Noise Eternal

Straight from the gutters of the west coast

[noise-eternal]

Aztakea - Thanatologisk Blues

Aztakea is a band from Värmland, Sweden, playing sludge with some black metal shrieks thrown in for good measure. I especially like the first song Födelse which with its bluesy riffs reminds me of some Eyehategod-leftover, they even have an advantage over said band because of the wonderful crunchy bass and spacey background sounds.

Unfortunately, which I feel is a downside to most stoner/sludge and punk the riffs can feel a bit samey which makes it less than it could have been with a little more innovation. But it’s definitely a solid debut ep all things considering.

6/10

[noise-eternal]

Levande Död - Interview

I came across Levande Död (kinda like Living Dead in english) earlier this year with their great debut Upp till kramp, released on relatively new label Happiest Place Records. Sounded kind of some kind of twisted take on post-punk, not too dissimilar to Gang of Four. So anyways I decided to take a chat with band member Erik.

I came across Levande Död (kinda like Living Dead in english) earlier this year with their great debut Upp till kramp, released on relatively new label Happiest Place Records. So I decided to take a chat with band member Erik.

Hey Levande Död! Could you please introduce yourselves? What kind of music are you making and who plays what?

We are exploring how rock music sounds when rock music is dying. The Living dead corpse of rock. The band is Emma Larsson, Hanna Sundbom, Gunnar Johansson and Erik Lahti.

Explain more about why rock music is dying?

Rock music was born in the 50s so rock should be at the age when death is the next step.

Would you be inclined to give away a bit about what your lyrics are about? They seem quite abstract to me, maybe it should remain that way?

The lyrics is about dead friends, Living friends and our own experiences. But we dont wanna go in to detail about it.

You were signed by the quite new record label Happiest Place Records, do you feel comfortable there? What’s your next move?

Happiest Place is the best label for us. They always let us artists have the last say. And they respect our work.

Now we are working with album nr 2. The original idea for that album is based on Mutual Aid.

What are the driving force or goal behind your music making?

To comfort ourselves and everybody else.

From what I gather you moved from Norrland (northern Sweden) to Gothenburg, do you have any recent bands to recommend from Norrland? Any thoughts about the swedish music scene in general?

In Luleå where we come from we have a tradition of bands playing d-beat punk in a way that is more common in northern Finland than the rest of sweden. We have/had really good d-beat bands like Dispose and Kranium.

Nowdays i don't really know what's going on up there but i have heads about a Trap scene and some postpunk bands like Brinnande Busken.

[noise-eternal]

wanda hbr - everything has gotten a bit better

Wanda hbr is a new one person-act who recently released its first ep, a small collection of songs packed to the brim with vulnerable, heartfelt dream pop sung in swedish and english. Especially the two songs in swedish makes the most impact on me as the previously mentioned vulnerability really comes to the forefront with (obviously translated) lines like “where not even art can give you anything, then there’s nothing”. All this accompanied by gentle Mazzy Star-like guitars which amplifies the already beautiful songs and I’m sold. Really looking forward to what this project has to offer in the future.

Best track: Över nu

8/10

[noise-eternal]

Skiftande enheter - Snubblar genom drömmar

Cover art not allowed since Tumblr are being lame assholes censoring a picture/art collage with like 5% nudity, but here's the record:

https://open.spotify.com/album/7GpukqU28C6imP7bhvfxyL?si=aOKRvRtXRGeta-aWeGi9aQ

Anyway:

This here is the first release from newly formed label Appetite run by Hugo Randulv (known from Makthaverskan, Enhet för fri musik and more) and Rasmus Hansén, former label manager of indie label Luxury who gave us the aforementioned Makthaverskan but also great bands like Westkust and School ‘94 and more.

Well to get to the point here we have some bittersweet lo-fi pop/punk (not pop punk, this shit is miles away from blink 182) clocking in at around 15 minutes delivered for example by the aforementioned Hugo Randulv (on bass), but you probably wouldn’t notice if I hadn’t said that since there’s a huge difference in sound comparing the two bands. Sometimes the songs even take turns into surf rock-territory but still without compromising that fitting punkish sloppiness throughout.

A downside I can think of is that the vocals courtesy of JJ Ulius can sound a bit stale, but it doesn't really have that much of an impact on the overall experience in my humble opinion. All in all I have high hopes for this band, and the label as well, someone has to fill the void Luxury left Gothenburg.

7/10

[noise-eternal]

Weak Ties/Noll Koll - Split

After War Music by Refused being the latest hardcore-album I’ve listened to it’s refreshing to hear some good hardcore again. Noll Koll from Gothenburg (have you heard that one before?) opens up the split with some really tight shit and an almost playful garage punky-style of hardcore even though the lyrical side of things reeks of misantrophy. As it should be. The production maybe is somewhat stale but that’s it.

Next we have Weak Ties from Bielefeld, Germany. Here we’ve got more straight-forward stuff, also good and with a rawer production and maybe it’s more power-violence than hardcore. It’s a shame their side of the split is less than one and a half minute long or else I would have had more to say about it.

6,5/10

[noise-eternal]

Alexandra Berger - Svälta Räv

With the description "this is what it would sound like if Veronica Maggio was institutionalized", it's hard not to get interested/curious about what Stockholm, Sweden based solo debutant Alexandra Berger is up to.

The six track EP "Svälta räv" (to starve the fox, some sort of Swedish card game), released a few weeks ago and recorded in cooperation with Christian Gabel of bob hund/1900 fame, doesn't do anything to negate the description given.

Based only around Alexandra's voice and piano, the more often than not disturbing lyrics gets the listener's full attention, and if I should compare this to something a bit more international, fans of for example Regina Spektor should definitely lend an ear to Berger's composition.

For me personally, the tracks Släpp! (Let go!) and the obsessive stalker anthem (if anyone ever wanted one) Din tjej (Your girl) with the chorus "I will always be your girl, whether you want me to or not" makes the hardest impact, but actually, all six of these tracks are well worth your, mine and just about everybody else's attention.

(Cover art by Linnea Thurelius, Adrian Records 2019, https://alexandraberger.bandcamp.com/album/sv-lta-r-v)

//Michael Sebastian Porali

9/10

[noise-eternal]

She Sees - Interview

I took a little chat with Boel Söderberg from the up and coming experimentalists She Sees!

https://shesees.bandcamp.com/

Hey She Sees! Can you introduce yourselves? Who plays what and how come you started the band?

Hey Noise Eternal!

Our band was brought to life in October 2017 by Alex, our drummer who had a vision of a band that wouldn't turn out to be that typical songwriting band with heavy rehearsals but rather more "jammy" and impromptu. He chose us as his fellows, sent us some messages, we agreed and now, here we are.

You seem much like a jam-band, do you enter the rehearsal place and just get it on or work directly with the songs from the start?

Usually when we enter our rehearsal space we have no idea of what we will achive. And that's exactly the way we want it to be, this approach relieves us from a lot of pressure which we already had enough of in the rest of our lives. Then, suddenly the jams (obviously handpicked by us, by recording and listening to our rehearsals afterwards) become Songs, and please let's not analyze how this really works, our brain are too tired to even more analyzing.

What do you want to achieve with your music? What does it mean to you and what do you hope it could mean to the listeners?

Well, here we are five different heads with five different opinions. But generally, we play for ourselves. The important thing is not what our listeners think, as long as we have fun at our rehearsals. We've playing together for two years now, we don't even had our stickers printed yet and why should we? She guess this is the main answer to the question.

Do you have any plans on recording a full-lenght? Do you have a record label as of now?

Firstly, of course we have. But don't stay tuned.

Secondly, no. That's for the future to decide, but now we don't have any plans to cooperate with anyone but ourselves. No rockstar plans here.

What inspires your music most apart from listening to music?

Books, myths, stories, gossips, folk lore and movies.

Our PV for our song "Ät Min Aska" is made of video cuts from the horror documentary "Häxan", because our drummer and movie nerd Alex had too much leisure, however it pretty much speaks for itself in this case.

You’ve mostly played shows in Gothenburg so far, right? What do you think about the music scene here, any favorites among the up and coming?

Speaking for my self, this town disappoints me to a level of pain. Truckstop is dead, which means this town is about to transform into something bad, in a very bad way. My personal wish is that She Sees could move away from this town and not grow cold within' it. Well, I've been enjoying shows åt Musikens hus and Pustervik for example, the only problem is that they only book good bands Truckstop Alaska booked fucking years ago and I'm not that interested anymore.

(She could definitely talk way too much about this, so let's Not.)

Thank you She Sees for the interview!

Thank you, too. Have a Nice Day, and if you don't, have a Nice Night.

[noise-eternal]

Leeches - Hav av cement

Really interesting Gothenburg band with an exciting and original sound I just discovered. Basically it’s garage punk, but with lots of synth (in this case) enhancing the sound. You could almost call it space punk, like if Hawkwind were a punk band. The songs varies from the almost spoken word synth driven Hav av Cement (Oceans of Concrete) to the amphetamine-driven At Night. Would be nice to know more about this band since I definitely would like to know more about them but couldn't find an fb-page.

8/10

[noise-eternal]

On rotation - November 2019

She Sees - SSS:1 (Gothenburg, August 2019, Single/EP)

I thought I read somewhere that this band plays post-punk, which couldn't be farther from the truth. Think along the lines of Dirty Three, post-rock without being “crescendocore” you might say. It’s a hard balance act though, the over 20 minute long song plods along nicely but never really gets really interesting even though some of the sounds are nice.

6/10

The Young Gods - The Young Gods (Fribourg, Switzerland, 1987, Album)

Really cool swiss band I found the other month, which I think all who hasn’t should check out. Sounds a bit like early Swans but more varied and a really tight rhythm section. So if you’re looking for some great industrial in french this is the place to look!

8/10

Walking Corpse - S/T (Gothenburg, Mars, 2019, EP)

New grindcore that shows promise, with some cool solos evening it out. Could be really great with better production work and more to listen to.

7/10

[noise-eternal]

Mayhem - Daemon

While many think Mayhem’s glory days ended with their first record I tend to claim otherwise. Especially Ordo ad Chao I think is an underrated little masterpiece, maybe all this comes from Attila being my favorite vocalist of theirs, but I don’t know.

Every Mayhem-album has felt like a departure from the sounds of the previous one, but I feel this is an exception to the rule, being a natural follow-up to Esoteric Warfare, only better. I don’t know why the anyone would name a black metal-song “Bad Blood” though, Aeon Daemonium and stuff like that sounds way cooler, but whatever.

Anyways, this feels somewhat more natural sounding than the previous one, which I felt could feel a little mechanical at times, almost. It’s also more straight-forward and the ghostly mentioned hungarian Attila as always does his best to give the songs a more theatrical edge. Otherwise I can’t come up with that much to say, it’s pretty much black metal by the rules, only better, you can tell these blokes have been in the game for long. Plus the cover art is really neat. All in all a listen worthy release from a classic band, but no De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas or Ordo ad Chao.

7/10

[noise-eternal]

Nuke From Orbit - Mutual Assured Destruction

What we got here is an ep packed to the brim with sludgy, black metallic crust, with misspelt song titles in the package. The music has at least a little potential though, just wished it could have been tighter and with more intensity. A much rawer production had served the songs well too. Which can get a bit stale and this not really fit the music, more speed is on my wishlist.

The Gothenburg band should glance at bands like This Gift Is A Curse which does this thing much better.

4/10

[noise-eternal]

Heavy Lungs - Measure

Cover art by band and Alec Morton™.

In recent years punk has seemed it doesn’t really know where to go without boring the listeners with the futile materials at hand to use in t. The solution have been served from the liked of UK, Denmark and Sweden, with bands like Iceage, Idles, Viagra Boys and now Heavy Lungs gracing us with their violent form of post-punk.

This here is just as good as their ep Straight to CD released back in January, which shows even further promise. Behind the snarling guitars and tight rhythm duo, all the duriation of the ep it feels like singer Danny Nedelko (sung about in the Idles-song with the same name) can enter some sort of breakdown anytime, you can almost hear the angry spitting, such is the passion at display here.

I hate to draw another parellel with Idles, but like their latest album these songs seem to center a lot about the importance of self worth, much needed in times like these. I only wonder when they will release their first proper LP.

Best track: Half Full, Self Worth,

8,5/10

[noise-eternal]

M:40 - Arvsynd

One of the best crust bands of recent times seem to go from clarity to clarity, with their third record Lidköping based noise makers M:40 seem to have been evolving a bit further.

Like fellow swedes Martyrdöd they’ve started to include some black metal-vibes with good measure, and the songs themselves contain enough variation to keep them fresh enough preventing the boredom often hard to avoid sometimes listening to crust and hardcore bands.

If their previous record Diagnos felt oppressive and misanthropic this even tops it with it’s violent sonic assault, foreboding atmospheric intros and anxiety-ridden lyrics. All in all a great record that all fans of more extreme music should check out.

7,5/10

[noise-eternal]

DIIV - Deceiver

After the previous DIIV full-length Is The Is Are frontman Zachary Cole Smith checked into rehab for his heroin addiction, during this period of time DIIV basically didn’t exist anymore, but he slowly acclimatised himself to music again, so when that process was over DIIV started making music again.

All this makes this album very much one about overcoming addiction. The lyrics reads mostly as the narrator’s happiness about overcoming the heroin, but there’s also some parts where a little longing for times past can be noticed, at least in the opening track Horsehead. The album is also a lot more bleak than their two previous albums (while still very much shoegaze), you won’t find the jangle from tracks like Doused here, that’s for sure.

Highlights includes among others the singles Skin Game and Taker, where Elliott Smith- and My Bloody Valentine-influences respectively clearly can be heard. All in all, it might be a lot darker it’s still that mix of 90’s alternative rock and shoegaze that seems to be the band’s signature sound, the krautrock-touches present on especially Oshin are gone though. Let’s hope Zachary can manage to stay sober and make continue to make great music with his band!

8/10

[noise-eternal]

The Island - The Island

Listened to this little ep made up of two songs, the first one, Margaritas by the Sea sounds a little like it’s title. With relaxing repetitive (in a good way) guitars in the background while you enjoy a good drink in the sun. Full of samples from god knows where, this sounds like some weird psychedelic mix of krautrock, Velvet Underground and even has some jazzy vibes to it in my opinion.

The second track, Scandinavian Starlines, is perhaps even more spaced out, and has a more rockish vibe to it compared to the first one with its acoustic guitars. It is also my favourite amongst the two, the first one seemed a little over-sampled, almost. Anyways, this was a fine journey and it would be interesting to see what this band could accomplish in the confines of the album format.

7/10

[noise-eternal]

Fatal State - Estado Fatal

Fatal State is a political hardcore punk band from Portland, Oregon. Their sound is very much influenced by grindcore and noisy metalcore! Female fronted vocals with a fierce anti fascist attitude and some spanish language to mix things up! The lyrics deal with injustice at the U.S border patrols and racism but also trigger warnings and radical politics in the Internet age!

I love the instrumentation in the intro to "Pure Rhetoric" It's chaotic and forboding and the bass intros in this album are so crunchy and heavy! The song "Savior Complex" deals with the subjust of tyranical people who believe that their actions are justified, by example by God or by the furthering of colonialism.

The guitar tones are blistering and sound very good when combined with the lightning fast drums! Though this album could use more variety for my taste, but this is a mosh album both metalheads and punks can enjoy and fits well for a circle pit!

The production is clear, which is not something you think about when thinking about punk, hardcore or grindcore. But when you have something to say, you wanna be heard clearly. Though sometimes the lyrics can feel a bit drowned in the mix and in the distortion. Nonetheless, this album is in your face, grinding, noisy and a great piece of feministic metallic hardcore! Buy this album, support the band and see them live!

5/10

//Miki Gzaiel Claesson

[noise-eternal]

Blut aus Nord - Hallucinogen

French veteran black metallers Blut aus Nord (mostly a project from singer/guitarist Vindsval) have dabbled in many styles of black metal since their inception in 1994. Mostly they have done this well, their last album since this one, Deus salutis meæ, was a bit of a letdown though and I didn’t really get a lasting impression from it, but here they deliver their best one since 2012 (777 - Cosmophosy).

The lengthy, somewhat psychedelic songs deliver layer after layer and doesn’t really get boring anywhere. A couple of parts even reminds me a bit of Alcest, though not that much, for this is essentially a black metal-record even though it challenges the limits of the genre.

It's a very atmospheric record, whereas Deus was more straightforward and raw and had some industrial stuff going on, these are songs to get lost in. With a lot of dynamics in the songs it’s sure not to get you bored. All in all I would say this is one the best black metal-records of the year, up there with Misþyrming, Deathspell Omega and Mgła. For the hate of God, check it out!

8/10