Page 7 of 34

• Gospel - The Loser

  

  11 Aug 2022 - Thorsten
  Post-Hardcore, Afrobeat, Progressive Rock

  Has anyone ever investigated that little crack between At The Drive-In and The Mars Volta? No? You haven’t? You might want to do so, because in there you will find a pretty little solitaire ring with the name GOSPEL engraved on the inside. And that shiny diamond at the top of this classic engagement ring – when held against the light – will throw the glistening, glittery words The Loser onto the next surface it touches. A sight as miraculous as the record this review will talk about!

  Continue reading >

---

• Head in Hand - Unnatural Providence

  

  10 Aug 2022 - Thorsten
  Blackened Sludgey Post-Hardcore

  How can we describe the sound of the earth? Does earth have something like its own sound? Can we synesthesize any given sound with that somewhat primal element? Until today that was nothing that set my mind in motion, but since listening to Head in Hand’s miraculous record Unnatural Providence I have this feeling of associating it with the feeling of dirt and sand, of stones and grit. Why? No idea.

  Continue reading >

---

• Omegashift - Doctrine of Dust

  

  09 Aug 2022 - Knut
  Heavy Doom Metal, Hard Doom Rock

  Inspired by the 80s Doom Metal and Hard Rock scene, the Norwegians of Omegashift released an album earlier this year with some modern twists. What if the giants of the 70s and 80s had used clear and strong female vocals like the ones on this album, would they have sounded like this? Probably not, but it is nice musing about while listening to the band unfolding five well performed Heavy Metal songs induced with Doom and Hard Rock.

  Continue reading >

---

• Locrian - New Catastrophism

  

  08 Aug 2022 - Dan D.
  Ambient, Electronic, Death Metal

  7 years. 7 long years. That’s been the time since LOCRIAN’s Infinite Dissolution. The world is now a very different place than it was in 2015. Our planet is a more fractured and dangerous place than it was. The rise of egotistical bigots has made fascists feel they can now scurry out of their dank, insipid hovels. We are faced with the real threat of nuclear annihilation at the hands of ‘leaders’ not stable or of sound mind enough to have access to such power. An unprecedented, and seemingly inevitable, global environmental crisis casts a grim spectral shadow over Earth. How long humanity has left in its current guise is anyone’s guess, but one thing is for certain, when I do go, I want the audio accompanying my demise to be LOCRIAN.

  Continue reading >

---

• Effluence - Sarmat

  

  07 Aug 2022 - Brayden
  Avantgarde Free Jazz, Goregrind

  After hearing Effluence’s Sarmat I can say it’s becoming increasingly difficult to believe the blueprint to metal was founded by the likes of Black Sabbath. There have been fundamental bands decades later that too are abjected comparatively to Effluence.

  Continue reading >

---

• Drift Into Black - Earthtorn

  

  06 Aug 2022 - Thorsten
  Doom Metal, Krautrock, Psychedelia

  “We have made engine start. Four, Three, Two. … 60,000 cases in a single day, it is the longest number of new cases, a new record. … A plane has crashed into one of the World Trade Center. … Dann tritt für mich ein, so wie ich für dich eintreten werde. … Without power. … A Day which will live in infamy. … The United States of America is suddenly at war. … has exploded in mid-air” Speech samples lead into Drift into Black’s new album Earthtorn. Combine them with the title and you got a good idea what they are trying to tell you! Important!! Warning!!!

  Continue reading >

---

• Alburnum - Buitenlucht

  

  06 Aug 2022 - Knut
  Post Black Metal, Folk Black Metal, Blackgaze

  Between the outer hard bark of a tree and the heartwood there is a soft part called alburnum or sap wood, the lightest and the youngest part of the tree trunk. Such a band name gives some expectation when the band is branded in the realm of the Black Metal genre. And yes, it is a magnificent debut release from this Dutch band that brings thirty minutes of riffs, tremolos, arpeggios accompanied by diverse drumming and folk related instruments as they sweep along the melodic themes and embrace the harsh and clean vocals.

  Continue reading >

---

• VAURA - Vista of Deviant Anatomies

  

  04 Aug 2022 - Joshua
  Experimental Metal, New Wave, Goth

  Each summer day has its flies, but lately they seem unremitting, deliberate even. Like bombardiers they careen across sunlit afternoons, incessantly buzzing and wringing their…hands?…as if plotting nefarious deeds or relishing those accomplished. Like noontide demons sent to despoil the midday calm, their clamorous buzz festers, looms—an aural sign of something poorly repressed resurfacing. Even these spent carcasses on the windowsill—the crushed velour of their brilliant jackets now fading—still tremble with cryptic meaning: Ɐ A Ɐ A A What could they possibly signify? What dark mote perdures in this summer sky? These can mean only one thing: today we reckon with the length of cold shadows cast by an unheralded January offering, VAURA’s Vista of Deviant Anatomies.

  Continue reading >

---

• Aftab Darvishi - A Thousand Butterflies

  

  02 Aug 2022 - Stephan
  Neo-Classical

  Leaving home, be it by choice or by force. Finding new homes. Yearning for familiarity, yet learning to embrace the unknown. This is the outline of themes on this collection of works by Iranian composer Aftab Darvishi.

  Continue reading >

---

• Stick To Your Guns - Spectre

  

  01 Aug 2022 - Sebastian
  Hardcore

  After years of hard to contain anticipation the new Stick To Your Guns album has finally arrived. It is packed full of highlights and showcases the versatility of the Californian Hardcore powerhouse. If you didn’t follow all of Jesse’s many side projects, you might be surprised about some directions this album goes.

  Continue reading >

---

• 40 Watt Sun - Perfect Light

  

  30 Jul 2022 - Ben
  Alternative / Dirge

  Patrick Walker returns with a lilting, affecting follow-up to 2016’s Wider Than the Sky. Recorded over the course of a year with an ensemble of collaborators, Perfect Light finds him in a reflective mood.

  Continue reading >

---

• Chat Pile - God's Country

  

  29 Jul 2022 - Thorsten
  Noise-Rock, Math-Rock

  God‘s chosen country. The first modern democracy. The pursuit of happiness. Bring me your huddled masses yearning to be free. A manifest Destiny. With Liberty and Justice for all. Or maybe …
  … a country to rule them all, one country to find them … and in the darkness bind them?

  Continue reading >

---

• Final Light - s/t

  

  28 Jul 2022 - Dan D.
  Blackened Synthwave

  Skynet is winning. The world is in ruin. Buildings stand no more, and the remains of civilisation lay strewn across the wastelands we once called home. Only a brave few members of the resistance remain.

  Continue reading >

---

• Oahk - Tiny Husks

  

  27 Jul 2022 - Thorsten
  Shoegaze, Ambient, Indie

  I am writing this review while driving to Berlin with my lively group of juniors, shortly about to embark on their last summer as school students, full of that wonderful vibrancy of youth. On my air pods I am listening to a record that fascinates ever since my dear friend Josh told me about it, roughly a month ago - Tiny Husks by Oahk. The latest record of that one-man-project from New Hampshire, which is also really exciting and vibrant. But its topic is quite the opposite of my current environs: the premature loss of an unborn child.

  Continue reading >

---

• My Sleeping Karma - Atma

  

  26 Jul 2022 - Sebastian
  Psychedelic, Stoner, Post-Rock

  After many years full of uncertainty and difficulties, My Sleeping Karma finally return and present us with one of their best works to date. The band was not sure if the album would even see the light of day, but it finally does and is once again a display of the incredible musicianship of the German four-piece.

  Continue reading >

---

• Exaltation - Under Blind Reasoning

  

  25 Jul 2022 - Stephan
  Death Metal

  “Exaltation from New Zealand are a death metal band releasing their debut album on Sentient Ruin Laboratories.” - Does this count as a full review yet?

  Continue reading >

---

• Living Room - New Years

  

  24 Jul 2022 - Dan D.
  Emo, Punk, Pop-Punk

  Back in the early 2000’s when I was at university, Drive-Thru Records was big. I mean REALLY BIG. I spent a sizeable chunk of my student loan purchasing CDs and shirts over a stupidly slow dial-up internet connection from their website and waiting weeks for them to be delivered. I didn’t mind so much as at that time a pound sterling pretty much equated to two dollars and shipping was peanuts, so I was getting a bargain. When the parcel finally arrived, I’d eagerly tear into it to and indulge in the pop-punk and emo melodies of Finch, Midtown and my personal favourite, The Early November. Living Room’s approach reminds me a lot of the first The Early November releases, they are more in the emo territory than pop-punk but still have certain pop-punk sensibilities, and I wouldn’t have been disappointed if New Years was included in my box of goodies shipped from the States.

  Continue reading >

---

• Videodrones - After The Fall

  

  23 Jul 2022 - Stephan
  Electronic, Synthwave, Krautrock

  For the fourth time Causa Sui drummer Jakob Skøtt teams up with fellow synthwave lover Kristoffer Ovesen for yet another album celebrating the warm magic of analogue electronic music. This time the ever-evolving duo added a new spin without losing their original flavour.

  Continue reading >

---

• Wilderness of Mirrors - Extinction Level Event

  

  21 Jul 2022 - Simon
  doom metal/drone/ambient

  Wilderness of Mirrors return with a superb sophomore album, it’s an effecting, grandiose offering which will reward you with its intelligent dynamics!

  Continue reading >

---

• Klaus Schulze - Deus Arrakis

  

  19 Jul 2022 - Knut
  Electronic/Berliner School

  I still vividly remember my first encounter of the third kind with the music by Klaus Schulze. I walked into a newly opened record shop in the town I grew up in to ask if they had received the new Gong album. They had not, but the woman behind the counter gave me timewind by Klaus Schulze and said I should check it out while waiting for the other album. The Schulze album totally blew me away and sent me into the wormhole of synth-based music for the years to come.

  Continue reading >

---

• Tómarúm - Ash in Realms of Stone Icons

  

  18 Jul 2022 - Thorsten
  Tech-Death Metal, Atmospheric Black Metal

  When thinking about tech-death metal bands one surely thinks about highly progressive scales, about the typically stumbling drums that seem to fall over each other, and about musicians who like Dream Theater as much as Death. Atmospheric black metal on the other is always associated with images of dark forests, hooded figures screaming at the top of their lungs for the gods of nature and to whom bands like Wolves in the Throne Room or Agalloch mean everything. A lot of people might – at first glance – guess that it is pretty hard to combine these two genres. Lo and behold, there are bands who are able to do that and Tómarúm from Atlanta is surely one to listen to!

  Continue reading >

---

• still motions - syn · the · sis

  

  17 Jul 2022 - Thorsten
  Post-Rock

  “Into the great wide open, under those skies of blue“ - that line from one of Tom Petty‘s biggest hits might have turned into a motto or a guideline for Arizona’s post-rock besties still motions. The band has now released a second full-length which proves that idea because their sound seems endlessly expansive and limitless. Behold this band as they might become the next big thing in post-rock!

  Continue reading >

---

• Imperial Triumphant - Spirit of Ecstasy

  

  16 Jul 2022 - Stephan
  Avantgarde Black Metal

  A “Maximalist Scream” it is indeed. The first single for Imperial Triumphant’s new album could easily have been its title track, as these two words so truly encompass the essence of Spirit of Ecstasy: A bonkers more is more assault of layered chaos with an army of guest musicians from all over the spectrum performing multiple genres simultanously within an avant-garde black metal tornado that sticks its gloriously cacophonous vortex right into your wide open, shell-shocked mouth.

  Continue reading >

---

• Mosara - Only the Dead Know Our Secrets (EP)

  

  14 Jul 2022 - Knut
  Sludge Doom Metal/Doom Metal

  In May last year Mosara released their debut album although they had been active as a band since the beginning of the 2000s. It was all you could wish for from a heavy blistering sludge doom album. And now they release an EP that further explores the heavy sludge doom sonics they master so superbly well. This release may be a bit more subdued in how it unfolds the soundscapes, more cinematic and wider, but still very stupendous.

  Continue reading >

---

• Ashenspire - Hostile Architecture

  

  13 Jul 2022 - Thorsten
  Blackened Avantgarde

  Hostile Architecture Hostile…what? How can architecture be hostile? It can and it will become clearer throughout this review of a really amazing record if you like White Ward and Botanist, Code and Imperial Triumphant. Glaswegian-based collective Ashenspire catapults itself into the top ranks for modern black metal music with a twist and an agenda!

  Continue reading >

---

Page 7 of 34