(written by Islander)
As you know if you’ve stopped by here in previous Saturdays, I sometimes start with a shiny lure, a new song or video from a well-known band, and then drag people down into much deeper waters, kind of the reverse of conventional fishing (fishing from below).
Today I do have a shiny lure, but decided to put it at the end for reasons I’ll eventually explain. Before then I’ve bounced around among savage, strange, and scintillating creatures spotted in the lower depths.
FILTHY ILK (U.S.)
This column differs from the usual format in another way as well. I’m beginning with a recently released EP rather than a single song. When I first listened to it I didn’t know what to expect but was tempted by this New Jersey band’s entirely unpretentious name (Filthy Ilk!) and by the creepy artwork, which I learned was the result of a collaboration among the band’s three members and was intended to depict “a noumenal entity from a parallel dimension.”
In our days of explosive diarrhea, measles running wild, heat domes, rampant wildfires, and flash flooding, the EP’s title — Weaponized Natural World — also seemed relevant.
On this EP Filthy Ilk do a lot of things very well. On the first song, “InESCapable“, they inflict bludgeoning beatings and blasting tirades; they discharge riffing that slashes, blares, and frantically stitches, along with soloing that eerily slithers and deliriously whirls; and they vent vocals that sound like a pack of enraged bears but also like crazed hyenas.
But the credits include performances on Tagelharpa and Sitar, and those exotic tones surface elsewhere in the EP (along with a multitude of guitar tones), along with moods of devilish menace, grievous despair, frightening and freakish hallucination, brutish thuggishness, and peculiar squirming.
As the songs move from one to the next, you’ll bear witness to a musical kaleidoscope, not knowing what shapes will shift and fall into place from one to the next. It’s a fascinating sequence, revealing music that’s indeed filthy, but even more so it’s wildly surprising — inventive, adventurous, demented, heavy-grooved, and thoroughly captivating. Every song is a winner, even the shortest of them.
https://filthyilk.bandcamp.com/album/weaponized-natural-world
https://www.facebook.com/people/Filthy-Ilk/61582594827054/
SIDEREAN (Slovenia)
Through a social media post yesterday I learned that the unconventional Slovenian death metal band Siderean has joined the roster of 20 Buck Spin for their upcoming third album, to be recorded later this year and released in 2027. Through that same announcement I also learned that Siderean had just released a two-song demo named 30,000 Cycles — and it’s a stunning.
The first of the two songs, “Glass by Dry Glass“, slowly and mysteriously glimmers and rings, eventually joined by proggy drum progressions, macabre vocal ugliness, sounds of unhinged screaming, episodes of percussive mania, and bursts of frantic fretwork dementia.
The music also seems to slowly ooze, to freakishly glitter, and to undergo dangerous seizures. Somehow the dexterous bass-work still manages to make its own place within this stupefying musical house of mirrors, which again rings as it ends.
The demo’s title song “30,000 Cycles” includes as many changing facets as the first one. It comes across as a mad hallucination, although produced in such a way that all the many moving parts and extravagant tonalities are quite distinct and detectable. (And I hope the vocalist survived long enough to make it to an emergency room for critical care treatment for his ravaged larynx, followed by psychotherapy.)
Both songs are extravagantly surreal, beautifully performed, and an unexpected gift for adventurous listeners.
https://siderean.bandcamp.com/album/30000-cycles-demo
https://www.facebook.com/siderean/
WEALTHY WOMEN (U.S.)
I was attracted to this next group of songs by SF-based Wealthy Women when I read these words in a message we received about the band’s forthcoming debut album, Children:
Children is out 7th August and examines the reality of living in America following Trump’s re-election in 2024, confronting the crises that define this political moment: the online radicalisation of young men, the human cost of cruel immigration policy, and the casual inhumanity of modern war. Two members of the band are US immigrants (Irish and second generation Filipino), which makes these moments of outrage and grief all the more poignant…. Recorded with Scott Evans (Neurosis, SUMAC, Autopsy etc.) with baritone guitars, low-tuned bass and sludgy doom territory but faster.
I haven’t had a chance to listen to the whole album yet, just the four songs now streaming at Bandcamp. The first of them, “37 Days“, arrived with a video. It focuses on the Gaza war and the story of Asaad al-Nasasra, a Palestinian Red Crescent paramedic detained by Israeli forces for that number of days.
It’s a furious, high-powered surge of music that features electrifying drumwork, lead-weighted bass-lines, and guitars that viciously churn and also blare like warning sirens. But the vocals might be the song’s most striking feature — not only the words themselves but the ferocious passion behind the performance, and the ranging nature of the rage and torment they manifest. It’s not the kind of growling and screaming you usually find in these columns, but it’s too raw, rugged, and ragged to be called “clean singing”.
However, the song changes. The music sorrowfully softens; the bass heavily grumbles; the guitars glimmer; and vocalist (and guitarist) Peter Sisk softly sings in near-silken tones — though everything ramps up to full throttle again before the end.
The other three songs you can now hear are “Men of the West” (which “stands apart as the lyrical outlier, drawing its horror not from the present but from the deep past”), “Take It Back” (which “follows a woman who supported harsh immigration policies until she finds herself caught in the machinery of immigration enforcement”), and “Shit Breaks” (“a quiet, devastating account of spousal abuse”). (I’m quoting here from press materials we received.)
All three songs are also well worth your time. They first two feature more of those striking vocal performances, more episodes of skull-rattling drumwork and bowel-loosening bass vibrations, and added doses of devastating riffage that urgently throbs, savagely scours, bleakly wails, and painfully screams. The third one (“Shit Breaks“) is indeed a dark and desolate piece of work, and it allows vocalist Sisk to really show his range.
I’ll add that the title track, which closes the album, and lends the record its name, is “in mourning for the children of Gaza and Ukraine”.
P.S. I don’t know why the band chose the name Wealthy Women, because none of the members appear to be women, or wealthy. If I find out I’ll update what I’ve written here.
https://wealthywomen.bandcamp.com/album/children
https://www.facebook.com/wealthywomenband#
THE HU (Mongolia)
In deciding how to end today’s roundup I reflected on the fact that my previous choices included episodes of unsettling darkness or rampant rage. I thought it might be a good idea to end with a bracing gallop, to fire people up for whatever challenges might be confronting them this weekend, and to do that I’ve turned to The Hu.
I guess you could say I got on board The Hu train at its first stop almost eight years ago. With “Yuve Yuve Yu” they drew a lot of attention very quickly, but I still wouldn’t have predicted back then that these Mongols would rise as high and spread themselves as far as they have. I also wouldn’t have predicted all their changes of costume and hair-styles along the way.
I haven’t been hooked by everything they’ve done since that first single in 2018, but the new one that arrived last week did put the hook in me. “Horsemen” is the name of the song. A celebration of ancient Mongol warriors, it arrived with a video in which warriors race, interspersed with film of the band rocking out, while still making use of old folk instruments and throat singing.
To the band’s credit, they also pull back just near the song’s mid-point and deliver a grim breakdown in advance of some fantastic soloing on their bowed instruments.
It’s a fun song, and we can always use some fun, can’t we? (Feel free to yell “HURAI!” right along with The Hu. “Horsemen” is from a new album by The Hu named HUN, which was released yesterday in full via Better Noise Music.
https://thehu.lnk.to/hun
https://www.thehuofficial.com/
https://www.facebook.com/thehuofficial