The Icelandic music scene has always been an integral part of me that shaped my identity into the person I am today, ever since I was a middle schooler (which is also what got me into learning Icelandic at 12. Who on earth learns Icelandic at 12, in this economy?). The metal festival Eistnaflug and the multi-genre festival Iceland Airwaves have always been on my ongoing bucket list.Continue reading
Tag Archives: Sigur Ros
ALBUM REVIEW: Scarcity – The Promise Of Rain
Second album from Scarcity, the Brooklyn based avantgarde Black Metal collective, who have managed to create a sound like no other on a record that well and truly bends the mind. This is black metal, but not as we know it. True, the blackened-screams of vocalist Doug Moore (Pyrrhon / Seputus) are delivered with a typical dark venom, but they are perhaps the most conventional aspect of the sound Scarcity purvey.
ALBUM REVIEW: Mono – Oath
A sensuous, rapturous and thought-provoking collection of superior, post-rock instrumental music, Oath (Pelagic Records), from Japanese four-piece Mono, was recorded and mixed by late, great and already much-missed engineer Steve Albini, who passed away last month, aged 61.Continue reading
ALBUM REVIEW: A Burial At Sea – Close To Home
With all the technical and specialist instrumentalism that goes into the world of post-Rock, it is no wonder that the sub-genre has almost become synonymous with being a tad bit pretentious, with acts at times focusing on how skilled their members are than writing a good song.
It’s only been six years since A Burial At Sea formed, but quickly they have cemented in their earlier works that this has not been the case for them at all. Continue reading
ALBUM REVIEW: Nytt Land – Torem
Nytt Land rip the balls off a Siberian tiger (no wild animals were injured for the purposes of this review) with the adventurously ambient, spirited and spiritual Torem (Napalm Records). Elemental, wild and ancient. Throat singing, Finno-Ugric languages. The kind of old-world wisdom the new world craves.
ALBUM REVIEW: Isafjord – Hjartastjaki
Hjartastjaki (Svart) is an almost cinematic experience, as Isafjord create bleak and desolate landscape pictures with their sombre atmospheric music. The duo of Solstafir vocalist Addi Tryggvason and multi-instrumentalist Ragnar Zolberg (Sign) wrote the album while holed up together in an old house, during the depths of an icy winter and using a broken piano to start many of their ideas.
ALBUM REVIEW: Crippled Black Pheonix – Benefyre
Banefyre (Season of Mist) is the twelfth album from Crippled Black Phoenix, the category-defying collective centred around Justin Greaves, a former doom metal drummer (for bands such as Electric Wizard and Iron Monkey) turned multi-instrumentalist songwriter. The current studio lineup of the band has Greaves joined by longstanding vocalist Belinda Kordic, plus more recent recruits Helen Stanley (keys, synths, trumpet), Andy Taylor (guitars), and new second vocalist and third guitarist Joel Segerstedt.
ALBUM REVIEW: QAALM – Resilience and Despair
QAALM is a new band featuring members and former members of Act Of Defiance, Harassor, and Seven Sisters Of Sleep. Described as atmospheric funeral doom, the LA-based group worked on writing and recording throughout 2020 and 2021, and Resilience & Despair (Hypaethral/Trepanation) is their resulting debut album. Continue reading
ALBUM REVIEW Boris and Merzbow – 2R0I2P0 (Twenty Twenty RIP)
2R0I2P0 (Twenty Twenty RIP, Relapse Records) is a collaboration album from two luminaries of the Japanese experimental music scene, Boris and Merzbow. Boris has released a vast number of albums over the past 25 years, and their sound ranges from psychedelic post-rock to crushing metallic doom riffery. Noise artist Merzbow (the brainchild of Masami Akita) has been even more prolific, having released hundreds of records over a 40-year career.
