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JEHNNY BETH – Obsession: TRACK OF THE MONTH

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RAW INDUSTRIALS FROM BETH, BLACK METAL FROM EGYPT AND … A VIDEO OF GLOWING SHOELACES

It’s been a big few weeks for big names and big media coverage. Glastonbury dominated the BBC but if you weren’t screen-bound at the time Neil Young actually played, his set remains elusive bar whatever scraps you can sweep up from YouTube (here’s an Old Man clip that’s quietly hypnotic despite – no, because of – being filmed miles away from the stage from by someone who totally gets it… thank you BrainRotRebellion. Great laces).

As if Glastonbury all over wasn’t big enough, Oasis got us giddy for communal anthems less than a week later and then BLACK FCKN SABBATH reunited for a celebratory all-star last-ever show at Villa Park: Back to the Beginning. Massive. Sabbath are dominating the sounds round here but, to balance all that enormity and nostalgia, here are some new tunes – and it’s a noisier bunch this month.

Converge have not put out anything new but Mary Anne Hobbs played the ferocious Dark Horse on her new Sunday evening 6 Music show last month. Why? Seems that Jehnny Beth is a fan – and Hobbs had just given Obsession its first ever radio play.

Unsurprisingly, Beth aces it. Obsession grabs the wracked emotions and desperate aggression of early Nine Inch Nails and makes fresh industrial chaos for 2025 – here’s the video and her new album You Heartbreaker, You is out in August. Obsession bodes very well.

Meanwhile … Manchester for Maruja, anyone?

MARUJA – Look Down On Us

For Maruja first-timers, like what I is, Look Down On Us starts out like punk-noise bass with sax and rage. So far, so grit. But there’s more to it as this is a track (and video) of many parts, moods and movements, where anger slows to calm, calm swells to hope, and hope gets hit with headbanger intensity and a squalling free-form crescendo. Explosive, cathartic and very possibly ascendant, no doubt this is a beast when played live. Video right here.

STRATFORD RISE – Gunshow

Can you call this stuff prog? It’s two and a half minutes short so probably not. But then again, length isn’t everything … is it? In Gunshow, Belfast’s Stratford Rise mangle blackmidi/Geordie Greep quirk into a dense, churning chunk of artsy metallics that doesn’t quite go where you think – and stops before you find out.

WITCHCRAFT – Burning Cross

Very timely, given the music retirement news of the moment – a pure retro crawl from a descendant of a descendant of Black Sabbath. Absolutely nothing about Burning Cross screams ‘2025’. Nothing screams ‘summer heatwave’ either, but this Witchcraft tune is definitely at the quality end of any Sabbath devotion you might stumble on, especially the non-metal (jazzier?) breaks and ever so slightly stank-face wah. Check it here and file away for some appropriate autumn drizzle.

LYCOPOLIS – Mesektet

Feeling the need for raw dirt? An anti slick fix, a hot shot of sonic filth? This’ll do it. Sounding like it was recorded inside a tomb, Mesektet by Egyptian black metallers Lycopolis does to black metal what Entombed did to death metal – gives it swagger, gives it groove, gives it fucking ROLL. Atmos conjured, arrestingly unique.

TAKKAK TAKKAK – Garang

Cultures clash, but which ones? Who knows. Percussion-heavy chants and beats make for an underground cult where the ancient and the modern mix it up while metallic one-chord chugs pin you down. Subterranean club music, without borders, outside of time, impossible to describe. A spirited antidote to barriers and boundaries. Take a hit of Garang from Takkak Takkak and make your own mind up.

BLEETH – Echoes of Doubt

Bass alert: prepare to be steamrollered. Echoes of Doubt employs an absolute wall of it to bulk up its post-desert stoner anthemics so if you’re partial to the late Caleb Scofield’s four-string MO for Zozobra and Cave In, Bleeth are worthy. With thick, catchy riffs, super melodic vocals and a neat little tempo pick up, what more do you need for the summer?

’til next time!

Monthly rewind
The monthly music rewind

TAKAAT – Amidinin: TRACK OF THE MONTH

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PIGSx7 LIVE IN MANCHESTER, HEAVY FOLK FROM SHEFFIELD, BLAZING POWER-TRIO ROCK FROM NIGER AND MORE

When you step into Manchester’s New Century Hall for a Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs gig on a Friday night, your first thought is:

Marc Riley must be in here somewhere.

Didn’t see him, but he was there – confirmed it when the band were in session on his 6 Music radio show three days later. Tucked away at the back for ear protection. Nice.

Non-sightings of Mr Riley aside, what can you expect from Pigsx7 live?

Oversized doomy bouncing howling slamming ear-ringing max volume euphorics with pink shorts and a workout vest, that’s what. If you’ve seen them before, you’ll know the score with Matt Baty’s onstage kit – it’s a self deprecating pop at the genre’s aggro-macho hardman vibes, shot through with ritualistic stage moves summoning some sort of communion with the heaviness gods. Launching the set with a shamanically extended The Wyrm (I think) and signing off with shit-kicking tarmac tribute A66, it’s a good-times ruckus start to end.

With short mid-tempo tracks like Detroit and The Glitch getting plenty of exposure ahead of Death Hilarious being released, it’s easy to forget the wrecking-ball breakdowns in Pigs’ music and it’s these slow dooming slams that really leap out live. Caught me off guard a bit – it’s been a while – but in the best way. Other highlights include a non-competitive Headbanger of the Night award, plenty of anti-Download patter (it’s a Venga Boys thing) and the perma-seismic bass of John-Michael Joseph Hedley.

Walking back down Oldham Street around 10.45pm, there were loads of people sitting in a line on the pavement. What in the name of cold arse cheeks is going on?

Queue for Record Store Day 2025. At Piccadilly Records. The night before…

Did you go RSD-ing? Was it worth it? Having moved to a town where there is no record shop, that Piccadilly Records queue was the nearest I got to any RSD action.

Slight fomo at that point. Still haven’t written up last year’s RSD find, which is a shame because it’s fckn ace. Even better, it was a CD. Cop for that, vinyl fetishists.

Just before we hit some killer new sounds, can we once again praise the Melvins and their now pathological consistency? After Tarantula Heart formed a stalwart noise rock trilogy of excellence in 2024 alongside Jesus Lizard and Shellac, they’ve only gone and put another one out already – well, Melvins 1983 have. Done it in the same month, too: April. Having squeezed a couple of listens of Thunderball so far, the first impressions are more than promising – a twisted, heavy Melvins 1983 shorn of the jokes that thinned the quality of Working With God. They play Sheffield in August. Cannot wait.

Right then, off we go with some single track highlights.

JIM GHEDI – Sheaf & Feld

David Eugene Edwards plopped onto the radar recently with a project with Al Cisneros, which is uncanny and timely because there’s a 16 Horsepower air to this dense, metallic, ensemble folk shanty by Sheffield’s Jim Ghedi. With its one-two swing, Sheaf & Feld is built for movement and group action – a communal, earthy hymn to keep spirits high while bodies battle or toil. And it’s a bit like this Archie Bronson Outfit cracker from 2006.

TAKAAT – Amidinin

Immediate Mdou Moctar vibes come flying off this unpolished electrified attack. When you find out that Takaat is in fact everybody in Mdou Moctar’s band who isn’t called Mdou Moctar, it’s so obvious. The energy is up, like Funeral for Justice, the triple-time rat-tat rhythm – check those deft beats by Souleymane Ibrahim – drives hard with no time to catch breath and the guitars are saturated with distortion. Amidinin is very much a live-action jam. Scintillating stuff.

THE OTOLITH – Glimmer

When Myrkur goes full blend between blackened metal and ethereal Scandinavian folk, it’s a killer combination for reasons you can’t always place. It just works. Glimmer by The Otolith gifts us a similar genre-blending deal that feels so organic you wonder why it’s not the norm. With sea-siren vocals and viola symphonics, it’s a seductive, enchanting trip that soon becomes darkened by brief but transformative visitations from Riff Lord and Hell Voice, aka the post-metal deathly sludge bit. Hauntingly beautiful and brutish, Glimmer beguiles and intoxicates.

MCLUSKY – People Person

Confession: despite knowing the name, this is the first mclusky music I have ever heard. But if their early noughties heyday was anything like People Person then shame on me for missing it – and thank Ipecac for spreading the word because this simmer-to-boiling-point fist fight is right up the piss-damp alley of anyone with a bent for slab rock physicality, predatory bass and caustic wordage. Ipecac is a good home. Want to see office workers lose their shit and beat each other with keyboards? Watch mclusky’s People Person video.

FUCKED UP – Disabuse

Dropping all notion of melodic hookery or progressive art-punk structures, Disabuse sees Fucked Up channel their name more literally to throw up a cathartic hardcore speed assault. Save it for when you need … a cathartic hardcore speed assault. To bang your head to. Blowtorch rock, check it here.

’til next time!

Monthly rewind
The monthly music rewind

PROJECT GEMINI – After the Dawn (Large Plants remix): TRACK OF THE MONTH

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Check this Rewind – no chitchat intro. Not through choice, more of a time pressure thing because life has got in the way AND the ‘unable to save draft’ tech hiccup only made things worse so here we are, rewriting and cutting and hurtling to hit publish just to get it done.

And breathe.

Calm.

Oh …

HIGH ON FIRE – The Beating

Never a truer title, and a deserving one, too – haven’t bothered with High on Fire for a few years. No great reason, just … haven’t. They’ve slipped off into a parallel slipstream but a track like The Beating whips them right back, demolishing all complacency in a two-minute rager that burns like a cosmic fireball and leaves a middle-finger shaped trail in the sky. Yeah. The High on Fire template hasn’t been fiddled with so you know the rough drill but the drums here really, really cook – and it’s new drummer Coady Willis, ex Melvins and trusted Melvins live stand-in, who’s driving the band these days. It’s not a brand new track because the album’s been out nearly a year, but having only recently caught it, The Beating makes it in for sheer good time brutality. No mercy.

WALDO’S GIFT – Malcolm’s Law

Instrumental, hard hitting new/post jazz crossover? Whatever this stuff gets called (if anything), Malcolm’s Law by Bristol-based Waldo’s Gift is it. See Run Logan Run for another.

The great thing about a track like this is you can zone in on any element and make a different listening experience for yourself. Want some jazz fusion with metallic edges? Put your receptors on the guitar, my fiend. Chasing a subsonic shakeout? Drop into that bass, man. Spicy beats? YES. Gilles Peterson played this on the radio earlier in the year and if you check Worldwide FM online, you can hear Waldo’s Gift in session last week. Haven’t heard it myself yet and you never know, Malcolm’s Law might be wholly unrepresentative. Then again, so might these words – after all, they’re just an attempt to capture a first impression. Check the track, then check the session.

JESUS LIZARD – Westside

Rack was a 2024 highlight. Did we expect such a resolutely Jesus Lizard-like outing after such an absence? Hard to say but it was a welcome return. Now we have new tracks and Rack’s high bar means expectations have been set …

Westside offers no real hook and doesn’t so much flow as lurch, stop, start and stumble while never quite losing balance … it staggers on. Prime Jesus Lizard, then, if a touch lighter. We’re lucky to have them. Submit.

[if Record Store Day is your thing, look out for Westside and the other two post-Rack tracks on vinyl next month.]

PROJECT GEMINI – After the Dawn (Large Plants remix)

Some classy psyche rock here – not the free-form brain-fry stuff but a more considered, groove-oriented take. There’s a history to Project Gemini but it’s all new to me, as is the news that Wolf People’s Jack Sharp is in Large Plants – which explains the impeccable prog/psyche devotion throughout. The riffs switch to extra fuzz midway through, floating vocals bring Dead Meadow to mind and there’s a classic lead guitar flourish to finish, all anchored by a tumbling, propulsive funk beat. After the Dawn right here.

VELVETINE – Miss Together

Glorious slab of dank quiet-loud here from London’s Velvetine, twisting a gothic edge – the Killing Joke, other-world edge – into an art-punk frame. It slams hard. Shades of late 80s Sub Pop. Squalling guitar abrasion owns the high ground, noise-rock bass bulldozers the low and Mia Scarlet channels Beth Gibbons to both soar and pull us down into the darker recesses. Meet Miss Together.

‘til next time!

Monthly rewind
The monthly music rewind

FIRE-TOOLZ – To Every Squirrel… : TRACK OF THE MONTH

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SUMMER REWIND: MIND-MELTING MASH-UPS, TRANSCENDENT DRONES AND A NEW TYPE-O ON THE BLOCK 

In the previous Rewind, I said that my cassette deck coughed its last breath (clunked its last wind?) and that sad ending probably meant a hiatus for these Rewinds. Such Doomsday thinking came about because the thought of writing new-tunes blather without first taping those tunes onto a trusty blank was unimaginable. Which might sound odd because no-one needs a tape to write. 

Thing is, I’ve been taping for too many years to count. It’s built into the way I choose to do these posts because the tapes and the taping came first, long before any word outlet. Writing a Rewind is just a way to do something with a pre-existing activity. Capturing radio highlights in hard copy analogue has been a fixture since the late 1980s and it’s ingrained, like a behavioural tattoo. It might be fading but it’s still permanent.

But although not having a tape feels strange, the idea of letting those ear-pricker tunes drift by without any kind of note feels even stranger. 

So, let’s get back to business – ish – with a bunch of hot rocks and warped sonics from the vanishing summer stretch that’ll blow minds OR confuse the shit out of them (talking to you, Fire-Toolz).

Before that, a quick salute to Iggy Pop for a four-song sequence the other week that sounded like a plot to destroy the BBC Radio 6 Music’s RAJAR figures or get him fired. 

Did you hear it? Wombbath Conceal Interior Torment, Gorement Vale of Tears and Full of Hell Doors to Mental Agony around 5.30pm on the radio on a Sunday afternoon with only a bit of Anna Von Hausswolff to separate them. Brutal. And horrible. But great to hear such shitbombs being lobbed on daytime radio every now and then. Mary Anne Hobbs has good form on that front, too. 

She played this on her weekday morning show.   

FIRE-TOOLZ – To Every Squirrel Who Has…

For squirrels’ sake, what the flattened roadkill is this format-defying track title? Here’s the uncut version:

To Every Squirrel Who Has Ever Been Hit By a Car, I’m Sorry & I Love You

Say you’re not curious. 

But if you’re hoping to get the general musical idea from a quick listen, it’s not going to happen because there IS no general idea – not on first play. This is an avalanche of ideas in six and a half minutes: Prince-style euphoric synth intro, black metal screams, death metal chugs, hyper pop, triggered beats, glistening electro, ambient guitar, new age trips, the fckn works – a medley of fragments and attention deficits. Definitely not a genre but when the stylistic leaps are this wild and fleeting, it’s head-breaking stuff. It’s maximalist post-genre everything, like a multi-screen art installation with fidgeting technicolour flickers of Fantomas, Mr Bungle, Amon Tobin, Devin Townsend, Steve Vai and millions of others I don’t even know I don’t know.

I also don’t even know if I like it but it’s impossible to ignore – and the more you replay, the more the fragments stretch and the more you do find yourself being drawn in… give it a go.  

RAFAEL ANTON IRISARRI – Control Your Soul’s Desire for Freedom (ft. Julia Kent)

The very opposite of a Fire-Toolz assault, Rafael Anton Irisarri conjures meditative heavy weather with this enormous unfolding of drones, tremors and strings that lift off and up from terra firma. Tranquil and serene yet heavy with it, Control… seems to offer some sort of healing while still acknowledging trouble’s presence. Engrossing and enveloping. Breath taken.  

NEON NIGHTMARE – Lost Silver

Looking for a tribute to Type O Negative? Neither was I. But now that one’s popped up in true undead style as we welcome autumn’s gothic sensibilities, maybe the time’s right for a Type O mini me to slide out from a misty dusk. And this debut track from Pennsylvania’s Neon Nightmare is SO close to the Brooklyn Four that resistance is futile. Look no further than the artwork. It’s the exact same layout and typography (make your own pun) as every Type O Negative cover, so much so that you think someone from the original band must be involved somewhere. Surely.

Musically, there’s no new soil broken. Of course, the voice is cleaner but everything else – delicate piano/keyboard breaks, pick slides down the guitar, luscious Sabbathian mid tempo riffs, smooth as blackened silk finales – is replicant. It’s so brazenly and meticulously Type O that it just has to be the deepest tribute and for that reason, you have to love it. Perhaps not to death, but at least until Halloween. Lost Silver, the new green and black.     

‘til next time!

Monthly rewind
The monthly music rewind