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

Within Destruction -- Deathwish (review)

Band: Within Destruction
Album: Deathwish
Genre: slamming deathcore
Year: 2018
Label: Rising Nemesis Records

Let's start 2018 out with something heavy!  My introduction to the Slovenian behemoth Within Destruction was their sophomore full-length, Void.  That album was heavy, slammy, melodic, and the double bass was fast as fuck.  So their latest outing should take that good reputation and improve upon it, right?
Well, the band did introduce new elements this time around, which is good considering the fact that this is still a relatively young band (8 years, didn't really take off 'til 2016).  The melodic passages are different than what was present on Void.  I would describe these melodies as kind of light and fleeting, whereas Void's melodic riffs were more ominous.  The vocalist has also revamped his style a bit.  The intense growling is occasionally broken up by some less-harsh moments.  It seems like the song is gonna lapse into melodic metalcore, but he reverts to tunnel-throating it as quickly as he stopped.
Aside from the aforementioned tweaks in style, this thing just turned out to be another run-of-the-mill "slam deathcore" album.  Anything that made the band's 2016 breakthrough interesting is painfully lacking here.  I couldn't even force myself to see an ounce of originality in this.  Everything from the production to the music to the album cover is so done-to-death it hurts.  Please, stop beating this dead horse.
Bonus: the guest feature on the title track made me never want to listen to Psychosadistic Design ever again.  It is that BAD.
Maybe someone can find something good to say, so check it out here.


Rating: 1.5 / 5

Батюшка -- Литургия (review)

Band: Батюшка
Album: Литургия
Genre: black metal/Orthodox chant
Year: 2015
Label: Witching Hour Productions

The Polish black metal scene has produced yet another fantastic band.  Батюшка (Batushka - title of an Orthodox priest) put a unique spin on the genre by drawing influence from the Russian Orthodox faith.  The three members of the band are shrouded in mystery, but most people say that they are involved with other projects.
Литургия (liturgiya - liturgy) is the band's debut LP, and right off the bat I am impressed.  The album is divided into eight ектении (yektenii - litanies).  The music incorporates Orthodox liturgical chants which give the album a ritualistic feel.  The chanted vocal parts are not samples like most bands use.  The chants are composed and performed by the band; thus, a good portion of the vocal work is done in this manner.  Keeping in line with the theme of 'orthodoxy', the lead vocalist employs the traditional black metal scream.  Overall, these vocal parts are central in the context of the album.
The instrumentation, while not unique, is well composed and executed professionally.  The album is dotted with killer riffs and memorable melodies.  The drumming is predominantly blast beats, but they feel somewhat subdued by the mix (which honestly works here).  The bass has a nice tone and gets a chance to be the center of attention on "Ектения VI: Уповане."  Occasionally church bells chime in between tracks.  In fact, the album feels as if it is being performed in a Russian church.  The guitars create a cavernous atmosphere, and the chants and shrieks echo off the walls.  One can almost smell the air, thick incense.  Литургия aims at creating an atmosphere first and foremost, and it succeeds while also providing quality riffage.
The sum of these litanies is an eerie yet beautiful execution of Polish black metal.  Hopefully this is not a one-off project as I hope to hear more liturgical black metal from these mysterious, talented musicians.  You can give Батюшка a listen on YouTube here.


Rating: 4 / 5
Top Tracks:
Ектения I: Очищение
Ектения III: Премудрость
Ектения II: Благословение

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

Death Worship -- Extermination Mass (review)

Band: Death Worship
Album: Extermination Mass
Genre: war metal
Year: 2016
Label: Nuclear War Now! Productions

Alongside harsh noise and mincecore, war metal is one of the most primitive styles of music in existence.  Inspired by the relentless chaos of Sarcófago, Beherit, and Blasphemy, one would be hard-pressed to find a form of music more bestial in nature.
Hailing from Canada, Death Worship features Ryan Förster and James Read of the infamous Conqueror, but this project has a slightly different approach to war-making.  The album displays a certain level of restraint, particularly in the vocal department.  Förster's raspy growls are almost whispered over the constant blast beats.  They conjure a certain presence that can best be described as unsettling.  Needless to say, it seems the vocalist is the ghastly skeleton that graces the EP's cover art.
With the unique approach to vocals aside, the instrumentation is rather straightforward for this particular style of music, as expected.  Buzzing riffs and blast beats dominate the structures.  Occasionally the drums slow down just a bit, but Read always returns to pounding away at breakneck speed.  Blistering, chaotic guitar solos dot the tracks as if to remind the listener that this is, in fact, music.
If you are looking for a group that knows what war metal is all about but throws in a little (and I mean a little) something different, look no further than Death Worship.  This EP is sure to appease fans of this approach to black/death metal, and perhaps that is all it's good for.  Little variation across all six tracks means that this thing will probably grow stale over time; nonetheless, this EP is a savage beating.  You can listen to Extermination Mass on YouTube here.


Rating: 3 / 5
Top Tracks:
Evocation Chamber
Holocaust Altar

Pagoda Mast -- Musashi (review)

Band: Pagoda Mast
Album: Musashi
Genre: blackened harsh noise wall
Year: 2016
Label: independent

If you are looking for bleak, soulless 'music', look no further than Pagoda Mast.  This Imperial Japanese Navy-inspired noise project is the epitome of audio depravity.  The one-man project's fourth demo, Musashi, is named after the IJN battleship which sank in 1944 during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.  The two-hour tribute to said vessel is nothing short of haunting.
The album begins with the track "Yamato."  The opening seems to be the sounds of the wind blowing over the deck of a ship.  This quickly gives way to an abrasive wall of noise.  The sound is thick and sharp.  No fragment of happiness or beauty can penetrate it.  The pattern shifts as the track progresses, but the aforementioned characteristics remain.  After a half-hour of wreaking audio havoc, the first track concludes only to be succeeded by "Untitled I."
The noise seems to come from a variety of sources aside from the usual noise 'instruments'.  Samples from documentaries about the Imperial Japanese Navy are amplified to ear-splitting volumes, and vocals seem to be employed at various points.  The vocals (if that's what it is, maybe I'm just hearing things) are piercing black metal shrieks.  In fact, this album has black metal written all over it.
The thirty-minute title track sounds like a black metal song drenched in noise to the point of being unrecognizable.  One can almost pick out a faint melody beneath the relentless chaos.  "Shinano" also feels like a gritty black metal tune, and "111" has a distinct, sorrowful melody and faint blast beats throughout.  The closing "A-150" features a heavy, mechanical beat reminiscent of industrial music.  Once the track clocks out, the listener is left with a sharp ringing in their ears.  That, my friend, is the sign of some grade-A harsh noise.
Pagoda Mast's Musashi is an unrelenting beast of an album.  From start to finish, there is no room to breathe and no way to cry for help.  Immerse yourself in this sickening noise wall, which can be found on Pagoda Mast's bandcamp here.


Rating: 4.5 / 5
Top Tracks:
Yamato
Musashi
111

Phyllomedusa -- Desiccation In Progress (Version I) (review)

Band: Phyllomedusa
Album: Desiccation In Progress (Version I)
Genre: gorenoise
Year: 2011
Label: Hypyractyv Larynx Frogquencies

Big Frog is one of my all-time favorite 'musicians' (I personally think the man is extremely talented).  He has a ton of projects, and I mean a ton.  For the most part he dabbles in extreme forms of noise, but he occasionally embraces some form of 'normal' music only to twist it into something abrasive and perverse.  The man has a way with, essentially, destroying music(al convention).  Phyllomedusa happens to be the pinnacle of this mindset.
What we have here is an homage to the gods of gore: Last Days of Humanity (sorry, Carcass is great too, but LDoH took goregrind to the limits).  Desiccation In Progress is 100% Putrefaction In Progress-worship, yet Big Frog manages to create a beast (excuse me, frog) of his own.
Eighteen tracks of grimy, vulgar gorenoise crammed into a thirteen-minute run-time makes for one hell of an album.  The tracks are almost single-minded in nature.  Blast beats blaze past at insane tempos.  The guitars (and bass?) are distorted to the point that there are no distinguishable riffs; rather, they create an impermeable wall of harsh noise.  The vocals are a combination of processed gurgles and violent, strained roars.  Big Frog sounds legitimately enraged, like a bull(frog) ready to charge.
The tracks are actually varied to some degree.  Occasionally, the music will break into an intense groove, like on "The Lumberjack Killer" and "Preservation of Hemiphractus Carrion."  The start of "Some Edible Rodent Fragments to Digest" has a very strong industrial metal vibe, and "Persuaded In Leptophryne Cannibalism" features a very brief but devastating breakdown.  These breaks from the grinding speed-fest, although short-lived, help keep the listener tuned into the disgusting noise.
This album is easily one of the best in the realm of gorenoise, and I highly recommend it to anyone looking to indulge themselves in 'anti-music' (which is, charmingly, just a category of music).  Download this thing from Phyllomedusa's bandcamp page here.


Rating: 5 / 5
Top Tracks:
Persuaded In Leptophryne Cannibalism
The Lumberjack Killer
Continual Spea Waste
Some Edible Rodent Fragments to Digest
Preservation of Hemiphractus Carrion
The Beauty of Putrefaction In Sensible Frogcare