Swedish heavy rockers, Kråkslott, take their psychedelic metal heaviness to the next level, and achieve a more refined and realized sound compared to their earlier offerings. The band's new 20-minute/two-song EP, The Witchhammer, sees the ambitious band following the genre's essentials, and has them looking really able for their future.
The two lengthy tracks which compose The Witchhammer abound with excellent riff-laden doom metal and gritty sludge akin to stoner rock classics, and coming forth like a dynamic compound of Electric Wizard and High On Fire.
Still early in their path, with their new release Kråkslott prove that they are not late in the stoner metal game, and that some of the descendants of Black Sabbath can still be capable of coming up with reinvigorating sounds and ideas which can keep the style thriving.
For their own version of old school black metal, South Wales band, Black Pyre, cite influence from the extreme metal of Norway and Greece, and their themes are based on demonology, ice and winter. On their debut album, Winter Solstice, Black Pyre certainly deliver.
Conceptually, Black Pyre go with idealistic subjects and notions which are true and appealing to metal audiences, so they seem to be on the right path on a fundamental level. Sonically, they utilize a rawer, yet, clear style of production which feels appropriate and matching to the extreme coldness of their sound, and ultimately their black metal comes across as an honest salute to the dark classics, mostly from the second wave of Norwegian Black Metal.
The band's first full length offers both moments of intensity and enticing melodiousness, often reminding of the ferociousness of Immortal, and other times the tuneful escapades of Rotting Christ. Winter Solstice is a well balanced record, undoubtedly the band's most realized work up to this point, and highlights like Hiraeth and its wonderfully driving title track can be downright convincing.
Not to be confused with the nineties British acid jazz band of the same name, Swedish quartet, Corduroy, offer some very much balmy and sweet shoegaze pop, based on hooky melodies, reverberating guitars and all around excellent production.
The band have been building their early acclaim with a few strong first singles, the latest of which is the memorable Gråa Dagar (Swedish for 'Gray Days'), possibly Corduroy's most gripping effort to date; a fuzzy and dreamy shoegazer which appears on the line of the sound of acts like Westkust and Pinkshinyultrablast.
As its title suggests and despite its overall amiableness, the new track comes with a more ponderous subject matter. In the band's own words, it "captures the grey parts between the small glimpse of happiness that life can offer you. A theme that you can’t construct because all you know is how to survive in a dingy post-industrial society far away from shiny filters and long lasting joy."
Corduroy are composed of Amanda Wallin, Olle Rosén, Martin Boström and Serafim Kristjansson.
Post punk trio, Plaisir, is essentially an international endeavor. The band is based in Berlin, Germany, and it's composed of Camille Haimet from France, Carla Cixi from Italy and KC Dahlehan from Sweden, while their lyrics are in English and French. The band's new track, Masło Z Solą, which is in Polish and it translates to 'Butter With Salt', follows their recent EP, Sap, and comes ahead of their anticipated full length which is still in the making.
Lifting from archetypal post punk, shoegaze and coldwave, Plaisir emerge with a rather moody and obviously promising sound, with the extensive fuzz contradicting the dreamlike qualities of their songcraft, sparking off a notable and imaginative foray into the dark underground.
Masło Z Solą leans toward the dreamier side of Plaisir's artistry, and it compels both for its neat instrumentation which is centered on an alluring bassline, and the band's fine delivery.
"A hopeful song about agony," the band describe it. "A soundtrack to your own movie."
One of the best to have ever taken post metal through minimal paths, BIG | BRAVE prepare for the release of a new album, the follow up to A Gaze Among Them from 2019. VITAL is expected out April 23rd, 2021 (for the vinyl edition it's going to be July 9th, 2021) via Southern Lord, and the first example off it is terrific.
"Having cut our teeth in very different musical backgrounds respectively, our intuitions vary, which has an interesting effect on our individual approaches and ears," the band comments. "This album involves what it means navigating the outside world in a racialized body and what it does to the psyche as a whole while exploring individual worth within this reality."
The nine-minute video for Half Breed is a single shot, and in its plainness it is very much emotive and impressive. The band comments: "The action of shoveling dirt onto the person, also acts a way to discredit, shame and discriminate the individual. With the victim (on screen), being painfully covered with dirt by the perpetrator (off screen), all we have to witness is the damage done and left behind. We are aware of what is happening, what has happened, but the source is kept anonymous and can easily be missed and overlooked."
BIG | BRAVE are Robin Wattie, Mathieu Ball and Tasy Hudson. VITAL was recorded with acclaimed engineer Seth Manchester at Machines with Magnets. The band state: "We fully trust his instinct as an engineer and his creative output, getting to experiment with textures, concepts, layers, and with pretty much every single recorded sound, the process of making records with Seth is an absolute journey in sonic exploration."
In very little time Rapt aka Brighton UK's Jacob Ware has managed to stand out with his unique take on lo-fi experimental ambiance. Late 2018 saw the artist emerging with the first releases which earned his act its first acclaim, and lately he's been on a creative run, with None Of This Will Matter coming out in late 2020 and making a rather fine impression, and the live-at-home EP, Lived Alone, following a little later.
Drouth, a new record composed of five untitled tracks, is a brilliant, introspective collection; a merger of ambient, downtempo electronica, cinematic and neo-classical sounds, and it brings Rapt a step closer toward the full realization of its musical existence by going back to where it started.
Shifting gears often between driving rhythms and ethereal atmospherics, the five tracks on Drouth supplement each other, and go through various moods, all of which have a couple of common denominators, such as a firm foundation of inherent wistfulness and layers of underlying calmness. The entire release is marked by Rapt's motivation to create a coherent work which plays out seamlessly on a larger scale, and on that aspect Drouth succeeds. as it is more of a compelling album than five great individual tracks,. Rapt's disconnection from the slowcore and folk direction of its immediately previous material feels absolutely intrinsic, and ultimately it pays off.
"Influenced by the state of things on this earth and in our lives, Drouth is the logical follow up to my first album under this confused moniker," the artist describes. "Composed from scratched, warped, worthless and unwanted classical music LPs."
The great Steve Von Till keeps being incredibly prolific, and continues the expansion of his solo work with the release of an ambient album and a spoken word one. Respectively, A Deep Voiceless Wilderness and Harvestman: 23 Untitled Poems will be out on April 30th, 2021 via Neurot Recordings.
No Wilderness Deep Enough finds SVT at his most unconventional and avantgardistic mode, even for his standards, with the album taking a neo-classical direction which seems surprising. In case it sounds familiar, it's because it's the same album as las year's No Wilderness Deep Enough minus Von Till’s vocal, with the track's wonderfully renamed.
"This is how I originally heard this piece of music," Von Till says. "Without the voice as an anchor or earthbound narrative, these pieces have a broader wingspan. They become something else entirely and unfold in a more expansive way. The depth of the synths, juxtaposed with the strings and French horn, have space to develop and allow the listener to imagine their own story."
Harvestman: 23 Untitled Poems and Collected Lyrics is SVT's first book of poetry, originally published by the University of South Dakota’s AstrophilPress, and it is now reimagined as a spoken word record, taking the Harvestman moniker to entirely unexplored paths.
"Being a constant sound-seeker, I thought it would be more interesting to have some textures and treatments to break up the intimate voice recordings," Von Till says of the new offering by Harvestman. "The background sounds used on some of the tracks were pieces related to No Wilderness Deep Enough that were either not used or repurposed to interweave further connections between my artistic output at this time of my life."
South London duo, Scrounge, have been building a solid reputation since their beginnings in 2018. The band's newest offering and their first release since their well received previous EP, Ideal, from 2019, is Leaking Drains, an immediate post punk piece which sounds all nervy, agitated and punchy; plus up to par with the current wave of British post punk excellence, and bands like Idles, Shame, The Murder Capital and the like.
“This track is designed to be short and sharp, both lyrically and instrumentally,” the band explain about their new minute and a half-long single. “Living standards and life expectancy have dramatically dropped for the majority of ordinary people in the UK over the last generation or so, and it often feels like we’re at once completely weightless and under extreme pressure – a little like being deep underwater.
“The demonization and punching-down that constitutes most of the mainstream discourse around debt, housing, poverty and precarity in this country only compounds the issue. The anger and absurdity of a track like Leaking Drains is driven by this stuff.”
Scrounge are guitarist Lucy and drummer Luke, and they will be appearing at SXSW online showcase in March 2021. Leaking Drains is out through Fierce Panda.
Bestial Mouths should be praised for their visual creations as much as they are for the music. Our Souls Take is part of one of last year's very finest albums, and it's no exception to the intrigue and the high quality all of the band's videos possess.
"Present, past and future—our souls encompass all aspects of time, cycling through aspects in our boratic ekstasis. Let us honor this process, in each element of this Aspect," says gothic force, Lynette Cerezo, describing the track and video's association to nature and spirituality.
Our Souls Take coheres as a short film on its own, and it was directed by Tas Limur.
Bestial Mouths prolificity continues strong, as the band announce the coming of a new release composed of remixes. THOUSANDNEEDLES is expected mid-2021, and it will feature collaborations with acts from the dark underground's front lines, including Adult., SRSQ, Ash Code, Light Asylum, Crowhurst and more.
A recent documentary about professional skateboarder, Bucky Lasek, produced by Powell Peralta, Lasek and Billy Bakker, is expectedly filled with some ace hardcore punk courtesy of fresh Californian bands, Spider, Last Point and Up Your Guts, together with something classic from the catalog of Epitaph by Rich Kids On LSD.
Spider's blood boiling three-song EP, Energy Gone Wrong, was released in 2019 through CPYRT CNTRL RCRDS, and it comes quite evident of the band's keenness for direct punk rock of the tried and true kind, and it even features a relatively faithful cover of Black Flag's Depression.
"It’s an existential, bootstrapping, introspective memoir; a vignette wrapped in metaphors," the band describe the EP's great title track. "The story captures snapshots of the fury of life set to a visceral rock-and-rollercoaster backdrop of buzzing electric guitars and primal, alchemy-seeking drums. There’s something for everyone here. The more you listen, the more layers you’ll find."
