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False Flags 2015
As the build-up continues ahead of the release of False Flags‘ debut mini-album Hexmachine, Ghost Cult are pleased to continue our association with the technical-hardcore miscreants from northern England by bringing you the stream of a new track, ‘Pet Wolf’ from the soon to be released mini-album.
Ghost Cult recently caught up with vocalist Chris Jenkinson (in a feature you can read here), who had this to say about the subject matter of their new outpouring:
The lyrics are kind of weird, really. Each song has a theme but they’re not really about anything in particular. Most of the time we come up with the title first, then I try to write around that. Charlie came in one day and said “Can we call a song ‘Pet Wolf’?” So that ended up being about one of my Chihuahuas being a little shit!
I’m a big fan of lyricists like Cedric Bixler (The Mars Volta) and John Congleton (The Paperchase) so I try to do that “interpret it how you like” kind of thing.
False Flags – ‘Pet Wolf’
Hexmachine, which the band will be releasing themselves, spurts abrasive, disjointed rock and takes inspiration from the likes of Unsane, Breather Resist, Botch and Coalesce. It will be released on 20th November.
The album launch show takes place at Bad Apples in Leeds, also on 20th November.
Deathcore’s a funny scene. Like many of the fusion subgenres, it often fails to find a convincingly cohesive sound amidst the disparate elements that the bands are trying to marry together. What you usually end up getting is a bit like a kit car built by 5 guys with ADHD who’ve turned up with parts from 3 or 4 different manufacturers and half the required tools.
The first three albums of Chicago’s Born of Osiris certainly suffer from this syndrome, feeling bitty, derivative and repetitive. 2013 marked a turning point for the band with the release of the bemusingly-titled Tomorrow We Die Alive (Sumerian). Whilst still a soup of djenty math- and deathcore, the songs gelled more satisfyingly than the predecessors through stronger song-writing and expanded use of keyboard and synth sounds. They finally sounded like a proper band, rather than a group of music nerds showing off to each other.
Encouragingly, Soul Sphere (Sumerian) continues this development (as one would expect from a band with a 12-year career spanning 5 albums). The main evolution here is the death metal part of their sound is much more at the fore, with strong elements of Soundtrack-era In Flames (Toy’s Factory). The math bits also integrate much better with the rest of the parts, sounding more like lead-ins and accompaniment rather than random ejaculations of musical Tourette’s Syndrome. Less Dillinger Escape Plan, more Protest The Hero. I also wonder if someone in the band’s been listening to J-Metal (a wise move, as there’s a scene that effortlessly manages the kind of musical alchemy hoped for by <insert-flavour-of-the-month>core bands), as the keyboards have more spacey feel and greater presence across the album and serve to add more glue to the sound, providing firmer grounding and context for each song.
Soul Sphere‘s opener ‘The Other Half Of Me’ showcases the band’s progress beautifully. The 80’s horror intro floats throughout the piece, binding the rest of the track together into a symphonic slice of Gothenburg goodness that would do any of the Swedes proud. ‘Throw Me In The Jungle’ is an equally strong follow-up in the same vein, but with slightly more emphasis on math. ‘Free Fall’ harks back to their earlier work, but clever use of synth and industrial guitar effects produce a sound that is both consistent and original; an impressive feat, given what’s in the pot.
‘Illuminate’ is slightly disappointing, as it starts off sounding like a continuation of the previous track and would have benefited from being placed later in the album but ‘The Sleeping And The Dead’ changes gear into straight-up djent from the heavy end of the stable and ‘Tidebinder’ proves that it is possible to successfully combine melodic death with djent metalcore. Seriously Nice.
‘Resilience’ dusts off the math chops for a noodlefest very reminiscent of Protest The Hero. ‘Goddess Of The Dawn’ is a blueprint for what the genre should be. All the elements are present, but working seamlessly with each other to produce a deft end result which finally transcends the sum of its parts. ‘The Louder The Sound, The More We All Believe’ is straight melodic death that sounds like it could have been on In Flames‘ Soundtrack To Your Escape. ‘Warlords’ is funky djent. ‘River Of Time’ is a bombastic salute to symphonic metal. ‘The Composer’ closes the show with another reversion to previous fractious form, but once again being saved by the excellent synth work, which is given centre stage for an outtro that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Blood Stain Child album.
This is seriously good stuff. Put it in your ears immediately.
8.0/10
PHILIP PAGE
False Flags 2015
With their debut mini-album on the horizon, Yorkshire UK discordant hardcore newbies False Flags have made available the excellent preview track, ‘Last Screen Goddess’ that turned heads at Ghost Cult towers. Vocalist Chris Jenkinson helped us piece the puzzle of the band together…
You all know each other from various bands (Red Stars Parade, Whores x 3, Year Of The Man) from a couple of years ago, so how did things come together, and considering you’ve had a break, why now?
We all met through playing gigs together in our old bands back in 2005ish. After all the bands split up, Charlie told me that he, Mark and our old drummer Kev were jamming some new material and I, being quite drunk at the time, said I would be up for doing vocals. The day after, I couldn’t remember saying that at all!
But I still joined anyway.
A year or so of writing and playing the occasional show, Kev left the band so we met Mike through advertising for a new drummer. We’re all in our mid 30’s now, so I think we just do this to get out of the house and hang out.
You’re self-releasing your mini-album. What does “DIY” mean to you?
DIY, to me, is just cutting out all the bullshit and stress that we’ve had in the past with regards to putting the mini-album out. It’s just so easy to put it out ourselves these days rather than trying to get a label to do it.
Speaking of which, Hexmachine is out on 20th November. What can people expect who don’t know about you?
It’s a pretty heavy, straight to the point record from start to finish but you can tell that there’s a structure to it. Rather than most math/hardcore records being all out nuts, we’ve kept it so you can follow what’s going on so its a tad more palatable. I think it’s an age thing really.
You’ve made lead-off track, ‘Last Screen Goddess’, available. Tell us about it, and what do you think it brings that maybe others don’t?
It’s one of the last tracks that we wrote for the record and it kind of just wrote itself. The name came from a headline in the newspaper when Elizabeth Taylor died so I wrote the lyrics about a fictitious character and what they would do to become a famous film star.
It’s pretty much a verse, chorus, verse tune which I don’t think many bands are doing in the DIY scene these days.
What bands do you relate to, and are there any in particular in mind when you’re looking in terms of what you want to emulate?
We’re still fans of the bands that we listened to when we were kids. Pixies, Nirvana, Deftones etc, so when it comes to writing I try to use the same dynamics with a cleaner vocal for the verses and then scream the “chorus”, but then put that into a hardcore band. I remember going to see The Chariot years ago and thinking, that’s the type of band I want to be in, so we bring that dynamic to the table too! Structured chaos!
What’s the deal with the lyrics… Is it true you’re a bit random with them? Are you not worried about not connecting, or are the words just a means to an end? Or is it just trying to do something a bit different and not just bro-downing?
The lyrics are kind of weird really. Each song has a theme but they’re not really about anything in particular. Most of the time we come up with the title first, then I try to write around that. Charlie came in one day and said “Can we call a song ‘Pet Wolf’?” So that ended up being about one of my Chihuahuas being a little shit!
I’m a big fan of lyricists like Cedric Bixler (The Mars Volta) and John Congleton (The Paperchase) so I try to do that “interpret it how you like” kind of thing.
How’s it all fit together with your every day lives? What you guys up to outside of the band?
I have a Mrs, 3 kids, a mortgage and work 6 days a week, so for me this is just a hobby that I love doing and it’s the best way for me to still hang out with old friends. The older you get, you tend to drift away from your mates with settling down and stuff, so it’s cool that my partner still lets me go out and pretend to be in my 20s and fuck about in a band!
Hexmachine is out on November 20. You can pre-order here.
WORDS BY STEVE TOVEY
Whilst all the talk around ‘Technical’ Hardcore may well be surrounding Palm Reader at the moment, and deservedly so, don’t let that stop you exploring other releases of the same ilk. Delivering that violently erratic smash-mouth style a la The Dillinger Escape Plan, Employed To Serve’s breed of music will hit you square between the eyes right from the word go.
The opening few tracks pretty much set the tone for the rest of the album – the band doing their upmost to not go down a path whereby you can predict what comes next. They’ve shunned the idea of a ‘normal’ song structure and instead launch through complicated arrangements, and mind bending riffs. A lot of the time, this level of description ends up putting people off checking this kind of music out, and like many of the bands playing a similar style will attest to, it can take time to get in to it. If you take the time around an album like this you will feel rewarded and some of these tracks won’t just become fodder to skip through on shuffle. Alongside the Dillinger type vibes on this album, there is an all round sense of bleakness, something made instantly plain by the track names, ‘Watching Films To Forget I Exist’ and ‘Greyer Than You Remember’ serving as clear examples. The absolute star of the show across the album is vocalist Justine Jones who delivers a performance containing so much venom you get a genuine sense that had she not been involved it would have been a lesser album as a result.
Overall then, this is some seriously high quality Hardcore music, whether you want to throw them into the Technical Hardcore bracket or Post Hardcore, it doesn’t matter – Greyer Than You Remember (Holy Roar) genuinely an exciting album which will hopefully hoist Employed To Serve on to more of people’s radars.
8.5/10
TOM DONNO
Hailing from Poland, Antigama are an absolute wrecking ball. Their breed of Grindcore is relentless, and has been since their inception way back in 2000. Now with the release of The Insolent (Selfmadegod) they’re looking to launch another assault within the scene.
The make-up of the band has certainly been very tumultuous since 2000, with only two of the four in the band still original members, but it doesn’t seem to have affected the tightness and fury in the music as formula wise this is very similar to their previous output. They’ve got a system and they pretty much stick to it – a series of short, punchy and breathless tracks.
What makes Antigama a bit more interesting than some of the others in the Grindcore scene is the fact that they’ve clearly got other avenues of influence which they’re keen to explore. Some of the tracks display an erratic series of time signatures and an all around neurotic level of chaos, with influence possibly coming from the Math-y side of heavy music.
This is most clear in the tracks ‘Used To’ and ‘Foul Play’ which both smash by in less than three minutes. Frankly though as the album progresses it all becomes a bit tiresome. Each track feels like they’ve been melded in to one, so unless you’re actually looking at whatever device you’re listening from, you’ll struggle to pick up on track changes. That is until we reach ‘The Land Of Monotony’, the final track on the album. Ironically you’ll feel that your experience getting through the album has become rather monotonous when this track hits, but this seven minute song showcases what exactly the band are capable of if they move away from their standard formula. The track is atmospheric, heavy and chaotic all at the same time and only leaves you wondering why there isn’t more of the same across the album. As good as they are at thrashing their instruments into oblivion; this song alone shows that there could be so much more to this band.
Overall then, a lot of this album is largely forgettable. If you obsess over a good blast beat and chaotic two minute tracks, then you’ll absolutely love this but with this being a seventh studio album the fact that there are only glimpses of different and exciting things being explored is a bit of a shame.
6.5/10
TOM DONNO
When a band describes themselves as “music for troubled weirdos”, it’s pretty safe to assume we don’t have the next incarnation of Mötley Crüe on our hands. Brooklyn-based trio Meek is Murder look like they would be happier engaging in a mammoth World of Warcraft session then doing blow with hookers on the Sunset Strip but that’s not to say the music they make won’t get one hell of a party started, for new double EP release Onward/Into the Sun (Rising Pulse) is one of the most exciting things you’ll hear all year.
Known for their blink and you’ll miss it song lengths seemingly tailor made for the ADHD brigade, Meek is Murder play a raucous style of mathcore that will have fans of early Botch and Converge foaming at the mouth with wide-eyed delight. It’s no surprise that the band has previously worked with producer extraordinaire Kurt Ballou, for his influence is all over the brief tracks that comprise first EP Onward, from the lurching dissonance of ‘Foreword’ to the manic violence of ‘Downward’ which features some seriously heavy drumming and a devastating false ending that will have circle pits erupting in any sweaty basement it is dropped live.
The other EP in this release Into the Sun actually came out in 2012 so the re-issue here is a welcome one to those who missed out the first time. A tribute to classic 80s sci-fi flicks Aliens and Back to the Future, this effort is a tad more emotive and plays around with slower tempos than Onward, but is still madder than a box of frogs as the hyperactive ‘Doctor Emmett Brown (Endless in Our Fleeting)’ demonstrates.
This kind of hardcore works best in short, sharp snippets and Meek is Murder have clearly done their homework. At only fifteen minutes in length but with more going on than it’s possible to mention, Onward/Into the Sun shows a band bursting with ideas and incapable of sitting still.
8.0/10
JAMES CONWAY
Tuurngait (Independent/self-released) is the second album from Quebecois one-man project Dave Tremblay, otherwise known as Vod. I tried to locate the font or alphabet the album’s titles are primarily given in; really I did. But I have a life, my wife and daughters were beginning to forget me, so enough: you’re getting the inuit-looking subtitles instead.
It’s a slow beginning but a crushing one, the brewing portent of opener ‘Inutuuvuq’ exploding into a sludgy morass of noise. The delightfully nasty atmosphere is graced by curious and inventive jazz structures especially in the soft, trumpet-led interludes of ‘Unnusarataaq’ and ‘Aqhaq’, displaying a creative freedom which initially proves compelling and magnetic, if a little difficult. ‘Itji’ shows a leaning toward the more progressive Post aggression of Isis and Cult of Luna with subtle, gradually swelling interludes, those freeform undercurrents not quite reaching Mathcore complexity but twisting the sound through a number of polyrhythmic stages.
The album really gains identity when the pulverising rhythms and swirling, plunking basslines kick into the riff and Tremblay’s terrible roar. The soft noodlings of ‘Ikuma’ are surrounded by barely controlled, brutal intensity, perfectly characterising the capricious moods of the sound; some phenomenal stickwork morphing grotesque atmospherics, robotic sampling and eerie tones into a somehow cohesive whole.
Unfortunately, Tremblay’s undoubted talent appears to grow too self-indulgent for his own good. The gradual influence of strings and a developing harder edge isn’t enough to detract from the fact that this evolves into an experience only fully enjoyed by the real muso. This apparent need to display technical ability starts to supersede song structure and by the closing, oscillating horror of ‘Unnuak’ it’s begun to grate rather seriously. It’s staggering stuff of course, the quality cannot be denied, and there remain shows of power from the drums at least, but the rambling complexities wash away much of the interest long before the lazy horns of the closing ‘Anirniit’. Dampening that early promise, Tuurngait proves to be just too much hard work.
5.5/10
PAUL QUINN
Palm Reader are one of those bands who have been steadily bubbling under the surface in recent years. Their live shows have consistently impressed, and often outshine anything they’ve put down on record. Now whilst this is the common view with Palm Reader, wait until you hear Beside The Ones We Love (In At The Deep End). It may be considered a bit of a dark horse, but this is almost certainly looking like one of the albums of the year. Similar to the Architects release last year, this truly could be the album to explode them above surface and into the consciousness of a far larger audience.
Fundamentally the band are often tagged under the ‘Hardcore’ scene, but as soon as you throw this record on and ‘I Watched The Fire Chase My Tongue’ explodes into an absolute onslaught of noise you’ll immediately begin to draw comparisons to the Mathcore style of The Dillinger Escape Plan. That is because Palm Reader haven’t just produced stuff similar to what they’ve done before, they’ve taken their sound, expanded on it and struck absolute gold.
It doesn’t really let up either as ‘Pedant’ and ‘By The Ground We’ve Defined’ keep it rolling and pummelling into your face. Creatively on this record, Palm Reader have gone completely beyond what they’ve done in the past. You’ll listen back to this album a lot, not only because it is absolutely brilliant, but because with each listen you’ll still be surprised by each little twist and all the nuances, it constantly changes path down a road you don’t expect. Again this will easily ignite comparisons to the great Dillinger Escape Plan, but this album is that good, it truly is of that level. Because even despite all the frenzied powerful riffs throwing you all over the place there are still really anthemic chest pumping moments, most notably on ‘Sing Out, Survivor’.
When a band begins to build hype, and you’re not absolutely convinced on what they’re able to do to live up to it, there is no better feeling than hearing said band release a record which grabs that hype and throws a grenade in its mouth. Palm Reader’s stock will rise with the release of Beside The Ones We Love and it is absolutely what they deserve.
A phenomenal record from an extremely talented band.
9.0/10
TOM DONNO
Given the uncompromising starkness of their moniker, which makes any kind of internet research on them an exercise in frustration, it’s fairly safe to assume that Syracuse, NY quartet Bleak isn’t here to make friends and win fans. According to their FB page (which can be found with effort) “The only thing we hate more than ourselves is you” and after giving their debut, self-titled EP (Blasphemour) a listen, you’d be hard pressed to disagree.
Playing a hard-hitting form of groove metal that rarely gets above mid-pace, the band also draw elements from sludge and hardcore to produce a sound that will knock you on your arse. Quite simply, wimps and poseurs need not apply. Kicking things off with the savage groove of ‘Bridge Burner’ which roils and pummels like Vision of Disorder if someone had murdered their families, the band proceed to inflict a serious of devastating body blows over the course of eighteen punishing minutes. However, they’re not afraid to take risks, as the harrowing dark ambient of second track ‘Resplendent Repression’ emphatically proves.
The short, sharp shock of ‘Simple’ employs skittish mathcore anti-melodies amid its lurching chugs, coming across like a looser Ion Dissonance while the crushing beatdowns and feral roars of ‘Outflanked’ is some of the nastiest hardcore you are ever likely to hear.
What Bleak do isn’t big or clever and it certainly isn’t that original, but their uncompromising nihilistic approach and straightforward, bloody-minded aggression is refreshingly honest. They sound like they would beat you to within an inch of your life for no reason and in a scene full of chancers who like to talk big, Bleak are well primed to make a name for themselves.
8.0/10
JAMES CONWAY