Your End -- Le sombre triomphe (review)

Band: Your End
Album: Le sombre triomphe
Genre: blackened death/grind/sludge
Year: 2017
Label: independent

Your End started out as an extreme metal duo in 2017, but they sound as if they've been honing there sound for at least half a decade.  Needless to say, these guys exist to deliver sludgy, HM-2-driven black/death.
The EP opens with my personal favorite track, "Endless Agony."  The sludgy riffing and crushing breakdown set the morbid tone for the hail of frantic blasts and dark melodies that follow.  When the band kicks it into high-gear, the songs sound as if they are on the verge of falling apart, like all the screws are loose and everything is violently rattling.  As a result, the music sounds urgent, as if Your End is trying to record the whole thing before they shatter into oblivion.  That may not sound so good on paper, but the EP benefits from this greatly.
The pacing of the music varies from frantic blast beats to slower sludge metal passages.  There are plenty of riffs and melodies to make each track stand out from the rest.  The vocals are very much a cross between black metal rasps and grindcore growls and grunts.  The track "Dead Before Dawn" even briefly features some more emotive vocals.
Overall, Le sombre triomphe is an excellent, raw debut release from this American extreme metal duo (now a trio).  I highly recommend procuring their full catalog.  You can download this EP (for free/name your price) on bandcamp.


Rating: 4 / 5
Top Tracks:
Endless Agony
Dead Before Dawn
Drain

godheadSilo -- The Scientific Supercake (guest review)

Band: godheadSilo
Album: The Scientific Supercake
Genre: sludge/experimental
Year: 1994
Label: Kill Rock Stars

While he can err on the side of excessive “hipsterism” and I don’t always agree with all of his opinions and analysis, I still find Chuck Klosterman one of my favorite journalists because of our common interests. Klosterman’s famous “VORM” article I read in his compilation X strived to find the value of each individual musician in a band- first by calculating a musician’s worth relative to their other band members, then calculating that band’s relative worth to other bands. Ambitious? Yes. Controversial? Certainly. I had listened to most of the bands at the top of the weighted spectrum (Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Radiohead) but one name that caught my eye was godheadSilo, intriguingly weighted the same as R.E.M. Curiosity = piqued.
Watching some of the band’s mid-nineties YouTube performances, I got a sense that you had to be there. I just knew a video recording couldn’t do these guys justice- it was just a bassist (Mike Kunka) and drummer (Dan Haugh) slamming away on their instruments with relentless fury. Both the band members have experienced hearing loss and discomfort from their brutal shows, and I knew I had to pick up The Scientific Supercake right away to further my artistic experience.
After a few listens, I concur that godheadSilo were certainly less songwriters than soundcrafters. There’s almost no way to describe the SOUND of this thing- if I had to compare it to any other record I’d probably pick Godflesh’s Streetcleaner, but listening to this album at any decent volume with good speakers will make your skin crawl. I’ve always been a sucker for more sonically than technically ambitious albums, so I found this right in my wheelhouse. Fun fact- if you turn the bass all the way up on your speakers and play this, it’ll blow them out. Not that I’m willing to try.
Opener “Nuts To You” has Kunka’s strangled vocals higher in the mix than any of the other songs, with Haugh’s mutated rhythms taking center stage. They settle into a more comfortable crushing tempo on “Birthday Sandwich”, but it isn’t until the freaky white-noise blasts on “Another Schizoid Ambelism” that the record truly reaches its hair-raising peak. The heart of the record is “Mr. Push Up”, which serves as the quintessential godheadSilo song; extended, creepy intro, percolating tempos, and harsh treble spurts. “I Luv U….Nicorns” has almost a pop sensibility to it, with catchy, ripping riffs, and “Hopefully They Will Learn” serves as a bleak, disturbing intro to the final two songs, which wind down all the thrashing somewhat. Short interludes are sprinkled throughout the record, ranging from melodic (“Two Peanuts Are Walking Down The Street”) to esoteric (“Ventriloqueef”).
Kunka and Haugh haven’t explicitly expressed the desire to record again since 1998’s Share the Fantasy, so we may have seen the last of this incarnation of heavy noise rock. While the riffs can get repetitive and janky at times, and Kunka doesn’t have much to offer as a vocalist, I haven’t even heard of anything close to the general sound and diverse range of influences this album draws from, and it hasn’t been commodified and diluted by legions of poor imitators. The sound of this album draws you in initially, but the strong songwriting and attention to detail gives it multitudes of replay value. Definitely recommended.


Rating: 7.2 / 10
Top Tracks:
Another Schizoid Ambelism
Mr. Push Up

Guest review by Adam Nohl

Phyllomedusa -- Environment and Adaptation (review)

Band: Phyllomedusa
Album: Environment and Adaptation
Genre: sludge metal | ambient
Year: 2012
Label: Sloth Clatter Media

Big Frog is the mastermind of various underground solo projects, including my personal favorite, Phyllomedusa.  A variety of genres are explored throughout his discography, but most of them are brimming with abrasive noise and amphibian calls.  Environment and Adaptation is a sludge-drenched doom metal behemoth that trudges along, dragging the listener's lifeless body along for the ride.
The album opens with a soothing ambient track before erupting into the crushing riffs of "The Misfortune In Pursuing Food."  From that point on, Big Frog hardly lets up.  The guitars and bass are drenched in caustic distortion, and the drums pound steadily and relentlessly.  I personally love the ring that the snare has to it.  Overall, the sound is organic and filthy.  Big Frog's vocals are fuming with hatred, which fits comfortably with the aggressive instrumentation.
This album is all about repetition, which can best be seen on the titular track.  About two minutes into the song, the tempo slows and the guitars shift to a very simple, repetitive riff.  This is easily one of the heaviest, dirtiest riffs I have ever heard.  When Big Frog lays down a riff, he hammers it into the listener's skull.  By these means, I would say that the songs become catchy (but not really, right?).
Due to the extreme level of distortion, the bass seems to melt into the wall of sludge, but in the intro of "Scutiger" the bass gets a chance to shine (except it's covered in filth, so it can't really "shine" per se).  I absolutely love the tone as it has a throbbing pulse to it.
The album's final track is a nearly half-hour ambient piece which juxtaposes a tranquil atmosphere with the absolute filth of the sludge metal.  Big Frog is known to create softer works aside from his vast catalog of gorenoise and sludge.  The stark shift in style from crushing guitars to waves of ambiance works well here.
I plan to review plenty more of Big Frog's releases (does he even sleep?), but in the meantime, check out his catalog on bandcamp and give Environment and Adaptation a listen here.


Rating: 4 / 5
Top Tracks:
Environment & Adaptation/Glandirana-Ki
I Come from the Water (Toadies cover)
Scutiger
Chiasmocleis Humming In Dusk (Supratympanic Fold)