A brutal summer ends, and it took my best friend of the last decade with it. R.I.P. Big Moose, now hopefully running wild in overgrown cemeteries and snacking on smoked pig ears for eternity. Impossible to fill that void, and tough to do much at all the last few weeks, so if this is a bit rusty, well, that's why and that's all.
Below the jump: metal, noise, drone, across four LPs and a tape, all very worthy of your time and attention, just in time for the upcoming Bandcamp Friday. Let's get to it:
Blood Monolith, The Calling of Fire LP (Profound Lore)
Sometimes I think I'm done with death metal, so intent are bands on incorporating progressive rock elements, ambient passages or indefensible clean vocals. Inevitably, outta nowhere, something like the opening of "Trepanation Worm" on The Calling of Fire hits and I'm roped right back in. Blood Monolith is a newer entity from the D.C. area, comprising of members from other metal bands (Nails, Genocide Pact, etc.), but they notably feature Aidan Tydings-Lynch from Brain Tourniquet on drums. The vocals are deep and gravelly, the guitars crunch and crush, but it's the drums, suitably high in the mix, that push The Calling of Fire to near-grind extremes for nearly every second of the record's duration. It'd be exhausting if the band didn't keep things very trim, with most songs tapping out after three minutes. It's almost a necessity if they want to play these live: "Prayer to Crom" twists inside-out and back again in about a minute, before opening up with a brief breakdown and solo and whipping back into a frenzy again. Nearly every song features a break for a completely ass-beating breakdown, but never feels forced or predictable. Rather, it's a small reward for enduring the body blows the rest of every track delivers. My pick's the perfectly titled "Slaughter Garden," but the whole record is pretty incredible, and recommended for fans of recently-released records by Pissgrave and Septage. The Calling of Fire has one foot firmly in death metal, the other ankle-deep in the offal pit of goregrind, neatly wrapped in Nick Blinko cover art for an added twist of confusion/conflation.
Arianne Churchman & Benedict Drew, The Tree of the Left Hand LP (Folklore Tapes)
I'm still steeping in their double-LP May, but Arianne Churchman & Benedict Drew have already churned out another LP's worth of material, recorded in a haunted countryside bungalow for added authenticity. The duo's sound is, somewhat reductively, a combination of drone and traditional folk, written with an eye toward the natural world. Theirs is a sound that welcomes new age into darker corners, though more akin to the cavernous chant of Benedictine monks than an attempt to instill fear. Think of it as a paean to nature adapting, surviving, outlasting us all; kudzu enveloping abandoned buildings, pitch black inside but throbbing with life once returned to the earth. All of that is to say: The Tree of the Left Hand is a distillation of May, with less focus on traditional folk songs and more on atmosphere, verging on musique concrète for most of the duration. The two sides play continuously, though there are seven demarcated tracks; the droning, looping instruments (harmonium, synth, "various acoustic instruments") ebb and flow, conjuring dark and light, all but submerging Churchman's vocals past the swaying opener, which dissolves into a pool of refracted light. The two sides seldom unlock anything abrasive or dissonant, and in that sense The Tree of the Left Hand can coast by unnoticed, almost too naturally intertwining within whatever space it plays. That's hardly a knock: it's booming and immersive, capturing that sense of spine-tingling awe when you actually look out and see what's in front of you. Might sound too earnest for some, but I'd argue it's the necessary medicine with the emergence of internet brain-rot as a personality or genre. Maybe next time they'll release an anti-record on a 12" circular piece of sod to drive the obvious home.
Hell, Submersus LP (Sentient Ruin)
This is the fifth proper Hell full-length by my count, following a now-canonical trilogy and a self-titled follow-up. Hell is the doom metal project of one MSW, one who's also contributed in some way to Mizmor, Asphalt and now runs a recording studio and mastering service. The release notes for Submersus state the tracks were recorded between 2020 and 2024, which kind of points to either the project slowing down, or that this might be a collection of tracks that never fit in elsewhere. Past the piledriving opener "Hevy" (he's definitely fucking with us now), the album meanders with long passages of guitar drone or lonesome fingerpicking for two tracks. The former shows more promise, especially with MSW's recording and mastering skills, and it's true that this is probably the best-sounding Hell album to date. Large swaths of the album veer toward the nth iteration of post-metal where the track lengths are long with no other purpose than to appear thoughtful or deeply contemplative. Maybe MSW is filled with eschatological contemplation, or maybe he's just growing out of the fiery rage that defined the project in its early days, which: good for him. The first time I saw Hell live, MSW was all clenched fists and jaws, shaking and spitting when he screamed; at a more recent show, MSW cracked smiles while laying down heavy blues riffs with a group of friends. If that means slightly less searing albums, I'm still in, especially when they close with the sludgy march of "Bog." For my money, the Splits collection is the best entry point, but you'd do just fine wading into Submersus and working your way backwards, too.
Robert Rental, Mental Detentions 2xLP reissue (Dark Entries)
Whew, reissue of the year(s) right here: originally released in 1979 on home-recorded, home-dubbed cassette, with no titles, in an edition of not many, Dark Entries has brought Mental Detentions to wax. The Bridge, Robert Rental's record with Thomas Leer on Industrial Records, is fairly well-known and generally regarded as the height of his discography, but I'm guessing that's only because a select few were really able to hear what he laid down on Mental Detentions. The rudimentary equipment used makes the recording feel somewhat intimate and accessible, even inspiring, in that such rich sound-worlds can be conjured from a few simple machines. The bulk of the recording is laced with reverb and loops, some choking on their own fumes as they unravel ("Colourblind") and some approaching what Basinski would later do with The Disintegration Loops ("Vox"). When the drum machines appear, the sound represents what Rental's post-punk-leaning studio work, with reverb acting as an uncredited instrument, trapping the wires and microphones in molasses. Anyone who is a fan of Robert Turman's work, especially the Chapter Eleven box set, will enjoy basking in Mental Detentions, as will anyone taken with the crepuscular meanderings of the Nightcrawlers, if their mission to space was downed by intense pollution. Mental Detentions has served as my go-to album to put on for the better part of a year, with no signs of stopping, a rarity in the age of attention deficit. A nearly perfect record, if such a thing exists, and given my highest recommendation.
Stomachache, Presque Vu CS (Activated Skeleton)
Latest and greatest from Minneapolis' Stomachache, branching out from their own label to Marsha Fisher's Activated Skeleton for 30-some minutes of decaying concrète sustain. Each subsequent 'Ache release has been about refinement, whittling away the instruments and parts that don't work, instead making the sounds that fly by us every day the focus of intense scrutiny. Frans de Waard mentioned Luc Ferrari and musique concrète in his effusive Vital Weekly review, and I concur; while there's still plenty of grating sounds on Presque Vu, it comes across as a very studious, engrossing work. Think Jim Haynes' In- albums, or Joe Colley's Desperate Attempts at Beauty for reference points. I also hear a bit of MB on "Spinning," and my favorite "Carry Water" sounds like the reverb'd-out experiments of Robert Rental on Mental Detentions. At a tidy 30 minutes, Stomachache leaves 'em wanting more, and maybe someday we'll get their double-LP opus. Until then, the sounds within Presque Vu do what the best noise artists do: captivate, blot out the world for a bit, freezing your surroundings and allowing the sounds to commingle, spark, sizzle within your brain. Really, really strong release, criminally limited to 20 copies with (what else) hand-made J-cards, probable tape of the year.
