“Läjä Äijälä and Albert Witchfinder are both veterans to the Finnish music scene, the former best known for his time with punk band Terveet Kädet, while the latter is renowned as vocalist/bassist of Reverend Bizarre – although their collaboration has nothing to do with either. Like 2021 debut Centuries of Youth, Ordeal and Triumph offers three tracks and an hour of a polarizing blend of power electronics, industrial, analog noise, dark ambient, and spoken word.” Enter the Ordeal.
“I picked up Terror Winds for shock – I’ll admit that fully. When we last met T.O.M.B. readily dealt my very first 1.0 roundhouse kick. 2020’s Thin the Veil was, by all accounts, a disgrace. Offering a revolving door of guest musicians without a thread of consistency while flaunting painfully directionless songwriting in the name of kvlt kred, it consisted of forty-five minutes of noisy industrial black metal that felt about forty-three minutes too long. Straddling the fence between a bargain bin Psyclon Nine “beats ‘n shred” approach and the Tetragrammacide ascetic aesthetic with the grace of a toddler, it was something else. I just didn’t expect to see T.O.M.B. back ’round these parts so soon.” T.O.M.B. soon?
“To write about Gensho, the latest in a 15 years long series of collaborations between illustrious Japanese experimental metal, rock, and everything in-between trio Boris and legendary noise musician Merzbow (alias Masami Akita), is to write about three different records: a Boris shoegaze-cum-drone meditation, a Merzbow harsh noise attack, and a mammothian combination of the two.” What’s with guys who like drone and writing run on sentences, anyway?
“When does a song become high art instead of mere music? Every once in a while you come across an album that makes you question what you define as music. The tracks hit you like a wrecking ball (think the depravity of Nattefrost or the savagery of Romania’s Satanochio), they’re emotional and express an idea, but instead of rhythm and harmony, they’re far more experimental. They’re more noise than melody, bleeding rebellion and one could even say they’re anti-music. German experimental black metal band Vom Fetisch der Unbeirrtheit (V.F.d.U) have left me pondering the above questions with their new release Vertilger.” Unpalatable anti-music passing as fine art? Only at AMG! Follow along as Madam X explores some funky, experimental blackness.
