KILLING JOKE and EMPIRE STATE BASTARD: TUNES OF THE MONTH

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APRIL REWIND: NOISE SUPERGROUPS, A LEGEND’S RETURN AND A BUBBLE-SWEET POP

Busy month, April. Record Store Day went back to its regular slot, Oxford stalwarts Desert Storm released Death Rattle and launched it with a gig (OK, that was March 31st but it’s close enough) and there was the tiny morsel of news that METALLICA DROPPED 72 SEASONS ON US.

But Metallica is too big a deal to blog share so they’ll get their own post another time.

Until then, some ugly beauties.

Like Empire State Bastard.

EMPIRE STATE BASTARD – Harvest

Let’s take a moment or ten to revel in the sheer class of that band name because it’s surely the best of the year, if not the decade. The track itself is pure Dead Cross on first listen – punk metal hardcore, jammed with tempo shifts and grinding riffs at pace.

But who’s driving Empire State Bastard? Only Mr Dead Cross Driver himself, Dave Lombardo. How good is that? He’s not the only big name either because Biffy Clyro and Oceansize are feeders for the rest of the line-up – Simon Neil and Mike Vennart do vox and guitar, just way harder than you’d imagine. Ace. Harvest video this way.

While we’re in a Lombardo state of mind, don’t forget his new solo album Rites of Percussion, just released on Ipecac.

JAAW – Rot

Lurching noise rock for subterraneans, Rot sounds like the slow decay its title suggests. Driven by the kind of monstrous bass that the late Caleb Scofield laid down for Cave In and Zozobra, Rot neither needs, wants nor gives a fuck about air, daylight and all that other lovely stuff. Nope, it’s a grimy beating of infernal industrial sludge decomposed by assorted guys from Three Trapped Tigers, Sex Swing and, get this, Therapy? – Andy Cairns lends a buried howl. Jaaw Rot: yours if you want it.

KILLING JOKE – Full Spectrum Dominance

Released in March ahead of Killing Joke’s Royal Albert Hall gig, Full Spectrum Dominance is both exactly like any other recent KJ track and somehow new sounding. Don’t know how they keep pulling off this sleight of hand but they do. There IS nothing new. But it sounds so great. Dark arts indeed.

So, Full Spectrum Dominance churns that dense, deceptively heavy power we love so much and adds just a little more mid 80s throwback with ghost-ish keyboards and softer vocals in the verse. And though it’s a headphones track for sure – check that bass separation when you’re plugged in – the chorus is built for a slamming live audience. Is this the most pure distillation of modern-day Killing Joke into a single track? It might just be.

SILVER MOTH – Mother Tongue

Psych folk and fuzz guitar combine with piano, sax and multi-layered voices to lay painterly textures brushed with squall. Hints of Espers, perhaps? There’s a menacing edge to one of the guitars as it moves in and out of Mother Tongue’s intricate web and it all feels timeless/ageless, perhaps drawing on the Isle of Lewis spirit where it was recorded.

And though it doesn’t make you think of Mogwai – not this track at least, it’s much more in the electrified folk sphere – Stuart Braithwaite is in the band. Go check it out.

DAWN RICHARDS – Bubblegum

Something completely different to finish with – an infectious, exuberant electro-dance soundclash that namechecks Beyonce and Prince with enough sex and attitude to outdo both. Reminds me of MIA’s Bird Flu but really, I have no frame of reference for this. Bubblegum bursts with filth-o perfection and unshakeable groove. As Richards says, POP IT. Or not…


’til next time!

amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind
amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind

EXTREME – RISE: Tune of the month??? YES

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MARCH REWIND: EXPLOSIVE PSYCHE JAZZ ON STAGE AND A SUPERNOVA SCORCHER FROM NUNO

Didn’t see that one coming. Extreme, creators of one of the most hated ballads ever to many a 90s alt-rock post-thrash industrial-crossover Seattle head (like me), flew in from nowhere and slayed the long-standing prejudice right out of us (er, me again). Their new track Rise is a killer, partly thanks to a stupendous Nuno Bettencourt solo that could just be a Moment for mainstream hard rock virtuosity.

But we’ll get to that soon enough. First, it’s a little late write-up of live new-jazz action that set a serious bar for all live music in 2023.

RUN LOGAN RUN – LIVE @ TAP SOCIAL, OXFORD, FEBRUARY 15

When you check Run Logan Run online, you’ll see the band listed as a duo of tenor saxophonist Andrew Neil Hayes and drummer Matt Brown. You’ll see they’re from Bristol and you’ll see tags like experimental, jazz, punk jazz, all that stuff.

None of this is untrue. Except that, on stage, there’s a guitarist and bassist too (don’t know the names of the players, sorry) so any mild trepidation you might have had as to whether drums and sax alone can hold your attention gets fully obliterated by the trance groove, transcendent voodoo and rock-band physicality served up by a four-piece. And they LOVE what they’re doing up there – improvising, smiling and connecting with each other while locked on free-flowing psychedelic trips.

Points of reference? You need someone better versed in this field than me, but if you’re partial to Colin Stetson/Ex Eye, Melt Yourself Down and the outer limits of Robert Plant’s Sensational Space Shifters then you’ll find much to like. A couple of tracks – Silver Sun was one – feature Annie Gardiner on vocals, who did the night’s opening set. Billy Fuller plays on Annie’s latest album so that’s even more evidence of a deep Bristol/Beak/Plant continuum at work.

Tracks played tonight include Give Me Back My Slippers, Project Pigeon Missile, Caveman Disco and a storming Searching for God in Strangers’ Faces. Whether or not listening to their recorded music matches up to the on-stage incarnation is something I’ve yet to check, but the live show is without flaw. Adventurous, highly proficient musicians fully immersed in the moment, Run Logan Run pull you in to the eye of their creative storm. And it’s a thrilling trip.

And now for something completely different …

AUTHOR & PUNISHER – Drone Carrying Dread

Slow, luscious, machine-beats metal mixing doom tones with euphoric splendour – think Type O Negative hooking up with Deftones or Chino Moreno solo and you’ve got the mechanised bones of this goth fix, chilled by 80s ice (but no Vanilla). It’s been out for a year so it’s not brand new but never mind, we’ve saved it for a gloomy day. Check it here.

HOLY FAWN – Void of Light

Enter the world of atmospheric post-metals, made for cold grey skies. Slow, soft beginnings mark this out as an atmospheric venture, and it absolutely is, but a change of beat brings an attitude shift. Voice harshens, rhythm skitters, layers amass. No rocking out to this, not that way, because it’s not riff music. It’s mood music: nature’s bleak call. Listen here and file somewhere near Cult of Luna.

ELDER – Catastasis

Heavy ecstasy from Massachusetts’s Elder. Catastasis packs an album’s worth of hardened prog and hypnotic riffage into a 10-minute joyride that’s both free-flowing jam and crafted orchestration. There’s an airy propulsion that adds 3D-space to knotty riffs and ground-level bass – check those spiralling, looping motifs at the start – as do the Yes-alluding vocals and fleeting keyboard cameos. Classy stuff. And while we’re in the company of Elder, let’s not forget about Delving either.

OK, then. Shock of the year:

EXTREME – Rise

I’m sure we’ve all got an opinion on Extreme. Or a physical reaction to More Than Words, a tune that undid the exuberance of Get the Funk Out and positioned Extreme as a permanent Musical Enemy of the early 90s.

But this new tune, Rise, is something else. It’s a beast.

Kicking off with a straight-into-it riff that could easily be the opening bars of a 2023 Metallica track, it hooks you and you keep watching. The band’s in great shape, turning in one of those old-school performance-style videos that we didn’t realise we’d missed. Gary Cherone’s voice is in top shape. Tonnes of energy and a Tool-ish riff fragment lurking under the chorus. So far, so unexpected, so good. And then…

…and then. Nuno Bettencourt’s solo.

And that’s where it all blows up. Honestly, the drop-jawed shock that comes from seeing and hearing this for the first time is enormous and it could be a re-defining hard rock moment. Then again, I’m no musician and maybe it’s a generation thing I’m feeling, wowed off-guard by a critical underdog. But something feels unexplainably BIG about this – some combination of nostalgia, big-name comeback, timing, viral potential, Eddie Van Halen tribute and Nuno showcase that lands like a celebration and a challenge. It’ll make a lot of others look tired in comparison. It’s exciting, it feels like it was needed. No wonder people like Rick Beato are all over it.

If you’re gunning for guitars and showmanship in a song you can sing along to, Rise delivers. Over and over.

Not convinced? Watch the video and see. I’m all in.

’til next time!

amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind
amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind

JAMBINAI: POST-ROCK EXCESS OF THE MONTH

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JANUARY REWIND: KOREA BRINGS THE NOISE, ELLING PUSHES THE FUNK

Bit slow off the mark with new sounds because, honestly, the post-Christmas deep winter hibernation is still going strong which means…loads of old stuff, over and over and over. 80s hair rock heroics, trad-metal excavations, 70s guitar excess, you get the idea. Might share a bit about these old-school revelations in another post but, in the meantime, three actual current tunes

to get going in 2023.

KURT ELLING – Wrap It Up

Jazz FUNKED. Those who know stuff know Kurt Elling to be a pre-eminent jazz vocalist and a Grammy-winning legend.

But some of us don’t know that. Some of us don’t know shit. Some of us first heard Elling by chance last week but felt the juice in Wrap It Up‘s squelchy, sinewy, ultra funk muso grooves that we drank it up fast. Every note, beat and break is a mini explosion and the whole thing POPS. No idea if the Guilty Pleasures EP will be equally sticky when it comes out but let’s see.

SOFTCULT – Someone2Me

Dreamgaze drift and guitar shimmer, cloaked in thick, voluminous fuzz. If you like the idea of early Smashing Pumpkins being pushed through a goth-ified grunge filter, check Someone2Me by Phoenix and Mercedes, aka Softcult. Music with a message too, listen up.

JAMBINAI – Once More From That Frozen Bottom

A cacophonous GY!BE/Thee Silver Mt Zion climax – and that’s just the beginning. From there we get swept into a softer break and multi-tracked voices before hurling back to harshville and the screams of a soul tormented. Who Jambinai? A South Korean collective mixing electrified rock and noise with Korean instrumentation to create colossal waves of beauty and destruction, if Once More From That Frozen Bottom is anything to go by.

What else this month? Bristol oddrock merchants Franklin Mint put new album Hoo-Ha out yesterday and multi-media firebrands Algiers announced new album Shook, out later this month. Check the pulsing urgency of Irreversible Damage with Zack de la Rocha for an incendiary sample…as ever, Algiers don’t mess about.

’til next time!

amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind
amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind

3 GREAT 2022 ALBUMS: KINGS, CAVES AND CROSSES

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Festive greetings all! ’tis that time again and we’ve had some proper cold for once, which makes everything better and more seasonal and better and more seasonal. As does a stollen bread carbo-coma.

But what’s kept the music fires blazing through the year?

Here are three metallic diamonds (?) from 2022 – not a definitive shortlist but certainly albums that caused much excitement AND lived up to it. That’s what we’re looking for right now: true musical love and long-term listening, so let’s start with the big one from a very strange year.

KING’S X – Three Sides of One

King's X - Three Sides of One

It starts badly. Really badly. What in the name of Satan Clause has happened to Dug’s voice?

Hang on – wrong speed. Amateur Hour over here, the record’s a 45rpm-er. Anyway, King’s X. First new album for 14 years. Fan froth. Where will it sit in their staggering back catalogue?

Chances are it’ll slide right up towards the top of the King’s X table because it’s got the very things the first four albums had and XV somewhat lacked. Stylistic range. Acoustic guitars. Choppy riffs and rhythm shifts. Dark and light, not just groove, and – of course – heaviness, melody and harmony all over, aka the KX factor.

Record one, side A: Let It Rain rings out a pounding apocalyptic vision before Flood Pt 1 cranks a jagged riff as heavy as they’ve ever done and Nothing But The Truth takes you back to Dogman’s very own Flies and Blue Skies.

Not a bad start? No, a bloody great start – and so it goes on. Driving hard rock singalongs (Festival), glacial bass-heavy vibrations (All God’s Children), Hendrix-y screamers (Give It Up) and early-days recreations (Watcher). Swipe Up repeats Flood Pt 1’s punishing riff, but without the Beatles-esque sweetener this time around, it hits even harder.

So, again, there’s every chance that Three Sides of One will turn out to be a top-tier record. On first listen it’s the most King’s X-sounding record since 1992’s King’s X, at least to me – don’t know why exactly, not over-analysing it either, it just somehow brings back not only the sound but the feeling of that album. After a couple more plays, fragments of songs and riffs worm into your head and stick. Just how we like it.

Whatever issues Dug Pinnick, Ty Tabor and Jerry Gaskill had during the making of XV, they’re straightened out now and if this ends up being their last record then it’s a rich, vibrant, complete send-off.

King’s X are back. 100%.

CAVE IN – Heavy Pendulum

Cave In - Heavy Pendulum

Who’d have thought there’d be a follow up to Final Transmission? Me neither. Heavy Pendulum is Cave In’s first album of new material without the late Caleb Scofield, but with credits on three tracks and artwork space in the booklet, he’s still present. Nice. Brother-in-arms noisemonger Nate Newton keeps the bass close to home and the band carve out another molten post-hardcore trip. Tracks like Blood Spiller and Floating Skulls shred with barbed riffs and open aggression while Heavy Pendulum drops a proggy descender of a riff so sublime you wish it’d never end.

As is often the case with Cave In and their collaborations and crossovers, the slower tracks have a knack for nailing a transcendent, awesome beauty and we get two of those to close out the album. Reckoning‘s unplugged heaviness feels fit for a campfire ritual, while album finale Wavering Angel burns a 12-minute pathway to the ether. Only Cave In themselves know if it’s an epitaph for their departed bassist but it sure as hell feels like one, traversing from acoustic picks to juggernaut chugs to full-circle convergence. Class.

DEAD CROSS – II

Dead Cross - II

32 minutes and 11 seconds. That’s all you need for Dead Cross’s 2022 OTT hardcore goth-creep assault and it’s a grinningly perverse, relentless beating from Michael Cain, Justin Pearson, Mike Patton and Dave Lombardo. How can you not succumb to Nightclub Canary‘s full throttle discharge and skipped beats? Or Christian Missile Crisis with its sneaked-in Slayer riff? Or Imposter Syndrome‘s insane realisation of art-thrash/punk expression?

There are plenty of non-solos and shadowy breaks peppering II – the Tomahawk vibe oozes through in those moments – but, for the most part, Dead Cross don’t hold back. At all. Prepare to be flattened.

And there we have it, a trio of faves from 2022. What are yours? Do share – after all, it’s the season to give.

’til next time …Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

F*CKED UP PIGGY POP: TUNE OF THE MONTH

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NOVEMBER REWIND: IGGY, PIGSx7, F.U. – RAUCOUS ROCKS AFORE FESTIVE NICETIES

Cramming a few blinders into a November Rewind before the end-of-year madness kicks off (like it hasn’t already) but … we can’t get straight into it because of some very late, very huge news.

Metallica.

They dropped a brand new single on us yesterday, which you’ve surely checked and got giddy with its old-school speed – very much a Garage Inc cover vibe – like the rest of the world. New album announced, too. Who knew??? This is way too much excitement for one day. But, having fallen into yet another Metallica phase my very self last week, it’s strangely timely.

Right then, back to the Rewind with some brand new beasters to see November OUT.

FUCKED UP – Strix

This is nasty. Like, demonic nasty. There’s something un-right at the ruptured heart of Strix and, not knowing much about Fucked Up beyond a few distant spins of The Chemistry of Modern Life, it’s a total head-turner. Metallic punk yes, but charred, blackened metallic punk. Hardcore diabolus. Check it right here.

PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS – Mr Medicine

Did anyone else not quite feel it for 2020’s Viscerals as much as King of Cowards and Feed the Rats? Was it the concise tunes, shorn of sprawling damaged excess? If so then Mr Medicine won’t really change things as it’s at the bouncier end of All Things Pigs and has no length, but let’s see. It’s still a mighty slab and Pigsx7 always punch big. New album Land of Sleeper due out in February.

IGGY POP – Frenzy

More tales of the unexpected – new Iggy Pop tune, new album due in the new year. This one’s a filthy throwback to the Beat ‘Em Up/Skull Ring days, all pissed off attitude with music to match. Raging and unsophisticated, Frenzy hits like a cathartic vent from a guy who’s got the fidgets for a fight after a few years of respectability. Pop at full tilt.

CATHERINE GRAINDORGE – Iggy

More Iggy? YES. And no. At the same time. Composer and violinist Catherine Graindorge made a four-track EP The Dictator with Mr Osterberg and this is the closing track. But Iggy’s not on it. Iggy is instrumental – and it’s a beguiling, seductive mix of emergent drones, strings and ascendant swirls. Stunning.

CROSSES – Vivien

They’re called Crosses but how do you type the name out in symbols, as it’s meant to be? The best I can do is +++ , but that would be Pluses, which is shite. Anyway, in contrast to this month’s mostly grubby expulsions, we have Chino Moreno’s electro euphorics in Vivien. It’s all very catchy and clean and, if we’re honest, a bit too reminiscent of The Matrix BUT… it’s a slick mood shift, it climbs like a club anthem and Moreno’s yearning vocals fit those fulsome beats pretty well.

LEATHERETTE – Dead Well

Dead Well lurches like a jazz-punk sax-topped dirt-fuzz goblin, luring you towards carnivalesque madness where bad things happen … messy and low-budget hallucinogenic, this is Leatherette from Bologna. A wayward trip for sure.

’til next time!

amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind
amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind

WALL: Wall / Vol 2

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DESERT STORM BROTHERS BUILD INSTRUMENTAL RIFF ACTION

They like to be busy, those Desert Storm fellas. Not content with being the best metallic band in Oxford, Desert Storm are striving to be the best TWO metallic bands in Oxford.

How so?

Because drummer Ryan Cole and guitarist Eliot Cole have built a no-vocals home of riffs and called it Wall. Last year they added their second EP, the Sabbathly-named Vol 2, to their first EP Wall. Let’s stack ’em up and go check.

Wall – Wall

WRATH OF THE SERPENT kicks off with a sludgy poundalong, which you’d probably expect given the Coles’ parent band. Give it two minutes though and we’re bullied off track by pacy thrash pickups, 5/4 riff interjections and headbanging slams, introducing us to the idea that Wall is perhaps the rougher, twitchier relative in the Storm clan. SONIC MASS plays the mid-tempo card, as does OBSIDIAN’s brutish Pelican-channelling-Godflesh beating, but LEGION is where Wall really cook, its ultra-weighty Karma to Burn-style riffage with added growl wiping a smile across your face. No disrespect to Karma to Burn RIP, who we love, but this is exactly the kind of energised attack that K2B’s later records lacked: a bit of spike or pace, something fresh. With Legion, Wall push the Karma legacy forwards.

Ending this EP is Black Sabbath’s ELECTRIC FUNERAL and, as a cover choice, it’s bang on – not too obvious, and Grand Mal voice Dave O is as Ozzy as it gets. No reworkings here, just a faithful tribute to one of Wall’s spiritual building blocks.

Wall – Vol 2

Another cover makes it onto Vol 2, this time by long-time Desert Storm touring buddies and mentors Karma to Burn. No doubt NINETEEN honours the late Will Mecum, who passed away in 2021, but before that we get AVALANCHE and THE TUSK. Avalanche continues the tone of Wall’s first EP, while THE TUSK veers more towards classic metal – faster rhythm picking, twin-axe style guitar licks – but the surging groove is never out of reach. Ditto SPEEDFREAK. Busy, tight.

Then we get our three minutes of Karma – no words needed, literally. It’s an instrumental band covering an instrumental band and it rocks mightily. Feels right.

Vol 2 ends with a Wall anomaly: FALLING FROM THE EDGE OF NOWHERE, a hazy acoustic skit teased from the dried bones of a supernatural Western. Problem? It’s too short. If Wall stretch out to an album one day, can we have a big acoustic psyche-doomer on there? Please?

Anyway, there you go. Two EPs packed with zero-indulgence riff-only rock, short and sweet-ish. Get both EPs and you’ve got a solid album’s worth of music, 42 minutes. And catch Wall live, too – they supported Boss Keloid the other week at Oxford’s Jericho Tavern and totally delivered. But if you’ve seen Desert Storm, you’d know they always do.

(for more background, check this Sleeping Shaman interview with Wall from last year)

TOOL: LIVE 2022

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LONDON O2 ARENA: MAY 10TH, 2022. TOOOOOOOL….. CAN THEY LIVE UP TO THE EXCITEMENT IN YOUR TOOL-NERD MIND?

A shade after 8:30, they’re on. Fear Inoculum is up first, a gently building Toolscape to set the scene and IT’S HAPPENING, it’s actually bloody happening. Then it’s a three-decade rewind to Sober, which is huge but with this unexpected diversion:

“….happy birthday dear Danny … happy birthday to you.”

Woven seamlessly into Sober’s bleak spell is Maynard’s singalong for the big fella Carey on the drums.

“Old as fuck. It could be your last.”

A couple more waspy barbs and a quick crowd singalong later, we’re back into Sober’s dark underbelly where Adam Jones’s original video plays out on the colossal backdrop. This is followed by Undertow and Pushit. Is this a start or what? The playing’s as meticulous, forceful and exceptional as the records so there’s pretty much no point describing it. Every riff, break, drop, surge, polyrhythm, tempo shift or whatever it is that knocks you out when you play the albums is right there.

Which leads to this: if the music’s beyond question (and it is), what’s the point of a review?

It’s to somehow share the spectacle – because that’s what this turns out to be. It IS a spectacle. Lasers and lights and the huge backdrop’s never-ending liquid flow of visuals sucking you into a psychedelic odyssey of infinite godheads, third eyes, altered states and more make for a meticulously staged art show, though it’s very much Tool art. Like their album packaging, the attention to detail is exquisite. And a silhouetted, mohawked Keenan on the risers either side of the drums, crouching and swaying like a predatory sex gimp, adds to the illusion. Total integration, full immersion.

Tool play Invincible
Tool trip

Pneuma and Right in Two maintain the prolonged ecstatic hit but if there’s a lull (sorry, don’t shoot), it’s 7empest. Felt a bit of energy leak away in its second half. Having played it again several times since the show, I wonder why I thought that – still sounds every inch the Tool epic, still works as a Fear Inoculum finale. Maybe it’s more an album experience than a live thruster, but Fear Inoculum veers a little that way anyway. Refined and reflective.

But that’s just a minor plateau in 2.5 half hours. The highs are harder to pick because of the ridiculous levels sustained throughout. The Grudge – slightly faster than on record? – is one, as is Aenima’s venomous Hooker With A Penis. Tool still hit hard. And Keenan revelled in that one.

A 10-minute breather with an on-screen clock counting down the minutes leads to an encore: Chocolate Chip Trip, Culling Voices (Tool-on-stools acoustic intro) and a storming, poignant Invincible to finish.

It’s a sign of just how good a gig is that the absence of some of your mostest specialest tunes (Jambi Aenima Schism etc etc etc) doesn’t matter one fucking jot. With volume and visuals like these, Tool’s already exceptional music is ultra enhanced. It’s the full trip. We know the guys on stage are regular, if ridiculously gifted, mortals breathing air and blowing snot like the rest of us. But it’s more fun to pretend they’re not. Not tonight, not on that stage. Tonight, they’re aliens, riding a hallucinogenic vortex and brainwashing us with musical divinity.

And if that sounds over the top, so what? If you were there, you know. If you get Tool, you know. London, the O2: a gig for all time.

DELVING: TUNE OF THE MONTH

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MAY REWIND: JOHN PAUL JONES ON A REBUILD OF LED ZEP’S LEVEE.

Been a while since we did a little Rewind (hello again! Anyone there? No? OK…. ) so a couple of these tracks are merely quite new instead of shiny sparkly new.

Like that matters. Let’s dig.

DELVING – Delving

Much like Motorhead, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and the daren’t-look-it-up Cock and Ball Torture (thanks to Dan or Danny’s list at rateyourmusic.com for that gem), Delving have done a song named after themselves. Nice. Delving’s the solo project of Nick DiSalvo from Elder. Haven’t heard Elder either till now, which is probably a chunky oversight, but if they’re half as awesome as the track Delving by the band Delving then they’re going on the Must Check list because this is everything you need from a guitar instrumental IF …heavy prog-tinged rock shakes your beans. You get a bit of taut, non-quirk Tortoise pushing hypnotic rhythms on repeat and some Porcupine Tree clean/heavy duality. But with fatter, groovier wheels.

That would probably be enough but Delving says no. How about a subtle but crushing post-metal drop near the end??? ‘kin ‘ell, YES. Shades of Isis, just for a sec. Monu-bloody-mental and highly addictive, check Delving here.

AQUARIAN – Death, Taxes and Hanger

Drum’ n’ bass backbone. Airy textures. High-speed motion. Fierce yet uplifting. Yep, I have no musical references to write about this stuff, but Death, Taxes and Hanger is a hell of a ride and if you’re of a certain vintage it’ll take you right back to 1997. Maybe. Aquarian himself, when he introduced the track to Mary Anne Hobbs, said: “Death, Taxes and Hanger is probably what you could consider atmospheric drum ‘n’ bass but with a bit of cheeky 90s tech step breakdown stuffed in for good measure … and classic progressive classic trance probably imprinted itself on there too.” There you go.

PLAYING FOR CHANGE – When The Levee Breaks

Change of pace now with a Zep-faithful rendition by a global cast of many for the Playing for Change Foundation, which aims ‘to connect the world through music’. Watch it and feel the optimism: music, beauty and good vibrations pour out of every performer on this clip. It transcends borders. And the bass being in the originator’s hands – a lean, lithe John Paul Jones – is the Levee cake’s icing as you can see.

Anything else? Downtuned nu-metal filth adds extra drag to the crawling beats of Tether by SCALPING. Dense subway darkness and pulsing momentum make strange euphoria in War Priests by The Allegorist.

’til next time!

amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind
amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind

KILLING JOKE : LIVE 2022

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LOVE. WAR. BECAUSE. VIRUS. Those are the first four tracks: Love Like Blood, Wardance, The Fall of Because, I Am The Virus. Funny how random words can sound timely.

Then again, Killing Joke track titles always do, and 2022 seems to be exactly the right time to see them. War, COVID, climate, hyper communication, they’re all fuel to the agitated perma-tension backdrop that is the KJ MO. Their time is now. Same as it ever was.

In Hammersmith for the last date of the current tour, it’s Love Like Blood that gets rolled out first, and even if we didn’t see The Big One being launched that fast, it’s a euphoric shot of unity to kick things off. Wardance cuts through next, then The Fall of Because. Which is, as ever, total psychosis. All rhythm and no groove, it tells you just how awkward and dissonant that early Killing Joke sound is.

Pylon beast I Am The Virus barks huge, and by this point you’ve got the hang of the gig. You remember what it is that defines KJ live: relentlessness. The volume, the swirling lunacy of Geordie’s guitar, the permanent static, drones and crackle (or is it tinnitus?), the bass and kick drum vibrating your sternum.

What you get live is a version of the band – the heaviest, least varied version. No spacious dub reworks, none of the recent dance-NRG uber anthems like European Super State or Big Buzz, nothing subtle like Primobile, no Ghosts of Ladbroke Grove ebb. It’s a one-dimensional bludgeon to the brink of the chaos.

Other tracks? Requiem, The Death and Resurrection Show, Mathematics of Chaos and Total Invasion are in there, as is The Wait whose tension-packed riff sounds more sinister and paranoid than ever. Best of all though is the apocalyptic This World Hell. Shit me. It’s heavy enough on Absolute Dissent, but here it’s a stop-start juggernaut in flames with a double kick that pummels from the inside out. And while we’re on that point, Big Paul Ferguson is end-to-end phenomenal.

A Bloodsport-Pandemonium encore wraps the night. Triumphant? Yeah, no question. It’s only in the dying seconds of stage time, just before everyone walks off, that Geordie’s face finally shows any expression – a huge smile as the band hug each other and thank the Hammersmith gathering. It belies the abrasion he’s concocted for the previous 90 minutes but this is nothing new. Effortless, expressionless force is his forte. Always has been.

How long can they keep doing their music live in this way? Don’t know, though the Lords of Chaos EP shows no sign of mellowing, not in the studio anyway. Bring on the next long player.

Want more Geordie? Check The Damage Manual

Killing Joke at Hammersmith 2022
Lords of chaos?

NAPALM DEATH LIVE: A FIRST-TIME REACTION

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NEVER SEEN NAPALM DEATH LIVE? NEITHER HAD I. THIS IS WHAT YOU GET

Friday 11 March, 2022. Oxford’s O2 Academy. Upstairs, in the cosy bit – this is where Napalm Death 2022 are going to destroy. Ho-lee shit.

First, a disclaimer, just so you know where these words come from: I’m no Napalm pro. A handful of albums (Greed Killing EP, Enemy of the Music Business, Time Waits for No Slave, Smear Campaign, Fear Emptiness Despair) have spattered the past twenty-odd years and their obliterating Nazi Punks Fuck Off cover has been a pulverising favourite for even longer, but there are plenty of Napalm holes. Doesn’t matter. They’ve been a band for violent kicks more than regular listening and those albums, TWFNS especially, have more than done the job.

But what’s the reaction to the real thing right there, in your face?

SO. FCKN. HEAVY. It’s laughably obvious to say that but it’s all you can do when you’re in disbelief at what you’re witnessing. Napalm Death in the flesh at full pelt with even more density (how?) than the albums is unlike anything else. Precision, violence, intensity, a total revelation. A wall of noise. No tricks. Pure ferocity.

But that ferocity is shot through with friendship. No posturing, no machismo aggro and no barriers: Napalm Death are the people. Everyone’s welcome, which is all the more impressive given the musical hostility coming off the stage. Shane Embury, Mitch Harris and Danny Herrera are impeccably tight while Barney, aka the youngest-looking 52-year-old you’ll ever see, moves with an endearing, almost gentle eccentricity. But his vocal delivery is immense and full-on, song after song. Your only worry is that one night he’ll sweat away his entire body and be reduced to mist. A screaming, raging mist no doubt, but still: KEEP EATING, BARNEY.

Tracks played (identified here only because Barney announced them) include Contagion, Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism, Narcissus, Suffer the Children, Siege of Power, Scum and the epic You Suffer. Taste the Poison too (I did recognise that one, well done me). Nazi Punks Fuck Off, obvs. And a ton of other fast bastard cuts, none of them anything less than monstrous.

Odd as it seems, this Napalm Death experience has a lot in common with King Crimson. It’s all in the pre-gig giddiness and anticipation before the show, though it’s not just about seeing a band for the first time. It’s about seeing a certain kind of band for the first time – bands with next-level reputations, bands who are pioneers, bands that excel, bands whose live shows transcend but you don’t know how exactly because you haven’t seen them

yet.

King Crimson do it through a seven-man spectacle of orchestration, complexity and musicianship that sends you back to their albums with new ears. King Crimson on stage are entirely their own thing.

And so are Napalm Death. Bit less orchestration and slightly shorter songs, but no less a spectacle. INSANE. Time to add more mass to the ND back catalogue.

Resentment is always seismic