Tag Archives: Black Sheep Wall

GHOST CULT PRESENTS: Mini-Metal Mixtape #17

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Metal and Coffee’s Mini-Metal Mixtape, presented by Ghost Cult Magazine is back with another new episode! Time to get your weekly dose of an essential mix of the newest extreme music by essential bands, and a few classics baked in there too! In the latest edition of Mini-Metal Mixtape, curated by Ebonie Butler a.k.a, Metal & Coffee,  she brings an eclectic array of bands: from Sepultura, Black Sheep Wall, Cult of Luna, Lewd Acts, and more!  In her 12-year journey as an extreme metal DJ, Metal & Coffee has delved into the depths of the heavy music world to bring you a new mix each week. Metal & Coffee has been featured on Philadelphia’s most popular college radio station, WKDU 91.7 FM, and has also spent time as the resident New Releases DJ over on GIMME METAL. Stream the newest playlist right now!

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Black Sheep Wall Stream New Single “New Measures of Failure”

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Sludgey L.A. hardcore band Black Sheep Wall has streamed a brand new single – “New Measures of Failure’ from their forthcoming new album, their first in five years, Songs for the Enamel Queen – its first new music in five years, out February 26th on Silent Pendulum Records. The track is brutal and a fresh blast of fierceness. Check it out!

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North – Light the Way

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There’s a shimmering, spectral beginning to Light the Way (Prosthetic Records), the fourth full-length from Arizona trio North and the first to feature bassist Evan Leek as lead vocalist. Its gently stirring sound suggests no little emotion or drama ahead, and that’s certainly what unfolds. The stark, Post chimes of opener ‘Moonswan’ carry through into the title track and penetrate the heart; whilst Zack Hansen’s Doom-paced drums and Leek’s gravelly Stoner-Sludge roar, appearing less strained than that of long-time predecessor Kyle Hardy, deliver both ferocity and weight.

There are elements of both Kowloon Walled City and Black Sheep Wall here, but with a more noticeable pain and sadness: the plaintive, desperately sad music polarised by the brute force and slow pace of the rhythms, and the vocal nastiness. The sinister bass and wailing guitar opening ‘Weight of All Thoughts’ lead to a pulsating riff which at times hops and crushes with gay abandon, seemingly at odds with the soaring, emotive leads puncturing it. Similarly the Low-end, plangent hostility of ‘Earthmind’, again dictated by portentous tub-thumping and Matt Mutterperl’s colossal riff, is gradually invaded by heartfelt undercurrents.

The switches in tempo of the bruising ‘Primal Bloom’ display the band’s skill and versatility, whilst not straying far from the template. The gentle beauty of the nevertheless ominous ‘Rhef Anad’, however, does show a willingness to depart from a sound which would have proved wearing if unbroken for a full album. Indeed there’s a certain tedium in the oft cumbersome nature of the aptly-named ‘On a Beaten Crooked Path’, and the staccato ‘From This Soil’ which, although seismic and lively, loses a certain amount of impact from that unflinching vocal.

In spite of this, the juxtaposition of suffocating heaviness with sparkling, introspective chords emits attractive shards of light and shade which does win out overall. The gorgeous yet melancholic thrum and jangle of the instrumental closer ‘Relativity’, harking back to North’s earlier days, shows the band in its true light. Its delicate anger finalises a listenable set, showing enough of the invention and emotion of old to offset the intermittent chunks of flab.

6.5/10.0

PAUL QUINN

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Kowloon Walled City – Grievances

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Despite the fraught hostility coursing through the first two albums from San Francisco Sludge quartet Kowloon Walled City, there was evidence of a Post-hardcore sensibility. It’s no surprise, therefore, to see a heightening of the band’s melody on third album Grievances (Neurot).

Brief flurries of lead are evident from the outset, but so is a slow pace; Ian Miller’s rumbling bass, especially throughout tolling closer ‘Daughters and Sons’; and Scott Evans’ embittered yell. What opener ‘Your Best Years’ misses in urgency and frenetic neurosis, it gains in feeling and an almost unbearable tension: sections where brakes are applied evoke scenes of tethered wild animals straining to be free. The ensuing title track has the same doleful, stone-kicking pace: violent desires suffocated by a Doom-like oppression which leaves every synapse twitching with the harrowing drama of it all. When the explosion occurs at the track’s midway point, it too is sufficiently reined to maximise its powerful statement. Less, here, is more…

It is this skill which Kowloon Walled City possess in buckets: the ability to move further toward the more touching, tortured elements of Touché Amoré without sacrificing their own aggravated, pummelling core. Timing, especially with the introduction of Evans’ vocal, is immaculate and delivered to optimum effect with always a word left out there hanging past the instrumentation: the “Weaknesses…” refrain to ‘Backlit’ is positively chilling. Yet it all feels so organic, a fluid part of the breathing whole.

That anger is occasionally allowed its freedom, within the crashing ire of ‘The Grift’ for example, yet it remains tempered by a complexity of sound: the guilt after lashing out which even the tweak of strings at the track’s coda highlights. This is the embodiment of pure expression: an album depicting a person with so much justified anger, yet is too nice to show it or feels like shit when they do. An album fizzing with pain and frustration yet constantly, feverishly, grasping at its reins for fear of what could happen if let loose. The pregnant ‘True Believer’ epitomises this fragile balance: a squall of pent-up hurt and aggression which flays the skin when the bubble pops.

Grievances is an at times unsettling and traumatic but always potent experience, blowing this year’s closest relative, Black Sheep Wall’s I’m Going to Kill Myself (Season of Mist), from the water by more accurately personalising the rawness and unpredictability of suppressed emotion.

 

8.5/10.0

 

PAUL QUINN


Black Sheep Wall and Colombian Necktie Book May Tour

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Black Sheep Wall and Colombian Necktie have booked a May US Tour, and confirmed dates are below.

May 23: Holland Project – Reno, NV
May 24: The Shred Shed – Salt Lake City, UT
May 25: 7th Circle Collective – Denver, CO
May 26: Duke City Sound – Albuquerque, NM
May 27: 1919 Hemphill – Fort Worth, TX
May 29: Korova Basement – San Antonio, TX
May 30: Haphazard Hall – Las Cruces, NM
May 31: 51 West – Tempe, AZ


Black Sheep Wall – I’m Going to Kill Myself

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So many directions and departures in such a relatively short career… The debut album from Californians Black Sheep Wall was considered unworthy of inclusion in the annals of the notoriously strict Encyclopedia Metallum, yet their follow up No Matter Where It Ends (Season of Mist) exploded through that draconian outlook with its oppressive Sludge. Last EP It Begins Again  (Independent release), their first without former key players Trae Malone and Garrett Randall, saw post-hardcore emotion blend with that weighty brutality, and that’s how third full-length I’m Going to Kill Myself (Season of Mist) resumes the turbulent career.

The ridiculously fluffy, colourful cover does a great job of hiding the torment within and the ponderous, stark Post background is coated in former bassist Brandon Gillichbauer‘s anguished screams, mirroring Touché Amoré‘s more desolate moments, though without the snappy delivery, and with pounding monoliths hitting the brake pedal. Torture and angst is immediately in your face, despite the often delicate meanderings and heartfelt teardrops of lead guitar strains, so that when the brief pummel of the ferocious rhythms within opener ‘The Wailing and the Gnashing and the Teeth’ kicks in, you’ve been preparing yourself for it for a while.

That wounded fury, straining at the leash, is positively feral on the primal roar of the ensuing ‘Tetsuo: The Dead Man’, the pulverising, contorted riffs beating the staccato rhythms with barely controlled frenzy, whilst Gillichbauer’s voice is all abject pain and sparing, vertiginous leads pierce the mind. It’s a pulsating ball of embittered anguish which is as compelling as it is unnerving. The complex, contorting mass and intensity of ‘White Pig’ is near unbearable: the brutal onslaught of its power passages, varying in tempo yet never in their crushing ferocity, are only augmented by the subtle ambience and eerie intonations which create a maelstrom of feverish tension.

It’s this innate ability to set terrifying scenes which is the band’s forté. The last two minutes of ‘…Pig’s’ unsettling reverb and spoken word delivery induce the arse twitches just in time for the 34-minute closer ‘Metallica’; a metronomic, pulverising saw riff underpinning Gillichbauer’s apparent and barely-managed breakdown, with brief lulls and occasional silences puncturing the expanding swell like Astute missiles. The lash of the oft-chaotic rhythm increases steadily, as does the intensity; yet marvellously, incredibly, a bone-crunching pace remains constant. The largely unflinching template of the track wears the nerves a touch but it’s a minor quibble, and when the harrowingly screamed line “I’m going to kill myself” reappears like a recoil through the last six minutes it chills the marrow. What the fuck it has to do with the Bay Area behemoth fuck knows, but it’s a synapse-shattering experience and the latest proof that this band are now masters at turning violent emotional turmoil into an irresistible listening experience.

 

8.5/10

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PAUL QUINN