Mutilation Rites - Chasm (2018)

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Mutilation Rites newest full-length is real pleasant, in a sort of ugly and decrepit kind of way… It's charms are hidden in the mire, under layers of cold riffs and bastille day like war drums as its ferocious commander coughs out commands and chokes on bile. A two-headed beast of black metal and death metal, a not so uncommon amalgam these days…but hey, peanut butter and chocolate right? (chocolate and mint is wrong)

I'm liking what I've heard off of Chasm so far, I'm sure I could nit-pick but the production is pretty spot on for this ilk, murky. I have listened through Chasm a few times since writing this, each time I have gone back I'm finding another thing to like about it, especially in the wake of those trumpeting icy riffs that sway from galloping to mid-tempo glacial sludge to bang thy brain to and fro.

* It's worth noting Gilead Media has Chasm up on Bandcamp to buy for only $6, that's very, very reasonable and a good halfway point between affordable. It takes money to make a record.

Mutialtion Rites - Chasm (bandcamp)

The Column - Oracle (2018)

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I don't know what to say about this, so I'll leave this post devoid of any significant details or helpful indicators as to whether or not you might actually like this record or not. You will though, but only if you're into low-fi, ambient synth melodies driven underneath post-punk structures... Think Solid Space doing Depeche Mode, doing The Smiths doing drugs and feeling really poorly about it. I just said things that are quasi-relevant so use that at your own risk. Oracle teeters that hairline between bleak and joyful, and sometimes that's how I'll feel and when I do, I'll be listening to this and things like this. Enjoy life kiddos.

The Column - Oracle (bandcamp)

Unified Right - Straight to Hell (2017)

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I don't get too excited over newer hardcore albums these days, knowing that it will probably sound like hardcore and that's an okay thing and I'll continue to listen to the old and the new without much interest in chewing any fat or digging through subtleties and nuances of its sound. It's, generally speaking, relatively straight forward.

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I didn't know Unified Right released a new album in 2017, (again, I was too busy listening to Amenra's "VI") but word finally reached my eyes and ears and played it through like any ol' day. It finished rather quickly (again, hardcore), and once it was done I didn't have a strong opinion one way or another… I mean, I liked it. Forward three or five spins later though, and my opinion of this album was very, very high.

It holds the same structure as most hardcore but it definitely doesn't sound like most umbrella hardcore, likely due to the gruff and off-kilter cadence of Branden's singing -Most comparingly to Ray Cappo of Youth of Today - but there's an array of really cool tom fills, riffs (and solos) and tones floating around this short and devastating heartfelt hardcore album. Incendiary and Unified Right for 2017 maybe?

Too hardcore for smartphone punks. Too punk for clap mosh losers.

Ps; The industry hammer hitting anvil section a minute into 'Consuming Satisfaction' is hard as nails.

Straight to Hell (bandcamp)

Hooded Menace - Ossuarium Silhouettes Unhallowed (2018)

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Hooded Menace huh… let's do it. And by "it" I mean "it", thee it. Let's chew some fat about this monolithic, obese slab of doom/death metal. Let's get down to the bone. Hooded Menace have always  remained a distant blip on my musical radar, and it's weird, because I have liked what I have heard from them, the gamut of their full-lengths, ep's and splits (especially with filthy titans Ilsa), so I'm not sure why I have never really continually gnashed my teeth into their releases, until now, until Ossuarium Silhouettes Unhallowed was released at the beginning of the year, and even though I was (still do) playing Amenra's 'VI' (which was so obviously the best album released in 2017 - I'm currently taking counter-arguments you dinks) I still managed to find time to overplay this new release. Here's a brief and trite incite as to why;

reason 1) It's heavier than a dead dog, reason 2) It's filthier than a pigeon stoop in East Hastings, reason 3) It's produced very well, reason 4) revert back to reasons 1, 2 and 3.

Give this one a few spin cycles, and repent for all your cynicism's.

Ossuarium Silhouettes Unhallowed (bandcamp)