Skullcrush – Visions of the Firestorm Eclipse

Jul10

Sure to leave you feeling tainted by its visceral scourge of noise, Visions of the Firestorm Eclipse is the debut EP from death metallers Skullcrush, a band we believe hails from Phoenix, Arizona. There is little more we can tell you about the outfit but plenty to share about their four track offering released through Glasgow based metal label Camo Pants Records.

Visions of the Firestorm Eclipse unleashes sounds which more than lives up to the band’s name. Death metal with a foraging element at times of doom to its character, the EP is an invasively corrosive animus of filth laden debilitating sound whether going for the jugular or wearing the psyche down over time. It opens with Spectacle of Suffering, a ruinous ear blasting, senses ravishing onslaught bursting from a sonic dissonance with an invasive groove which swiftly got under the skin. Around it riffs savage and rhythms bludgeon; vocals a dirt clad infestation of malevolence accentuating the decayed enterprise assaulting the listener. Embracing shifts in its attack and venomous contagion, the track is a pestilential treat of an introduction to the band; alone ensuring a want to keep a close ear upon its creators.

The following Mists of Blood quickly backs up the potent start with its own death metal pillaging of the senses. As its predecessor, it too has a swing to its creative antipathy which ebbs and flows in its central lead but never relinquishes its impact as the track’s black heart and toxic air blossoms. As its own sonic dissonances brews and overwhelms, darker and heavier rancor fuels new twists and shades of the gall spewing feud; each bringing open enterprise within the suffocating smog of noise.

Entrails Ablaze similarly yet uniquely springs a spiteful contagion from its voracious loathing, the track a brief but memorable slab of virulent ferocity which is almost punk like in its feral savagery before the, in comparison, epic grudge of Hellwater takes over the infernal trespass. This is where that collusion of death and doom really comes together, the track a bestial malignancy which emerges with a relatively lively stroll to its violation but as the minutes pass slips into a defence sapping lumber consuming the senses and spirit with every increasingly exhausting and despoiling step.

It is fair to say that Visions of the Firestorm Eclipse is an attention grabbing and increasingly impressing first listen to Skullcrush with the potential within its four hostilities as intriguing and exciting as the tracks themselves. It is not for the weak hearted or for those with a nervous disposition, in fact it is a toxicity all should fear but eagerly embrace.

Visions of the Firestorm Eclipse is available now on cassette and as a digital download through Camo Pants Records @ https://camopantsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/visions-of-the-firestorm-eclipse

Pete RingMaster 10/07/2018

Owl – Orion Fenix

Mar28

There are places and experiences you fear engaging in but still feel compelled to immerse in; dark and imposing yet inescapably seductive propositions which lure and ensnare despite their ravenous shadows. Orion Fenix is one of those propositions or rather one which takes you and your imagination into such a shadow thick emotionally dark landscape so beguiling the only real option is to lose yourself in its tenebrific majesty.

Orion Fenix is the new EP from Owl, the solo project of Valborg guitarist/vocalist Christian Kolf. A single track, 22 minutes in length, the song is the creation of instinct and emotion, a piece which Kolf said in regard to its birth, ”There was no big thinking behind it, I just wrote it and that’s it. Let my feelings go.” It is an organic affair with flows over and envelops the senses like a tempest bearing lover; engaging and inflaming the imagination with every new twist and turn. Its epic length is like a slowly revolving kaleidoscope, bringing new emotive scenery and shades of light and shadow in an exploration which never truly repeats any of its fascinating moments or bewitching trespasses.

Emerging from sonic mists with a throaty resonance, immediately there is an alluring invitation from Orion Fenix but one with a portentous edge to its smouldering beauty. Graceful yet with a threat in its tone, the track rises until its tempestuousness sparks a heavy doomy gait. Its corrosive suggestiveness though is instantly tempered by the harmonic tones of Kolf, his voice similarly pure enticement and menace laced melancholy.

That early mellow air is in time a burning pyre of emotional and physical dissonance but just one passage in the journey as ill-boding lines a new relative calm from which melodic charm blossoms within the bleak climate; it in turn evolving into a desolate yet magnetic consumption.

And so the song continues, every minute a fresh suggestion, each turn a harbinger of new instinctive exploration either reassuring or unsettling; usually simultaneously both and always enthralling.

Quite simply Orion Fenix is stunning; invasively glorious and hauntingly torturous. It is also a riveting appetiser for Owl’s forthcoming full-length album Nights In Distortion; an experience which now just cannot come soon enough.

Orion Fenix is available now via Zeitgeister Music.

https://www.facebook.com/owlmetal

Pete RingMaster 28/03/2018

An Evening With Knives – Serrated

Jan30

Photo: The Hills Have Eyes

Yearning to be embroiled in a tempest of raw energy and intensity? Then the debut album from Dutch trio An Evening With Knives is a date you might not want to miss. Offering seven slabs of raw emotion and muscular confrontation, Serrated tantalises as it imposes with a wall of sound cast from post metal/rock and doom/stoner metal infused with plenty more.

Eindhoven hailing An Evening With Knives made their first potent mark with their self-titled debut EP in the summer of 2015, backing it up with an ever growing live reputation taking in stage shares with the likes of Corrosion Of Conformity, Truckfighters, Elder, and Steak Number Eight. Recorded with Pieter Kloos (Dool, Death Alley, Monomyth, The Devil’s Blood, Motorpsycho), Serrated more than hints at the power and edge which you can only assume empowers their live prowess, consuming ears and attention from the first breath of its opener.

Come Undone instantly dangles guitar bred lures before the listener, their predacious air as rich in the lurking rhythms and overall tone of the track’s entrance. The controlled but gnarly growl of Peer van Grunsven’s bass soon prowls the senses, it too as inviting as it is portentous as it instinctively courts the vocal prowess of guitarist Marco Gelissen. He in turn weaves sonic tendrils, melodic often acidic vines which captivate around the invasive beats of Ivo Jonkers. It is mesmeric stuff, the three conjuring a web of emotive suggestion and biting enterprise with essences of psychedelic rock in its doom and stoner nurtured metallic drama.

Equally intense and enticing shadows crowd together in next up Restless, their union slightly claustrophobic around the raw beacon of melodic temptation. In turn, vocals draw their own lines of lures and investigation, rhythms and grooves gaining greater intensity and weight to greet them. Once more there is a predatory feel to the proposal, the track stalking the senses as it lays down some delicious bait lined with addictive hooks within a post rock climate.

Blind Man’s Guess brings a more primal tone with its presence to wrap its own web of sonic teasing as Gelissen roars , he as potently backed by the equally angst loaded tones of van Grunsven. Each third of the band creates a line of invasive seduction, combining them for a rich and fiery trespass as atmospheric as it is ravenous. Tempestuous throughout even in its calmer moments, the track is a nagging treat with riffs and rhythms walking a fine line between poise and rabidity.

Through the melancholic climate and emotive unrest of Hysteria and the contagious commotion of Fade Out, ears and thoughts were again only sparked into instinctive involvement, as too an already keen appetite for the barbed explorations of Serrated. The first of the two did not grab as fiercely as previous tracks or indeed its successor but left an eagerness for more which the second thickly fed with its waves of repetitious riffs, bone snapping rhythms, and overall through its irresistible infernal harassment. The track is superb, barbarous yet punishingly beautiful as it works on body and imagination with relish and creative predation.

The album concludes with firstly Thoughts and Regrets, a song with a similar and as successful template to the previous triumph, and lastly the heavy doom soaked Drowning in Daybreak. The first unleashes an individual ruction of invasive grooves and turbulent enterprise across heavily barbed rhythms while the second toys with the imagination through its instrumental suggestiveness, the piece a melodic squall which just beguiles.

There are moments within Serrated which you may feel you have heard before or certainly invite references to others but from its first to last breath the album is a rousing and heavily impacting individual leaving an urgent want to brave plenty more of An Evening With Knives.

Serrated is available now through Argonauta Records @ http://www.argonautarecords.com/shop/en/music-/236-an-evening-with-knives-serrated-cd.html

http://www.aneveningwithknives.com/ https://www.facebook.com/aneveningwithknives/

Pete RingMaster 30/01/2018

Mammüth – Outlander

Jan18

An epic journey in time at almost an hour and a half and a rich exploit in sound, Outlander the new album from Norwegian rockers Mammüth is one unforgettable proposition already easy to suggest will make regular appearances on end of year best of lists. The band’s sound is a thick and flavoursome not forgetting imposingly heavy invasion of stoner metal and quite addictive within the walls of their striking new album.

Hailing from Drammen, Mammüth emerged in 2007 forged in its members love for stoner, space rock, metal, doom, drone, and hard rock. They are flavours which entangled to make the quintet’s debut album of 2012, Gone with the Wolves, a well-received and praised encounter. Since then the band has honed their writing and sound while breeding open maturity in all aspects, all fuel to the instantly and increasingly impressive Outlander.

Produced by the band and mixed and mastered by Martin Skar at Skar Productions and Norsk Lydstudio, Outlander instantly draws and grips attention with the opening strains of Circling Vultures, its initial wired grooves and senses rapping rhythms nothing less than predacious. With just as hungry riffs in tow, the potent bait only strengthens with the earnest vocals shared by rhythm guitarist Stian Svorkmo and synth player Steffen Overaa. Their union is superb, magnetism in its own right and matched by the rabidly writhing yet controlled sounds around them. Like a fusion of Mastodon, High on Fire, and Down yet not such its and indeed the whole album’s individual character, the track is manna to an appetite for heavy, voracious rock ‘n’ roll and a great tease for what is to come.

The compelling dynamic beats of David Hjellum lead in next up Dead Man’s Trail, a track swiftly as addictive as its predecessor and unveiling a web of varied flavours in its bold trespass. The bass of Stig Johansen growls with almost bestial temptation, its dark lures contrasted but matched in salacious intent by the gripping enterprise of lead guitarist Christian Schei. Drama soaks every twist and turn, accentuating each inventive note and atmospheric breeze blowing across the track’s serpentine landscape whether melodically calm or tempestuously intense.

That mellower air blows through the following Fields of Bones in voice and music though there is always a certain volatility waiting to catch which it does with a dirtier, grouchier eruption. Virulently catchy and manipulatively fascinating, the song is quite superb and if the album collapsed in on itself thereon in, with its two companions, would make Outlander a notable recommendation.

Of course the album does not slip from its heights, Fortuneteller and God Eater just as beguiling as they devour the senses. The first, and one of the candidates for best song, is a relentlessly nagging irritancy on ears, riffs and rhythms alone harassing quick submission for its proposal with vocals again pure raw seduction in the midst of the guitars tenaciously resourceful webbing. Its successor has a more concussive touch tempered by grooves which crawl under the skin with primal desire, again everything offered as predacious as it is irresistible.

Through the early atmospheric suggestiveness of Hadrin’s Wall, a lure which grows more invasive and portentous as the band bears its gladiatorial dexterity, and the even more confrontational, certainly cranky, Heirophant, the real world is an even more distant reality, band and album consuming all attention soon gripped even tighter by the senses enveloping, discord blessed Lightyears. With grooves which worm into the psyche with ease and a tempestuousness that roars upon the senses from within a mercurial sonic cyclone, the song is just majestic yet still eclipsed by the mighty Monstrosity. With waspish grooves swarming the senses from the first second and vocals buffeting ears with their emotive holler, the track soon steals best moment upon Outlander in our ears, its voluminous rock ‘n roll manna.

The album’s title track finds a somewhat moderate attack in comparison to the previous track but as expected with a threat of a brutal eruption at any time. It is a peril which remains lurking around as melodies and harmonies radiate though it does have a say on the growing energy and flurry of the encounter before the extensive creative theatre of Space Ghost unfolds. With an eager lilt towards thrash metal at times across its sinuously textured evocation, preying on body and imagination at every turn and there are plenty across its nine minutes plus, immersion into the song’s crafty tale is easy.

Uncharted Waters completes the exceptional adventure of Outlander, its thick shadows and dark depths as transfixing as the sound as they colour. An array of flavours twisted into a coiled spring, nothing predictable escaping as it tenses and discharges its enterprise, the track is an enthralling finale to one remarkable album to which we can give numerous references to others for certain moments but really only embraces its own uniqueness.

There will be many important propositions across 2018, encounters which will guide its musical direction and Mammüth with Outlander has come up with the first.

Outlander is available now through Negative Vibe Records across most online stores.

https://www.facebook.com/MammuthMetal

Pete RingMaster 18/01/2018

Possessor – The Ripper

Jan16

UK metallers Possessor have been a band fear and lust has equally and simultaneously been spawned for in the face of each release uncaged since they emerged within the death throes of 2013. The band’s doom nurtured, thrash fuelled sound is a crushing and violating experience but one which has enslaved body, imagination, and soul here with its virulent, invasive boogie. The London trio recently released new album The Ripper and we can tell you nothing has changed. Their third album is a cauldron of corrosive riffs and destructive rhythms honed into one of the rawest, insatiable, and thrilling trespasses you are likely to hear across this coming year and beyond.

As much grunge, stoner, and alternative metal as those earlier mentioned hues, Possessor’s sound is pure predatory confrontation often as demonic and lewd as the horror soaked premises it spawns. The band’s 2014 debut album, Electric Hell, was an unpolished gem of an introduction providing “a thrilling ticket to the start of their inevitable ascending ride.” It was a journey which has bruised and abused, gripped and thrilled across the following Stay Dead EP a year later and second full-length Dead By Dawn eighteen or so months on. The last album really thrust the band into new spotlights but it has to be said that all have been rousingly eclipsed and put in their place by the carnal majesty of The Ripper.

Instantly opener Conjure and Possess casts a sonic storm over the senses, its abrasive scouring the warm up and prelude to a ravenous stomp of riffs and rhythms bound in the most lustful of grooves. A temptation to rock the residents of a graveyard into life with the swinging beats of Matthew Radford as arousing as they are destructive, the track roars through ears bearing the raw dirty vocal tones of guitarist Graham Bywater with open devilment. The bass of Tom Fowler is just as devilish, its own grooved swing instinctive incitement in the multi-flavoured onslaught.

The following Guillotine is just as fevered in its attack, maybe more so but unafraid to slip into less intensive examinations of the listener as it conjures its own web of salacious grooves and rapacious enterprise. Bywater’s voice and riffs infest ears but even more so his grooves and sonic espionage manipulates body and appetite already caught by the primal claws of the rhythms.

Fowler’s bass finds an even more carnivorous voice for the following Wet Cemetery, its visceral gurning leading a wash of rasping riffs within which vocals spew causticity. Toxic melodies vein the relative calm which separates the song’s energetic lust, it all leading to moments of nefarious endeavour which itself is sheer magnetism. A mesh of essences which lure references to bands such as High On Fire, Cavalera Conspiracy, Electric Wizard, and Unsane, flavours rising throughout the album, the track emerges unique to Possessor and again a common factor to The Ripper echoed in The Slime immediately after and thereon in. The fourth track hits its crunchy stroll instantly, snarling riffs chewing sinew before grooves send liquor coated tendrils through ears, its varied metallic irritancy swiftly addictive as the psyche is increasingly possessed.

Through the grim viscera of Whitechapel Murders and the scalding tension of Lava, the scorching of the senses and unrestrained pleasure escalates, the first of the two bearing the early Therapy? scent our ears have always found and greedily consumed within the Possessor sound. Every part of the band’s unholy trinity is on the top of their game, a success applying across the whole release but at their hungriest or certainly most fervid here. Its successor is an inferno of threat and intrigue, less equipped with irresistible hooks and addiction sparking grooves than others around it but just as commanding in its escalating incessancy.

Notting Hell opens in a jungle of rhythmic machination, the piece a brief shamanic infestation of devilry setting up the blood strewn quarrel and sonic narcotic that is Hacksaw. The most barbarous exploit on the album, it is a bestial and concentrated blitz on the listener, manna for the beleaguered senses and primal rock ‘n’ roll instincts.

A pause as things take a breath simply marks the insatiable devouring sprung by closing instrumental Earth Shaker. It is a rampage driven by a horde of voracious riffs and fearsome rhythms with grooves and twists just as mercilessly toxic and though it does not quite hit the spot as fully as what came before, the track consumes attention and satisfaction with ease.

There are few bands which truly excite just from news of a new encounter with them but Possessor is among them and will continue to be so with hellish offerings like The Ripper.

The Ripper is available now through Graven Earth Records on cassette, Wicked Lester Records on CD, and digitally @ https://possessor.bandcamp.com/album/the-ripper

https://www.facebook.com/possessorband

Pete RingMaster 10/01/2017

Concrete Lung – Fumes

Dec3

There is no denying we have a major soft spot here for British industrial-doomer Concrete Lung though that pleasurable weakness might be as much from the concussion from listening to thementally devouring, physically punishing sounds spawn as any lustful inclinations. There is something about its dissonance soaked invention and vitriol fuelled imagination which gets under the skin and inflames our own emotive quarrels; a connection which has never been stronger than with the project’s new album Fumes. Like its title might suggest, it is a suffocating severely invasive affair, debilitating and cancerous, and oh so irresistible.

The successor to 2014 leviathan Tolerance & Dependency, the nerve shredding Fumes sees Ed Oxime at his most sonically corrosive and emotively discordant yet but equally at his most destructively virulent to date. In their own ways, each of the seven tracks within the album stalk and hunt down the listener, devouring their light and feeding on their weaknesses but in turn sparking a cathartic release as potent as that you imagine the pair found giving birth to Fumes.

As its predecessors, Fumes does not want to be liked nor does it care the emotional waste its ruinous exploits cause but as opener The Harbinger proves, if it’s kind of raw attrition and toxic sufferance is your masochistic poison the rewards are exhilarating. It rumbles into view, like a distant portentous storm with swift sonic winds to the fore. Its cavernous air soon becomes a senses smothering cloud of mordant noise, industrial death knells clanging as the track nags and niggles its way into the psyche. Equally the vocals lay a caustic glaze on the infernal incursion, the pressure and animosity intense yet infectiously virulent.

Of course there is no respite as Spinning In The Grave prowls in straight after and it too gives no inch as it consumes the senses in sound as vocals and words unleash their antipathy. Equally though, it has its own death dealing swing, heavy rapacious grooves winding rather than swaying around ears but with a contagiousness which cannot help but infest song, vocals, and listener alike. It grinds the defences down, though admittedly a willing submission just waiting to grab the salacious manipulations on offer; they then asphyxiated by the tsunami of sonic jaundice brought by When The Blind Man Sees You. Its lumbering pestilence is equally addictive, preying on thoughts and emotions whilst seducing with its senses scarring funereal swing and though for over seven minutes it crawls over the listener, it just leaves too soon.

Dissension I is just a carnal schism uniting noise and fear in a sonic smog of dissent, softening up already wasted senses further for A Thousand Years to venomously scrutinize and erode layer by layer with its industrial acid before the wounds are further decomposed by the post punk entangled, doom spawned album title track. There is an early Killing Joke hue to the tenebrific skulk of the track’s climate and gait, its compelling echo adding to the sublimely lethal lure of a highly addictive consumption.

Ending on the starkly raw dissolution of, well everything with Dissension II, the perpetual scourge of Fumes is filthily primal, severely uncomfortable, and permanently scarring but one of the most exhilarating violations heard pretty much since Concrete Lung’s last intrusion. The band has become more creatively dangerous and sonically insightful so beware, be brave, and go enjoy.

Fumes is out now through Armalyte Industries; available @ https://concretelung.bandcamp.com/album/fumes

http://www.concretelung.com/ https://www.facebook.com/concrete.lung https://twitter.com/concrete_lung

Pete RingMaster 01/12/2017

Devil Electric – Self Titled

Oct4

Looking for some new dark and heavy rock ‘n’ roll, especially some with flames of lava-esque blues within encroaching doom bred shadows? Then there is a good chance that the debut album from Australian heavy rockers Devil Electric will have the senses buzzing. Offering nine predacious slabs of seventies inspired heavy goodness with a virulent catchiness in its grooves alone, the release declares a new mouth-watering force in town.

Hailing from Melbourne in the midst of 2015, Devil Electric swiftly began honing a potent reputation for their sound and live presence, the latter seeing the quartet play alongside the likes of Truckfighters, The Sword, Kadaver, and Endless Boogie over time. Last year saw the well-received, highly praised release of their first EP, The Gods Below, which saw the band subsequently lured by and signing with German label Kozmik Artifactz for the release of their swiftly gripping self-titled album.

It opens up with Monologue (Where You Once Walked), quickly raising intrigue and appetite for spicy portentous rock ‘n’ roll with its opening prowl. Entangled in juicy grooves and driven by raptorial riffs and rhythms, the track soon steps into a seriously contagious stroll, thumping beats and intrusively pulsating bass lures a bestial temptation and grooves a fiery vining of the senses. In the midst of the instinctive seduction the richly magnetic tones of vocalist Pierina O’Brien roar; her voice another irresistible focal point among so many in the song fair to say.

The starter is glorious, almost reason alone to check out the album but quickly matched by the equally compelling exploits of Shadowman. As quickly as the first grips ears and imagination, its successor swings on them with irresistible dexterity and endeavour, grooves again winding around the appetite as rhythms belligerently unload their intent. Marching through ears with an antagonistically commanding air, the track proceeds to spread fiery fingers, guitarist Christos Athanasias spinning a web of flirtation as the blended trespass of bassist Tom Hulse and drummer Mark Van De Beek court and invade the senses.

The sultry flirtations of Lady Velvet wind their charms around the listener next, O’Brien leading the heated vines of the guitar with her beckoning tones. Alongside her Hulse’s voice makes a potent backing, always understated in the mix but a firm texture which works perfectly with O’ Brien’s. Ultimately the song maybe does not have the same thrust as its predecessors, preferring more of a smouldering attack but it too is created from a tapestry of sonic imagination and rhythmic enticement this time with just a sense of physical rabidity involved.

Acidic Fire similarly has a fire borne climate and siren like call to its body, O’Brien the central protagonist but more than matched by the sonic weaving of Athanasias. In many ways the song crawls over the body and psyche, enjoyably searing the senses before the bestial gait and muscle of Monolith brings its own instrumental sludge thick crawl to bear. After its softening up of defences, the mercurial air of The Dove And The Serpent immerses ears, its climate soaked in danger and seduction as it dances in ears like a sonic equivalent of festivities bred from a mix of venomous isolation a la The Wicker Man and The Witches.

Both The Sacred Machine and Lilith with their individual trespasses keep the rich temptation flowing, the first with its invasive yet bewitching blaze of sound and intensity, the second with its haunting atmosphere and exotic mystique. The latter is an instrument which swiftly has the imagination conjuring whilst seeming to set up the atmosphere of the equally enticing and occasionally salaciously moody Hypnotica. The closing track and the band’s new single, the song is six minutes plus of flaming ambiences, emotive intensity, and sonic webbing; all primed to seduce and enslave the senses and in turn the imagination.

It is a mouth-watering end to a striking at times ear withering but persistently thrilling first full outing with Devil Electric; a band seemingly drawing on the inspirations of bands such as Black Sabbath, Graveyard, The Dead Weather, Jess and the Ancient Ones, and Blood Ceremony but forging their own individual incantations.

The Devil Electric album is available now via Kozmik Artifactz @ https://devilelectric.bandcamp.com/album/devil-electric