Contaminated / Kutabare Split (2019)

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I've been listening to Contaminated's debut album Final Man more than anything else in the last couple months, and though its release was in 2017 I can't find any reason that I missed it when it came out. I'm remiss. Everything within the wall of cavernous death metal is right where I want it, layers of begrimed tones stacked over a guttural churn that is often a troglodytic bellow cutting through super crunchy guitar tones, bloated and fetid while the drumming ranges from plodding dirges to a mirky standard death metal grooves with cymbals that somehow manage to sound really good cutting through the blanket of mire conjured on this begrimed beast from down under. Up there with my favourite death metal albums right now.

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Contaminated have also released a one-song split with Kutabare this year worth mentioning, even though it's only mere minutes both songs are worth a listen as they both managed to pack unequivocal ferocity into each track, respectively. I'm in.

Contaminated - Final Man (bandcamp)

Contaminated / Kutabare - Split (bandcamp)

Bestia Arcana - Holókauston (2017)

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Holókauston is an album I have been chewing through since it came out; Slowly wading through its musical fat and gristle, letting the innocuous flavours and the potent decadent flourishes rest on my pallet before swallowing. You would be remiss (and wrong) to chalk this album up as black/death metal and just walk away as if this simple categorical summation is adequate. It's not.

It's a raging torrent of death metal at its foundation. A deluge of war-like drums poke and pound nefariously while the whirr of guitars waft around a cavernous atmosphere in a dizzying haze, gaining in traction, increasing in heft, bubbling, frothing, foaming over, spilling over its iron cusp and pouring out onto the earth. Its core tethered to the lilt of black metal, cold and unrelenting. It sounds like communicating beasts, invoking spells and inciting incantations; summoning tremors, hale, lighting, fire and the 17 plagues of babel. Your hope and whimsy left in desiccated heaps of dust and your wellbeing not so well. Malign in your bones and total ennui in your veins.

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The paragraph above is seemingly hyperbolic and self-masturbatory. A lot of words, with little meaning… Yeah maybe, but one thing is certain, Bestia Arcana released one of the better metal albums last year and it went way under everyones radar. Everyone fucked up.

One of the best albums released in 2017, period.

Bestia Arcana - Holókauston (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)

Milk Music - Mystic 100's (2017)

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"And you can smoke a mystic 100 with him..."are the last words that can be heard piercing through the reverb laden downward spiral of the intro song, sounding muddy and discordant as all hell, Coxen's vocals howling on like weird recounts from a bad trip... It's weird that this track flows into the second track 'Twists & Turns & Headtrips' because even through sheer contrast and complimentary juxtaposition it sounds like two different songs from two different albums from two different bands especially when the second song is jerked to start out of a sample of game show clapping... It's really weird and it shouldn't work. But it does. And I like it.

I only bring all that up to point out one thing. I have been almost completely bored with most music lately, in particular new music coming out this year. Continuously listening through Mystic 100's has been a temporary anecdote to my sonic banality. It's one of those rabbit hole listens, where the ending is nowhere close to the start, everything is wonky and your perspective hangs by a thread.

Milk Music are special. Not like special olympics special but unique special. Their musical cloth is woven from many threads; Weaving in late 60's psych rock, post-punk drone, a grimy edge from side alley punk and an undeniable ooze of catchy pop hooks. Sometimes sounding poignant and nostalgic like early Replacements or Royal Headache and non-sensical and punchy like Destruction Unit or early Pissed Jeans.

I don't know what it's all about and I like it.

Mystic 100's (bandcamp)