Big Black – Lungs [EP]

Lungs is 19-year old Steve Albini playing every instrument except for a drum machine and “sax bleats”1 as Big Black. What would become a household name in noise rock started off pretty rough on this extended-play, with fleshless songs and angular guitar strums against incredibly simple (and nigh-identical) percussion loops. Albini’s voice is extremely reverbed,…

SEPHORA脳バイブス – HOTEL GALANTHUS

Named after the Andorran hotel, spa, and ski resort, HOTEL GALANTHUS bills itself as a “digital compilation of the sounds of confort(sic),” but it’s really just a standard sample curation album of mall muzak and easy-listening jams. That’s not a bad thing when the curator elicits an aesthetic leitmotif with careful presentation and editing; unfortunately,…

Deathspell Omega – Infernal Battles

Deathspell Omega got off to a rocky start with 2000’s Infernal Battles. Dubbed by the issuing label Northern Heritage as the group’s debut full-length, this is really an extended-play/compilation of sorts that is comprised of four tracks recorded for the release and an additional four tracks straight and unaltered off of the group’s Disciples of…

Burzum – Dauði Baldrs

It’s hard being in prison.1 The food is just okay, your roommate might be psychotic, and the guards won’t let you have heavy metal instruments. It’s exactly the predicament in which Varg Vikernes of Burzum found himself while serving a 21-year prison sentence for the murder of Øystein “Euronymous” Aarseth in 1993. Dauði Baldrs2 is…

Icky Boyfriends – Live in San Francisco

The Live in San Francisco series by Castle Face Records features garage rock bands picked and curated by label owner John Dwyer. Contrary to the psychedelic offerings that are the forte of Castle Face, the Live acts are typically loud, fast, and abrasive old school-flavored garage rock with plenty of swearing and irreverency. As of…

Krieg – The Church [EP]

When properly done, raw production adds incredible atmospheric depth. For example, take Ulver’s Nattens madrigal – Aatte hymne til ulven i manden: buzzsaw guitars, screeching vocals, and hollow percussion that create a haunting, coarse masterwork that evokes primitive animus through the imagery of wolves. It would not have nearly the same callous acerbity with “good”…

If These Trees Could Talk – Above the Earth, Below the Sky

Above the Earth, Below the Sky is the debut full-length album by Ohio instrumental metal quintet If These Trees Could Talk. Taking a page from cinematic post-rock groups such as Explosions in the Sky and This Will Destroy You, Above the Earth, Below the Sky is a luscious album of crescendos and soft guitar plucks…

Anaal Nathrakh – Desideratum

Anaal Nathrakh1 are a British band that fuse elements of grindcore, black metal, and industrial metal into a blast-beat-obsessed clusterfuck. Desideratum is their eighth full-length release and first on Metal Blade. Unfortunately, what once sounded fresh and crazy is now safe and stale, and the choice of production relegates Anaal Nathrakh too close to parody…

Pilgrim – II: Void Worship

Traditional doom is a loosely defined sub-subgenre1 of heavy metal that espouses the style of 70s/80s heavy metal bands, most prominently including influence from Black Sabbath, Candlemass, and Saint Vitus. Intelligible vocals play a prominent role as storyteller; singers eschew screams and growls for dramatic clean singing, with subject matter typically including fantasy elements or…

Sunn O))) – The Libations of Samhain

The Libations of Samhain is a live recording of drone metal group Sunn O))) in London on Halloween of 2003. It follows the Earth-esque down-tuned and extremely extended guitar passages often characterized by a single strum that goes on for a minute or longer. This particular performance incorporates some tendencies from White1 such as spoken-word/vocal…

Karen O – Crush Songs

In several circles of independent music criticism, amateurishness and low-fidelity are equated with the concepts of true music and realism. In turn, this has inspired artists to shift from clean, produced sounds in favor of ascetic tendencies.. Low quality is seen as a realistic depiction of artists’ lives and emotions; the term “intimate” is often…

Nunhex – Disruptive Deception

Nunhex’s debut EP Disruptive Deception is not a bad release1 by any stretch of the imagination, but it does have the issue of being nearly unintelligible. When your lyrics are indistinguishable from shouting HOOBA-DOOBA-DOOBA2 over and over, there’s a problem; especially in hardcore punk, as punk rock is – arguably more than any other genre…