Dead Cross- Self Titled

Pic SAWA

As the world seemingly surges rather than drifts into bedlam it is maybe not surprising that a sound is rising to echo it’s chaotic and discord fuelled order. It resonates from the creative union within Dead Cross, a project said to have emerged “out of a series of impractical schemes, fallen-through plans, and last-minute musical experimentation.” Featuring the combined acclaimed talent and creative ingenuity of Dave Lombardo (ex-Slayer, Suicidal Tendencies, Misfits), Mike Patton (Faith No More, Tomahawk, Mr. Bungle, Fantômas….), Justin Pearson (The Locust, Retox), and Michael Crain (Retox, Festival of Dead Deer), Dead Cross has just released their self-titled debut album; a deviously manipulative and skilfully conjured tempest of noise and intent, simply manic manna for the senses and imagination.

There really is no need to provide background to the members of Dead Cross, each individually and within a mass of bands having set down incitements and inspirations so many have fed upon and blossomed their own ventures with. So it is straight to the first breath of the foursome’s first release we go and the initial sonic mist of Seizure and Desist. From its midst surging raw riffs and rampaging rhythms burst, their assault soon joined by the distinctive and ever rapaciously mercurial vocals of Patton. Just as recognisable are the dynamically imaginative and textile swings of Lombardo; his anthemically biting incitement entangled in the sonic rapacity of Crain and the grumbling bestial tones of Pearson’s bass. A senses crumbling assault of hardcore, he track is as multi-flavoured as it is uncompromisingly furious and a hint of the developing web of noise and varied rock ‘n’ roll infesting the punk heart of the release.

The following Idiopathic even further harries and bullies the senses, its rhythms fuelling a barbarous catchiness which spreads to the united vocal attack and raw tone and causticity of the outstanding track. Unpredictability is as rampant as animosity, mischievous craft and fun equally as bold within the senses ravishing, body inciting maelstrom. Every passing second brings a fresh breath of bold and devilish adventure, the track a dancing predator by the time it makes way for the waspish nagging and unrelenting beating of Obedience School. It is glorious stuff, barbarous and harmonically bewitching leaving a tapestry of punk, alternative metal, and gothic rock suggestion.

Shillelagh is simply punk rock yet hardcore unafraid to embrace the spices of other pungent flavours to its infectious animus; the result a venomous contagion which has the body bouncing and appetite drooling before the imagination is enslaved all over again by a riveting cover of the Bauhaus classic Bela Lugosi’s Dead. Infesting it with the kind of energy and boisterousness felt at the Batcave venue back in the day, Dead Cross ensure the shadows and haunting atmosphere of the original are still an invasive temptation; Crain casting veins of melodic acidity which alone beguiles the senses.

The caustic invasion of Divine Filth hits the spot dead centre right after too, Patton and co vocally swinging from imagination’s rafters as the music around them throws itself around like an imaginatively manic dervish, again every passing second bringing new twists and expectations destroying adventure. Grave Slave is equally as tenacious in tone and intent, the Suicidal Tendencies exploits of Lombardo seemingly inspiring the whole of Dead Cross as they funk out with raw intensity and rancorous resourcefulness whilst equally embracing a Melvins meets early Therapy? like friction. It is a highly addictive proposal within an album similarly growing drug like in its temptation.

The persistent creative harassment of The Future Has Been Cancelled matches the lure and entrapment of its predecessor with its own individual and increasingly ravenous quicksand of sound and invention, at one point sinking into a quagmire of heavy seduction before bursting out with its instinctive rabid virulence of energy and sound to head towards the waiting heavy set jaws of Gag Reflex. It too meanders and dashes through a landscape of evolving gaits and twisted manhandling of the listener; each turn increasing its magnetism and our subservience to its manipulation.

The industrially lined shadows of Church of the Motherfuckers brings the album to a mighty conclusion, the track lumbering along with a primal swagger as resonating beauty glistens in its atmosphere. On the ground irritability guides the tempestuous exploits of the track, its climate remaining relatively clam but around a volatile heart which beats with combustibility. Through it all Lombardo springs a rhythmic trap which enslaves body and spirit, his creative mastery the last word in persuasion as the album comes to a thrilling close.

The tag super-group is bound to accompany many references to Dead Cross but ignore them. The band is a real and potent new force in its own right, yes embracing the previous experiences and exploits of its creators but offering something very different and exciting to rival and outshine most hardcore/punk noise exploits around them.

The Dead Cross album is out now via Ipecac Recordings through most stores.

https://www.facebook.com/deadcrossofficial/

Pete RingMaster 08/08/2017

Copyright RingMaster: MyFreeCopyright

Czar – Life Is No Way To Treat An Animal

Finding something which stands out from the crowd let alone presents something truly unique gets harder and harder but Czar and their new album Life Is No Way To Treat An Animal easily tick both boxes. Creating a compelling experimental, bordering on psychotic, brew of sound bred in the raw essences of anything from progressive metal, hardcore, and grind to mathcore, post punk and more, all woven with avant-garde tendencies, the Tacoma, Washington based Czar infest ears and infect the psyche with relish. Certainly it is a challenge not all will take to, yet every intrusive assault, off-kilter trespass found within their album has an instinctive infectiousness which rewards as it devours. Like a mix of Dillinger Escape Plan, Mr. Bungle, and Psyopus, yet as suggested creating its own individual character, sound and indeed Life Is No Way To Treat An Animal is one of those times when you really feel something special is in the making.

The album makes a subdued entrance with the beginning of Owls, etc; electronic throbs and melodic coaxing a minimalistic but potent lure. Soon the enjoyably strained and captivating tones of vocalist Dr. Landon Jared Wonser join in with lively beats and a brooding bassline alongside. The track is still restrained but smouldering greater volatility in its belly. With the funk of Red Hot Chili Peppers and the progressive lilt of The Fall of Troy laced into its Every Time I Die like swing, the song never does explode and only benefits from that teasing of expectations for a thrilling start to the release.

Too Many Yetis quickly follows; its agitated heart and enterprise a caustic invasion as the guitar of Nicholas J. McManus drizzles sonic psychosis upon the rhythmic battering of drummer David Joseph Dorran Jr. and Peter Joseph Ruff’s throbbing bass meandering. Its brief but potent escapade further whets an already awoken appetite before Arachnochondriac casts its unhinged waltz on the senses, guitars a web of irrational melody and bass a roaming grumble as the keys of Christopher Duenas intensely sizzle. It is a frenzied ear twisting affair as magnetic as those before it with its unstable yet skilfully nurtured trespass.

Antelope Mask steps to the fore next, it’s extremely short hunt the perfect appetiser for Beware the Flies, Orestes and its unleashing of a post punk woven landscape littered with cold stabbing riffs, steely grooves, and vocal predation. The eye of its tempest sees keys sharing a classical beauty as harmonies float behind the corrosive squalls of Wonser, the combination as riveting as it is enjoyably testing as it leads ears into the Latin kissed melodic festivity of Vultures Never Eat In Peace. This is a hot bed of unpredictability and cracked emotional turbulence hugged by the toxic sonic craft of guitar and the perpetual imposing enticement of rhythms; drama soaking every twist, sinister deceit each throat spewed syllable.

With a psychedelic lining, The Worm Enters the Moon prowls the listener next, its theatre of sound and imagination sharing attributes found in UK band Japanese Fighting Fish and indeed Dillinger Escape Plan. The open variety of the flavours making up the band’s sound and individual songs is already clear and only reinforced by Canine, No Eyes Just Teeth, spoken word nestling in raw lo-fi sound and straight after the ferocious punk and metal bedlam of Shark Cancer, a track suffocating and igniting the senses simultaneously. Its mordant assault is then matched by that of The Golden Calf, its breath scathing and touch scalding yet equally captivating as it fluidly shifts from venomous pattern to corrosive irritability; and even when the movement is more of a clunky sidestep it works perfectly.

Through the creative surf hued snare of Mister Reindeer and the melodic calm of Domesticated Wolves, ears and imagination are effortlessly reeled in with the rest of the body disturbed into compliance by the predatory jazz infested mania of the exceptional first and the poetic serenade of the second. That track is an oasis in the certifiable invention and nature of the album, a gripping dementia fuelling the crumbling climate and emotional erosion of You Were a Comatose Lion and in turn the jazzily bipolar Wine Hog, both revealing an array of crazed facets to their attention demanding personalities.

So often a nineteen track release is sharing a filler or four along the way but there is no such moment within Life Is No Way To Treat An Animal, the celestially bent x̌ʷiqʷadiʔ provoking grateful reactions while Blind Mice provides a bewitching espionage of twisted enterprise and haunted frenzy with interruptions of dark repose with their successors in Prawn and after that RxABBITS invasively exploring and stretching the psyche respectively. The later of the songs is especially striking with its incendiary fusion of raw and composed sonic belligerence.

Concluded by the minimalistic lure of Taking Roadkill to the Vet, a track warming up to the task of seducing the listener with sonic malignancy through every second of its low key but haunting  electronically spun three minutes,  Life Is No Way To Treat An Animal is a rare gem as creatively murderous as it is formidably tempting. Czar themselves are a fresh breath which you will not have to go searching for; their music and talent will do the hunting.

Life Is No Way To Treat An Animal is out now @ https://czar.bandcamp.com/album/life-is-no-way-to-treat-an-animal

http://czarband.com/   https://www.facebook.com/czartheband

Pete RingMaster 08/02/2017

Copyright RingMaster: MyFreeCopyright

Gloomy Hellium Bath – Sistema Solera

Always partial to some creative bedlam or a seemingly deranged adventure which, no matter how much you think you understand it, never fails to surprise and leave a vacant expression of pleasure on the face, Sistema Solera was destined to spark an eager appetite here for its sonic psychosis. It is easy to predict that the riveting debut album from French trio Gloomy Hellium Bath is not going to be for everyone but if the likes of Pryapisme, Mr Bungle, or 6:33 light the fires, then this unique fusion of industrial, electronic, and metal bred incitement is well worth exploring.

Gloomy Hellium Bath is the union of former guitarist Würm Edgard Chevallier (guitar/machine/samples) and Christophe Denhez (guitar /vocals), the latter no stranger to exciting ears through his work and releases with Nerv, Mur, and Område. Emerging in 2014, the Val d’Oise hailing project, with a line-up completed by bassist Neil, also previously of Würm, takes no prisoners with its infestation of the senses and emotions. Their sound is compelling aural violence and off-kilter enticement spun with black humoured mischief and realism caked antagonism; the result a cacophony of raw and intricate ideas honed into a roaring storm of gripping chaos and as shown by Sistema Solera, deviously captivating.

Fight is first, instantly throwing a melee of voices and fizzing sound at ears before leaping into a psychotic stomp with carnivorous walls, ravenous vocals, and warped electronic flirtation. Imagine Mindless Self Indulgence and Rabbit Junk in a dirty fusion with Young Gods and you get a whiff of the lunacy soaked enterprise, though from its ‘mid-season’ break it returns as another fresh industrial shaped punk of a proposal with the vocal alone insanely bewitching.

It is a great start continuing with Alcoholique Djerk, the track organically evolving from certain aspects of its predecessor to explore an even more industrial metal hued canter quickly working its way into the psyche. Equally it is unafraid to expose raw nerves with caustic eruptions and abrasing animosity, or indeed to throw one or two exotic or incendiary sonic slithers of surprise in to the mix too.

Fuck It swings in next, warm yet fuzzy air and sound coating ears as melodic rock with grunge lined edges colours the song’s sinister intent before hardened and rapacious provocation blends with funk urged enterprise and vocal revelry. Across its body, the track reveals a host of flavours, country rock and jazzy scented essences amongst the metallic turbulence again walling in varied endeavours within the song.

The album’s title track merges haunted and dark natured ambience with atmospheric volatility straight after, its Nine Inch Nails toned electronic grumble drawing in lighter exploits throughout to evocatively spark ears and imagination whilst setting up the tenaciously energetic and dynamic Lady Boy with its steely schizophrenic rock ‘n’ roll carrying elements of Trepalium and We All Die (Laughing) to it.

Across the sonic dissonance of Ouarchhh and the industrial neurosis of Bloody Mary, band and album wrong-foot, ignite, and twist body and thoughts inside and out. The first of the pair has a slight whiff of US band Pere Ubu to it in many ways as essential grooves and hooks lurk and spear an unpredictable landscape of dark intrigue and disorientating aural dementia with emotions to match whilst its successor scythes through and permeates the senses via a debilitating cyber invasion.

A melodic calm of sorts mellows things a degree or two through Fucking Mashine, its emotive and enveloping croon expectantly laced with provocatively disturbed and manipulative additives bringing light and dark, reserved and twisted elements in potent collusion. The track brings another open and striking variation to the album as too the CD version’s closer Dead Rising Horse, a drama of piston driven rhythms and scuzzy temptation aligned to melodic seduction and tempestuous extremes in sound and creative provocation. It is a rousing conclusion to a release which might need time to get fully under the skin but is ultimately very likely to if the kind of warped imagination it holds is the kind of pleasure which gets the senses and passions inflamed.

As suggested for some it might be an adventure too far, but Sistema Solera for the rest of us is as easy to greedily devour treat.

Sistema Solera is out now via Dooweet Records @ https://itunes.apple.com/fm/artist/gloomy-hellium-bath/id1057587349

https://www.facebook.com/gloomyhelliumbath

Pete RingMaster 17/12/2015

Copyright RingMaster: MyFreeCopyright

For more exploration of the independent and promotional services check out http://www.zykotika.com/

Shatner’s Bassoon – The Self-Titled Album Shansa Barsnaan

We have all had a dream which is ripe with randomness so abstract that it somehow makes sense, and that is exactly what it is like listening to The Self-Titled Album Shansa Barsnaan, the new album from Shatner’s Bassoon. Not that our brain cells have yet managed to come to terms with any of its themes, if there are any, or the intent behind its psyche twisting bedlam of creativity, but without doubt we are having the richest fun and enjoyment trying.

Shatner’s Bassoon is a sextet from Leeds taking influences from the likes of Tim Berne, Mr. Bungle, John Zorn, Frank Zappa, and an expansive range of styles and flavours into their warped composing and sound. Equally individual experiences of its members carry a diverse range stemming from European folk, Hindustani music, Brazilian music, straight ahead and free jazz, reggae, metal, contemporary classical, musique concrete and most likely plenty more inspiring spices. 2013 saw the release of their debut album Aquatic Ape Privilege and last year the live EP, The Crowd Grows Mild. Now representing “the summation of the last three years of working since the addition of Joost Hendrickx on drums and electronics”, Shatner’s Bassoon release their second album of unhinged imagination, an encounter from Johhny Richards (Keyboards/Piano), Michael Bardon (Bass/Bongos/Botanical String Quartet), Andrew Lisle (Drums), Oliver Dover (Saxophones/Bass Clarinet), Craig Scott (Guitar), and Hendrickx which puzzles, bemuses, seriously confuses but most of just thrills.

     Bruce Lawn starts the album off and according to the press release sees “Seemingly disparate musical fragments converge into a unified theme as catchy and uncomfortable as gonorrhoea. It dissolves as quickly as it manifests into a visceral aural soup, crashing into an overtly sexual Transylvanian organ punch.” It opens with a handful of lusty seconds of anthemic sax bursts and handclaps before flinging a host of discord kissed sounds made up of melodic and sonic tweaks. Already thoughts are conjuring a picnic in a thirties freak show, an abundance of off-kilter beauty providing an embrace of joy with sorrowful undertones. As with every track, and no matter the hints given by the band musically and in word, each listen sends the imagination down a new avenue of lively and shadowed adventure, though ones maybe not quite as disturbed or avant-garde as the ideas in the minds bringing the piece to ears. Band and song continue to ‘meander’ and spin new detours, a few of them Essential Logic like, as it drifts into an increasingly sinister haunting; coming out the other side with aural face paint smudged and mental coherence askew.

Bruce Lawn II: Arms like a Mirage comes next; the song’s initial elegantly chilled breath a surreal reflection of its predecessor’s final dark throes whilst spinning slowly deeper into its own turbulent intrigue of sound and barely masked insanity. It all leads to a bordering on bestial climax which is almost 6:33 like in its concussive collision of jazz, rock, and whatever else lies within its tapestry of aggression.

Like that initial spattering of water as rain clouds open is how Fringe in my eyes, Thighs in disguise sheds its mosaic of incompatible yet united sound next, each note from the song sheet a jazz bred splatter marking its territory; yes warped sounds seem to breed warped ideas, in us anyway.

Percussion and rhythms provide a skittish but fluent dance to set Mushroom/Fancy a Waltz away; bulging blobs of sax and clarinet flirting with the spicy strings of the guitar soon after before things get a little psychotically hairy in something best described by the band itself as “a machine gun spluttered duet finally melting into a refreshingly resolute meditation.” To be honest whatever we write or they say is a scratch upon the strange and spellbinding tapestry at work throughout the album and its individual exploits of tangling sound and ingenuity.

Ten seconds of innocence coated sax gaiety is all Mitch Fargone’s walk to school offers before Advocates of Anti-Funk pulsates and shimmers in a kaleidoscope of melodic and brassy sunspots, all wanting to share their swinging hips before eventually colluding in a dark carnival-esque seducing. Rip Rig & Panic meets Mr Bungle might be a good way to describe it…actually not really as again Shatner’s Bassoon cast only their own uniqueness over ears.

The dark enchantment of Boat Comforts moves in like sea fog, creaking boards and melancholic siren sent calls mesmerising and tantalising the senses. Every passing second brings darker and stranger nautical essences, the piece toying with the imagination like a Jules Verne on LSD written adventure complete with a bare boned and crazed shanty. Cardiacs come to mind the more the song spills its insanity and rum brewed frenzy before Boat Comforts Part II: Goat Conference / The Real Shim Lady unveils its own sonic choral of loco spawned textures and cracked rhythmic incitement. Like the unbridled discordance of eighties band Stump infesting the psyche and the creative prowess of a composer to a silent movie, the track goes from low key musical disorder to sinew swung hysteria and back again into deep melancholy.

Next comes DMT AABA which is like a nursery room found in American Horror Story, it in turn followed by the even more thickly haunting of The Ballad of Long Egg, a track which for whatever reason sparked thoughts of films like Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and The Tenant. Closing eyes whilst listening to the track ensures it is an atmospheric noir scare, its textual narrative high suggestion even if the results brewed mentally do or do not match the band’s intent.

Inspector Fargone is another passing swoosh of temptation, its twenty odd seconds like a spaced-out Jacques Tati moment whilst the brilliant Boghead (WaspSpeed) is a fevered uproar of energy through a palette of eccentric funky sounds and demented brass grimaces and eruptions, all coming together like a Dali sculpted painting by numbers, though of course there is no recognisable order or structure to the blaze of premeditated and free form ingenuity.

The album is brought to a close by an enveloping lure of sound which again can only be described as haunting. Will you be my Friend? draws in vocals for the first time, their harmonies as left field and fascinating as the sounds hugging their presence, and wonderfully as musically heretical as the gentle cacophony creating one enthralling and exhaustingly bewitching album.

When you listen to The Self-Titled Album Shansa Barsnaan you will have a totally different view and response to its songs, that is a given such its diversity and unfathomable genius but most will agree that for appetites of humour loaded music with an insanity as broad as the imagination and wealth of flavours in its creation, Shatner’s Bassoon have provided one feverish treat.

The Self-Titled Album Shansa Barsnaan is available via Wasp Millionaire Records from September 24^th.

Pete Ringmaster 23/09/2015

Copyright RingMaster: MyFreeCopyright

For more exploration of the independent and promotional services check out http://www.zykotika.com/

Nekrogoblikon – Heavy Meta

 

For all those acquainted with and new to Nekrogoblikon and their self-tagged “goblin metal” sound, time to embrace one of the most enjoyable and impressive metal albums of the year so far. You might initially snigger at the band’s goblin themed presence and invention, and you will giggle with the band’s lyrical rascality and self-referential mischief, but ultimately you will come away from one exhaustingly inventive and exhilarating new album basking in metal at its stirring best; you might also just want to be a goblin yourself.

Hailing from Los Angeles, Nekrogoblikon formed in 2006 releasing debut album Goblin Island the following year. At this point the band was just the founding duo of Nicholas Von Doom and Tim Lyakhovetskiy. The line-up subsequently expanded as their sound began evolving as shown by second full-length Stench in 2011; becoming even more openly diverse and exploratory in third album Power two years later. The raw black and death seeded sounds which primarily fuelled their first release, were soon part of a maelstrom of rabid flavours and styles from electronic to folk, symphonic to experimental metal, all colluding to seduce ears and imaginations. The evolution has continued and is now in full blaze with Heavy Meta, the band’s new savaging of the senses. It is a fascinating and irresistible tempest; simply a devouring proposition of flirtatious menace and bewitching voracity.

From opener The End of Infinity, band and album has attention gripped and appetite licking its greedy lips. The song’s initial stride through ears has an electro air to its contagious swing and as it expels further ingenuity and imagination, thoughts of bands like 6:33 and Destrage give a nudge. Keys and hooks only add to the virulent web being cast, the great weaselly vocals of Scorpion almost dancing on the strands of their tempting. A brilliant start only explodes into a greater escapade as guitars cast a melodic weave with tangy hooks and grooves whilst rhythms stalk that enticing with lustful intent. The devilish nature of melodies and enterprise has an additional feel of French band Pryapisme to it, and quite simply everything combined creates aural addiction, an intimidating and fanatically unpredictable shuffle impossible for feet, neck muscles, and the imagination to resist.

The passions are ignited just as potently too, finding further lust as the following We’ve Had Enough with its opening saunter of evocative keys swings in with drama and rampant devilment. Riffs and grooves are soon driving infectiously through ears, vocals spilling the narrative with salacious intent as clean harmonies court ears in the background. The diversity of emerging sound is matched by the great variety of vocals, every second and twist of the song as unpredictable as they are a fluid persuasion. Like a temptress ruffling the love sacks whilst stealing the gold, the track is a salacious temptation leaving ears and emotions on a high ready for the quick step and tenacious revelry of Bring Us More. Jazzy keys, pop bred harmonies, and funk kissed energy are all sucked into the fiery climate of the song’s rabid creativity, once more the likes of 6:33 coming to mind alongside hints of Trepalium and Mr Bungle whilst devouring the unique goblin sound.

Snax & Violence is a more predatory proposal, its blackened heart and melodic death metal voracity a ravishing of the senses. The song though is unafraid to infuse guitar and keys bred beauty into its climatic tempest, adding folkish hues to its grooving simultaneously. It is an enthralling stalking of ears soon outshone by the outstanding Atlantis. The band’s latest single exposes its rhythmic muscle and tenacity straight away, lacing it with scythes of sonic bait as vocal squalls and synth spawned teasing bring their individual persuasions to the rebellious landscape of the song. Like a death infused version of Hardcore Anal Hydrogen, the track is a puppeteer to body and soul, pulling the strings of pleasure before making way for the equally thrilling We Need A Gimmick. Think of a style of music and it is most likely infused into the bedlamic but flowing emprise of a song with something for everyone within and outside metal.

Full Body Xplosion is as grouchy as a ravenous bear and as rhythmically skittish as a dog in heat. Riffs and vocals are similarly fuelled across the volatile storm of invention whilst hooks and grooves offer magnetic toxicity and the keys intrusive seduction. The growl of the bass we will leave for your discovery and nightmares as another pinnacle in the lofty plateau of the album moves over for the raucous anthem that is Let’s Get Fucked. Featuring Andrew WK, it is as riotous as you might suspect and more merciful than you might imagine, with its guest the welcome and Scorpion the venom. Without rivalling its predecessors, the track still has the real world a distant memory in its company and energies ready to take on the caustic and sultry saunter of Mood Swings. Musically the track lives up to its title, each twist bringing a fierce fondling or flirty soliciting of the imagination, everything fully agitated and hungrily unpredictable.

The song Nekrogoblikon brings Heavy Meta to a glorious end; its cantankerous stomp an alchemy of relentlessly catchy rock pop exploits aligned to ferocious hostility. It is a torrent of vivacious turmoil and creative diablerie, just as the album itself. Heavy Meta is easily one of our favourite offerings this year so far and a major incitement for the metal scene, demanding and deserving the fullest attention in return. Now where do you get goblin masks…

Heavy Meta is available via Mystery Box now on CD and vinyl @ http://www.districtlines.com/nekrogoblikon and digitally @ http://bit.ly/1JycbMS

http://www.facebook.com/nekrogoblikon

RingMaster 03/06/2013

Copyright RingMaster: MyFreeCopyright

Listen to the best independent music and artists on The RingMaster Review Radio Show and The Bone Orchard on Reputation Radio @ http://www.reputationradio.net

Native Construct – Quiet World

If Quiet World is the kind of thing the members of Native Construct come up with whilst heavily involved with their college studies, then their future not only looks rosy but the music scene is destined to some real greatness ahead. The band’s debut album is a fascinating end enthralling adventure entwined in more styles and flavours than London Fashion Week and an imagination which simply bewitches that of the listener. It is not without a few flaws yet for an introduction to the band and their creativity, a ‘wow’ is in order.

Native Construct consists of vocalist Robert Edens, bassist Max Harchik, and guitarist Myles Yang, three music students who came together creatively in 2011 whilst at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Using the composition and arranging skills learnt in their studies, as well as the technical craft and inbred inventive talent of the band members, the trio began drawing on a torrent of genres from progressive and classical rock to heavier technical incitements, as well as musical theatre, jazz and plenty more. Between 2011 and 2013, Native Construct set to work writing and recording what was to become Quiet World, predominantly self-producing the concept release, whilst continuing their studies. It came to the attention of Brian Slagel at Metal Blade Records at some subsequent point, and as their press releases says “What began as jam sessions simply for fun eventually turned into a full-fledged musical endeavor.” The band was signed to the label and the album, with its vocals being recorded with Jamie King at The Basement Studios in North Carolina, is now out there to surely stir up a worldwide appetite for this potential drenched band.

   Quiet World brings a tale, to simplify it, of a mute and slightly unstable man who has an unreciprocated love for a girl which leads to obsession and eventual resentment. He also creates for himself a new, fantastic world where there are no oddballs or outcasts, which is where the album comes in. It is an eventful lyrical exploration more than matched by the musical adventure around it, and started with Mute. From an isolated climate with random sonic textures flying round the senses, the song bursts into theatrical and orchestral life. Strings and melodies spin an immediately potent and cinematic landscape of sound and emotion whilst the ravenous drum work is an uncompromising tempering of the fiery beauty. It is an invigorating start coated in elegance and menace, keys and guitars duelling with rhythms for voice whilst equally sharing the spotlight, whilst the vocals of Edens roar and serenade across the magnetic proposal. Relaxing into an avant-garde/jazz lit calm coloured by a seducing of piano and infectious harmonies, thoughts of bands like 6:33 and Pryapisme come to mind, and even more so as volatile and tenacious elements add their erratic and compelling presence to the mix. There are moments which for personal tastes do not quite hit the same sweet spots as others, but constantly evolving and unpredictable with that cinematic orchestral temptation returning in full persuasion, the song is intoxicating drama.

Following song, The Spark of the Archon, opens with an eighties bred synth pop shuffle, keys and percussion a smiling lure before riffs and grooves bring a rawer edge to the entrance. Once in full pop rock flow though, the song has a strong coincidental whiff of UK band 12 Stone Toddler to it with a Mike Patton/Mr Bungle touch too. Music and vocals again bring fluid scenery of unexpected detours and wrong-footing escapades whilst crafting an immersive and easy to greedily devour proposition. Lyrically at this point the protagonist’s new world sees the rise of Archon who leads an uprising in this new land against opposing character Sinister Silence.

The proceeding tracks bring for the main, different episodes in their enduring struggle, Passage next stealing attention and imagination with its stroking embrace of shadowed kissed strings around equally evocative guitars. Sultry and exotic, intimidating and melancholic, the track as those before has a perpetual shifting in its tone and sound, though it is more stable in its progressive flight and controlled in the additional additives of textures and styles seducing the imagination. In saying that the pent up creative bedlam which marked the previous tracks has to go somewhere, and like an itch which has to be scratched it bursts out through gypsy folk breezes and technical metal roars, to name just two of the delicious strains of the almost psychotic enterprise released.

Your Familiar Face also has a calmer interior within its walls, emerging as the most restrained of all songs upon Quiet World but unafraid to throw an unexpected twist and wink of creative mischief into its theatre of sound. It is a captivating caress on the senses but it has to be said by its end ears were hankering for that warped ingenuity, which is swiftly fed again by Come Hell or High Water. Sombre strings play with and incite body and mind right away, though behind their sombre face there is a twinkle which is taken up by rhythms and the swiftly joining vocals. Like a stage show song, it grows in stature and emotional drama, becoming a hearty bellow and in turn a snarling vociferous provocation, especially vocally. Of course by now expectations are redundant, the song ebbing and flowing in all aspects and extremes whilst conjuring new unpredictable and riveting antics.

The album is completed by firstly Chromatic Lights, a short instrumental detour within a raw ambience, which leads into the closing Chromatic Aberration, an epic twelve minute plus psychotic tapestry of emotion and unbridled creative mayhem. It is a chaos which is as perfectly shaped as it is emotionally deranged; every groove, melody, and rhythmic trespass a coherent and engrossing incitement in a cinematic flight across tempestuous and constantly changing emotional climates. The track is a dynamic and scintillating adventure all on its own, a mouth-watering musical emprise which combined with the rest of Quiet World simply leaves ears and emotions smiling.

We mentioned the album is not without issues but to be honest the more you listen and delve into Quiet World they are hardly of relevance, except to ensure that the band’s next offering when they have no other distractions, is an already highly anticipated proposition.

Quiet World is available now on Metal Blade Records via http://www.metalblade.com/nativeconstruct/

https://www.facebook.com/NativeConstruct

RingMaster 23/04/2015

Copyright RingMaster: MyFreeCopyright

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6:33 – Deadly Scenes

Entwining an extensive mix of styles and psyche exploring sounds is a carnival of fun in the hands of the most inventive and accomplished bands but loaded with the uniquely flavoursome imagination that is 6:33, that bold daring becomes pure musical alchemy. The French avant-garde metallers had us hooked with their Giggles, Garlands & Gallows EP of 2012, an introduction to our subsequently feverish ears backed up a year later by their formidable second album The Stench from the Swelling (A True Story), both featuring CinC/Carnival In Coal/ We All Die (Laughing) vocalist Arno Strobl. Now the Paris quintet have turned up the lust with new album Deadly Scenes, a tempest of invention and sheer aural ingenuity which sees the band at its loftiest pinnacle of creativity yet and surely the most exciting incitement in music today.

The Kaotoxin Records released stomp consists of nine tracks romping down dark avenues of psyche igniting drama and heavy, almost vaudeville like creative emprises. It dives into ravenous shadows, through blood strewn scenery, and across the darkest corners of mind and soul, leaving smiles and bruises as a token of its salacious esteem. Like an anarchic tempest of sound grown from the creative sap of Faith No more, Pryapisme, Polkadot Cadaver, and Mr Bungle, the perfectly formed and fluidly sculpted Deadly Scenes is a tapestry of intrigue and unpredictability casting unbridled pleasure. It carries a lyrical derangement and musical maelstrom across every one of its truly individual offerings, each sublimely and voraciously igniting every cell of those drawn into its inventive hex.

The album starts it’s ridiculously compelling spell with the ‘gospel’ of Hellalujah, certainly it starts that way with a richly resounding choir announcing “Lord Jesus!” It is a great wrong-footing coaxing, even for 6:33, which is soon opening up its invention through a building crescendo of flavours which unite in a sturdy footed stride. It is a bedlamic revelry of sound with a show tune essence to its invention, but as is the norm for the band a mere moment in the travel of a song. Bursting into a ruggedly flirtatious and body swerving blaze of swing and melodic rioting, the song is afire with hooks and metallic lures, all courted by the drama of the keys and the show-pop tenacity of voices and similarly inflamed sound.

Ego fandango comes in next, soaring keys and preacher bred samples the bed for the subsequent muscular and antagonistic stroll of the song. In many ways a Mike Patton essence is never far from the band’s music, here helping flavour the rampant vocal and inventive swagger flirting with an Oingo Boingo like vivacity and enterprise. Female vocals, as in the first song, provide a magnetic companion to the ever striking and gripping delivery of Rorschach whilst spices of Queen and Five Star Prison Cell bring further strains of sonic colour to the ever evolving terrain of the brilliant encounter.

A tribal and shamanic rhythmic canvas provides the landscape for the following brilliance of The walking fed, its hypnotic bait a constant persuasion as a low key Yello like electro and vocal beckoning lures ears into a sinister weave of progressive metal and funk infused exploration. The dark bass conjuring of S.A.D. works masterfully with the beats to cage the fiery endeavour within their walls but leaves his strongest most potent tempting for the closing stretch of the song where he unveils an addictive steely web as medicine man chants dance with the keys.

The furious intensity of I’m a nerd escapes another choral welcome straight after, its hellacious rage of metal an imposing roar before everything moves into a country kissed pop ramble with 12 Stone Toddler like pop ingenuity and Kontrust spiced mischief. To be honest as with every song, words can only give a hint of the depth and invention of the superbly blended flavours and ideas escaping the heart of the sonic incitement, and even listening in person, further twists only reveal their lures over numerous plays.

Through the theatrical noir of Modus operandi and the psychotic stalking of Black widow, 6:33 continue to paint new provocative pictures of musical drama and virulence, the first a kaleidoscope of again Faith No More ferocity with the worldly rock essences of Les Negresses Vertes, but as expected honed into something mouth-watering and unique to the band. Its successor is a furnace of creative and rhythmic fury sculpted into a virulent dance of sonic mayhem and deliciously cultured harmonic beauty; a Mr Bungle meets Toumaï seduction for want of a better clue. Their brilliance and exhaustive presence is followed by the gentle acoustic caress of Last bullet for a gold rattle, a country seeded night around a crackling campfire evolving into a melodic shuffle of Cajun/Latin sultriness.

The smouldering Lazy boy croons and bawls impressively over the senses next, it’s raging fury and warm lingering seductions a battlefield of gripping unpredictability. The song is as contagious and as vicious as any song you are likely to hear this year, but there will few which fuse the extremes as imperiously as this. Its sensational bellow brings the listener to the epic title track. Deadly scenes has a theatre all of its own as it narrates, soundtracks, and relishes a clutch of dark tales and spoiled souls. Atmospherically pungent and musically deranged, the track as the album blows ears and imagination away, leaving the passions exultant. Imagine every sound and musical spice you would wish in a soundtrack to your day and it will probably be in the enthralling and feet manipulating track.

     Deadly Scenes is another stunning triumph from 6:33. With every release we ask how they will top their new pinnacle but they do as evidenced by this front runner for most exhilarating if not important releases in 2015.

6:33 Deadly Scenes is available via Kaotoxin Records from 12^th January as a limited edition (1,000 copies) DigiSleeve, bundled with a free 26-track label sampler, a special cassette version limited to 100 copies @ http://www.kaotoxin.com/product-category/kaotoxin-releases/ and digitally @ http://listen.kaotoxin.com/album/deadly-scenes

http://www.633theband.com/

https://www.facebook.com/6h33official

RingMaster 12/01/2015

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