“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!
“As the Assembly Of Light Choir started murmuring its way into the first track on The Body’s magnificent preceding record, all promises of annihilation by the hands of a bearded duo of Rhode Islanders immediately faded into a celestial oblivion. But that was it. No more melodies for the rest of the album: just hints and subtle allusions as to what could vaguely resemble a remote assonance or a discernible musicality.” Join Alex as he takes you on an agonizing journey unlike any you’ve been on before!
“Even attempting to articulate just how great a band Moss are at what they do is a fool’s errand. Not only is their sound crushing and brooding beyond any band I’ve ever experienced but every new recording they release seems like a blue-moon event that simply cannot be missed. Horrible Night, Moss’ latest album, was met with an equal amount of excitement to die-hard fans, me among them — anxiously waiting for the follow-up to 2009’s absolutely monolithic Sub Templum, which is one of doom/drone metal’s best releases bar none.” Noctus tells you whether or not it was worth not sleeping or eating for months to get his hands on the very first copy of Horrible Night.
“I know nothing about music. No, seriously: I have no clue what this stuff is all about. I know this Anselmo guy was in a metallic band: one of those which must have done something cool back in the 1990s (no, not in the noughties, as far as someone has told me) because nowadays he is allowed to make music in many bands and he even produces many others. This album is only 18 minutes long and this is great because it’s filled with noises of all sorts, but it works because I really like it and it gives me the kind of adrenaline boosts I need when I feel exhausted. This is basically an album where Mr Anselmo and a band he put together for the occasion (Philip H. Anselmo & The Illegals) play the first and the third song, while another musical group called Warbeast play the even numbers.”
“Cosmic Child came through a little thin on the promo information (and in fact prior to listening to it for the first time, I didn’t even know the name of the album – so much for embedded album info) at any rate, I figured alright, close your eyes, hit play and go from there – how bad can it be right? The band name conjured up images of something with a Finntroll flavor – tell me a band name like New Keepers of the Water Towers doesn’t sound even remotely folky and troll-like right? It actually ended up being absofuckinglutely nothing like Finntroll, go figure!” But…if it isn’t like Fintroll, what the hell is it like??? Calm down. Madam X will now answer your questions.
Quite an epic album. The fuzz is there in all its imperfect majesty, while the pace is as slow as ever, bringing back the doom where it belongs: in the realm of repetitions, through think layers of narcotic sounds. Overall, the final result is a solid evolution from the psychedelic throes of Shadows of the Shapeless, but whoever (well, everyone) says that Kongh sound like Yob is right. And yet they’re wrong at the same time [Oh God! Which is it!? — AMG], since the sound these three lost souls from Nässjö and Småland (that’s southern Sweden, for the most curious nerds amongst yourselves) seem to enjoy touching on the likes of Alice in Chains (“Skymning”), Mastodon (“Sole Creation”) and Brooklyn’s own Tombs.
I started listening to Cult of Luna with The Beyond. The year was 2003, the city was quiet and the light had been swallowed by the sound of an unspecified frequency – an electric wall of sound that made everything glow. And it burned so bright that I remained silent for the following, painful 67 minutes. I stopped listening to Cult Of Luna a year later. It was 2004, the album was Salvation and I couldn’t help but think that everything that had to be told had already been told. I resumed listening to Cult of Luna in 2013. Resistance became futile. And, yes, giving in was the right thing to do.
Noctus loves sludgy stuff and according to him, Void of Sleep fits the bill nicely. Who can argue with doomy but catchy music from Italy anyway?
Noctus is with us again to question Amenra’s Neurosis influence, sense of heaviness and their ability to us Roman numerals in an approriate way. Don’t get too upset about it, man, those things are confusing!
Neurosis has been called many things over their storied career, from sludge to shoegaze to post-rock. Alex is here to examine these labels as he reviews Honor Found in Decay. He’s a deep thinker, that Alex.
