DEAD BANDITS, ANNA CALVI PEAKY BLINDER AND KIM GORDON DO THE BUSINESS IN JANUARY AND FEBRUARY
Belated welcomes to the new year in music. Am only just locating the new-tunes mojo after winter hibernation (and we’re not out of it yet but more on that, maybe, in a different blog, possibly) so let’s just plunge right in to this clutch of groundshaking 2024 newbies.
KIM GORDON – Bye Bye
Kim Gordon reads a list of things.
And? And sets it to a depth charge called BASS. With one-note piano jabs, noise guitar influx and agitating keyboard chaospheres thrown together with cut-up panache, Bye Bye compels and arrests with a contemporary weight that almost defies belief. A controlled explosion of art rock and industrial hip hop beats.
Kim Gordon reads a list of things. Best thing you’ll hear this week? Yes. BYE BYE.
DEAD BANDIT – Memory Thirteen
Instrumental heavy warmth is the order of the night for Dead Bandit’s Memory Thirteen, its brushy drum shuffle positively inviting you into wherever brushy drum shuffles hang. Exploratory guitars draw on Mogwai’s cleaner panoramic angles but the bass here is looser and dirtier. The whole thing teases a climactic Rock eruption but it never arrives. Instead, Dead Bandit deliver a neat triple-time groove that moves in and passes by, just out of reach.
ANNA CALVI AND NICK LAUNAY – Miquelon
If a gothic garage band escaped their four-walled space and wound up playing some sort of wild west Americana drone and chant, Miquelon would be their name. The riff in this loose, bass-bending, ritualistic stomp made Anna Calvi’s fingers bleed from the hard playing she hit it with but look where Miquelon ended up – Peaky Blinders soundtrack.
Right, that’s it for now – a short, word-rusty Rewind but the tunes excelled. As always.
DEC/NOV REWIND: THE SCRATCH PLUS SPARSE SCOTS BEATS, JARMUSCH ODDITY, RUDE FUNK AND CHELSEA’S WHISPERS
Last-ditch scramble round a couple of new sounds before Christmas hits, even though we’re pretty much in the thick of festive mayhem already … no-one REALLY spends time digging brand new music two days before Christmas, do they? But these tunes have been lurking a wee while and are way too good to miss so let’s just get-the-f**k on with it and keep them on a low-lit back burner, eh?
LORD OF THE ISLE (feat Ellen Renton) – For a Burning World
Lapping waves and luscious Boards of Canada ambience form the hypnotic backdrop for Scottish poet Ellen Renton to speak her words and pull you in. It’s a gentle start but gradually, the beats emerge – nothing manic – and start to break. Electronica washes surge then retreat while a darker keyboard riff makes the hook. Could be a mood piece for the season, as remote or intimate as you want (or don’t want) it to be. Winter explorations abound.
SQURL – Funnel of Love
Hazy, supernatural Western vibes here (not a brand new track either), venturing way out west Americana-style with an unwavering boom-rat-tat beat anchoring satellite guitar fragments. With Jim Jarmusch at the helm, would you expect anything less than exquisite production? No. Check the deft distortion touches and all-round movement and orchestration. The spirit of Dylan Carlson passes by early on but really, Funnel is all about the lightly intoxicating space in which to create your own pictures.
CHELSEA WOLFE – Whispers in the Echo Chamber
Nine Inch Nails always did a good whisper. So does Chelsea Wolfe in this subzero hiss ‘n clank of midwinter gloom. Delicate yet far from broken, it’s a ghostly creep-crawl through Portishead’s emotional machinery while the bent riff, corroded piano and rhythm pick-up are pure Reznor and by the end, Whispers in the Echo Chamber threatens to collapse under the weight of its own distortion. Unfestive but very seasonal.
DON’T THANK ME, SPANK ME! – Sandy
With a taut, garage pop-funk strut grooving over fat bass and pure-funk chords, this infectious jam for Grease character Sandy Newton (yep, that’s what they said) never forgets that space has its place – a !!!-meets-Chaka-Like-Sugar hit with a lick of dirt in the knocked-back guitar fuzz. Can you resist the Sandy strut? Surely no.
THE SCRATCH – Blaggard
Oh yeah, this is it. Tune of the month. A twisting, churning noise-punk riff tangled tight with tom-driven beats whipped through a noise-rock blender, Blaggard’s signature is a piledriving wall of rhythm that threatens mania yet stops just short of falling apart. There are light touches too, it’s not all shout and rage – but a fair slab really, really is.
PREMATURE R.I.P. TO THE SOUND THAT DEFINED A DEFINING SOUND
There’s been a defiant inevitability about Killing Joke in the last 15 years or so. They just seemed to keep going and getting better with (middle) age, fired by a different kind of impetus since Paul Raven’s passing pulled them back together and into the studio for a long, late-career golden run that started even earlier with Pandemonium. Seeing the reformed line-up deliver the live and recorded goods so constantly was almost one of rock’s certainties and there was never a sign it wouldn’t happen again. No talk of retirement. You just sort of knew they’d be back…on their terms. When the time was right.
But this isn’t on anyone’s terms, is it? Geordie Walker’s departure at 64, just months after the Royal Albert Hall gigs and the vital-sounding Full Spectrum Dominance single. Hell, it was only last year that we had the Lord of Chaos EP and the Honour the Fire tour. A full album was surely brewing.
Live, it was always Walker who captivated. The whole band did obviously, we’re not ranking players or anything, but the concentrated force of Geordie’s guitar won you over by wearing you down first. Every KJ gig has felt, to me, like slightly hard work at the start before submersing you into a strange state of battered awe by the end, and much of that comes from the hypnotic power of Geordie Walker. He doesn’t move and barely seems to even touch the guitar, yet whatever resonance/dissonance he conjures from those oversized chords and shapes just does something to your brain, shifting you from agitation to submission.
And because there are no solos, the fullness and volume of his noise is permanent. For all the right reasons, it’s no wonder he didn’t get the job with Faith No More when he auditioned back in 1994. Here’s what Mike Bordin said in Small Victories: The True Story of Faith No More:
“We liked how he played, we liked his texture within the music. We liked the fact he was incredibly aggressive with his tone, but wasn’t a soloist. He was cool, talked about jamming with Jimmy Page, smoked a lot of cigarettes…it was probably a bit of a long shot, even to get him to do it. But it was fucking fun.”
Billy Gould said, “He’s a great guitar player, one of the best I’ve ever seen. He would have been amazing, but he is so distinctive. I think he would have rendered us into a Killing Joke cover band.”
Even when talking about the genius of Trey Spruance, who joined Faith No More to record King for a Day…Fool for a Lifetime, Gould couldn’t quite shake Walker’s impact off, saying, “He [Trey] could do whatever he wanted and do it better, but he didn’t have the animal thing that Geordie had. There was a certain violence about Geordie. Trey doesn’t have a violent bone in his body.”
Distinctive is the word. Gould and co made the right call. Killing Joke was home, the only possible place. RIP Geordie Walker.
Deathly greetings all, how’s your horror-themed listening going . . . what’s that? Not got started? I feel your unfeeling zombie pain, my friend. It’s those pesky midweek Halloweens, isn’t it? Tuesday, my arse.
What we need is a perky goth-metal pick-me-up and that’s exactly what’s lined up
in a blog somewhere that actually knows what it’s doing.
In other words, not here. We’ll be gearing up for halloweenery high jinks with joyless, beatless bleakness.
Sorry. It’s SUNN O))).
SUNN O))) – A Shaving of the Horn that Speared You
Dare you to sit on your own at night and listen to this from start to end. Not as background, not in daylight, not while cooking or doom scrolling, none of that. Just you. And this. For 15 and a half minutes.
[note: the White1 CD booklet lies. It lists the track as 15’ 36” but in reality it crawls past that marker for two more whole minuteswhich, in SUNN O))) world, feels like three weeks.]
White1 is the album where SUNN O))) went prog, I guess. It’s avant drone metal gone batshit crazy with a wild collection of (very occasional) beats, guest voices, swathes of un-monolithic ambience and – wash your eyes, drone fiends – teeny fragments of clean guitar.
Being an avid Julian Cope fan, I first heard of SUNN O))) through his Head Heritage site where he’d wax hyper lyrical about them alongside Sleep, Khanate, Comets on Fire and too many other freakouts to count, convincing my clueless but curious self to pursue some of these subterranean sonic explorations. So, when White1 came out, it was the no-brainer SUNN O))) entry point, mostly because Cope himself was on it. The Drude was the safety net.
That track, My Wall, is a stupendous 20-minute tidal surge of low frequency fog ‘n drift that begins the album. Cope’s lengthy ode takes in Romans, Saxons, Vikings, Thor, Death, Ragnarok and more on his poetic voyage, and even SUNN O))) themselves (‘Play your gloom axe Stephen O’ Malley…sub bass clinging to the side of the valley’) get namechecked as Cope sermonises over death-knell riffs and tremorbass vibrations. ‘tis a magnificent gloomer and a genuine Halloween playlister.
But we’re not really here to talk about My Wall (much). Nor are we swinging on the offset hinges of The Gates of Ballard.
No, this Halloween we’re hanging with SUNN O)))’s biggest sonic experiment to date at that point: White1’s closing track, A Shaving of the Horn that Speared You.
Spooked the shite out of me on first play.
Admittedly, in hindsight, the conditions were possibly less than ideal. At the tail end of a monster Sunday hangover, it did seem like a good idea to check this brand new album in the end-of-weekend deadzone. So, lying on the floor of a basement bedsit in Hammersmith, headache fading, White1 went on and My Wall lulled.
Fell asleep.
Woke up in panic to deathly exhales, forlorn chimes and backwards, fuck-knows-what effects, terrified because it was all too horribly unsettling and disorienting. That was this, A Shaving of the Horn. It has haunted me ever since.
Sure, heard in full consciousness and/or daylight, it’s not that extreme. In fact, it’s not extreme at all, especially two decades of drone-and-noise exposure later, but there lies SUNN O)))’s grasp of atmosphere and future vision. The trademark oppression-by-force is gone. There is no feedback, riff or gloom axe. Instead there’s texture, intense space and undead vocalisms with vibrations that hum and swell. Fragments of orthodoxy – like a clean guitar strike – evade your touch as they warp and dissolve. It’s like you’ve been knocked unconscious and abducted, only to come round in some massive, living slow-breathing tomb while people outside ‘fix’ things.
Groaning and oozing. Death breaths. Things that should be inanimate but aren’t. This is what the track conjures. No climax, no payoff, no sudden death ending, nothing but a slo-mo creep masterclass. Dance to THAT, Tuesday Halloweeners.
PREDICTABLE FALSE ENDING ALERT
We need at least one gasp of light relief after all that nightmare psychedelia, so how about sticking this on your playlist? Old-school wormhole guaranteed to follow.
BLACK SABBATH – The Shining
Think ‘80s Sabbath’ and you might think Dio. Fair enough, but that was all over by 1982. Really, it’s the Tony Martin years that best define Sabbath metal in the 80s and The Shining has it all: killer riff, soaring vocal hook, nailed-to-1987 keyboards and posturing videos with dry ice and windswept women with birds. Lots of Tony crosses too. Extra points here for Martin’s un-Sabbath fashion sense … but then again, all of Sabbath was un-Sabbath by this point. Rocking tune, ripe for a Halloween replay. Rise up!
SEPTEMBER REWIND: PROG CHAOS, SUBLIME BRISTOL BEATS, GOTH/POST PUNK COLLABORATIONS AND A DRONE METAL ANNIVERSARY
THE HAPPY FAMILY ‒ Rodrigo
Zeuhl music? That’s a new one on me – blame it on the lack of Magma in my life.
But if zeuhl translates to a heavy, scrambled splatter of maniac prog like this awesome blowout from The Happy Family, sign us up. Rodrigo isn’t new – it came out in 2014 ‒ but the impact on virgin ears is immense. Chunky metallic riffs, quintessentially 70s keys, blazing short solos, awkwardly-crammed-in time sig changes and chaotic, almost disco-driven beats make for a deliciously demented instrumental. And the unbelievable crunch on the riffs serves the Metal Realm very well, even though jazz un-sensibility and genre-chopping hyper prog are the bigger drivers. NoMeansNo come to mind in the harder bits, as do Faith No More in places (you could definitely imagine Mike Patton losing his shit all over this).
GET THE BLESSING – Oscillation Ochre
Sticking with the instrumentals for a minute, this is another brand new exposure to a band who’ve been around a bit. Less crazoid than The Happy Family but absolutely no less inventive with the beats, it’s the stripped bass and deft, light-touch skitter that pulls you in. How so magnetic? Well, Clive Deamer’s behind the kit and those Bristolian waters run deep. You can hear where Radiohead/The Smile like to splash around. Great track for the headphones, every instrument slides in and out just when it needs to. Taken from upcoming album Pallett.
BRIAN ENO – Cutting Room I
If Eno did blues jazz film noir … hang on, stop right there. What are we thinking, trying to put Brian Eno’s music into words? How very dare we. There’ll be a depth of engineering, detail, creativity and process that’s beyond the oafish scope of the barely literate scribe. And, being the thoughtful, precise writer that Eno is, you can bet he’s already crafted an exemplary few words that render your own effort to be as eloquent as battered sausage leftovers. From last week.
So, back to (BATTERED SAUSAGE ALERT) ‘blues jazz film noir’ … Cutting Room I, a soundtrack to Top Boy, grinds mild menace from a low bass that moves with the slightest of struts down underlit back streets. Piano suspense too. Could definitely hear a big band ensemble pulling this off.
LOL TOLHURST x BUDGIE x JACKNIFE LEE – Ghosted at Home
How many legends can you cram in a project title? Here’s another one: Bobby Gillespie, because he’s the voice of Ghosted and maybe that’s why it circles back to Primal Scream’s more inventive soundscapes – a loping, looping Vanishing Point pulse is the centrepoint to this kaleidoscopic inner-city trip. Get up and dance to it. No, scratch that. Groove to it. These beats are introspective.
EARTH – Angels
Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version – the seminal Earth 2, as many write-ups will no doubt repeat – gets a 30th anniversary reissue next month. Cannot argue against its landmark status as a monolithic statement, but whether you find it listenable let alone enjoyable is a different question – am much more in the Hex camp meself. Anyway, the Earth 2.23 Special Lower Frequency Mix EP that’s out with the reissue gives us a different way into the source, starting with Angels getting grimy via The Bug and Flowdan. Check it here.
MAY REWIND: GODSPEED MAKES LIGHT, BORIS CUTS LOOSE AND TAMAR APHEK ROCKS HARD
Queens of the Stone Age have been on the playlist a fair bit these past few weeks. Must be the time of year. Or the appearance of new single Emotion Sickness and their fresh announcement as Glastonbury headliners. Or the Homme-sized wormhole started by a couple of top-drawer Kyuss reactions (NASTY!!! FLY!!!) from the groove-loving Lost in Vegas fellas Ryan and George. Or all of the above. Anyway, if Glastonbury is anything like their 2018 Finsbury Park show, QOTSA will surely win over the world.
Let’s start with a couple of typographic opposites. Just because, for one month only, we can.
First is the upper-case underscoring of ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT, aka Efrim Manuel Menucke and Ariel Engle, whose Waiting for the Light to Quit‘s drones-and-violin (is it?) shimmer teases a huge motorik explosion that never arrives, leaving you suspended in rays instead. Beautifully orchestrated, as you’d expect from a GY!BE/Silver Mt Zion spirit.
Second in this desperate, horribly contrived typo pairing is the lower-case/no-spaces charm of West Yorkshire favourites worriedaboutsatan. New album The Pivot takes a more varied detour from the consistently ambient/twilight electronica routes sometimes followed, and that’s mykindaworriedabouts – see the icy, metronomic pulse of Stop the Car for evidence. Go check The Pivot right here.
OK, a couple more awesome discoveries before we shut this dribbling tap of words OFF.
BORIS & UNIFORM – You Are The Beginning
Confession: after following them pretty devoutly for a few years in the noughties, I’ve dropped all Boris balls. Haven’t bought a new album of theirs since D.E.A.R. because that album continued a sequence that just didn’t quite land in the way that Feedbacker, Akuma No Uta, Altar, Smile and the like did. But this is part of the Boris trip because, as we know, there are very many Borises. It all depends which version(s) push your buttons.
Given all that, You Are The Beginning may well be the sound of a door re-opening – and if so, it’s a noisy, ripped-off-its-hinges door because this track starts like an uptempo kicker with harsh vocals and then loses its shit, winding up to a pummelling, chaotic clatter. Carnage from the neck up.
TAMAR APHEK – Crossbow
Primitive, repetitive bass and ultra-taut drums build the hyperactive motor behind Crossbow’s urgent, twitchy rhythm – until, that is, Tamar Aphek’s guitar howls voodoo across the joint. On this track she channels the free-thinking spirit of Savages and Fugazi, meaning space is the place – and it’s between the instruments. Not quite new, this tune and album came out in 2021 but it’s easily the most arresting new encounter from last week. And that’s why we’re talking about Crossbow.
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…
JANUARY REWIND: KOREABRINGSTHENOISE, ELLINGPUSHESTHEFUNK
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.
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
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
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
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!
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.
amplifier wordsmith 