#20 buck spin

[blackvalor666]

Tomb Mold- Planetary Clairvoyance.

[dreamsofconsciousnessmetal]

Deep Cuts [Weekly Mixtape 216]

Reeking Aura | At The Gates | Corpse Water | Fulci | Rotten Tomb | Godless | Jungle Rot | Lair of the Minotaur | Belexum | Xorsist | Chronic Hate | Lago | Sewer Altar | Gadget | Fermented Mess | Onchocerciasis Esophagogastroduodenoscopy | Lureplasm | Vomitory | Mortuary

Direct Download [hold + "Save As"]

Music On This Mixtape:

Reeking Aura: "A Forlorn and Frozen Vapor" taken from the album "On the Promise of the Moon"

At The Gates: "Of Interstellar Death" taken from the album "The Ghost of a Future Dead"

Corpse Water: "Spontaneous Human Combustion" taken from the album "...something in the water"

Fulci: "Paura che Uccide" taken from the album "Risorsero dalla Tomba e Fu… L’apocalisse!"

Rotten Tomb: "Mortified" taken from the album "Vestiges of Tortured Souls"

Godless: "Omega Omnipotens - Hosanna in Nullificatio" taken from the album "Adversus Parousia"

Jungle Rot: "Maniacal" taken from the album "Cruel Face Of War"

Lair of the Minotaur: "Prowler Twin Sister" taken from the album "I HAIL I"

Belexum: "Fleshwagon of Bones and Teeth" taken from the album "Belexum"

Xorsist: "Faceless" taken from the album "Aberrations"

Chronic Hate: "Blastphemy" taken from the album "Defeating The Oblivion Of Life"

Lago: "Initiation Rite" taken from the album "Vigil"

Sewer Altar: "Cryonaut Sludge" taken from the album "Fever Dreams of Vengeance"

Gadget: "Flatline" taken from the album "Coerced"

Fermented Mess: "Sickening Odour Of Death" taken from the album "Fermented Mess"

Onchocerciasis Esophagogastroduodenoscopy: "Gutted & Corpsed" taken from the album "Fugue Gnawed from the Scabbed God Cerebrum"

Lureplasm: "Blood Porridge Tower" taken from the album "Luridysic Heirloom"

Vomitory: "Two and a Half Men" taken from the album "In Death Throes"

Mortuary: "Cut Their Heads" taken from the album "Great Black Earth"

[ifeellikeaporsche]

Quickly: a few Bandcamp Friday recs

Five hits for your perusal…

The sleeve design for Hélène Barbier's 2021 LP Regulus caught my eye, but the music never connected; four years later, the opposite is true with Panorama, an album that, on the surface, hits a sweet spot between terse post-punk and more dreary, reverb-ridden capital-R Romance. The last bit is provided, mostly, by Barbier's calm, breathy vocal delivery, though the lyrics are more biting when you lean in ("Milquetoast"). The vocals float atop winding guitar lines that can sound like big name acts, as both the Cars and Interpol come to mind at various points. But the execution on Panorama is stainless steel surgical; no grease from cheese, no filler found or needed. The goofy bounce of "Marcel," like the artwork, isn't my favorite, but nearly every other track here connects, from the sparkling sway of "Lapin" to possible song of the year "Dans l'os." A bit of a calming effect, true, though the svelte set of tracks on Panorama deserve a wide audience.

Maraudeur returns three years after Puissance 4, and the formula for the Leipzig five-piece remains much the same: twisted-and-taut spindly post-punk, delivered with a knowing smirk and a pinch of vulnerability. That last bit is as evident as ever on "(Legacy)," but it's fleeting; most of Flaschenträger zips by on quick-shifting compositions and bemused vocals. "Ah" has this nice trick where the song shifts from a crooked, knotty Devo track to a galloping beat taken to the stratosphere, all connected by a single synth note. Yet another quality release from Cincinnati's Feel It Records.

For those looking for a harder edge to their gnarled compositions, VoidCeremony's Abditum should fit nicely. The death metal trio glides like a murmuration across their complex compositions, and they maintain a balance between impressive musicianship and accessibility without tipping the listener toward exhaustion. Basically: it's easy to do this genre wrong, where it's only fun for the people playing technical/progressive death metal and the people who want to play it, and VoidCeremony sidesteps that with concise compositions that spiral and swell with the requisite crunch. The whole album zips by in under 30 minutes, and gets better as it goes along; no unnecessary detours taken here, just a potent blast of satisfyingly chunky and complex death metal.

Verity Den released my favorite album last year, as I'd tell anyone who would dare inquire about what I was listening to, so it was without hesitation that I scooped their latest LP, Wet Glass. There have been comparisons to Yo La Tengo, a genuine mark of indie rock quality, but YLT hasn't released an album as concise and cohesive as Wet Glass. This is clearly a pored-over record, and the details are so rich that the mostly-instrumental tracks can outshine the more conventional songs; "Unsolved Mysteries" or "All It Was" at top volume should have people pounding down their door for production assists. There's more gold abound: the title track and its irresistible, unassuming riff; the Dischord shout-singing on "Spit Red"; and the subtle way that Casey Proctor's pink fog vocals split open "Green Drag" on the chorus. Stunner, and for sure one of the best records of this stupid year.

A throwback, but a worthy one: Woolen Men are no more, but their discography remains about as bulletproof as it gets. Their two collection LPs, Dog Years and Lucky Box, offer the most rewarding experience, compiled from covers, limited cassettes, etc., and make a great introduction to the band. Very reductively, they plucked pieces of the Clean, the Fall, the Feelies, and any other smart/sharp rock band of the last 50 years and glued them together with an acerbic wit, genuine enthusiasm and a strong sense of dynamics. Can't say enough good things about 'em, and I hope every city and town gets their own version of Woolen Men. Anyway - been playing Lucky Box a lot this year, a little mental stimulus when things feel shitty, and their cover of Neo Boys' "In Disguise" has become a now-again favorite. You deserve this in your life.

[nofatclips]

Lahja by Oranssi Pazuzu [Free Download on Bandcamp] - Video directed by Janiv Oskar

[recordswithgooglyeyes]

Oranssi Pazuzu - “Kevät / Värimyrsky”

submitted by @alokavira

[cremationisirreversible]

[drondskaath]

Bedsore | Dreaming the Strife for Love | 29th November, 2024

Italian Progressive Death Metal

Artwork by Denis Forkas

[dustedmagazine]

Ritual Mass — Cascading Misery (20 Buck Spin)

Photo by J. Adams

Cascading Misery is an apt title for this first full-length record from Ritual Mass, a doomy death metal band from Pittsburgh, PA. For sure the music seems investing in doling out dread and ill-intended excitement in equal measure. It may be that “cascading” doesn’t quite capture the force of the rhythms and riffage on the record — unless you tune into the cataract of pummeling pressure you’ll find at the very bottom of Niagara Falls, during the ghostly nadir of a cold, cold February night. You imagining it? Now play “Frozen Marrow,” very, very loud.

Still with me?

That’s good. Because there’s an interesting problem at work in Cascading Misery and how we might receive and listen to it. If promotional chatter about the LP is to be believed, Ritual Mass wants to imbue the music with profound anti-religious aggressivity, hence, perhaps, the puns built into the band’s name. We might hear an engagement with Catholic liturgy in “mass,” and also with the ideological consequences of the theatricals of the “ritual” of Catholic mass. As Pascal once formulated, “Kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you will believe.” Ritual Mass seems to want to disrupt the mechanisms of religious indoctrination.

But beyond the bare statements of intent one can discover in discourse adjacent to the music, it’s hard to discover any direct, didactic attack on institutionalized religion by listening. The volume and sonic violence of Cascading Misery are considerable — but given the distorted nature of the growled vocals and the fairly standard metal semiotics of song titles (“Looming Shapeless,” “Obsidian Mirror” and so on) the strategy seems rather indirect.

Perhaps that’s a generic issue. Black metal is redolent with antipathy for Western monotheisms, and some of that animus has gone beyond aesthetically mediated hatred (the infamous church burnings; the explicit, slavering antisemitism; the affinities with continental anti-immigrant movements, especially when those immigrants are Muslim or Arab). Death metal has a history of pushing similarly irreverent thematic buttons, but those provocations tend more strongly toward professing delight in sinful behaviors (murder, desecration, sexual violence, and so on) for the behaviors’ own sake. If institutionalized schemas for morality are transgressed, that’s a happy outcome, too, but heresy is not foremost on the list of symbolic pleasures.

So, yes, Cascading Misery is intense, and intensely belligerent, as a set of tonal values. But for all this reviewer can tell, those values might be applied to a series of especially turbulent hymns to the joys of Froot Loops (though, given the beliefs of the current HHS Secretary, synthetic food dyes are portals to realms of morally repugnant gluttony and lust; what a fucking tool RFK is…). It’s a very good death metal record, but in order to deliver its ostensible ideological intents, its groans and howls and grueling brutality need to be sharpened into something more legible.

Jonathan Shaw