Death By Gong (who are somewhat darlings on our page by now with our special interview a few days ago) gave us the opportunity to present another one of our playlist. With this list of highly diverse tracks they want to show their influences and what a list it is with acts like Beak>, Björk, Failure, PJ Harvey, The Notwist or Torche!

Rule of Two is comprised of two Oslo-based musicians Ronny Flissundet and Kristian Liljan known from bands like Dunderbeist, KITE, and Damokles which are on the hard rock and metal side of the musical spectrum. Now they have shaven themselves into an interesting mirror, a great side project, Rule of Two that fuse Shoegazing Dream pop, Darkwave Synth Pop, Trip-Hop, and Ambient sounds, prioritizing atmosphere and melody. We are proud to have featured them in a big special three days ago and want to crown the Focus-on-Norway-Week with this playlist: Their inspiration is largely from the 80s/90s scene, but with a modern touch to it. Here are the bands and music that inspired them to put their immense creativity into this new project.

The Dutch Post-Metal or Extreme Metal scene is a thriving one and also one that loves to collaborate. A few weeks ago we premiered a track off that impressive split-record by Throwing Bricks and Ontaard called Oud Zeer and now the folks have given us an impressive playlist to show where the musical influences came from. Check out their selection of bands like Suffocate for Fuck Sake, Uboa, Glassing, Sprain, Chastity or World’s End Girlfriend.

This exemplary playlist was curated by Agabas, whose cool record combines Death Metal, Doom Jazz and a lot of anger into a heated and energetic mix! Recently we reviewed their record A Hate Supreme which also shows that combination to the T. Their playlist combines their love for everything heavy and chaotic (Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge, Meshuggah) with a lot of other things like Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane or Spidergawd!

We write a lot of our music with the live format in mind. Some parts are simply designed to open up the pit. The first band on this playlist, Honningbarna, is one of our biggest influences, at least when it comes to live shows. I’m not suggesting that they necessarily write their music the same way, I wouldn’t know, but anyone who’s had the pleasure of seeing them live will know just how thrilling it is when the band uses the extreme dynamics of heavy music to play with the crowd. It creates a real synergy between the music and the people in the room, which is something we strive to nail as well. The rest of the bands on this list are really just bands who have impacted us and how we write our music in some way - riffs, song structure, tricks, arrangement - it’s all in there. And then there are some jazz tunes, probably self-explanatory. It’s good music, check it out!

The British Post-Metallers Helve have released one of the strongest debuts and we here at VoS are proud to have played a tiny role in their promo cycle (for example check out Knut’s review here). They have now in return provided us with this immense playlist with many classic Post-Metal bands like Rosetta, Amenra or Neurosis, but also bands from other genres like Yob, Deftones or SKINLAB!

Music or songs that I like have to inspire a certain feeling. Sometimes I’ll hear a snippet of a song and explore the full song and it has to continue to give me ‘that feeling’ otherwise I feel disappointed and move on. The songs on this list did just that. They invoked a certain feeling whether it be calming or heart pumping.

When I first discovered Post-Metal, I was pretty late to the game, ISIS were at the end of their life cycle, but I was in the right frame of mind having got bored (or too old) to listen to intensely heavy music constantly. It was a whole new world.

I’d heard elements similar to Post-Metal in some Deftones songs to a certain extent, through that contrast between heavy and ambient. But when I started to deep dive into Cult of Luna in particular it was a complete ‘light bulb’ moment, something triggered in me, or inspired me to want to write music in a similar vein. I am now heavily into Post-Metal, as my long suffering wife will attest to, although I love ambient stuff like Sigur Ros, and The Cinematic Orchestra.

I want to experience the journey, or dwell on an awesome heavy riff or drift away and relax to ambient songs. Songs for me have to evoke a feeling or emotion as cliche as it sounds, but it’s the best possible way I can describe how these songs make me feel and the reason why I hold them in such high regard.

Come on now folks, we all love some good booty-shaking, head-nodding, air-riffing party and if Masheena’s music is something, then it’s definitely a lot of party with even more depth! Therefore we are very happy that the guys compiled a playlist for us and compiled some classics like Otis Redding, Whitesnake, Rush or Frank Zappa and added some more modern sing-alongs courtesy of Mastodon, Soundgarden, High on Fire or Clutch! The playlist definitely shows where the songs West Coast Hard Rock come from (check out Knut’s review here)! The band`s songwriter describes his process and the playlist the band has put together:

When I start on a tune, usually inspired by a state of mind or a melody that has been spinning in my head (mostly without any purpose), I always start with the guitar (acoustic or an unplugged electric guitar), which makes it much easier to imagine how chorus, bass, drums, and possible arrangements can work, without predetermining how it’s going to finally sound. The lyrics [are] a process as the words have to match the story or feelings, usually managing to get a chorus and maybe one verse in place first. But hey, for me it’s important to make something that is not bound by any specific style or genre, lay it all out there!

Like some artists say that a painting is always unfinished, the great thing about Masheena, is that the demos made are like sketches that get different colors and shapes depending on what assimilations the rest of the band gets from it. It’s like a big sticky rock that gets pushed down the mountain, not stopping before its covered by branches, leaves and whatever it captures on the way down.

The tracks selected represent the variety of artists that mean something in terms of attitude and state of mind for the band: Jimi Hendrix with his guitar, and storytelling skills, making it sound so easy (this song is freakin’ difficult somehow). Soundgarden’s appealing mood and flirt with the abyss, into Otis Redding’s snapshot of “who’s wearing the pants”-attitude from another era, and into great hard “newer” stuff rounding it up into Zappa’s humor and impossible arrangements.

A few weeks ago we reviewed Rylan’s amazing record In Chemical Transit, last Sunday we published an interview with him and today the Gleavestival continues with this playlist containing loads of cool choices - Cocteau Twins, Eartheater, Chat Pile, Big|Brave, Ethel Cain, Nicole Dollanganger, Greet Death or Mrs Piss!

I’ve chosen songs namely that evoke a sense of hollowness, loneliness or mystery. I find this feeling across musical spheres, which is why there is a variety of tracks spanning genres, from the haunting, sparse folk of Burd Ellen, to the urgency and industrial grit of Mrs. Piss. There’s some older tracks in the mix, including Cocteau Twins and Codeine, and some recent releases from healthyliving and Coffin Mulch. There’s a preoccupation with voice, as is maybe to be expected as a vocalist, and especially with singers who have influenced my own practice, including Scott Walker, Nicole Dollanganger, and Maud the Moth. Some hidden gems that were new to me are Kikimora’s Pygmalion, and Lær meg å kjenne dine veie, arranged and recorded by Kim Rystaad, Arve Henriksen, and Tord Gustavsen. There’s a loose shape within the order, mostly aligned with emotional narrative, that hopefully will take the listener on their own journey, and let them extract their own meaning.

As we promised since the beginning of August, we are giving you another monthly roundup of what you got on VoS, and you get one track for (nearly) each thing we published in August. August was a very good month with reviews, specials, or interviews by Botanist, Breaths, Jaye Jayle feat. Bonnie Prince Billy and Patrick Shiroishi, Cliff Ruin, Silverburn, Pylar, Krigsgrav, Din of Celestial Birds, Rana, Calligram, Ursular, DDENT, Fen, Disimperium, Masheena, Thee Oh Sees, The World At A Glance, Tired Minds, 夢遊病者 (Sleepwalker), Dead Neanderthals, Loather, Khanate, Hundred Year Old Man, Mizmor, Mutoid Man and Cheer-Accident. Amazingly, this playlist contains more than 200 minutes of music and hopefully you enjoy every single one of them!

(Note: It was not possible to include one track for each review, interview or special, as some things are not availabe on Spotify or there is no (new) music.)</b>

A few weeks ago we were stunned by the latest effort by Breaths called Floruit and while talking to Jason, the mastermind behind it, he quickly agreed to compile a playlist for us - so here it is! He collected some great tracks by Chrome Ghost, No Sun, Windhand, Pallbearer, Monolord and also some of the bands that have always had a big spot in the VoS-hearts like Slow Crush, Spotlights or King Woman or Cloakroom.

This playlist reflects the genres/bands I have had in constant rotation over the last few years. I’ve been really into both shoegaze/slowcore and doom/sludge metal lately, with this playlist having a good mix of some of my favorites from both sides (and some that meet happily in the middle). These styles were the primary influence for the new Breaths album, and for the album that I’m currently writing for my new solo project somei. Now that Breaths is a full band and writing collaboratively, I’m not focused as much on writing for that, so I channel my love for shoegaze and doom into somei.

There are some categories that we just couldn’t keep up for lack of collaborators – others just take breaks, but are not forgotten. Our collaboration with The Devil’s Mouth aka José Carlos Santos falls into the second category. To make it clear – this collab just simply won’t go away. It might take a break but it will always come back! This time we wanted to do something seasonal – so José took it literally and compiled a great playlist for you to listen to with songs about the sad and dark sides of summer; with (nearly) all songs having the word “summer” somewhere in the title.

The playlist compiled by Head Honcho Thorsten can be found at José Carlos’ awesome substack where you can see that Thorsten chose some really “happy go lightly, play me some good car trip songs” but with a certain twist. If you wanna know the concept behind his playlist – you gotta watch the video below! Here you can find José’s fine playlist containing tracks by Swans, Current 93, Paradise Lost, Iron & Wine, Manic Street Preachers, Placebo, Sigh, Refused and many, many more!! And this time we give you a little contest – but again to give us the correct answers on one of the manifold social media channels of VoS or TDM you gotta watch the video!

This might be the most diverse playlist we have ever gotten by an artist. Running-time wise because the shortest is 2:16 minutes and the longest one is 12:25. Musically because we get tracks by artists as wide apart as Dionne Warwick and Stevie Wonder, David Bowie and The Police, but also Capatin Beefheart and Frank Zappa, Os Mutantes and The Jesus Lizard! Enjoy Cheer Accident’s playlist!

In selecting our playlist, we’ve gone with the not-too-deep-of-a-dive approach, opting for some of the bands that we not only share a love for, but whose output, aesthetic, and work ethic have influenced us in a multitude of ways over the many (many!) years. A couple of these folks may even be dear friends of ours (who just so happen to create uniquely magical music and deliver mind-bending live performances on a consistent basis). I’m sure we’ve left plenty of cards on the table, but the cards we’ve chosen to include continue to hold a special place in our hearts.

As we started this “tradition” last month, we are going through with it and give you another monthly roundup of what you got on VoS. You get one track for (nearly) each thing we published in July. In the month of June we got tracks by Saturnus, Loma Prieta, The Glass Pavilion. 1476, Divide and Dissolve, Guru, Agriculture, All Men Unto Me, The End, Mutoid Man, car crash weather, Decoherence, Mairu, Omen Astra, Seasons Worn, Xasthur, Boris & Uniform and finally Oxbow and Codeine! And you see, even though July was a rather small month for VoS, we are still able to give you nearly 140 minutes’ worth of music! (Note: It was not possible to include one track for each review, interview or special, as some things are not availabe on Spotify or there is no (new) music.)

When a band tries to cook up a raucous recipe somewhere between Vaudeville-tunes, Math-elements and some Prog-lines they better do not care about whether people like it - these acts better have a certain Punk attitude. Lovely Little Girls surely do and thus walk in the footstephs of bands like The Tiger Lillies or Cherubs and present us with a playlist containing acts as diverse as Yoko Ono, NoMeansNo, Nuclear Death, Crass, The Residents, Ennio Morricone, Steel Pole Bath Tub or Electric Light Orchestra.

Lovely Little Girls has a vast range of influences. We like to incorporate a lot of it in our work in a non-pastiche sort of way. I have done a lot of radio and music podcasts in which my goal is to connect a lot of disparate music with a tonal and emotional thread. How can I get from Celtic Frost to Esquivel! in 45 minutes and have the progression of events be seamless and organic? I extend this thinking to the way we construct our live shows and album tracking. I hope this playlist brings you on some kind of unexpected journey.

So, at the moment there is one special following on the heels of another one - last week, it was our first monthly Roundup, this week we give you the playlist accompanying our Mid-Terms-Selection with which we give you five records we really liked but didn’t find the time to review them (yet!). Thus you get another extra-long playlist which might keep you busy for quite some days. (Note - this playlist again is nearly 3,5 hours, so you might take some time or chop it into nice bits!)

A few months ago, we were asked by some of our readers and followers, whether we couldn’t do a playlist with all the things we reviewed, premiered and interviewed in a given month. Great idea, we were directly up for it! But starting to work on it we discovered something: Putting all records together in such an endeavor would result in a playlist much too long, this month probably somewhere along the 27 hours or so. Therefore we are doing it a little differently: As we already have been listing our favorite track of each record we simply compiled those and songs from the last releases by our interview partners and - if possible - the songs we premiered this month. In the month of June we got tracks by Atlases, Seven Impale, Wallowing, Wolfredt, Jeromes Dream, The Ocean, Cicada the Burrower, Eremit, Orme, Mournful Congregation, Vexing, Finte, JeGong, sear, Godflesh, Aodon, The Exit Bags, Umlaut and Jaye Jayle ft. Bonnie Prince Billy and Patrick Shiroishi! (Note: This playlist is still 3,5 hours because of the ultra-length of some tracks, especially Orme and Eremit really pushed it!)

A few months ago, we shared a premiere for French Synthwave Post-Rockers Arhios and their single “Darla” and were really positively taken by it. When the band then offered to compile a playlist for us it was a real no-brainer. The compilation takes a strong look at the mindblowing diversity of the French scene with tracks from Quentin Sauvé, Bou, The Psychotic Monks or Soja Triani but also some cool tracks from foreign bands like Greet Death, Algiers, Wolf Parade or Everything Everything.

Here is a our playlist with a short selection of around twenty tracks. You can discover our favorite songs of the moment, made mostly artists from the French scene but also some international references.

As you can see it’s an eclectic selection. We have several artistic sensibilities that we love to mix. Here are some good tracks and bands that inspire us. We also want to make a short highlight with local and French bands cause we have so many !

Hope you’ll enjoy it!

Innerwoud is the stage moniker for Belgian neo-classical cello and bass player Pieter-Jan Van Assche who is also know for his collaborations with Treha Sektori (Dehn Sora) and BARST and who is also a member of the Church of Ra, the collectiver formed around Blackened Post-Metal powerhouse Amenra. Pieter-Jan compiled a highly interesting playlist for us: He included classical tracks by Carlos Cipa or Edward Elgar, but otherwise his love for Post-related music shines bright on this one with track by Fall of Efrafa, The Black Heart Rebellion or Hundred Year Old Man - all garnished with some wonderful tracks by Lankum, Soap & Skin and The Pirate Ship Quintet. Enjoy!

A short playlist with a fair amount of variation, which is also a good reflection of my taste and the music that inspires me. It includes several tracks that revolve around the cello, such as the one by Icelandic project Lost in Hildurness, which showed me what is possible with looping and a string instrument like the double bass. Generally, I tend to listen to dark and introspective music, but I also enjoy harder music with an anti-establishment message, like Fall of Efrafa, which I listen to on a daily basis through speakers or headphones during long walks through nature. Classical music, such as the work of Elgar, and contemporary piano compositions by Carlos Cipa, have also been pleasing me for years and are a significant influence on the music I create. Finally, there are also a few top Belgian bands, such as the unfortunately defunct Black Heart Rebellion, with one of my favorite tracks, “Body Breakers”, because the pulse and rhythms sound both exotic and Post-Rock. “Dust” by the Belgian band Brutus is another song that goes in all directions, and I have been deeply impressed by it since its release.

Sunflo’er are everybody’s darlings here at VoS - thus we were highly excited when the guys from Upstate New York (a town named Potsdam where Wes Craven once taught!) gave us this playlist full of cool stuff, some a bit wondrous, some totally serious. Enoy!

Sunflo’er listens to a lot of butt rock along the drive to a show. Part of this is because we love to get a rise out of each other by trying to play the worst song but also because we love it. When asked to compile a playlist for our friends in Veil of Sound, by some miracle, the resulting playlist did not end up sounding like those drives. The following collection of songs will actually not be a a colossal waste of bandwidth.

Arranged here is a list of tunes that bounce between members’ personal influences, new discoveries, and plenty of references to bands we’ve met and played with, or hope to play with in our secretest, smelliest dreams.

Blast it and pet a kitty. We love you.

VMO, short for Violent Magic Orchestra is a relatively new act, that is for sure. The Osaka, Japan-based project is nothing less than an amalgam of the most diverse kind. There is a lot of Drum’n’Bass in the vein of Roni Size in their music but also a lot of Black Metal - so some people might call this Dungeon Synth, but it is much more beat-oriented and modern in sound. That diverse mix can also be seen in their playlist. There are songs by Melt Banana, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and even Robert Miles but also tracks by Full of Hell, Mayhem, Brujeria or Burial.

The planet HELVETECH in 2099 has the same music as Earth. This time, we VMO chose music up to 2023. The future is still early for those reading this. If you want to hear the music of the future, listen to VMO. メイヘム is a hardcore man. ダークスローン is an electronic man. ゴルゴロス is a light man. ザスター is addicted to anime and K-POP. And VMO was born on the planet HELVETECH. That’s all. Have fun.

ṘO from Spain’s Basque region have given us several amazing releases like Athalase (2020) or Baiagoan a few months ago and we were really excited when they gave us this playlist for all of you to enjoy. They combined classics like Maybeshewill, Caspian, Olafur Arnalds or Toundra and added a few lesser known acts like Apparat, Dut, Mikel Iraeta or Sara Zozaya. Here is what they have to say:

These songs may not be the ones that we listen to everyday but they are really present in ṘO. There is a lot of musical taste variety in our band, but we all share the love for instrumental music. We like those long songs that explore deep atmospheres and emotive melodies but also heavy riffs full of rage.

A few weeks ago we gave you a detailed review of Seer of the Void’s fine full-length Mantra Monolith, this week they gave us a wonderful playlist showcasing some of their influences! Enjoy songs by The Sword, Uncle Acid, Weedeater, Kylesa, Black Tusk and Cough. And some classics, too!

This is a short playlist of our influences through different decades of music. From the psychedelic sixties through the heavier seventies, the more aggressive eighties era till the desert scene of the 90’s and more up to date stuff. These are some of the influences of the band that forged our new album Mantra Monolith and also our debut album Revenant. Some of them are obvious, some of them are more “under the skin”. We also think it’s a pretty good playlist for a roadtrip!

Well, well, well, what do we have here? Hmmm basically nothing but simply the new edition of our playlist-collaboration with José Carlos Santos aka The Devil’s Mouth.

Our favorite festival of the year, heck, of every year is approaching quickly and therefore we used one element of this year’s edition as a chance to do something different, a long look at one label, which started out as a labour of love and which is now one of the main players in heavy Psych-Rock and Noise-Rock: Rocket Recordings from Bristol, which started as a local, very niche label but which is by now spreading out into many different sounds. Therefore the label itself follows Roadburn’s idea of re-defining their sound pretty well, and that was also one of the reasons for their showcase in Tilburg this year, as Walter from Roadburn mentioned to me lately.

Visit the Devil’s Mouth substack to see Thorsten’s picks but right here, right now you can see that José picked some of the most well known bands from Rocket Recordings’ roster: Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, Goat, Deafkids x Petbrick, Gnod, Uran GBG or Teeth of the Sea! Which bands have we forgotten, folks?

Scandinavian “Everything heavy”-omnivores Draken (whose record Book of Black is out on Majestic Mountain Records - check out Knut’s review) have compiled this week’s playlist and man, it’s loaded with real classics - from Sepultura, Darkthrone, Iron Maiden, Celtic Frost, High On Fire or Slayer! Enjoy, all you metal aficionados!

This playlist displays the mood we were at when making Book of Black. Some of the tracks are direct inspirations, some are music we were listening to at the time of recording, some are songs we, in retrospect, can relate to the album. We hope you enjoy this little playlist!

Our VoS Tapes are back - and we have a mighty cool playlist for you compiled by Ari from STAHV who gives us a cool tracklist! And the man behind the cool Alternative Rock project from the West Coast has a real knack for these things as he is able to incorporate the greats from the 80s into a concise playlist featuring the likes of Sisters of Mercy, Depeche Mode & Fields of the Nephilim on the one hand and more modern sounds like Ladytron, Unto Others and Drab Majesty on the other. And here is what he has to say about his playlist:

This playlist reflects the dualities at the heart of STAHV: darkness and light, hook and atmosphere, famous and obscure. As a collection of songs, this mix moves through many phases of my life while genuinely expressing the sounds that move me today.

The sounds of Space Afrika and Riki are more recent discoveries brought to my attention through playing live shows and exploring modern iterations of genres I love. Then there is a track like “Stepping Out” by Joe Jackson that has never ceased to thrill me since I was a young child in the backseat of our family Volvo. Artists like Ladytron and M83 lie somewhere in between, consistent companions over the last few years.

If anything, the eclectic nature of this playlist is the glue. I’m a sonic omnivore, prone to obsessive immersion into a subgenre for weeks— even months—while simultaneously ingesting nostalgia for dessert.

I work with words and with sound, but music is my soul’s food. It provides me with energy, peace, distraction, and focus. So, from ’80s synth pop and goth rock to atmosphere beats and art rock, here is a curated overview of what makes STAHV tick in 2023.

Here you can also find our review of STAHV’s latest record Simple Mercies

One says there is a certain number of repetitions necessary to internalize a new process. Having repeated our collab with The Devil’s Mouth five times now, this has become a staple for us and for you out there. This time, José and Thorsten take on the 2003, a year many think not to have been a really great one, but they surely dug up a lot of treasures for that year!

As mentioned with the last playlists already, let’s dig deep and search for smaller themes because as the two are nerds at heart, they’ll still find enough stuff to keep your ears busy. Busy because the older listeners will revisit some records and songs and the younger ones will find amazing stuff they might have never heard of! Visit the Devil’s Mouth substack to see Thorsten’s picks but right here, right now you can see that José picked very diverse stuff like Darkthrone, Azure Ray, Early Day Miners, Burnt By The Sun, Willard Grant Conspiracy or Keelhaul - and those are only 6 out 30 songs!