ALBUM REVIEW: Dvvell, "Quiescent"

By: Richard Maw
 
Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 03/06/2022
Label: Transylvanian Recordings

 
“Quiescent” CS//DD track listing:
 
1). Mother
2). Father
3). Son
4). Daughter
 
The Review:

Four tracks. Many minutes. Funeral doom/sludge with synths. Santa Cruz, California?! There must be something very bleak about living in Ca. The crime rate? The threat of earthquake? The relentless good weather?! Certainly, this music is as bleak as it gets. This is thick as tar and just as dark.
 
The four tracks here comprise of “Mother”, “Father”, “Son” and “Daughter”. It is far from a happy family, though. The soundscapes are nightmarish, slow and low. The vocals, when they appear, are shrieked and rasped- the sound of despair. Only one track is much below fifteen minutes, so with a running times north of eighteen minutes for the opener, you know you are in this for the long haul.
 
Of course, there are no hooks or ‘songs’ here per se. This is just a horrible journey through an underground tunnel with minimal to no light. It is as down-tuned as Conan, but that’s where the comparison would end. Dvvell are very much their own thing.
 
If you like your doom with sludge, synths and truly epic playing times, then this is undoubtedly for you. It’s hard to know what else to say here; it’s dark, troubling and relentlessly bleak. If that sounds like something you might enjoy- that word used very loosely, then you are already a fan of this band even if you haven’t heard them as this is very, very good.
 
“Quiescent” is available HERE 

Band info: bandcamp || instagram

ALBUM REVIEW: John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies, "Halloween: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack"

By: John Reppion

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 19/10/2018

Label: EVP Recordings

The Review:

Forty years after his atmospheric, autumnal slasher “Halloween” first arrived on cinema screens, John Carpenter is back, not with a new film (the 2018 “Halloween” having been written and directed by David Gordon Green), but with another of his iconic soundtracks. I say "back" but clearly, just like that ever-babysitter-murdering serial garden-lurker Michael Myers, Carpenter never really went away. His film work has been rightly praised for some time now, but it’s only fairly recently that his music has been widely given the credit it deserves.

Prior to 2018’s “Halloween” soundtrack, the last new (i.e. not remastered or anthologised) film scores Carpenter released were for “Vampires” (1998), and “Ghosts Of Mars” (2001), neither of which had the synth-heavy sound he’s mostly known for. 2015’s “Lost Themes”, and the following year’s “Lost Themes II” – written and recorded with Carpenter’s son Cody, and his godson, ex-Karma To Burn vocalist and guitarist, Daniel Davies – were the first original, non-film albums from Carpenter, and both had that authentic electronic sound most of us associate with the man and his work. The trio started touring together in 2016, performing Carpenter’s film themes alongside their own compositions, and last year released “Anthology: Movie Themes 1974–1998”, featuring their re-recorded versions of pretty much all the Carpenter classics.

It’s this trio of Carpenter, Carpenter, and Davies (son of Kinks guitarist Dave Davies by the way, just in case you find that interesting) who are responsible for the twenty-one tracks on the “Halloween Motion Picture Soundtrack”. So, right from the outset, you can be sure we’re in safe hands. That’s so long as you’re a fan of John Carpenter’s previous musical offerings of course; admittedly there’s not much on offer here if you’re not. If, however, you’re someone like me whose idea of fun is to sit and listen through “Prince of Darkness”, or indeed “Lost Themes”, then I think it’s fairly certain you’re going to enjoy “Halloween”.

Rather than being a reboot or offshoot of the original franchise, the 2018 “Halloween” is a played as a direct sequel to the 1978 film with Jamie Lee Curtis reprising her role as Laurie Strode, the girl Mike Mayers couldn’t kill. Most of the titles on the soundtrack give away a bit more of the plot than we probably should at this point (given that it’s only been on general release for a couple of weeks) so, in the interest of trying not spoil the film for anyone who’s looking forward to it, I won’t go through every single track here.

“Halloween Theme” is a pumped up heart-beat kick-drum driven version of the original, very much in the spirit which Carpenter’s touring trio now perform it. “Laurie’s Theme” has that lovely mix of melancholic, tense, and eerie that Carpenter does so well. This is even more evident in “Prison Montage” which gets near to the Duffer Brothers type synth-wave stuff people now often tend to lump him in with, but it’s much grittier, and heavier than that. As is often the case, elements of the main theme are used as a motif which recurs throughout the soundtrack as a whole. “The Bogyman” is a short, doleful, down-tempo example of this, just like “Ghost Story” is on “The Fog” soundtrack.

There are big distorted stabs, pulse pounding arpeggios, sinister synth strings, terrifying saw-toothed swells, and moody pianos. It is a master-class in electronic horror sound-tracking, and is, in my humble opinion, as good an album as Carpenter has ever put out. “Michael Kills” and “Michael Kills Again” (whose titles I don’t think are giving anything away that we couldn’t have already worked out) are perfect examples of, not just how good a composer and performer Carpenter is, but how he’s managed to move forward and stay fresh and modern sounding, while maintaining his signature style. Often copied but never bettered, if you want the real thing then the new “Halloween” soundtrack is as good as it gets. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some pumpkins to carve. Weirdly though, the knife I had ready seems to have gone missing…

“Halloween: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack” is available here

Info: bandcamp

VIDEO PREMIERE: LLNN deliver "Appeaser", a monolith of monstrous dimensions

Copenhagen's LLNN burst onto the international scene with 2016's critically acclaimed debut album “Loss”.  After a split EP with LA's WOVOKA in the summer of 2017, LLNN now return with their sophomore album, “Deads”, an erosive, abrasive, dystopian, apocalyptic monolith of monstrous dimensions: more compact, yet more complex and organic all at the same time.  Released on the 27^th April 2018 via the celebrated Pelagic Records, today you can check out a brand new video for the track “Appeaser” and the band offer the following insight below. You can preorder here

"We are fascinated by how the human mind tends to interpret random images, or patterns of light and shadows, as creatures and structures.  A psychological phenomenon called “Pareidolia”. And how music and visuals can evoke certain emotions in us and let our imagination unfold into abstract storytelling.

These are the thoughts behind the music video and the album artwork of “Deads” (with photographs by drummer Rasmus G. Sejersen).  The overall album theme of “Deads” is about births and downfalls of civilizations in other worlds throughout the universe.From creation to final decay, the depletion of the host - scenes which inspired the music video. All the footage is filmed mostly with macro lenses to create the extreme close-ups in combination with a few wide shots.  Created in a minimalistic setup in our parents home. (Combined with some heavy Halo Reach 2v2 gaming. Come get some!

LLNN + BISON Live Rituals

22.04.18 NL ROADBURN
23.04.18 DK Copenhagen
25.04.18 NO Oslo
26.04.18 SWE Stockholm
28.04.18 DE Hamburg
29.04.18 NL Utrecht
30.04.18 DE Karlsruhe
01.05.18 DE Wiesbaden
02.05.18 BE Brussels
03.05.18 CH Bulle
04.05.18 CH Porrentruy
05.05.18 F Paris
06.05.18 UK DESERTFEST (London)
08.05.18 CZ Prague
09.05.18 AT Vienna
10.05.18 CR Zagreb
11.05.18 RO Cluj
12.05.18 RO Craiova
13.05.18 RO Bucharest
14.05.18 HU Budapest
15.05.18 PL Krakow
16.05.18 PL Warsaw
18.05.18 DE Kiel
19.05.18 DE Berlin (PELAGIC FEST)

Band info: facebook || bandcamp

Pinkish Black - "Bottom of the Morning" (Album Review)

By: James Harris

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 30/10/2015

Label: Relapse Records

Cinematic without sinking to schlock or gimmick, this is music that does more than carry a tune - it builds a scene, and that scene is enveloped in fog, where steel-wielding Rippers and ephemeral neon futurists stalk and hunt each other all night, every night.

“Bottom of the Morning” CD//DD//LP rack listing:

1. Brown Rainbow

2. Special Dark

3. I’m All Gone

4. Burn My Body

5. Everything Must Go

6. Bottom of the Morning

7. The Master Is Away

Pinkish Black is:

Daron Beck | vocals, keyboards, synthesizers, mellotron

Jon Teague | drums, synthesizers

The Review:

A blood-spattered Ennio Morricone begins writing suicidal soundtracks - multiple-camera-angled Argento-esque odes to the end presided over by a several-years-dead Ian Curtis, and we have started the process of understanding the immensity of what Ft. Worth duo Pinkish Black bring to the altar.  The highly anticipated follow-up to 2013's “Razed to the Ground” takes their Lynchian noir-sludge and puts a funeral-home suit on it, expanding from horror soundtrack to the soundtrack of future horror. The record stalks and sulks, pulses with ghoulish swagger in the vein of Nick Cave's “Murder Ballads” or Goblin's most nightmarish soundtrack work. This band makes heavy with seemingly every ingredient but metal, and “Bottom of the Morning” is as abrasive and ironclad as it is slick, melodic, strange and unusual, it’s horror-villain-sexy.

Vocalist Daron Beck by turn, chants, wails, whines, and howls over tightly organized patterns of barely-secure warbling almost-chaos, nearly-noise courtesy of his and drummer Jon Teague's synthesized contributions. His apocalyptic crooning amplifies the strangeness; the eerie comfort with which PB blur genre boundaries while Teague wonderfully blends the machinic propulsion of industrial metal with a lo-fi jazzy organic vibe, a combination that underscores their whole sound. The band's ability to keep humour amid darkness (attested to in various interviews, not to mention the morbid and unfortunate tale of their origin) seems to be a key component of their ability to transgress so many sonic boundaries and write stunningly beautiful songs even as they "describe how gross and mediocre things are" in the words of Teague. 

The pinnacle of the album, the space-opera gone dirge “Burn my Body” is an intense, nearly soaring, psychedelic view on incredibly harsh and harrowing last-moments, swirling visceral unease seamlessly in with a devastatingly pop sense of melody. At times rendering such elements as krautrock or no-wave through a nearly black metal lense, whilst referencing composers like Badalamenti and John Carpenter or M. Gira. There is something on this record for everyone that likes to be chilled to the bone, from the blackened baroque groove of opener “Brown Rainbow” to the title track's almost sensual creeping from jangly romance to dissonant doom-inflected pomp/stomp. The aura at the end of that tune bleeds over into the album's last track, instrumental “The Master is Away”, with a slowed down lysergic trance-rhythm opening up into a positively uplifting final march. Even when the melody shows depressive teeth, PB continues to defy doom's expectations, pushing further and further into territory as dangerously close to 'majestic' as it is to 'metallic.'

Recorded at the Echo Lab and mastered by legend James Plotkin, the quality of the production and the material bleeds out of this album at every turn, pinkish-black blood that has already twisted several knives into the so-called "identity crisis" of the current metal scene, crossing genres at will, dragging many unwary hesher puritans down dark corridors and blind alleys to be slaughtered by the dulcet tones of this group that openly cop to being more influenced by Popul Vuh or Klaus Schulze than modern extreme metal. Cinematic without sinking to schlock or gimmick, this is music that does more than carry a tune - it builds a scene, and that scene is enveloped in fog, where steel-wielding Rippers and ephemeral neon futurists stalk and hunt each other all night every night. You can catch them in their hometown for a few shows in December, and you can find their old band The Great Old Tyrant's excellent material (that saw a fresh release recently) on their bandcamp now as well.

“Bottom of the Morning” is available here

Band info: bandcamp | facebook

IIVII - "Colony" (Album Review)

By: Mike Wilcox

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 04/09/2015

Label: Consouling Sounds

With an ambient soundscape complimented with well groomed synthesizer sounds, by the albums’s climax you wonder if you’re actually listening to Tangerine Dream. You can so easily get lost in the world and realms created by IIVII, but if you take to it with good intention and an open mind it just might open up a door that you didn’t know was there…

‘Colony’ CD//DD//LP track listing:

1. Signals From Home

2. Colliding Horizons

3. Transmissions Illumine I

4. Transmissions Illumine II

5. Black Galaxy

6. On The Shores Of Markarian 335

7. Shaping Itself From Dust

The Review:

When I came upon the project that is IIVII and their latest release, “Colony”, upon reading the bio posted on bandcamp I was kind of at a loss to what to expect.  It’s established that I can talk about early electronic and all of that but I don’t frequently find that crossing paths with metal.  The solo project of long time Neurot friend and jack of all trades Josh Graham seems to bridge that gap.  Looking at Graham’s previous collaborations with the likes of Tombs and Jarboe among others, and his founding background in Red Sparrowes and Battle of Mice, you know that you can expect some sort of Neurosis family vibe.  It’s that thrum you clicked with when you listened to Drowning Horse but this however is a altogether different beast.

“Signals From Home” starts your journey through the ether, a word that comes to mind constantly when listening to this album.  With an ambient soundscape complimented with well groomed synthesizer sounds, by the song’s climax you wonder if you’re actually listening to Tangerine Dream.  “Colliding Horizons” creates shadows on the sound-space in such a way that I felt like I had dropped acid.  There isn’t really a better way to say that.  Following into the next tracks, “Transmitions Illumine I” through “On the Shores of Markarian 335”, you are taken through an astral journey, the whole time feeling like you are breathing ether…  With elements of Trance and similar electronic styles you are shaped and moulded as you float through the universe that IIVII has created for you.

“Shaping Itself from Dust” takes the album out well, maintaining your trip while slowly dissolving around you until you eventually realize that there is no more track, no more album.  It’s over.  You’re back.  You can so easily get lost in the world and realms created by IIVII, but if you take to it with good intention and an open mind it just might open up a door that you didn’t know was there…

  

‘Colony’ is available here

Band info: official | facebook

Goblin Rebirth - 'Goblin Rebirth' (Album Review)

By: Hunter Young

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 22/06/2015

Label: Relapse Records

If you want something that is out there, entertaining, and from a legendary band, look no further than Goblin Rebirth's self titled debut. Bend your mind, but only to the best of beats with these Italian masters of the reptilian beat!

‘Goblin Rebirth’ CD//DD//LP track listing:

1. Requiem For X
2. Back in 74
3. Book of Skulls
4. Mysterium
5. Evil In The Machine
6. Forest
7. Bolero
8. Rebirth

Goblin Rebirth is

Bass | Fabio Pignatelli
Drums | Agostino Marangolo
Keyboards | Aidan Zammit
Keyboards | Danilo Cherni
Guitars | Giacomo Anselmi

The Review:

Hailing from the golden age of horror cinema soundtracks, Goblin Rebirth rises like a gore soaked phoenix from the on/off again ashes of (Giallo soundtrack legends) Goblin! Soaked in scintillating synth, rocking with raw riffage, and completely jamming with retro vibes, the self titled Goblin Rebirth has it all for those looking for pure musical ecstasy.

Honestly sounding like a homage to themselves, ‘Goblin Rebirth’ is an ode to a time for movies when a sick, memorable soundtrack was almost a physical character in a movie. Like Wes Craven (RIP) and a slew of current projects (Gatekeeper, Oscillotron, Espectrostatic, et al.), they sound as if they made the album for a funk movie ranging from gore, to Giallo, to exploitation, to just damn fun(ky). They are all over the place, befitting a progressive rock band from the 70s, and they are the European instrumental version of Chicago, Yes, or King Crimson, who in themselves are huge band for fans of synth and atmosphere, just saying.

The album plays like a selection of experimental rock from guys who know what the hell they are doing. No part of this is sloppy, or going to leave you wondering why they did this or that; it's a solid offering from a more weird rock place. To really enjoy this, darken the lights, get your favourite repast on a table next to you, some snacks, a good selection of drink, and just jam out! Some of it is a bit slow, like ‘Book of Skulls’, but it resolves itself well, and the playing is top notch. They riff, ramble, jam, and scorch their fret boards in time with your soul, and have no singer to take you out of the experience. ‘Book of Skulls’ is also one of the more movie-esque selections, of which they kind of all are, but you can make up a movie in your mind to certain ones more than others. For a solid pick, musically, ‘Evil in the Machine’ is raucous and jubilant, with sinister tones and a rare spot of digitized vocals to hammer home that circuit that may carry more than just electricity.

If you want something that is out there, entertaining, and from a legendary band, look no further than Goblin Rebirth's self titled debut. Bend your mind, but only to the best of beats with these Italian masters of the reptilian beat!

‘Goblin Rebirth’ is available here

FFO: Zombi, King Crimson, Fabio Frizzi, John Carpenter, Ennio Morricone

Band info: Facebook | Twitter

The Pod - Land Of Bread And Water (Album Review)

Album Type: Album

Date Released: March 8^th 2015

Label: Self Released

Land Of Bread And Water – Track Listing

1.Of Bread and Water 06:11

2.Lifegiver 03:40

3.Folded Eyes 04:00

4.The Alarmist Was Drowning 04:13

5.Premonition II (Scars Can Be Saved) 04:05

6.Work Through Work 05:02

7.And This Is Where We Part Ways (ft. Matt Stevenson) 08:21

Bio

Scott Endres of Sludge/Post-Metallers – MAKE – Ambient/Doom Solo Project

Members

Scott Endres - vocals, guitar, synthesizers, samples, beats

w/

Matt Stevenson - drums, beats, samples

Spencer Lee - bass

Review:

I've featured Scott's solo project – The Pod – a few times and I consider myself a fan of his experimental/drone/ambient/doom/electronica/doom solo project. Some of you may know Scott from Chapel Hill Sludge/Post-Metal band – MAKE. A great band in their own right.

This is The Pod's 8^th release overall. If you're a fan of Jesu, Godflesh and Tribes Of Neurot then The Pod will speak massive volumes to you. As Scott has created an album that leave you in trance from beginning to end as the mood ventures from Ambient based Industrial Synths to the more heavier Drone based Doom Metal variety with bleak vocals to match.

There's no point doing a song by song review as this album should be experienced as one epic song. It's a breathtaking and adventurous work from one of Sludge/Post-Metal's highly talented individuals. The way Scott blends different noises and sounds can be considered an art form as he makes real passionate music to lose yourself in. You can feel the texture and density of the heavy synthesizers that leave you in a bleak state. Scott doesn't play by the rules so some people may find this album very hard to listen. And truth be told it is a very hard album to listen to. If you're a fan of Ambient/Drone albums then you will find much to admire here.

Scott doesn't create music to impress people with. He creates music for the sheer love of it all. He's very highly regarded in his home town and the Sludge Metal scene in general. It's been a while since MAKE released any new material so Scott has focused all his creative energy into The Pod. I'm always glad to hear new music from Scott and I'm a huge fan of his work but I'm hoping we will see new material from MAKE as this album made me remember the heavier riffs that I first encountered Scott's work. But I'm digressing – Fans of John Carpenter soundtracks will get a kick out of this album as well especially on the brilliant last track – And This Is Where We Part Ways – as it has a slight throwback feel to that legendary director's musical output. Or that could be looking far too much into things.

If you want something different to test your resolve with then this album comes highly recommended. It won't be to everyone's tastes but if you have the patience for this then you will richly be rewarded with a stunning musical experience. Check it out as the album is available to buy now on BandCamp Buy Now.

Excellent and Highly Recommended

Words by Steve Howe

For More Information

Facebook | BandCamp | Twitter