Khuda - Molasses Constricts The Clinostat (2014)

Khuda play a super honed in take on psychedelic post-rock with elements of math-rock, post-hardcore and shoegaze. It has the atmosphere of Kokomo, the quirky time signatures of Khann, and a more atmospheric, slightly funky take on something Cloudkicker would dredge up with the slightly bleak, yet uplifting elements of Explosions In The Sky.



As per usual, if you would like to listen to it but can afford the price on Bandcamp, email me and I'll get it to you as soon as I can.

Khuda Bandcamp

Bad Energy - Dead Magic EP (2014)

Bad Energy brings the good energy. Dead Magic brings the living magic. Hailing from where cheese steaks are best (Philadelphia, dummy), one can obtain the grittiness you get when you live in the asshole of the United States, surrounded by abandoned heaps of wood that once stood proudly as somebody's home. I guess I'm really describing where chicken wings are made best (Buffalo, idiot). Though Pennsylvania is pretty gritty as well man. Whatever. This EP is good, listen to it and dig it if you are into punk/hardcore.

If you want good punk from Buffalo though, Brown Sugar and Bad People are killing it.

EP is up for "name your price" on bandcamp, which is pretty much the best thing to happen to music since The Mojomatics introduced a harmonica to their music. If you can't afford anything, input 0$ and enjoy sucker!

Dead Magic

Maveth & Embrace of Thorns - A Plague Through The Heavens [split] (2014)

I was initially going to challenge myself by reviewing Noia's new album Obstinate Sacrifice while trying not to talk about how much it sounds like a cleaned up version of Venom playing Nuclear Assault songs or how the lyrics should be swapped out for pseudo-human grunts, belches, growls and farts… But I decided against it because I'm already going to be reviewing Midnight's No Mercy For Mayhem for favorite Icelandic human Birkir and his blog Halifax Collect later this week.

•  •  •

Instead, I give you filth. I give you death. I give to you a split that is actually worth checking out, A Plague Through The Heavens released by Dark Descent Records. Two bands that aren't new to the game, Maveth from Finland and Embrace of Thorns from Greece band together to bludgeon you senseless with their dragged through the muck and fecal decay of the sewers take on black/death metal. I'm sure this is best listened to in the dark, sitting in a pentagram drawn with goats semen but I'm sitting on a park bench withe the sun beaming down on my fucking forehead, and it's still pretty sweet man.

  

A Plague Through The Heavens (Buy + bandcamp)

Wöes // Wölvefröst Split (2014)

Hmm shit… How do I start one of these things again? This split is heavy, you should listen to it.
Nah, that won't do.

Yeah dudes, I know, it's been a really long time since I've updated anything at all, and frankly my fingertip muscles are rusty, which is a major bummer because my inbox has never been more full of new and exciting shit to post up on here for your sorry ass eyes. I wish I had a really sweet excuse as to why I have been so removed from SHOM, like I was kidnapped by a pack of wolves, dragged into the Taiga forest to learn and hunt with the wolf-pack and howl at the moon all while the opening riff to Wolfchant's "A Pagan Storm" appropriately played in the background, but no man the boring truth is due to a broken "e" on my keyboard. I wouldn't lie to you, the "e" letter key on my keyboard stopped working and I just couldn't be asked to fix it right away. Do you know how many letters have the fucking letter "e" in them? Basically every goddamn shit sucking letter in the English language!

Anyway, I have a lot of catching up to do, and I will do just that with this mega bestial, dragged through the shitter, crusty black metal split from Wöes & Wölvefröst. Both bands bring a blistering paced handful of songs to the split. all of them raw, cloaked in noise, and unrelenting, encompassing a simplified punk-like aesthetic to the structure, but still very much black metal with the crust turned way up.

haha check out that opening riff to the Wöes song "Tyrant King", sloppier than a baby eating mashed potatoes, but it is great, because we are stone cold rebels. My favorite track on the split is by Wöes and it is called "Martyr With A Serpents Tongue".  Here is that track;

Full album streaming over at Cvlt Nation!
Preorder it here at Orc Tusk!

Cosmic Wheels - Cosmic Wheels (Full Demo)

Judd Madden - Everything In Waves (2014)

Judd Madden is a person. And, Judd Madden is a one man band. His impressive ant colony like work ethic is made apparent through the discography of the band; 7 full-length albums in the span of 5 years, and all of his releases are available for free download on the bandcamp page, what a gentleman! I bet you he donates to beneficial charities and helps old women cross the street too.

Instrumental sludge/doom at it's center, with some post-rock and THC soaked riffing to bang thy skull to. The guitar tone is washy and hypnotic but remains mega crunchy and those drums sound like fucking hells cannon fodder. Listening to this album makes you want to shotgun beers while riding on a woolly mammoths tusk into a snowstorm. It has cool artwork as well.

Toss a buck or two, or if you're broke enter $0, it is to my understanding that the downloads through the bandcamp page still help support the artist.

Judd Madden bandcamp

Dephosphorus - Ravenous Solemnity (2014)

I don't know about you guys, but I fucking hate flip-flops, skateboarding in the wind, fluctuating weather patterns, weak handshakes, the aftertaste of coffee, people who don't find rape humorous, people that don't listen to Wormrot, timid sneezing, and the parents of those Mormon kids that go door to door on their spare time, fuck all those things and many other things… Fuck those as well.

I like the new Dephosphorus album "Ravenous Solemnity", though. I've seen this album slapped with every genre tag under the sun, black metal, hardcore, crust, sludge, noise, punk, deathened doom, and astrogrind? To hell with all of that. Most importantly, Dephosphorus sound like nobody else, the instrumentation is super tight and dynamic, and it will bang your goddamn skull. Those vocals make me happy.

I'm not sure this album is receiving the laurels and appreciation it deserves from other high-horsed interweb bloggers and "critics", and I'm too lazy to check, but if anyone knew anything, that someone would have this album, and listen to it, and like it, a lot.

It has been out for a few months, so if you don't have it, follow these words down and grab it. Update;  I was asked to take the link down right away, so put your email in the comments if you want it. Sharing tunes among friends can't be illegal.

Dephosphorus (Bandcamp)

Half Goon - TERRORIZER EP (2013)

Listening to TERRORIZER will be your personal reminder that you're fucking 10-ply bud. But don't worry, you can harden that over exfoliated sun sheltered skin just by listening to this album.


Half Goon play an infectious blend of noisy post-punk/hardcore with some other musical shit in there for you to nit-pick at. It's hard not to draw comparisons to acts such as METZ and Pissed Jeans for the almost industrial like noise drone, the gritty and THC soaked biker riffs of The Coltranes and the feral attack of old Ceremony – But Half Goon bring something entirely unique to their sound, a potent energy and a unabashed sense of experimentation.

It's short, spanning only 14 minutes over 7 songs, but it packs enough clenched-fist hate to justify using that repeat button. Stop being soft. I'll tell you what, I wouldn't dare fucking miss these dudes play if they came around to Toronto.

It would be righteous if you picked the EP on the bandcamp for a name your price option, but if you're a truly broke bastard just input an amount of $0.

TERRORIZER EP

Heresiarch - Wælwulf (2014)

Begrimed, soupy bestial death metal from New Zealand. I've been a fan of these Kiwi's since I bought their EP Hammers of Intransigence back in 2011 and have been impatiently waiting for a full-length release ever since, but instead another EP is released to sate my lust for destrvktion…

Also, thanks to New Zealand for Meth Drinker, Ulcerate, Witchrist, Diocletian, and Vassafor.

Wælwulf
Heresiarch Bandcamp (Buy Wælwulf $666 NZD)

Jumalhämärä - Resignaatio (2010) [Guest contribution]

Birkir Fjalar Viðarsson, my main man and the main man behind the impressively updated and super righteous blog Halifax Collect, which I've been invited to collaborate and write for currently and in the past. After all these years, the basterd has finally succumb to my nagging and has imparted us here on SHOM with a post of his own…  BK has been a real pal to me; getting me into sold-out shows in Toronto, getting me on board with The Reykjavík Grapevine people, giving me a place to stay in Iceland, countless reach-arounds and introducing me to some really radical human beings that have humbled me down to ground level.

•  •  •

Words by Birkir Fjalar Viðarsson

It was around two years ago, me and Chris of Severed Heads Open Minds met for the first time… On a stormy day in Iceland, one of the first things we spoke of was Jumalhämärä, as I asked him if he knew the band… He didn't. Most people don't. I then went into an aimless and poorly articulated description of the album's opening track "Ecstasy In Blood - A Ballad." I tried to explain that the song's arrangement didn't make any sense, how the blast beat was a foundation for at least two guitars and a bass, all of whom play the same riff essentially but not aligned and synchronized. Which means, they all harbor the same notes but "start" (for a lack of a better term) at different junctions in the bar of riff they are playing, overlapping each other, yet never negating one another.
It's hard to explain, but this cacophony of chaos, this wall of sound is absolutely beautiful. We're not talking odd time signatures and technicality, but a cascading stream of melancholic aggression. And when the "second part" kicks in and all riffs are played in sensible unison, the power of it all is exhilarating. The song ends in a cathartic mess of yells, yelps and screaming, like in an apocalyptic ritual and there's no stopping this song. Like falling into a never ending abyss. Humongous floor toms plod along in the back like a giant's heart beat. Stunning.

Chris - "Who do they sound like?"
Me - "No one."

Is the following song similar? Not at all. What the hell is going on here? The Neurosis like opening would have you believe you are in a familiar territory (more on that here) but the slide guitar is an omen to be taken seriously: This song will also not behave. But it takes a while for it to go off the beaten track, thus "Storm Is Coming" is probably the song that will not scare anyone away, for the rest of the album is no fast food for the non-adventurous.
The impossibly perfect "Haul" kicks in with its "march onwards" snare drum and twangy guitar. Yes twangy! Something one isn't used to associate with black metal (not that these Fins can be lazily written off as black metal-anything). I had no idea what to expect when I heard this one the first time but when the noise-punk like drumming kicks in topped off with the black metal screaming and those irresistible twangy guitars I was incredible excited. This leads into a semblance of a chorus with howling and yelling men and a haunting single strong guitar melody that hasn't left my thoughts since I heard this album in the winter of 2010. This is magic time. You'll be on the edge of your seat awaiting an explosion, that never happens. Oh the tease! Leave them hanging, I say. Leave the audience salivating for more.

But again, the gears shift in "596" and even more melancholia and wistfulness takes the stage, like being slowly walked to one's death. The tone here befits a funeral. Keyboards, accordion, and a lead that is obviously improvised, so much so that the player performing it is testing frets as he goes, clumsily, but the effect is as charming as it is imperfect. This sounds like a terrible idea but it is not. It is incredibly refreshing and arresting.  Somehow this resonates with me strongly in an age of fix-jobs and perfection. These sort of moments are strewn all over Resignaatio. Another, more composed than earlier, choir enters the fray. I imagine a forsaken flock of men, abandoned in deep mines, awaiting death - longing for it. So yeah, this is music that stimulates the mind. Such a rare thing in metal these days.

The title track conjures more menace and when picked a part, all its movements would fit a more conventional black metal song but in the hands of Jumalhämärä, and this deep into the album, one anticipates something wild, untamed and unhinged around the corner… And that eventually happens in the album's closer "Of Enlightenment and Righteousness: Part II."
This review is nearing a track-by-track analysis. I’ll forgo that. When an album reaches heights and harmony while sounding utterly untamed, archaic, primal, tribal, loud, crashing, frantic and downright insane, you know something special happened.You know, every madman has moments of calm, serenity and beauty. That's Resignaatio for you. It's unique experience that will grow with you and haunt you for a long, long time.
… You're welcome.

  •  •  •

I've had a hell of a time trying to find this album for myself, but I've finally stumbled on a download link for you guys, so listen up. 

Resignaatio