I've been listening to this for the past two hours and it's amazing. Arkham Witch hail from the United Kingdom and they play traditional heavy/doom metal infused with Lovecraftian tales of terror, stories about barbarians and retro occult vibe. On Crom's Mountain is their debut album and it's tight as fuck. They bring the fast'n'heavy riffing, powerful vocals, groovy drumming and tons of references to Dagon, Cthulhu, R'lyeh and other bits of H.P. Lovecraft's bestiary.
The Lovecraftian atmosphere is best conveyed through horrific ancient death metal from beyond, as far as I'm concerned, but oldschool heavy metal comes in as a close second on the list of musical genres best fitted to describe Lovecraft's twisted universe of madness. If that's something that you're into, give Arkham Witch a listen and prepare for a headbanging journey across the netherplanes.
Here at
Tzeeeac, we handle requests for review in a democratic and liberal fashion.
Such was the case for the latest offering from Environments, a bunch of
romanian music lovers with a knack for ambient/drone. Thus, we
found ourselves sitting round our virtual HQ table, trying to figure out which
one merited the honor. Needles to say, we had a little bit of a struggle.
Chester kept complaining he couldn’t do it because it didn’t sound anything
like bears fighting with trash cans inside an electrified cage, George was not
himself, but rather a hologram of his persona, respectfully informing us that
he is still internetless (and kept reminding us how the only furniture in his
kitchen is a neatly sharpened saw and some folded carpets) while Marco, well,
he was in some sort of trance where he kept mumbling “Where should I change my
name? Huh? What?” repeatedly. Gherasim was sitting on his usual throne in the
sky, watching us mortals squabbling.
You can
notice the predicament here. I could have just simply volunteered myself, since
I dabble in this kind of music on occasion, but instead I opened my mouth and
spewed out a random piece of information that would finally get the others
focused and made myself the proud owner of this review that doesn’t seem to
quite start yet. It was something along the lines of “Hey, I used to make
fractals several years ago!”
What
could that even mean? Well, let me tell you, I am a man of temporary hobbies.
The most recent one is funding a mechanical project, a couple of years ago I
started a self-thought process of “how to make your own music based on the use
of synths” - abandoned for the sake of abandonment really, while about five or
six years ago I had a deep focus on creating artsy looking fractals with the
use of computer dedicated software.
With this
in mind, I thought I’d share some of my creations alongside this album, but
after scouring two personal computers, several deviantArt accounts and more
than five email addresses, I realized that
the pictures resulted in said creation process were just a long-lost legacy. So
you’ll just have to take my word for it. (By this time, you may have noticed I have a
bit of an identity problem; it also reflects in the change of name here, on
Tzeeeac; I am the one that gods and mortals alike used to call Zulu).
Now, back
to the actual music. Wait, we hadn’t even started on it? Oh well, go figure…
Environments
is a romanian ambient trio and Fraktal is their third album, due to be released
on the 16’th of March. And they’ve been nice enough to let us have a sneak preview
of it (thanks guys!). What we have here is a collection of six tracks that make
a great point of blending together drones, piano, guitar and drums, creating a
very organic sound that seems to go well while listened at a loud
volume.
I hear,
on occasion, bits and pieces that remind me of my favorite ambient/drone
project (of the few I listen to), Desiderii Marginis, yet the record still
holds its own in creating a strong individual motive. The first five tracks are a
bit low key and dreamy, making for a spacey listening experience, but I found
myself more engulfed with the sounds of the last song, “Fathom, Movement, Field”.
Its abrasive approach, with drums buried in the background, detaches a bit from
the ‘ambient’ category and gives way to a completely different entity, one that
unfortunately ends in an abrupt manner; needless to say, I found myself wanting
for more because I felt the track was just starting to develop into something
greater.
Overall,
I enjoyed the album very much, the only nitpicking I could find is that it
lacks in the bass department. As I turned the volume up I expected some kind of
reaction in the walls and windows, yet that never (truly) happened. Fifth
track, Blecher, showed a bit of potential in this area, but still fell a little
bit short. I don’t know, maybe fractals aren’t so fond of annoying the
neighbours :).
With that
said, I’ll leave you in the company of their music. Check these guys out on the
following links
and keep in mind that they’ll be touring
alongside Valerinne, another romanian band we featured here on Tzeeeac. In
fact, they’re even going to hit Leipzig alongside Umberto (insert a happy
Chester comment here).
Today is the International Women's Day so most of you are probably out either buying or receiving chocolates, flowers and champagne. That's fine and dandy, but, as far as I'm concerned, with apologies to all you romantic, sensitive types out there (myself included), there really is no other way to celebrate than with Necro's The Sexorcist, the most vile, criminally insane, sexist, misogynistic, perverted, offensive and downright disgusting rap album ever to be conceived.
The Sexorcist is a collection of 22 tracks and skits that all deal with the same subject - having wild, Bible-disapproved sex with porn stars and prostitutes - and I can comfortably say that there are no weak songs here. The entire album is strong from start to finish, featuring Necro's complicated wordplay on subjects like BDSM, golden showers, big butts and being an absolute pimp, with some really cool choruses thrown in for good measure. Not only is he a master lyricist, but Necro is also an accomplished musician, having produced all of the beats on this album himself. And boy, they're pretty damn cool.
The Sexorcist is one of my favorite rap albums ever (and that's saying a lot, seeing as I don't really like rap) and if you haven't heard it yet, you should definitely give it a shot and then share it with your significant other. It's got songs titled "You Bitches Love to Get Fucked in the Ass" and "We Fuck Virgins". What could possibly go wrong here?
Here's some gloomy shit to fuck you up. Primitive Man hail from Denver, Colorado and play a sickening blend of doom metal, drone and sludge, smeared with some black metal noise just for the hell of it. The album opens with the self-titled Scorn, which is an almost 12-minute long piece that crawls at a funeral pace and crushes you with layer upon layer of gritty bass lines and poisonous guitar riffs. The vocals are the highlight of this release - filthy, obnoxious, filled with dread and despair and oozing bleakness out of every growled lyric.
The first song is a good indicator for how the rest of the album sounds. The dark atmosphere just keeps getting thicker and muddier with each passing minute and listening to this in your headphones at night makes for a very claustrophobic experience. The cover artwork is suitably bleak, too. I don't really understand who that masked character is, but it's pretty obvious the other guy is in some amount of pain and/or discomfort, which is exactly how the music makes you feel. Don't sleep on this, it's one of the best releases of 2013 so far. And you can depress yourself for free.
Echo Park are an upcoming band from Guildford, UK, consisting of five dudes who thought it would be a good idea to ask for our honest opinion about their music. Obviously, they were wrong. I grabbed my evil monocles and started laughing maniacally as soon as I finished reading their submission.
Oh, to be young and naive.
Nah, I'm just fucking with y'all. They're pretty cool. One thing that I liked about their music was that I couldn't really label it - it's too pop for rock, and too rock for pop. Firstly, you got the powerful and raspy vocal delivery typical for a pop-rock band. Kay, not bad, not bad. Really digging it. But then it starts with bad-ass guitar solos and violent drumming and I go whaaaaat? Did I accidentally click on a different YouTube video? And then I see it's the same band and I suddenly feel fuzzy on the inside. Their style lies comfortably in the limbo of genres, and that ambiguity kept me hooked until the end. That is, until the end of their third and final track, because that's all they've released to date.
Fortunately, the guys are working on their debut EP as we speak, so be sure to give it a listen when it comes out. Until then,check out their Facebook page for stalking purposes and their YouTube channel for new releases.
I've been a huge UMBERTO fan ever since I did that piece about carpentercore and I was super stoked to find out he would be performing live in the little corner of the world I live in right now. So last Friday, after spending the whole day eating souvlaki, drinking beer and chillin' in the sun, I put on a hipsterish shirt, my favorite jeans, grabbed my iPod and sailed off into the night, ready to live inside an old horror movie for a few hours.
I showed up at the venue at nine thirty, just like the poster said, only to find out the place was deserted. Turns out the tickets aren't ready yet or something, so yadda yadda yadda, come back later. I was a little bummed, but a small delay was better than having the show cancelled for whatever reason, which I had feared was the case.
So instead of waiting outside in the cold like an animal, I decided to check out a promising looking metal bar I had passed by on the way over, about 10 minutes away from the club. Its windows were covered in a sticky wallpaper featuring skulls so I wondered if maybe it was actually a tattoo parlor, but whatever, I tried the door anyway. As it opened, I saw a rather small rectangular room, with a long bar on the left side and the right wall covered in concert posters. Death metal was blasting out of every speaker and there was a painted Lemmy icon on the wall, so I knew I had come to the right place. Turns out, it was actually the bar/clubhouse of the local motorcycle gang and they were pretty cool guys. I had a nice Greek microbrewed beer (indie as fuck!) and chatted with the bartender about Rotting Christ and various concerts and festivals they have in Greece.
But alas, I didn't want to miss the show, so after about an hour, I bid the MC'ers farewell and made my way back to the venue, which got pretty crowded in the mean time. I barely had time to get a drink, because Matt Hill got on the stage, fired up the laptop and the video projector and started doing his thing. I was surprised, because I thought Umberto would be the headliner, not the opening act. I'm not sure the audience knew him very well, either, because for half of his set, I was the only guy standing right near the stage, taking in the whole experience. And what an experience it was! I already knew his music had that delicious vintage synth vibe I love, but the video collage that ran during the set really tied everything together. It blended together cool scenes from a ton of well-known campy 70s/80s horror and thriller movies - Halloween, Final Destination, The Thing, Re-Animator, Begotten, Silence of the Lambs are just a few of the movies featured in the ever-changing projection. It really added a new layer of flavor to Umberto's retro horror-inspired soundtracks and, needless to say, I enjoyed the set immensely. I even chatted a bit with Matt Hill after he finished and the subject of John Carpenter and his movies came up in literally 2 seconds. He's a cool guy.
I was tempted to go home after Umberto's set and skip Mechanimal's show (I had to get up extra early for school), but I decided to stay after he told me he liked them and that they were really good. I didn't know what to expect when the three members of Mechanimal took the stage behind a guitar, a microphone and a keyboard rack, respectively, but I was kind of excited. What followed was a mix of theatrical poetry reciting, expansive ambient guitar soundscapes, vintage drum beats and weird/disturbing visuals which confused me at first, but got me sort of dancing after a while. Their songs were pretty damn catchy and I really enjoyed the show, even though I got pretty upset because of all the circus training/torture footage shown during the set. I fucking hate the circus.
All in all, it was a fantastic night and I'm really glad I had the chance to experience Umberto's sounds in a live setting. Below you can find some relevant Bandcamp links and some footage I shot during the show. Peace out!
Following
their 2009 release, Anno Domini High Definition, polish masters from Riverside
return with a long awaited LP aptly shorted out as SONGS. Now, I tell you,
these guys have a knack at finding abbreviations for their albums that sound
even cooler than the actual names. I mean OOM, SLS, REM (hey there!), ADHD and
now SONGS! Can you get more trv than that?!
While ADHD received mixed reviews based on the
fact that it didn’t sound anything like their previous efforts (What?!? And you
call yourselves prog lovers? Let me remind you what progressive music should
sound like: remember this? Yes? Now go
buy me a six-pack, infidels!), SONGS lays back on the metal side and opts for a
more groove oriented sound, gracefully taking on hard-rock, blues and jazz
influences in a mix of eight tracks that are bound to get anyone’s attention
regardless of their music taste.
Personally,
I enjoy everything Riverside has put out so far and while SONGS is not as
powerful as any of their previous releases, somewhat lacking in those wow
moments you expect from them, it’s still one of the better albums around. You can definitely tell they had a blast
recording this.
Check it
out for yourselves.
P.S: One
of the comments to this video states “Sounds like the guys had been listening
to a lot of Clutch during the recording sessions”.
You know
what? He’s right! Maybe more bands should do the same.
P.S.2:
They’ll be hitting Bucharest on the 26’th of May and be sure I’ll be there to
support them since one live show from two years ago is nowhere near enough to
satisfy my Riverside musical wants. Expect a show review, I tell you!
Ok, so
maybe it was more than one word, but these guys really had me going cherry-picking
here, because this EP was a bit hard to review. I’d like to say I’m familiar enough
to all the styles that are blended here, yet it all comes out as something of a
“love it or hate it” kind of thing, while I found myself strangely stuck in the middle.
Let me
just go about recognizing that the start point of this recording is an absolute
monster. I think I’ve never heard such mammoth riffing since Jesu’s Heartache
EP (any connection to the title track? because it’s too good of a pun…),
but I feel the extended droning parts are distracting and take away the whole
cohesion of the song. That, coupled with the lack of a real climax (or one that
comes about way too late to in the song) made for a jarring listening
experience, as I found myself liking only the sludgy moments of it.
The
second track, however, is what the first one should have been all along: clear
passages, good flow and rhythm, a perfect placement of a guitar solo (which
sludge records aren’t exactly known for) and overall a great listening
experience. This one reminded me of Year of No Light’s “Nord” album, and that’s
saying a lot.
Message Of
Nihil… goes about like a standard drone piece. I can get what they’re saying in
relation to the title, it’s meant to be something unworldly, but it dissipates to
just background noise. I guess it lacks the atmosphere to back it up (which can
be a pain in the ass when one opts to record a drone track).
The
closing piece, Forgotten Is What Never Was, plays out with a bit of everything
but the general focus here is on doom. Long, sustained notes, minimal and
somewhat tribal sounding drums, scarce vocals; it fades out to a wall of sound
that, oddly enough, reminded me of Opeth’s “Hex Omega”. And we arrive to that
conclusion that I’ve opened this review with:
Focused
song-writing.
While
this is a great debut all around, it lacks individuality. I feel it borrows too
much from all the bands that have influenced it, without actually creating
something of its own. But that, as they say, only time and experience can
define. I hope that Goatooth and Alpha can gather what they have learned with
this recording and make something truly unique when they’ll follow up with
another release, because the talent is there and it would be a shame to go to
waste.
Anyways,
because I’m starting to get all melodramatic and all, I invite all thee to
check-up on these two ukrainian brothers in metal and have a listen for
yourself at http://nonsun.bandcamp.com/.
And if you like them, go to their page http://www.facebook.com/NonsunDoom and say hi. They’re definitely worth it.
P.S:
Guys, if you happen to hit Romania, give us a shout, maybe we’ll be able to
attend the show.
Finally, this sickening winter is gone and I can look forward to some warm, sunny days. I know it's not trve and br00tal to like sunny days, but I don't care. I fucking hate gloomy days, I hate rain and I hate cold winds. I for one welcome spring time.
And what better way to celebrate the rebirth of nature than with some INSANE technical deathcore about hostile alien forces ripping humans apart with their devastating death rays? Californian aliencore pioneers Rings of Saturn are back with their second full-length album called Dingir, which was actually available for streaming since November of last year due to a regrettable leak of a pre-production version. So I've listened to this almost three months ago, but I thought I'd wait until the actual official release to post about it.
Dingir is another display of dazzling axe mastery, as the guitarists once again take center stage and showcase their impeccable use of their tentacle fingers. There's fucktons of shredding, sweep-picking and crazy arpeggios flying off in every direction, so anyone who's not into nintendocore guitar noodling will probably hate this. There are some melodic parts sprinkled throughout, but the band focuses first and foremost on delivering the CRUSHING BRUTALITY deathcore kids enjoy. New vocalist Ian Bearer is rather spectacular, as his dual high/low growling vocals are extremely fitting with the alien genocide theme of the album. The rhythm section doesn't lag behind the guitars and manages to keep up with all the insanity that's going on. As awe-inspiring and jaw-dropping the technical prowess of these dudes is, the album does tend to become a bit stale after some listening. It is definitely more well fleshed out and structured than their previous effort, Embryonic Anomaly, but it requires the listener to be patient and to pay attention. And to hold on for dear life.
Rings of Saturn is certainly not everyone's cup of tea. In fact, I'm pretty sure all of my friends hate this band. :( Still, I think it's worth giving them a listen, if only to have your brain melted by all the horrifically-complex guitar parts. Listeners who take their time with Dingir will sometimes be rewarded with melodic bits, but 99% of this is screaming, blastbeats, heavy riffing and breakdowns. And I don't have a problem with it.
