John Joseph Wardle aka bass legend Jah Wobble started his career with post-Punks Public Image Limited (teaming up with a certain John Lydon), playing on the albums Public Image: First Edition, Metal Box, and the Paris Au Printemps live record. After his departure from that band, Jah would embark on a highly eclectic solo career exploring all manner of musical styles and collaborations far too extensive to list here.
Amphetamine Reptile, remember them? The legendary Noise-Rock label home to countless legends such as Helmet, Melvins, The Jesus Lizard, Tar, etc etc. In later years a newer generation of bands emerged that includes Gay Witch Abortion, White Drugs, Hepa-Titus, and of course Mr Phylzzz.
Since their formation in 1998 Hungary’s Thy Catafalque have been releasing category-defying experimental metal records to an ever-growing fanbase. In 2011 the band effectively became the solo project of songwriter Tamás Kátai, who provides guitar, bass, keyboards, programming, and vocals and now makes use of various guest musicians on each release.
Coming off the buzzed about ‘Nowherer’, it was interesting to speculate where Portland’s Victory Over the Sun would go next. Vivian Tylinska may have just “a girl who makes noise” on her Bandcamp bio, but that deeply undersells the scope of her enthralling work as a composer, thinker, and multi-instrumentalist.
Thirty-one years after the release of their sophomore Godflesh album Pure, Justin K Broadrick and Ben Green (and Machines) allude to this one aspect of the band’s crushing history with new album Purge, releasing on June 9th on Avalanche Recordings.
With a career that has spanned 30-plus years to date (factoring in a 16-year departure), Dutch Death Metaller’s Phlebotomized are a band with a legacy and a cult following even amongst extreme music. Attributed as being one of the first such bands to use additional instrumentation including synths, theirs was a sound that was considered by many unique and pioneering at the time and in part a clear influence on many bands since then and in the current day. With this in mind, how does the new Phlebotomized hold up in the current day? On the evidence of Clouds Of Confusion (Hammerheart), pretty well.
On Troll (By Norse Music) Drott draws from Scandinavian folklore to create a soundtrack for the listener to inhabit a dank, murky forest, with the eponymous troll close enough that you can smell it, delivered via dark, slightly campy electronic rock soundscapes that would feel totally in place in a (not too scary) fantasy/ horror movie. Continue reading
This experimental Chicago band has been toying with the dark sonic corners for over twenty years. It’s been eleven of those years since we have had a new album from Yakuza, and it is good to dive back into their land of twisted shadows. The focus has shifted to a more deliberate brand of heavy, that places them not far from the sonic zip code of older Mastodon. The differences are fewer guitar pyrotechnics and a much darker trajectory than the Atlanta progsters. Bruce Lamont’s baritone moan carries a hint of anger as the opening track is framed with dissonance.
Austrian post-black metallers Harakiri for the Sky kicked off their debut US tour in Brooklyn, co-headlining with North Dakota’s Ghost Bath.
No matter how rotten the State of Denmark ever was, the fecundity of fetidity seems ever more prevalent in the Belgian ward of Ghent; more specifically within the parish boundaries of the Church of Ra, is something far more foul. Missionary for ruinous, dark, and heavy music, six-string dire wolf Lennart Bossu presents a new vehicle to spread the word of power of exacting, challenging, but ultimately rewarding, dark metallic music captured and presented under the guise of Predatory Void, a quintet of local luminaries to Bossu who have helped mould and shape a new, slightly more straight-forward, yet no less demanding than Amenra, force.