Having gained renown as a winner of the Cannes Soundtrack Award in 2013, Brooklyn-based Dutch composer Jozef van Wissem is something of an expert lute player and is no stranger to getting Drone-like music from it. We Adore You, You Have No Name (Consouling Sounds), van Wissem’s latest album, is a journey through the archaic and the contemporary, the rustic and the mystical.Continue reading
You Won’t Get What You Want (Ipecac) sees the welcome return of Rhode Island creatives Daughters: this being their first album since their 2013 reformation, and fourth in all. The band’s affinity for complex noise is undiminished yet has refined with age and experience.Continue reading
Several years ago I reviewed a local gig containing a set by Manchester-based post-Hardcore band Knifecrimes, and enjoyed a chat with their fresh-faced East Anglian guitarist. These days Joe Clayton still classes Manchester as home but is now a sought-after producer and mastermind of the multi-faceted, enigmatic Pijn, whose first album proper Loss (Holy Roar) is a pulsing ball of creativity.Continue reading
Troubador is a terminology almost forgotten to time. Sure it applies to a lot of Indie-Folk and Alternative artists. There are some really great storytellers across different genres in music history: Johnny Cash, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Neil Young, Eddie Vedder, Loudon Wainwright III, Jaye Jale, Emma Ruth Rundle, The White Buffalo, Marissa Nadler, Chris Smither, Wovenhand, and even the lighter side of artists like Xasthur and Panopticon. Why not mash-up soulful Blues and Country like Hank III, but also Torch Song Art-Punk like Amanda Palmer? It can be done if you have the talent and the ability to convey realness. Fake anything won’t work for this style at all. Amigo The Devil a.ka. Danny Kiranos deals in these realities that point the mirror at the less flattering and absurd moments in life, including at himself. His new album, the Ross Robinson (Korn, Sepultura) produced Every Thing Is Fine (Regime Music Group) conveys this in spades.Continue reading
Much of personal significance has happened to the members of Virginia Doom troupe Windhand since third album Grief’s Infernal Flower (Relapse) dropped in 2015: the resignation of co-founder and guitarist Asechiah Bogdan, after which the band has remained a quartet; the death of a friend close to the band; and the birth of guitarist Garrett Morris’ child. Given the joy and despair surrounding such events, it’s understandable the new full-length Eternal Return (Relapse) is a different beast from the droning sound usually expected.Continue reading
Since arriving in 2013 with their self-titled EP (Midnight Werewolf), Bostonian quintet Fórn have allied themselves to the dark, visceral yet mournful slurry plied by the likes of Bell Witch and Lycus. Sophomore album Rites of Despair (Gilead Media) is their first full-length for four years and is another harrowing journey through the mire.Continue reading
I reviewed Funeral Horse’s 2014 EP Sinister Rites of the Master (Artificial Head) and still recall that marauding yet tuneful promise. Four years later, and I’m here with sophomore album Psalms For The Mourning (Artificial Head), a subtler beast shooting that Stoner template through with added invention and a touch of maturity. Continue reading
Much darker in tone than its ethereal predecessor (both Century Media), The Banished Heart is no less beautiful in its execution. Where Winter would often soar, this record looks inward and deals much more heavily with personal, introspective feelings of heartbreak and loss.Continue reading
Brett Kissel‘s new album, We Were That Song, came out last week via Warner Music, and even though it’s a country record, there is one moment that metal fans will love to hear. Continue reading