FEBRUARY REWIND: BLACK-HELL INDUSTRIAL… PROGRESSIVE DEATH AND YES-CORE METALS… CAVERNOUS POST JAZZ… TRIP-HEAVY MINDMELTS AND POST-SCHLAGENHEIM COMEDOWNS. AND DAVID BOWIE.

Some mildly cheerless fare scattered throughout this Rewind – Sightless Pit, Blood Incantation, Pulled by Magnets – but then again, it is still winter. If that’s not your thing, there is at least some new David Bowie. And if new David Bowie leaves you cold …

… best not even go there.

SIGHTLESS PIT – Kingscorpse

Grimmest first. Skitter beats carry disembodied harmonies, industrial noise buries them and a black-metal styled death voice burns through. The sound of humanity’s incineration? Nuclear winter? We have destroyed ourselves and are face to face with hell. That’s what this is. Lingua Ignota is in the band, corpse stench right this way.

BLOOD INCANTATION – Inner Paths (To Outer Space)

Nothing about this says death metal. The first four minutes are aggressive metallic prog, but then we get the escalation and then we get the DM hit – briefly. Like John Carpenter’s The Fog, the threat recedes. Much is hinted at, so it’s no wonder that Denver’s Blood Incantation are top 10 in Kerrang’s Top 50 Death Metal Bands Right Now list and in Metal Hammer’s New Noise feature. Death metal isn’t my thing, but have this lot got crossover appeal? Maybe. Hidden History of the Human Race is their second album.

HUNTSMEN – Ride Out

YES. Not the opposite of no, but Yes the band – because if that early vocal doesn’t remind you of Jon Anderson, you’ve never heard Jon Anderson. And if you have heard him, you’ve never heard him over a super dense prog thrash attack that’s Rush-taut (how tightly packed is that rhythm guitar?) but way heavier. Shit me, this feels good. Of course, Huntsmen’s Anderson is part-time and gets blown into next decade by a metalcore breakout, making this one of the most exhilarating tunes of the month. Mandala of Fear album is out in a couple of weeks.

PULLED BY MAGNETS – Those Among Us

We’re going wholly non-riff now, but this track has a heaviness that comes from metal’s fringes. Jazz drummer Seb Rochford – Polar Bear, Sons of Kemet, gazillions of others – pushes cavernous dubby slo-mo here which, for a non-jazzer like me, seems within sniffing distance of Metal Box and an avant Sunn O))) voyage. Check it here.

DODMEN – Drawn Circle

Stuart Maconie played this on his Freakzone this Feb. Turns out it’s not 2020-new, more a 2015 vintage, but when you chance on stuff this good, who’s counting?

Play this straight after Pulled By Magnets and it’s a pretty neat sequence – Drawn Circle has a similar pace, same drone backdrop, same massive sense of space and time. But Dodmen have guitars. And they use their loose, heavy slacker attack to hypnotic effect, piling on the layers and distortion to reach some sort of transcendent frenzoid. It’s nearly 11 minutes but everything is underplayed. Everything except the volume and the anticipation.

BLACK MIDI – Sweater

Another 11-minute sprawl, this time from musical eggheads black midi. Nothing like the instant mania of Schlagenheim, though it was part of the same sessions, Sweater just got released and is … calm. Deliberate. Possibly meditative. Possibly feeling around for a direction. But when those first, awkward guitar notes land, you know exactly who you’re cavorting with. Stick around for a midi life catharsis.

DAVID BOWIE – Nuts

The February Big One. Nuts is the fifth of six drip-feeds from the Is It Any Wonder? EP of Bowie rarities, and Nuts is the one that grabs. Why? Because it’s an Earthling extra, and 90s Bowie surely scores highest on the thrill-ometer for unreleased material (Black Tie, Buddha, Outside and Earthling unearthings? Yes please).

According to Mary Anne Hobbs, who played it first and is a Proper Insider for Earthling-era Bowie, Nuts was meant to be a bonus track on Earthling but then the idea was dropped. Would it have worked? Not as an album track, no, and Earthling definitely doesn’t need a bonus track to ruin the flow. This belongs on a bonus EP or mini album. Nuts is pretty much instrumental with spoken fragments (‘What would you rather be doing?’) – if you think of that break in Little Wonder where the whole track drops a bit and loses the voice, the piano and the big beats, Nuts motors along with that kind of vibe. Inner calm amid the superficially frantic. Drum ‘n’ bass, Bowie style. And that, obviously, is more than gift enough.

’til next time!

amplifier wordsmith: the monthly rewind