DOWNLOAD: Kультура Kурения - Рвота

Here's a sharp little three-track self-released ep from Russian black metal band KультураKурения, with a title that translates as the succinctly dirty Vomit. The first track ends up as pure cold Northern harshness – sky-scraping, star-gazing howls into the primordial abyss, backed by fuzzy tremolo and the comforting anti-fidelity beat of cardboard box drumming (a good thing) – but begins in the post-punk tradition of much Depressive BM, sounding more like The Cure than anything grim and Scandinavian - 'Blackwave' as they term the sound themselves on their website. While the track quickly dismantles this latter genre framework, suffocating it in blasting beats, the second bridges the styles with a more finessed sense of experimentation – a loose and ragged piece with reverbed notes floating into a wide atmospheric space, before taught clean riffs arch into peaks of fiery distortion. The final track combines all elements with the greatest presence and success with a lead riff that slowly mutates without ever losing any punch. It's a pretty rocking number than adds in layers of textures through screeching vocals and extra guitar all the while hanging on to its potent initial riff but developing the track through expansion and contraction of the guitar figures.

Download for free from their Bandcamp

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REVIEW: Sheer Ignorance - Conditioning (Self-Release)

Scotland's Sheer Ignorance began life in 2011 as a crust punk/black metal, d-beat frenzied project between Neil (of highly acclaimed death metal act ‘Nerrus Kor’) and Rick, the former bringing the vocals, the latter bringing the music.

Their debut EP was released in September 2011 and can be found on Bandcamp at sheerignorance.bandcamp.com  for just £3.

This new blackened hardcore death punk band blast so many genres into these five hyperfast songs it's barely worth trying to boil it down to anything if that indistinct tagging is the best I can come up with. Imagine the kinds of taught blackened punk spirited bands around at the moment such as Deafheaven or Castevet then reconceive them as more directly influenced by D-beat, Pig Destroyer and Napalm Death then you might come up with their sound. Lead track Pay Your Dues to Punk is so absurdly kinetic it blurs, as exhilirating as any opener should be. Social Conditioning could almost be their calling card, so diverse yet assimilated are all the influences: a great hi/low twin vocal attack, gruff and rumbly countered by fierce misanthropic shrieking, drums roll and boil locking the guitars down tight in savage switch ups between chugging and thrashing punctuated by melodic passages. It's a tightly written and ferociously performed piece, more than setting up the head-turning neck-snapping second track. Blood Sludge does what it suggests and slows things down to a doomier pace and atmosphere, those twin vocals playing off each other in even closer proximity as the riff churns up the dirt from the tarriest depths the band can reach, until half way through they draw up to a canter and blast their way out to the end. Militant Zombie Deathsquad drops straight in at full speed slashing out the speakers with hot-blooded full-throated guttural roaring and snarling – Zombies move fast these days and this blitzes you to a ragged corpse in two minutes before grinding down until your bones are powder. The end comes through politicised means with Mind Control Airwaves which fades out to finish, brilliant. I couldn't name another metal record that does that, the facetious little oiks. Perfect.

LIVE VIDEO: Ash Borer @ The Acheron, NYC

From the Gilead Media blog: Ash Borer @ The Acheron, NYC, 16th July 2011 via (((unartig)))

DOWNLOAD: Yith - Demo (Self-Released)

Yith
Demo
DOWNLOAD

Essential self-distributed free d/l demo of sludgy hi-tempo US black metal that opens with a maelstrom of killer weighted riffs that drop like piledrivers down from a track titled Dwelling in Eternal Solitude. Home studio sounding production still can't disguise the amount of weight this is trying to convey - you will feel it.  The Metal Archives entry lists the number of members as none but my guess is this is a one man entity.  The tempo shift in Return from subterranean crawl to Link Wray-ramalama two-two kick with tremelo guitar tones screeching over it is just one of several deadly moments of coldly executed black metal strewn across these four tracks; the whole churning introduction to Dark Mysteries sounds like classic Immortal with the rhythm of the vocal delivery echoing that influence further and stirring up some genuine flutters of power in your belly as the potential to overwhelming epicness becomes clearly audible. By the final track Haunting Grief the funeral doom influences in their sound start to make their shadowy presences felt; the sombre dirt throwing off dust in surges of tempo, every shift a definably addictive riff accompanied by savage and poignantly phrased vocals.

Trust me; this one's a keeper.

DOWNLOAD: Wreck and Reference - Black Cassette (Self-Release)

Wreck and Reference

Black Cassette

DOWNLOAD

Read the article about this on the excellent Lurker and barely finished reading before I jumped to download it.  It's Metal of many kinds with no guitars, a “DIY electronic Doom band” crafting “wastelands of sonic chaos and despair”; it's digital noise formed into blackened metal shapes overshadowed by the hand of doom. It has a sense of the industrial about it, but not Industrial; the electronics providing electrical charge, thunderstorms of crackling intensity. The vocals sound a lot like David Tibet, a haunted nasal form of rhythmic speech, intoned with holy menace and latent grandiosity.  You might have to be told that the wall of roaring static pouring from the speakers come from key-tones rather than steel string abuse so stylistically textural is the sound, yet in a similar way to how Servile Sect suck up Metal and Atmosphere and produce something alien sounding out of the familiar, Wreck and Reference also produce a parallel take on metal and subvert the pre-requisite set-up for producing it in the process. There's shades of the shadowy Menace Ruine about the smoky shapes blown out of the atmospheres.  A thick, tense and tangible threatening presence.   

The dark storm of All The Ships Have Been Abandoned crashes waves of rousing noise against a titanic beat then stutters to a climax building a rockier groove into its spaces.  In Chains starts with furious drumming that smooths down to a thick bass tom beat for the veils of noise to descend over them, vocals and keys soaring upwards to meet another euphorically bleak wall of crashing turbulence.  The finale is one of the most powerfully stirring pieces of music you might hear all year; concluding the record's existential themes of human futility and finity in a simultaneous maelstrom of all emotion as waves of bliss stained bleakness crash and flutter into cosmic oblivion.

This release isn't just digital, and if all 50 copies of the cassette tape haven't sold out already listening to this should not take long to convince you to own it.  Tapes come in black hand sewn cloth sleeve with lyric insert. The band are currently working towards a full length album, but this release should easily sustain you for longer than they might possibly take to record it.

On another head-spinning note, it turns out that one half of the duo – Ignat - used to be in a band called Bison who pre-empted Women's post-Sonic Youth textural strung out rock musics by about two years with an excellent demo and the track Painted Gold which I played to death in the early days of NFR.  Amazing.

DOWNLOAD: Harassor - Harassor (Universal Consciousness)

Harassor
HarassorDOWNLOAD

Debut full length album from the three-piece primitive black metal LA based Harassor.  Long time fans of NFR may remember me playing their stuff out at DJ sets a few years back whenever I felt the urge to go on the full-on-anti. This is equally as good as those early day demos, the production not being cleaned up in the slightest - just enough seperation between the instruments to make them discernable but keep them mulched together with murky primordial sludge. They describe themselves as “primitive black-sludge metal grind thrash savagery” and have precious little time for much else than doing just that. They say on their fb page: "We grimly demand the extermination of mankind" , grinding out appropriately nasty old school riffage as a single minded entity intent on pure annihilation.

The vinyl is released on Universal Consciousness but the band have also put up the digital version for free download from their Bandcamp.

DOWNLOAD: Ajris - Uccanen Imellalen N Tamazgha

Ajris
Uccanen Imellalen N Tamazgha
DOWNLOAD

Atmospheric black metal from Algeria?  I remember an interview with Sunn O))) years ago where Stephen O'Malley said he was looking forward to the incoming wave of Nigerian BM that was headed this way.  At the time I was sure he was joking, now I'm not so sure.  Huge influx of savage grimnity from the Middle East and Africa of late and although none of it is really pushing anything hugely groundbreaking in songwriting or structure it's interesting enough to hear the subtle variation that comes from an excess of heat rather than cold.  Bands like Tadnees, Al-Namrood and many other on the Shaytan Productions label are all pushing a malaevolent inferno of noise that has exchanges sinuous trance for a brute aggression - the Lebanese band Ayat pushing their incarnation of anti-existence anti-Islamic hate energy to the same punishing extremes as Anaal Nathrakh with even more brutal production.

This demo from Ajris sits somewhere in the middle of all that is current across the world, influenced as it is by the intrisically less aggressive strains of depressive, atmospheric and ambient black metal, but still has a deep bite, especially in the guttural vocals and constantly blasting drums.  The rhythm section sets up a rushing undercurrent that sweeps beneath the trebely drone of guitar on top.  All works really nicely together with some great movements within the long (10+ and 18+ minute) tracks.

Find them on Facebook and Reverb Nation

DOWNLOAD: The Ash Eaters - Cold Hearts

The Ash Eaters
Cold Hearts
Download from
BANDCAMP
MEDIAFIRE

Continuing these incredible few weeks for metal releases, here are download links for free copies of Umesh Amtey's new project The Ash Eaters' 2010 three-track demo Cold Hearts. Mediafire files includes artwork and lyrics.

Amtey's second Moribund released Brown Jenkins album, Angel Eyes was my album of the year in 2008, and with all his Jenkins' releases he has single-handedly drawn a distinct circle from which his unique recasting of black metal and funeral doom has grown, towering alone unchallenged with a monolithic stature.  The Ash Eaters follows on from where he left off with his mostly solo Brown Jenkins project - nightmarishly blurred fever dreams of howling leviathan stalked voids - Lovecraftian cosmic horror.  This new band is a two-piece including Demiurge who worked on Brown Jenkins final album Death Obsession.

The first striking addition to the sound is the wall of screeching feedback cast over the first past of the opening  Desperate Angels. Where Jenkins worked with dissonance and the manipulative shearing of reality from hallucination, The Ash Eaters use a slightly heavier set brute energy to barge its way into your senses.  All the cascading riffs from before are present, that signature sound boiling with a tar-thick viscosity throughout, a confounding rabid lushness. All Your Stars Will Die drops in deep gothic choral vocal accompaniment to the tremelo waterfall of rushing appegiated chords and the Heavens open to rays of black light, burning through on a guttural chug of bassy riffs contrasting, swirling into a sickly whirlpool of sound as the two tones warp aural perspectives.  This is deliberately overwhelming and all-consuming music that succeeds not through speed and battery but with crushing airless momentum and a euphoric relentlessness that provokes adreneline rushes with changes in density and volume of sound, pressure drops and disorientation.  Night Never Ends throws in a couple of shapes that develop the sound of Brown Jenkins and mark out this project as distinct; two minutes into the enveloping darkness a choppy speeding riff savagely gnaws into the drums thundering at it, it has a looser, wilder, rockier feel, separate to the wildness evident in the rest of the tracks; later on there is a booming yawning feral climax that spirals upwards in appropriate conclusion.

The band have already recorded the first album in full and are in the process of securing a label and distribution for it , so hopefully the full debut should be not too far away.  Umesh is already writing the guitar parts for the 2nd album right now, so The Ash Eaters are a fully active and dangerous concern - not just that, but they plan on moving up to New York at some point too. The Big Apple won't know what's hit it when this Texan dust blown dirt rolls in.

FFFF: Necrite - Bereft of Hope

I'm not trying to post a black metal track up every time for the Fast and Furious Friday Feature, but at the moment I am being overrun by excellent releases so the temptation is too strong to avoid. This week I give you cosmic Californian misanthropes Necrite and their track Bereft of Hope from the Flenser released album Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

Don't let the somewhat unoriginal title put you off, the album is unique in its mix of mid-tempo deliberation and ambient sections of obsidian darkness, this is an album of Lovecraftian galactic horror, pulling down the firmament and staring straight through its eyes. The chilling pace erupts into faster sections, like the one I have for you here.  This track doesn't cover the full range of sound the album has, nor the full emotional effect, missing out some of the trancier elements. The title track is an enormous 27 minute oddyssey that builds over 14 minutes of brewing tension and black ambience until it suddenly blasts out into a lightning fast crescendo; the final Sunn O))) worshipping doom drone track acts like a dying star's gravitational pull on the end of the album, sucking everything that went before into a terminal abyss of finality.

DOWNLOAD: Luggaldimerankia - Black Vomiting Mass

Luggaldimerankia

Black Vomiting Mass 

DOWNLOAD

 

British black metal can often be an inhospitable and harsh enterprise and I'm going to come back to it in a lot more detail soon, but for now, as a softner, here's a brand new album from one-man anti-cosmic noise conjuror Luggaldimerankia as a split between that incaration and his other more ambient Black GoatSkin Robe side.  There are 32 tracks in all, the seven BGSR ones being longer more meditative drone pieces while the Luggaldimerankia side - all 25 tracks of it - blaze through ideas and more violent sounds in about a minute each. It's available a a free download, and I'll leave it to the man himself Nostalggia to tell the story of why and let you in to what it's going to sound like:

"After all the bullshit with this release namely due to money issues & the quality of the tapes being so bad that most of them broke whilst the music was being transferred (a slight fuck up on bbw productions half) I am making this release avalable for free to download.

The release was an experimental one as both sides are by projects belonging to myself. The reason for making this was for me to see the difference in creating ambient music outside of the trance like state I induce when creating for black goatskin robe & using the more depressive/angry state I use in Luggaldimerankia but putting it into an ambient context then putting them side by side. To me personally the difference is very apparent & rather striking, tho I belive to many peoples ears it will all sound the same...

I have never used synths to create any of the music in BGR tho there was a slight use of them in lugg's part." 

LIVE VIDEO: Woe & Krieg @ Knitting Factory, NYC, 30 Oct 2010

Awesome pre-Halloween Black Metal gig to bring down the sky - Krieg and Woe playing together on the same night. Another ridiculously exciting gig that was thousands of miles too far to travel.  two incredible bands that share a member in Woe's main man Chris Grigg playing drums for Krieg; both bands just released trancendental albums on Candlelight records - a sidestepped vision on Black Metal that sets them both above and beyond the recently fertile USBM scene, raising it up a level when it had only just plateauxed.

Her's videos of each band, filmed by (((Unartig)));

This is Woe in full flight:





and here's Krieg:

Ash Borer/Fell Voices split ep

Two of our favourite current black metal bands are touring together and releasing a split single at the end of July/August.  They both play some kind of post-* strain of black metal, but they go beyond that with their seperate interpretations of the genre, and each with their own convictions of direction.  Ash Borer's sound is more refined and elegant, whereas Fell Voices is feral, dystopian and savage.

Ash Borer just posted a sample of their half of the split on their blog, reposted HERE:

SAMPLE.

Fell Voices are much less into the internet in that way, preferring to never post anything digitally as much as possible; their MySpace contains 3 samples from their first ep as acknowledgement of it;s usefulness as a 'social tool' but their blog exhorts people to listen to their recordings in full in a more suitable environment than in front of a monitor. Inattentive listening isn't really possible with either of these bands.

Here's a video of them live to show you why.

Enbilulugugal - Black Noise Armageddon: Denying 9 Years of Existence

One of my all time favourite most ridiculous bands ever released an anniversary best-of a little while back; compiled by Izedis (vocals and bass player of the band) in 2009 to celebrate their 9th year. It was released by Xul Creations last month as a free digital download.  You can get it here:

http://xulknowledge.blogspot.com/2010/04/enbilulugugal-black-noise-armageddon.html

Enbilulugugal make some kind of horrorcore power electronics form of black metal.  There's not much buzzing trance, more ferociously blown out industrial noisegore and as such, seem to be pretty hated amongst a lot of black metal fans - their Metal Archives page has only 3 average scores of 33%, 75% and 30%. Still, one suspects they couldn't give a forty-fingered nun-fuck as this career(ing) best of should attest to, what with song titles such as Vomitous Orgy of Mutilated Catholic School Girls and Slicing the Blood Clotted Cunt of the Rotting Virgin AngelSlut and albums called things like NunTwat Armageddon.

Plus the artwork for Cultivating Goat Vomit attests to something not totally sincere either:

AMAZING!!


They have a whole host of albums and split eps lined up for the next year, so if you like this - and why the hell wouldn't you? - then you won't have to wait long for the next fresh release of goatserpent obsessed satanic filth to come rolling along.

VIDEO: Yoga - Encante

I have been trying to find a video for Fourth Eye, but it doesn't exist - you can stream the full track on Last.fm but that ain't he same as me posting it here. No matter, every track of Yoga's Megafauna album is incredible in its own way - Black Metal like you never heard it before; Chillwave to give you chills - GrimWave. The lack of clarity and focus, that half-lit, hypnagogic state is the same but its coming up from the earth instead of down from the clouds. When they gave it Record Of The Week Aquarius Records described it as "Tim Hecker or Philip Jeck, filtered through a grim black bedroom black metal aesthetic."

We simply describe it as ESSENTIAL.

Links:

MySpace: www.myspace.com/yoga666
Last.fm: www.last.fm/music/Yoga

Gravsahl - ... A Part of Nothing

Gravsahl, a German one man black metal band releases his first demo '...A Part of Nothing' as a free download. This really is worth you picking it up. It's not that it's groundbreaking - there's whole essays to be written about the oversaturation of one man BM bands (OMBMB!) - and you never know, we might be just the people to espouse on the why, when, who and where's of it all one day. No, it sounds like you'd expect - drum machine keeping intense tempos, buzzsaw guitar throb up in the foreground - but what it does it excels at and all you need to know is that the black flame burns bright with this one, the long shadow of Burzum hangs over the ragged mantra icy trance - its captures the regal, arrogant poise and majestic elegance of the founding sounds of the genre (just look at that logo), adds enough influence from the intevening history and produces an absorbing energising record as a result.

So, here you go: DOWNLOAD


Lynx:

www.myspace.com/gravsahl