“As one of the resident “I like weird music” suckers in the AMG offices, it fell to me this month to take on the latest from Brazilian noisemakers Deafkids: their third album, the copy-and-paste titled Metaprogramação. These fellows create a bizarre fusion of noise rock, punk, and Brazilian polyrhythms, leaving us with something that is both disturbing and hypnotizing at the same time. Newly signed to the Neurosis label Neurot Recordings, and actually supporting (along with Bell Witch) Neurosis for their upcoming brief North American summer tour, all signs are pointing up for Deafkids. Now, how to go about reviewing something that Steve Von Till describes as “sonic Ayahuasca?”” Kids today.
Neurot Records
CHRCH – Light Will Consume Us All Review
“Anything that comes out on Neurosis’ home label, Neurot Recordings, is sure to be drenched in minimalist atmosphere and performed with impeccable skill. After seeing critical success with 2015’s debut Unanswered Hymns, as well as this year’s split with Fister, Sacramento’s CHRCH are set to lay claim to the mantle of heaviest all-caps doom band with the release of sophomore effort Light Will Consume Us All. Being one of the few AMGers who is into long, drawn-out doom extravaganzas, I laid claim to the album immediately, and have cranked it for a month now — because when songs are ten to twenty minutes long, you need a lot of time to dig into them.” Missing vowels and busting bowels.
Amenra – Mass VI [Things You Might Have Missed 2017]
“Sometimes life gets dark. I’m not referring to the bullshit in the news, the whore we know as world politics, or the hopeless struggle to remediate the things we’ve done to this planet. No, I mean things get dark. For how selfish it sounds, sometimes things happen to you that make all the worldly issues scatter across the floor, like mercury from a broken thermometer. No matter how you try, you don’t give a shit about anything as you fall deeper and deeper into yourself. That’s the power of depression.” Given to the falling.
Ufomammut – 8 Review
“Stoner doom seems such an easy genre to play. Write every kickass riff you can think of, play them slow and heavy, and you’re most of the way there. Yet many struggle with the cyclopean task of keeping their bundle of riffs interesting for 45 (or 75) minutes. Ufomammut is not one of them, however.” Putting the “uf” in Ufomammut.
Harvestman – Music for Megaliths Review
“Most musicians these days have multiple projects on the go. Whether because of diverse musical influences or the need to try and make a buck in this silly industry, we can expect members of our favorite bands to pop up in all sorts of places. Neurosis’ Steve Von Till is no different, playing in his main band along with solo outings, Tribes of Neurot, and his outdoorsy drone/ambient project, Harvestman.” Enjoy of deep Druid-core.
Neurosis – Fires Within Fires Review
“When Neurosis releases an album it is an event. These guys, more than thirty years into their influential and genre-creating careers, always come up with interesting goods, and the album teaser released earlier in the year was enticing. Will the full album hold up? We sure hope so!” This is not appropriate music for a Friday.
The Body & Full of Hell – One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache [Split] Review
“There are times when you don’t want music to be uplifting. When abject nihilism and despondency will match or elevate your mood and you just want to be subjected to someone else’s anger. Both Full of Hell and The Body understand that sentiment. One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache is their stark, raw scream into the abyss. It is a split born of noise, sludge and grind. It’s as unrelenting as it is devastating and those looking for ease of access need not apply.” Uncomfortable is the new comfortable.
Ufomammut – Ecate Review
“Italian power trio Ufomammut, now with eight (or nine if you count collabs) studio releases under their belt, return to form once again playing their signature alloy of psychedelic space doom, sludge, and stoner…. Actually, we don’t really need a formal and formulaic intro when we’ve got an album of this magnitude at hand.” Big things are in the offing. Big, big things.
YOB – Clearing the Path to Ascend Review
“Eugene, Oregon’s YOB have come a long way since their beginnings way back into the nineties. They started their career on a high note by churning out a pretty unique beast of an album, Elaborations of Carbon, whose mad, gigantic sound would become the band’s trademark. By 2005, albums like The Unreal Never Lived ensured them the status of one of the frontrunners of the sludge/doom scene and following that record, the band went on a two-year hiatus which looked like a permanent disbandment at the time. When they came back from the dead, fuelled by the perseverance of mastermind Mike Scheidt, it was clear that YOB underwent some kind of transformation, which was reflected on the following two albums. Taking that into account, the expectations and fears for their first new material in three years were running high through a mist of uncertainties and worries about the direction the band would take.” YOB is love, but is YOB still YOB? YOB!
Iron Tongue – The Dogs Have Barked, The Birds Have Flown Review
“It’s unusual to see a Southern metal band opting for comic-style album artwork, one typically expects to see John Baizley’s surreal, exotic and naked-women-filled art gracing the cover. However, the music on this record is anything but comical; this Arkansas sextet means (retro) business.” Happy Metal Guy talks on the merits of prescription drugs, dope, sludge and rehab and he manages to fit in a review of Iron Tongue’s The Dogs Have Barked, The Birds Have Flown!