Islander

WHY DO WE LIKE DISGUSTING MUSIC?

 Mosh Pit  39 Responses »
Feb 142015
 


Photo by Tim Flach

 

About the title of this post: I’m using the term “we” very loosely. A lot of people who visit this site, maybe a majority of you, probably don’t like disgusting music. Heavy and harsh, even angry and savage — yes. But disgusting? Not likely. I’m just as sure that many of you do. I do. But why?

I’ve had that question in my head for a long time, but like most hard questions, I put off focusing on it. What got me thinking about it last night was Durf Talitopia’s review of Primitive Man’s new EP, Home Is Where the Hatred Is, at Brutalitopia. He wrote:

These are four songs that make you feel the need to shower after listening, and then maybe consider just drowning yourself in the bathtub…. Home is Where the Hatred Is will definitely not be for everyone.  It’s uncompromising in its ugliness, relentlessly spewing spite and bitterness from every second of every song…. This is music that has little to no commercial appeal, music that most people would probably turn off halfway through the first track.  In short, it’s music made by a band that believes in it…. I love that Home is Where the Hatred Is exists, and I think it’s one of the most distinct, incredible albums I’ve heard in a long, long time… even if I might not listen to it again for a long, long time.

Durf found the EP’s final song particularly disturbing: “‘A Marriage With Nothingness’ is one of the most uncomfortable songs I’ve ever encountered, to the point where I genuinely don’t know if I ever want to listen to it again.”

I hadn’t heard that song, or anything else on the EP, until reading the review. I listened to “A Marriage With Nothingness” first, and then I started writing this post. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: AWAY (VOIVOD)

 Interviews  2 Responses »
Feb 132015
 

 

(We present Wil Cifer’s interview with Voivod drummer Michel Langevin (Away).)

Here’s an interview I did with one of the most underrated drummers in metal — Away from VoiVod, who I caught up with on the Space and Grind Tour, where they continue to steal the show from Napalm Death.

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Caught the show last night and you guys were amazing, one thing I thought was interesting was that all of the songs except for the new one were from Nothingface” and back, and when I heard Target Earth I thought, “Wow, this is the album that should have come after Nothingface” just from the vibe it had.

Away – We have three sets and songs from Target Earth are on two of them, but we have been debating that, since we are on tour to promote that album. What do you think, should we play more from Target Earth? Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: LEVIATHAN, LYCHGATE, IMPLODES, SVIN, KEEP OF KALESSIN

 Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  8 Responses »
Feb 132015
 

Presented below, for your entertainment and edification, is a collection of songs and videos I discovered this morning. All but one are new. All are recommended. No two of them sound alike.

LEVIATHAN

Within the last couple of days Noisey published an interview of Leviathan’s Jef Whitehead by Drew Millard, preceded by Millard’s thoughts about the subject of the interview (“Whitehead’s a scary guy”). If you want to read that, the link is below. But the main point of attraction to me was an accompanying premiere of a new song from Leviathan’s forthcoming album, Scar Sighted (due for release by Profound Lore on March 3). Below, I’ve included the Soundcloud stream for that, too. Continue reading »

SHORT BUT SWEET: TUSSK — “PAR T. ANIMAL”

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  1 Response »
Feb 132015
 

 

(Andy Synn reviews a new two-song offering by Tussk from Staffordshire, England.)

So last Friday I played my first show of 2015 with Beyond Grace, alongside fellow Nottingham natives The Five Hundred (think a more melodically-inclined Lamb of God) and The Winter Hill Syndicate (melodic/metallic/misanthropic hardcore), and bewhiskered Staffordshire riff-mongers Tussk… and it’s the latter band I’ve come here to talk about today.

Now Tussk don’t claim to be reinventing the wheel in the slightest, and their whiskey-soaked strut and shimmy certainly bears more than a few similarities to the cock-sure chaos of Every Time I Die… but after knocking back a couple of heavy doses of their high-proof, high-voltage riffery, each one accompanied by a chaser of smooth, bluesy swagger, I doubt it will matter to you whether you’ve been down this road before or not… what’s important is who’s doing the driving! Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DECLINE OF THE I — “LE ROUGE, LE VIDE ET LE TORDU”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Feb 122015
 

 

The French band Decline of the I are nearing the release of their second album, a seven-track work entitled Rebellion. We’ve paid close attention to the music as individual tracks have been released for public consumption. Last October we wrote about the first advance track from the album, a song named “Hexenface”, and then covered the premiere of a second one — “Lower Degree of God’s Might” — in mid-January. Now we ourselves have the pleasure of bringing you a third example of what Rebellion holds in store.

The song we’re premiering is “Le rouge, le vide et le tordu” (“The red, the emptiness, the twisted one”), and it is yet another display of the diverse talents of the band’s principal creative force, multi-instrumentalist  A.K., who has also performed in such bands as Vorkreist, Merrimack, and Malhkebre. Continue reading »

GRIND YOUR HEART OUT

 Album Reviews, SHORT BUT SWEET  4 Responses »
Feb 122015
 

 

(Austin Weber brings us a collection of short reviews of grind core albums that have caught his fancy.)

I’m backlogged on metal I want to write about, including a diverse wealth of different-sounding grind bands I feel are worth mentioning. So here is a grind dump of grind bands whose names all coincidentally start with the letter C (except Executive Task Distraction, who have fucked that up). They all happen to kick major ass as well.

Also, watch how many times I say the word “grind”! Since grind is short, sweet, and in your face; the write-ups will be similarly brief. The last two bands give away their albums for free. Freedom is grind, free grind is freedom. Grind yer heart out!

Cave Moth – The Black Lodge

Cave Moth sound like the result of what would happen if you took every crooked and dark element of Gaza and condensed them into a hyper-violent grind format with a bit of mathcore influence and supported by a fuckload of stark dissonance. Continue reading »

SWAMP WITCH: “THE SLITHERING BOG”

 Album Reviews  4 Responses »
Feb 122015
 

(Our guest Grant Skelton reviews the new album by California’s Swamp Witch.)

 

“This miry Slough is such a place as cannot be mended. It is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore it is called the Slough of Despond; for still as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there arises in his soul many fears and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place. And this is the reason of the badness of this ground.”

–John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress

Some metal is made to be immediately infectious. When I began my journey as a metal fan, I would describe my metal collection that way. Immediately infectious, catchy, listener-friendly, accessible. I became a metalcore junkie in high school and that lasted into my early-mid 20s. The older I get, the less time I have to listen to music than I did when I was younger. On the other hand, I find that I have an increasing desire to explore new genres. I want metal that takes me somewhere I’ve never been before. Everyone loves a memorable chorus that gets stuck in their head for days, but sometimes you don’t want just that.

Those of you who read fiction will likely be familiar with the term “suspension of disbelief.” It refers to a writer’s ability to make you forget the line between this world and that of the story you are reading. You forget truth, reality, value judgments, and the like and you plunge right into the narrative. Of course, suspension of disbelief requires some action on the part of you as the reader. But good writing invites you to suspend your disbelief without you even being aware that you’re doing it. You will participate in the story, and not merely read it. You live the events with the characters rather than just observe them. Suspension of disbelief is just as important for the most realistic murder mystery as it is for high fantasy realms of swords and sorcery. And music has something similar. A good album takes you somewhere. It tells a story that involves an introduction, a conflict, a climax, and a resolution. It can make you feel anger, grief, joy, fear, guilt, or longing. And it can do so without forcing those feelings upon you. Continue reading »

NAPALM DEATH: “APEX PREDATOR (EASY MEAT)”

 Album Reviews  5 Responses »
Feb 122015
 

 

(DGR reviews the new album by Napalm Death.)

Our crops had been weak for decades, our village was starving, and we found ourselves on the near brink of ruin. Famine had torn through the whole country, but my village was hit especially hard. We knew that there wasn’t much time left, and despite this being the modern age we had few solutions going for us. We had tried so many on the path to getting ourselves back up on our feet but nothing had worked. We were desperate and starving and we all knew it. Ideas once thought stupid were now grand gestures of genius and we were embracing them all wholeheartedly. If we had honestly thought that painting ourselves blue and pretending to be cat people would’ve worked, we would’ve done it.

Now, we found ourselves turning to a person that we honestly hadn’t thought about or given a second notion to for years. He was a relic of the past, kept alive mostly by fool traditionalists and relatives. Nobody cared to learn his art and so he was to be the last of his kind, yet here we were, three days running now in a smoke-filled tent with a man now in his upper eighties with body paint on, deep in thought and apparently asleep. We had turned to our shaman and were using him in the way that my grandparents would’ve sought knowledge with his father. We were hoping to hear something wise, anything, really, to get ourselves out of the mess of starvation that we were currently in.

Finally, after three days of being so still as to appear petrified were it not for the glistening beads of sweat on his forehead, he began to convulse. My friend jumped forward to help but my father held him back, informing him that this was how it had always gone and were anyone to interrupt him the whole process would have to start anew. And so, we sat and watched a man convulse until finally he opened his eyes and one our own ran out of the tent hollering to the village that he had awoken and was going to speak. Finally, he opened his mouth and uttered a few words of wisdom before closing his eyes and nodding off.

“Napalm Death are an important band” Continue reading »

GET TO THE POINT: A.C. OF THROES

 Interviews, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  2 Responses »
Feb 122015
 

 

(In this latest installment of his “Get To the Point” series, KevinP poses 5 questions to multi-instrumentalist “A.C.” of the UK band Throes, whose debut album Disassociation is coming out March 22nd… and we have a new song to stream as well.)

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K:  Another day, another new band from you.  So what’s this all about?

A:  Throes comes from a turbulent time.  It was originally formed as a full band in 2011 but due to DG’s term of house-arrest we were forced to disband.  There’s not a great deal worth delving into with regards to the history of Throes. In fact, we’d rather leave most of it feigned in mystery.  This is for a variety of reasons but mainly because when you look at the current incarnation of Throes it bares no similarities to its predecessor (i.e., as opposed to being a full band), it is now a two-man outfit with all instrumental and writing duties handled by myself and vocals performed by DG.

 

K:  So musically what were you aiming for on this, as opposed to the plethora of other bands you are involved with?

A:  This has a whole load of electronic influences and definitely takes a much more experimental approach than any other record I have done.  Also, I wrote the material over a fairly short period of time in comparison to what I would normally spend on a record. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD: VOICE OF THE SOUL, IN DREAD RESPONSE, SOUTHERN FRONT, MUSCLE AND MARROW, FALL OF SUMMER 2015

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  3 Responses »
Feb 112015
 

 

I would actually like to review an entire album. Or even an entire EP. And I harbor hopes of finishing the rollout of our Most Infectious Songs list for 2014. But on a daily basis I continue to find new songs that I feel compelled to say something about, and so here we have another round-up of such discoveries.

VOICE OF THE SOUL

I first came across Voice of the Soul four and a half years ago via a MISCELLANY excursion. The band’s vocalist/guitarist Kareem Chehayeb was then based in Kuwait, with other band members spread around other locations in the Middle East. When I reviewed their 2011 EP, Into Oblivion, I found that it represented a large leap forward, or more like a stretching of wings — by a rapidly maturing raptor with big claws that could do some damage, and an even more impressive ability to take flight on the wings of some very memorable melodies. Since then, Kareem Chehayeb and guitarist Monish Shringi relocated to Dubai in the UAE, and recorded the band’s debut album, Catacombs.

Guest writer Gorger reviewed the album for us last October and gave it high marks. But despite his praise and my own history with the band, I stupidly didn’t dive into it. Too many other distractions, I suppose. And then yesterday I watched and listened to the band’s new lyric video for a song from the album named “Defiled”, and holy shit. Continue reading »

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