18 Oct 2024 - Lucia
SludgeFuneral Doom

There’s music that breaks the mold, that changes and evolves, and that defies the music genre canon - and that is exactly what Fórn’s Repercussions of the Self gives the listener. Not only featuring album art that hints at this next chapter of the band, but also giving the fans that Sludge and Funeral Doom sound that’s characteristic to their music.

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17 Oct 2024 - Thorsten
Noise-RockHardcore-Punk

We all need some time for ourselves. To calm down. To have a lavender infused soy-latte, a cozy, warming oven fire burning down the wood collected by Canadian monks 200 years ago in the company of some First Nation children whom they taught the psalms and how to praise the word of God. … wait shit, what? No, we all need to listen to Chat Pile and their new record Cool World!

Forget the shitty idea of spending Fall and Winter evenings snuggled up together in an attempt at escapism, at shutting out the vengeful, hateful world beyond our cozy little windowsill! The Oklahoma City band once again puts their money where their mouths are and shows up why this world should realistically be assessed a shithole run by pervert, money-seeking, moral-lacking billionaires throwing and/or attending “Freak Outs” and not taking a look at anything beyond their 100-car-garage.

Cool World is a powerful statement and the songs surely hold their necks up compared to its Album of the Year-predecessor God’s Country. If anybody had feared the guys to go soft on their new record and to lose their bite, rest assured, that is not the case, not in the least. Even though the opener ”I Am Dog Now” might seem lullabying us into false security with its opening ambient sphere for something like 20 seconds, the ensuing Industrial Noise Rock attack shows the path forward. Only on first listen is ”Shame”, the second track, a somewhat less aggressive, because listen careful beyond the amazing vocal melody and focus on the near Death-Metal like growls in the background and on the lyrics dealing with the long-termin consequences of a Post-Colonial world in which the former oppressors have withdrawn from their enslaved colonies now only to keep connected to them in the form of a capitalism driven dependence – please mark here that it’s not an interdependent system, but one of a clear hierarchical structure!

The way the musicians have incorporated a few more Shoegaze moments into their structures might become clear when listening to ”Frownland” and it still gives me the creeps to find the parallels in sound between Stin’s bass style and Rage Against The Machine’s Tim Commerford – bouncy but not in the Fieldy sense, much more with some basic HipHop-allure. Fortunately Cap’n’Ron doesn’t try to emulate Brad Wilk, so no one can call them a clone for another politically driven US rock band. But one thing might be similar: Chat Pile could be as important for this period of time as RATM was originally – and therefore it doesn’t come as a surprise that they covered the L.A.-quartet’s track ”Bulls on Parade” before. The track contains one of the critical point that both bands surely share: ”Weapons, not food, not homes, not shoes / Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal”. And indeed that is something that Raygun also hinted at in our interview stating he doesn’t see a party which would not screw the people over. Chat Pile are here to point out the deficits and the accompanying misconceptions our society holds for many people. Seemingly the only thing it holds for them.

The soundscape on Cool World are still noisey, but there are more elements of a kind of dragging Industrial sound, which become pretty obvious at the end of ”Camcorder” with is slowly fading outro which is then followed by the rather eruptive ”Tape” (notice the combination of “camcorder” and “tape”?). The tracks focus on the creation of violent content (”If I could, I’d kill them all” and ”They made tapes”) and then the consumption of the latter (”It was the worst I ever saw” and ”Let’s watch it again”) – one of the horrible side effects of our virtual reality life form. There is always someone to watch something even more horrifying than the last thing.

Even though there is a shift from the national (“God’s Country”) to the global (“Cool World”) the urgency, the demand and the saltiness of the presentation of topics occurring on a supra-national scale has the same fervor, passion and even anger as the first record. Musically, this band is untouchable and should keep on rubbing salt into the wounds which many try to neglect, forget and simply deny. The somewhat more varied and more diverse soundscape of the new record is still rooted in noisey Punk of the early to mid-80s and as Raygun dropped several bands to compare them with one clearly comes to mind: Dead Kennedys. The similarities are obvious, not only on a vocal or topic level but also in the way that both bands are never background music. You can neither put on Frankenchrist nor Cool World and not be sucked in immediately, finding yourself screaming along loudly, pumping fists frantically, radicalizing yourself mentally. This is the band the world needs now, not soft-pop vanities like ”What the World Needs Now” but rather ”No Way Out”! And now please excuse me, I have some wounds to scratch open as I shall not forget.

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06 Oct 2024 - Gökhan
Death Metal

By now it is safe to say that the old-school Death Metal revival proved to be nothing short of a mere trend. It is here to stay and what is even more exciting is that we are witnessing a period where the bands of this wave are starting to evolve and come to find their identities more and more with each release. One of the forerunners of the cabal is Undeath from Rochester, NY.

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05 Oct 2024 - Knut
ShoegazePost-Rock

An album with sublime Post-Rock music - meditative, ethereal, and dainty, sometimes with a timbre of Blackgaze when exploring the denser side of the musical scope it is immersed in.

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04 Oct 2024 - Stephan
Jazz Rock

Be it from expected suspects like Kamasi Washington, as a stunning surprise from Sean Ono Lennon, with the Psychedelic touch of Ivan The Tolerable or as one of many ingredients in wild melting pot albums like the latest release of Zeuhl Metal sensation Papangu… I would definitely count this year as a good one in regards of Jazz Fusion. And that’s of course only a small peek into my personal narrow horizon. One thing is for sure though: You shouldn’t even have this conversation without looking into the music mines of Norway, which are always ready to unearth an exciting new gem glinting in the lights of Prog, Krautrock and Jazz!

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03 Oct 2024 - Knut
Post-HardcorePost-Metal

”Passion and enthusiasm, walking on a thin thread”

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30 Sep 2024 - Stephan
ShoegazeDream Pop

In modern digital communication, whenever two parties are actually verbally talking to each other, be it via telephone or other devices, the service provider always feeds technically unnecessary signals into the line. Because if there suddenly was an absolute silence as soon as both participants of the call are just pausing in the same moment, it would feel as if the connection broke off. The soft comfort noise in the background however assures us that someone is still out there on the other side. We are not alone.

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27 Sep 2024 - Daria
Doomgaze

For me, autumn is the best season for gloomy and introspective music, whether it is Dark Folk or more heavier music, perfect time for Iress’ new record Sleep Now, In Reverse.

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27 Sep 2024 - Thorsten
Post-RockPost-Metal

One of the major problems for many Post-Metal bands is to balance fragile, intimate moments on the one and hard, crushing parts on the other hand. Enter Glacier who seem to have taken this formula to new heights for themselves and also for their genre.

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26 Sep 2024 - Lucia
Death MetalExtreme Metal

What would it be like to disappear into thin air? Dreamless Veil gives us an answer to this in the most eerie and introspective way, with music that transcends the realms of the corporeal. The body being portrayed as a mere vessel, that just as the blast beats and shrieking vocals can be shattered, dissolved into nothing in the most gruesome way. Let’s travel into this sonic tale, which is beautifully crafted and materialised with Every Limb of the Flood. Be prepared to venture into this concept album with the idea that we, as listeners, will fully evaporate into its sound.

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24 Sep 2024 - Knut
Hard RockProg

A stunning release with constantly shifting heavy Hard Rock with some dazzling, melodic female vocals.

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19 Sep 2024 - Stephan
Instrumental RockAvantgarde Metal

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14 Sep 2024 - Knut
Post MetalPost-Hardcore

This heavy high-velocity album will leave you dazed and confused. But it is a happy daze paired with confusion on a higher level.

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12 Sep 2024 - Knut
Desert RockStoner Rock

If you weld the fuzziness of Desert Rock with the heaviness of Stoner you get “Tundra Rock” as this vibrant sophomore album from Slomosa wants to show.

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07 Sep 2024 - PBV
Experimental Death MetalExtreme Metal

”You’re not going to Mars / Mars is coming here”
…opens the chorus of the first track off Exhaust, the sardonic but devastating mood-setter bouncing and reverberating into the alleys through a dilapidated boombox.

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03 Sep 2024 - Thorsten
Melodic MetalBlack Metal

Spectral Wound bring the fun back into Black Metal. No, not the Black‘n‘Roll kinda fun that we enjoyed with Kvelertak but the kind of classic Black Metal sound that is defined by angry, fast, raucous attacks and some real Punk attitude where the only alternative to fast is faster!

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02 Sep 2024 - Knut
Post-Rock

Post-Rock from the capital of Metal, Birmingham, UK. It is not surprising that Solars’ music is ladden with the timbre of the heavy riffs that originated in this city.

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01 Sep 2024 - Gene
Post-ElectronicExperimental Hip Hop

This is your brain on drugs.

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30 Aug 2024 - Knut

Once more the Swiss-American band Modern Rites releases a cascading crescendo, a genre-defying album. The music is as intense as it is dense. It contains some of the riffing warmth of Death Metal, the soaring beauty that can be found in the tremolos and synths in Atmospheric Black Metal, and the churning depths of Industrial Metal.

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28 Aug 2024 - Lucia
Black Folk Metal

Black Metal is very familiar with paganism and mysticism, and Alburnum has managed to create a very ambitious mix of the ferocity of the genre whilst adding beautiful folk elements. The intricate melodies and arrangements make this a very distinctive sounding album. Not only do they deal with pagan and mystic themes, but they manage to add a personal touch to the music in The Withered Roots of Reality. Alburnum has achieved music that will be enjoyable for fans of the Black Folk Metal genre, with an obscure sound that is their own.

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27 Aug 2024 - Knut
Atmospheric Sludge Metal

A stunning album following a trail somewhere along the highway of the mightiest forerunners of the genre. The album does not come out as an equal, but more as a sequel with its heavy weight that carries the music with maritime and celestial themes. The band is constructing towers of sound with the riffs, the bass, and the drums that embrace and push two growling vocalists into memorable harmonies.

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27 Aug 2024 - Gökhan
Death Metal

Sometimes Death Metal doesn’t need to be elaborate or elongated - sometimes a quick slasher with the blade does the trick as easily as the more complicated chainsaw massacre. The Italian Death Metal guys in Fulci surely know about the usage of the blade just like The New York Ripper did. And now the former is back with a record about the latter. Intriguing!

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22 Aug 2024 - Thorsten
Avantgarde Black Metal

Next stop: The Birthday Party. What the anonymous masters of Avantgarde-Everything Mamaleek are doing on their latest record Vida Blue signifies a development which might only lead to the assumption that Mamaleek is the re-incarnation of Cave’s first significant band!

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22 Aug 2024 - PBV
Funeral DoomAvant-Jazz

As shadows slowly crawl across the worn skene of the Theatre of Dionysus, shifting the rays of the sun into low and heavy swirls of clouds, we witness the foreboding scene unfold — etched by Föhn in the ephemeral stage.

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17 Aug 2024 - Daniel Gorman
Post-Rock

Just when I thought it was a done deal that we weren’t ever getting a new Dirty Three album, they drop Love Changes Everything, their first LP in twelve years!

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