of producers and vocal appearances from Sebrox, Jak Progresso and more, each exhaling vile bars of insanely lyrical/lyrically insane wickedness with unique flows over shadowy and brash productions. Disturbed and distorted sampling pulled from all over the fucking map, mercurial ambient loops, lurking violence abstractions, potent poetic expressions of the outside perspective equally ignorant and eloquent, one eye crookedly looking backwards to rugged backpack Rap heyday and old skool minimalism, and the other farsighting future crimes against the mainstream of acceptable Hip Hop with hawkeyed esotericism. Each of the Boxguts mixtapes hosted on Grindcore Karaoke are worth your attention, but this one is my favourite. Scope their bandcamp page here.

Bandcamp

GK#134