Crypto Order - Destructive Strategies for Sustainable Living (2021)

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An album that at first glance would be way out of left field for Severed Heads Open Minds but upon further inspection into Crypto Order's sonic aggression in the arena of off-kilter industrial electronic and hallucinatory rave songs you could deduce a host of similarities to boundary acts like Gnaw Their Tongues, Daughters, Mamaleek, Jute Gyte, etc.

Much like Death Grips in the sense that there are perceived as well as sighted influences from a cornucopia of bands that revolve around feral energy like Revenge, The Doors, The Microphones, Lightning Bolt, The Jesus Lizard and things that feed off the dark and dismal. You will find much of the same energy on Crypto Order's Destructive Strategies for Sustainable Living.

Listen around on Italy's Democide Products page and those without a "strictly blast beats" mentality will find an arsenal of songs and albums worth your time.

Crypto Order - Destructive Strategies for Sustainable Living (bandcamp)

HIDE - Interior Terror (2021)

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HIDE are a noise based duo from Chicago that are carving their way into the fray with a reeking blend of hypnotic electronic wrapped in a thick wall of pulsating noise which serves to unearth sounds that make the listener feel supremely uncomfortable. Much like how The Body use driving bass and drums to evoke discomfort, HIDE take it in a multitude of different directions that range from the fetid industrial dirge of early Pansonic to the post-punk noise of the perfectly executed Daughters record from 2018. This won't be for everyone, this won't even be for most, but a small amount of you masochistic sycophants will somehow for some reason derive a sick pleasure in the sounds from Interior Terror. I'll listen to anything coming out of the Dais Records library, I guess.

HIDE - Interior Terror (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)

The Body - I Shall Die Here (2014)

Last night I went to sleep listening to The Body's newest release 'I Shall Die Here', which is probably tantamount to watching a snuff film before going to bed. It fucks you up. It fucks your dreams up, and it ruins your sleep as well as the entire day thereafter.

I'm really digging the sounds on this new album though, which the band has said was meant to be wholly experimental. Thought it's not like The Body's catalogue isn't already entirely experimental in nature anyway. 'I Shall Die Here' is still heavy, terrifying, ominous and warped. Instead of The Assembly of Light Choir we've come to know and love throughout The Body discography, the band recruits The Haxan Cloak to contribute on 'I Shall Die Here', resulting in something more industrial, ambient and nearly cinematic in sound. I don't know why, but it fucking works man. I hope The Body and Death Grips collaborate on the next album. Friggin' rights.

Listen to this, the strongest track on the album… Yes, in my opinion.

I Shall Die Here.

Blut Aus Nord - 777: Cosmosophy (2012)

So many new releases, so little time. Behold, this one is fresh off the leaked belt, so you can feel extra scummy for picking it up early. Just fucking kidding, it's guilt free because I say so. Download it, put the music in your ears, if you like it, you have the right to decide on acquiring it from the band if you so choose.

Cosmosophy (LINK REMOVED DUE TO COMPLAINT)