Parched & parcel
Things are getting noticeably heavier and weirder, and we're the better for it. Some metal, finally, paired with some fine Aussie experimental noise and a band that'll make you believe in the dream of NYC again. It's the best season for this kind of stuff, so dive in.
dprk, Shitville Tourist LP (Studio Fabrik)
May I introduce to you Shitville Tourist (title of the year) by dprk, apparently a duo of Nick Dan (xNoBBQx) and Richard Fielding (Severed Heads) with support from a few mates. It feels like a journey in time back to where Twisted Village and Kye once roamed, where the journey largely justified the end product and the listener could take it or end up spending big later. While there is no question this record took me a few listens to unravel, what didn't take much to pique my interest was the gentle loop on "Crazy Little Corkscrew," something that sounds like a lullaby played with a steel drum, being poked and prodded by various electronics over its seven minutes. The track, like all four tracks on here, doesn't really go anywhere over its duration, but floats, writhes, twists and soaks in the sounds being made: pure joy in the noise made by machines. The title track and "Blumen Schmerz" are darker, more cavernous, where synths bleep and blot and drum machines whirr and exhale steam, creating the illusion of life where there is none. The latter has some creepy guitar parts splayed out on the pulsing synth backbone, but the investigation leads to no further conclusions; there is no categorization here. The finale, "Gulag In Space," provides not only another great title but a track nearly worthy of dancing, especially after the mind-fuck of the first three tracks. The beat bounces off all surfaces, as slippery as the rest of the record, but there is a sparkle on "Gulag" that winks at the listener as Shitville Tourist winds down. Something magnetic, or just plain alien, about the whole affair, but whatever it is, the sheer number of times I've played this have more than justified the hefty price tag. Great debut; let's hope for more from these true underground freaks.
Excarnated Entity, Mass Grave Horizon LP (Nuclear Winter)
Greece's Nuclear Winter puts out a ton of releases, so much that I've seemingly looked them over in the last few years. But taking stock, they've been responsible for the physical releases of a number of near-and-dear U.S.-based death metal acts like Blasphematory, the mighty Anhedonist, and now, Excarnated Entity. Excarnated Entity features a former member of Anhedonist, and there's definitely a similar approach to death metal with the two acts: mournful, grandiose but without the heavy-handed use of keyboards or Gregorian chant-like vocals. Excarnated Entity is also singularly focused on the horrors of war - not to be confused with the glorification of such in war metal - and provides ample heft to the incalculable loss of life. The band's demo, also reissued by Nuclear Winter in 2020, was a good primer for their debut LP, but the LP is devastating. The instrumental opener "Abjection" runs an elegant Mournful Congregation-style guitar line into the ground, simultaneously distraught and triumphant, and sets the stage for the rest. For anyone paying attention to the recent death-doom resurgence, Mass Grave Horizon fits right in and sets itself up near the top of that heap. While I think that there's a bit of momentum wasted in the middle section of "Corridor of Flame," that's really the only complaint I can level at the record. Everything else is properly filthy: gurgling vocals over blastbeats slam headfirst into downtuned chugging riffs, and a elegiac solo rises from the cracks in the pointlessly blood-stained soil. It's between "Irradiated Shadows" (the part before the solo, yeesh) and the punishing title track for my favorites here, but there's not a dud in the bunch. It's worth noting that the band does four-minute sprints as well as they can stretch tracks out to twice that length - a versatility that elevates Excarnated Entity above the one-note lifers rehashing the same formula on every track. Bleak, miserable and, given the state of the world, timely death-doom is what you get on Mass Grave Horizon, and if you think you've heard it before, it's worth hearing again in this singularly focused and dimming light.
VoidCeremony, Threads of Unknowing LP (20 Buck Spin)
I've got to give Nic at Repressed Records credit for pushing this one, as anything combining descriptors like "jazz" and "prog" with "metal" usually makes me run for the hills. But, this new VoidCeremony LP is checking all the boxes while flirting with all of the above, while (as Nic notes) throwing in a fretless bass solo on nearly every song to boot. The band plays death metal, firstly, and while there are some space-y outros and instrumentals, everything feels of a piece rather than forcing together disparate parts. The label press mentions that the band plays "with the gliding, controlled chaos and smooth fluidity of a jazz quartet," and that checks out, but I don't smell anything particularly jazzy about the record. Rather, I get a big whiff of Gorguts when listening to this record, another band that seamlessly combined progressive, thrash and death metal with grooves, resulting in something impressively complex without making it feel like a homework assignment. "Writhing in the Facade of Time" probably best displays all of these aspects, from the fading-in tech-death opener, to the sky-scraping guitar solos, to the crushing close of the track before the group's whisked away on a mystical Moog coda. The band shifts from strength to strength without any bloat, and just as importantly, without any clean vocals. Threads of Unknowing is my go-to workout record this year, the fluidity of the drumming providing blastbeat stress and necessary space in equal measure. Strap in, take a trip; whether you buy into the lyrics or overarching theme is up to you, but either way it's one of the most thrilling death metal records of the year.
Weak Signal, War&War LP (12XU)
Cool "reissue" of an album digitally released in 2022, hopefully given a wider reach with the push of 12XU. War&War is Weak Signal's third LP, and it sounds like a band comfortable with themselves, their capabilities and their sound: they can rip off a garage-punk track like "Don't Think About It" and slow things to a simmer on "Consolation" with ease. That the band sounds so self-assured did make this record feel a little too easy the first few times; but, like label mates Lewsberg, the complexity of the tracks shines through on iterative spins. Seemingly small choices like the backing vocal melody on "Names" or the sparkling Cass McCombs guitar on "Spooky Feeling" begin to feel like bold, powerful moves amidst the background of resignation/resilience across the album. The mostly spoken, barely sung vocals paired with the often bluesy guitar lines give the record a rough, workingman feel - which, for me, means that things ain't going your way but what are you gonna do about it - but there's no glory in it, just a general disdain for how things are. It's definitely a bit of a downer, though I think the band would prefer "realist," and two lyrics from the middle of the record seem illustrative of the this approach: "I'm no weirdo/I'm no freak/but things keep happening to me" from "Songworld," and "If you think I care/that's where you're wrong" from "Yr Deal." I don't find that the lyrics convey apathy, rather an infinite patience or aplomb in the face of everything spinning uncontrollably off-axis. War&War feels similar in spirit to what True Widow was doing on the heavy sigh of As High as the Highest Heavens..., though without the depressive bent of that record. A bit of despair creeps in on the cover of Johnny Thunders' "It's Not Enough," which bleeds into the gray, abstract noise of the title track, but the band puts their dukes up again on closer "Who the Hell Are U?," a fitting end to the record to reinforce the group's street savvy instincts. Weak Signal's delivered a doozy, and one of my favorite new-to-me discoveries of the year so far.
