Meth Drinker / Moloch split LP

Alongside Denmark's Bottom Feeder, Italy's Grime, Massachusetts' Plague Survivors, the UK's own Moloch and New Zealand's Meth Drinker, the term sludge is being reclaimed by a clutch of young bands to epitomise hateful howls, squalling feedback and corrosive distortion at torturous tempo, as opposed to it being applied to any vaguely slow heavy music, or seemingly automatically applied to any band from Georgia.

This is a development I welcome wholeheartedly, and I'm glad to see two of the finest exponents of The New Wave of Worldwide Sludge Metal sharing a split. I've had the great misfortune to witness both of these bands live shows, and left both sets feeling like I'd been held down and had rusted nails slowly forced into my aural cavities. I should probably mention I regard that as a good thing.

Available through Feast Of Tentacles here:
http://feastoftentacles.bigcartel.com/product/moloch-meth-drinker-split-lp-preorder

Read my full review at The Sleeping Shaman...

Ramesses - Misanthropic Alchemy DLP

When Ramesses announced their split in January this year, I was pretty gutted, but not especially surprised. Guitarist Tim Bagshaw had moved to New York, and was playing in Serpentine Path with the guys from Unearthly Trance (with whom Ramesses released a split in 2009), and there were rumours going around that drummer Mark Greening was back behind the kit with Electric Wizard. The split was inevitable.

Criminally underrated during their decayed decade together, Ramesses were one of my all-time favourite bands, as well as simply one of the best heavy British bands, and it's only fitting that their horrifying legacy be preserved. The label started by the band, Ritual Productions, have reissued the band's debut album Misanthropic Alchemy as a kind of epitaph, and after trying to get hold of a vinyl copy for ages now, I snapped one up as soon as they were available.

I never managed to snag a copy of the original vinyl release so I don't have much basis for comparison, but it can't have been as perfectly packaged as this repress. The intricate print on silver mirror board is glorious, though this being a double LP it struck me as odd they wouldn't go for a gatefold sleeve, but its still a thing of twisted beauty.

'Ramesses Part 1' opens the record at an uncharacteristically fast tempo, the clatter and clang of Mark Greening's poor abused drumkit driving the whole corroded cacophony along at deathly speed. Adam Richardson's serrated rasp of a voice spits only the necromantic call "Arise legions... Destroy Enemy..." before the summoning is complete and the tempo drops you into 'Ramesses Part 3'.

Slowly uncoiling riffs emerge from the suffocating murk, unfurling themselves insidiously from the speakers. Cries of "Holding out to die" are sung in a startlingly clear voice, contrasting with the usual vocal style employed that erupts forth like molten hate. Around two thirds of the way through the track it switches down a gear, taking on an elegiac, sombre tone. The lamenting wails sound like some damned maddening choir. The music burns out and smoulders in warm feedback before the needle scrapes its last. Damn it's great to finally hear this album on vinyl.

Side B opens with the dirge-like 'Lords Misrule', a draining, dragging track that picks up pace as it progresses. Ramesses lay bare their mission statement in this track, with a putrid growl of "doomed to death". When this album was released, very few bands were forging together the various metals found in Misanthropic Alchemy. With the recent resurgence in death-doom, and almost every subgenre seeming to merit the prefix 'blackened', maybe people have forgotten just how much Ramesses were digging the graves of Winter and Autopsy at a time when very few were. Of course now both of those bands have been resurrected, but even as recently as 2007, there weren't many ploughing the same corpse-bloated furrow as Ramesses.

I'm getting a little off topic, but I can't state enough just how vital this band were to me personally. They opened whole new (creaking tomb) doors along my musical path.

'Coat Of Arms' has an almost postpunk chiming guitar intro before it erupts into the familiar sludge, the distorted mix courtesy of Billy Anderson is so foul and thick you could almost choke on it.

When the vocals eventually appear halfway through the track, it's another case of contrasting the tortured moans of "souls so lost and old" with a more acidic delivery courtesy of "bludgeoned minds". The last minute of the track is a furious flurry of blackened blasts, a maelstrom of sounds to close out side B.

'Terrordactyl' is the precursor to the musically similar 'Terrasaw' from 2010's Take The Curse, opening with the same ramshackle drum fill, before the beast morphs through various incarnations before settling on an unsettling alternating mix of shuddering, churning horror and a sort of drugged funeral march.

Towards the end there's the perpetual threat that the whole thing will explode into blastbeats, before a demented guitar solo that sounds sped-up or backwards masked, somehow unnatural brings things to a head, and the song ends with the harshness of a slap, heard literally in the final sample.

The cacophonic rattle that opens 'Before The Jackals' introduces a plodding doomed procession, conducted by the wretched death rattle emitted by Adam Richardson's ruined larynx. It circles deeper and deeper until the hypnotic effect becomes overpowering, where thankfully it ends before you lose your mind. The plaintive fingerpicking that comprises 'Earth Must Die', the last track of the original album, seems like an ominous portent of horrors to come... but they never do, the track just endlessly racks up the tension.

As I thought when I first heard it, it's still a really odd way to end an album, it seems like a pointless build up to a release that never comes. It's still a great track, it just suffers from being misplaced within the running order.

The two live tracks that follow the end of the album, recordings of 'Lords Misrule' and 'Ramesses Part 3' remind me of just how alternately bludgeoning and hypnotic the band were in the live setting.

I managed to make it to one of their last ever shows before they ceased touring, supporting Eyehategod no less, and was totally blown away by how well they recreated the malevolence of their recorded work, and that effect is captured perfectly on these recordings.

Misanthropic Alchemy is the sound of Ramesses still hashing out ideas, taking the first steps down a darker path than they ever had in their years in Electric Wizard, a conjuring of sounds more atavistic, more primal; old doom from a dark age. Their development would eventually culminate in the refined blackened doom of Take The Curse a few years later, but these recordings mark the beginning of their descent into the darker recesses of doom.

You can pick up this limited double LP from Ritual Productions here:
http://www.ritualproductions.net/rites/rite014/

Or opt for the CD version which also includes a bonus disc containing the EPs We Will Lead You To Glorious Times and The Tomb:
http://www.ritualproductions.net/rites/rite015/

Gurt - Hoboreaper

Remember the heady days of CD singles when you'd buy a copy of a track you already owned just to hear the not-really-worth-it remix or a couple of live tracks recorded somewhere you'd never heard of? London filth merchants Gurt sure do. Their latest release is a limited CD single to tide us over 'til their full-length debut is released next year.

I don't think I've bought a single in the past decade but based on the swampy stomp of 'Hoboreaper', I think that trend is about to change. Opening with a demented martial beat and a see-sawing riff, this tightly-wound sound isn't what I was expecting in the slightest. Definitely an attention grabber. When Gareth Kelly's glass-shard-vomiting vocals kick in, it sounds bizarre atop the crazed march of the music.

You can get this CD direct from the band over at http://gurt.bigcartel.com

And check out more of their recordings at http://gurt.bandcamp.com

Read my full review over at The Sleeping Shaman...

Naam / The Cosmic Dead / Bacchus Baracus / Lords Of Bastard - The Citrus Club, Edinburgh

This review originally appeared over at The Sleeping Shaman.
Flyer drawn by yours truly, check out more of my design work here: rdmvisuals.tumblr.com

This was one of the most highly anticipated shows of the summer, and everyone I spoke to at the gig was totally psyched (ha!) to see such a solid lineup of mainly local bands, as well as New York's excellent Naam.

Hometown openers Lords Of Bastard kick things off with their set of psych-tinged stoner rock. Their setlist was mainly culled from their recent release, the brilliantly titled Cuddles, with fast paced tracks like 'Bloody Hell' and 'Ghost Time' sounding absolutely monstrous live. That's a good thing by the way.

Their tightly-coiled, almost jazzy rhythms are accompanied by driving organ swirls, this evening provided by guest organist Victor due to regular member Sanjay's absence.

Guitarist/vocalist Mike Aitchison's voice cuts through the muscular swagger of the music easily, his soaring wails contrasting with the short sharp stabs of the rhythm, but it works.

I last saw Glasgow's Bacchus Baracus supporting Pentagram, where their set of burly, booze-sodden rock more than held it's own against the legendary headliners. Tonight's performance proves that wasn't just a one off with a set so raucous I'm surprised it doesn't start an old-fashioned bar-room brawl.

Gravel-throated drummer/vocalist QBall could give both Neil Fallon and JP Gaster from Clutch a run for their money, which is no mean fuckin' feat! The rest of the band lays down solid grooves that have the slightly more inebriated members of the crowd flat out dancing. A truly weird sight to behold.

The swirling, mindwarping theremin solo that closes out the otherwise straightforward stoner rock set is a little unexpected, but it fits perfectly with the overall psychedelic vibe of the show.

I'm not familiar enough with the band to know exactly what the setlist was, but judging from the strength of their set tonight I'll be getting hold of a copy of their new album Tales of Worries, Woes and Whatever as soon as possible.

Unfortunately due to the show running slightly behind schedule, we don't get nearly enough of The Cosmic Dead's meandering psych explorations, but what we do get is a short but sweet set of woozily pulsating rhythms and ever-evolving eastern-tinged melodies.

The reverb-drenched one song set 'Khartomb' holds the whole crowd captive, with everyone powerless to resist it's swaying groove. Vocal duties are handled by all members bar the drummer, with each vocalist becoming lost in thrall to the continuously morphing momentum of the jam.

The exploratory tendrils of the band's expansive space rock don't get the opportunity to reach far enough into the substance-addled minds of the crowd, but the beauty of such a loose improvisational set is that they're able to wrap things up nicely without harshing anyone's vibe too much. Hopefully I get the chance to witness a full mind-melting set from these psychedelic space lords sometime soon.

If you didn't manage to catch Naam on this tour, what the hell are you doing with your life?!

New York's premier exponents of heavy psych and excellent facial hair completely blew me, and everyone else crammed in to the venue, away.

You might think after so much keyboard-accompanied heavy rock that the crowd would be weary of the sound by this point, but each band managed to do something completely different from one another, and Naam manage to encompass everything from trippy atmospherics to floor-rumbling stoner heaviness. The layered vocal harmonies weave perfectly atop the music, while the music locks into a serious groove, and synth lines oscillate wildly through the whole mix.

The set was a mix of new material from their latest album Vow, as well as older cuts like 'Skyling Slip' from their self-titled record, and 'Starchild' from last year's The Ballad Of Starchild, and even though I wasn't familiar with the new material, I can't wait to pick it up.

It's great to see that even in 2013, the psych rock scene is alive and thriving, with weirdos from New York to Edinburgh and beyond venturing further and further into the recesses of their minds and the far reaches of space and creating new sounds with what they find. More brain-frying shows like this, please.

All photos by Simon Anger, Amplified Music Photography [https://www.facebook.com/AmplifiedMusicPhotography]

Ilsa - Intoxicantations LP

It took me forever to get around to finally buying a copy of this record due to my current impoverishment. I had to do awful, awful things to afford this album. It was worth it.

The album cover, drawn the band's drummer Joshy, is a truly fucking creepy collage of scuttling insects, animal bones and substance abuse. The juvenile scrawl on the back cover, depicting vomiting and bleeding witches presiding over a cauldron of narcotics, reminds me of the childish obscenity drawn by Mike Diana that graces the cover of Iron Monkey's Our Problem. This is the sort of design that's worth getting the gatefold sleeve for, so you can pore over every revolting detail in the artwork.

The music is just as depraved as the sleeve, and also should be heard as intended; hissing malevolently out of record player speakers. A harrowing catalogue of drug abuse, screams and feedback provides the intro to 'Foreign Lander', the bands brutish take on the folk song. It crashes along at a relentless pace, the shredded throat of Orion imbuing the words with a venomous vehemence before a twisting, writhing solo closes out the track.

The record's title track drags itself out of the speakers, the decrepit drudge of the rhythm overlaid by a howled Intoxicantation, a repulsive recipe for "unholy hallucinations". The tempo is as interminable as the endless agony of fingernails splintering along your spinal column. Fucking lovely.

Eventually it ends and they launch into 'Deadbeat's Ballad', a tale of a Faustian pact, what the Germans call moritaten, or murder ballad. The track careens along at a neck-abusing tempo until midway through when the band lapse into another funeral march, accompanying the horrifying infanticidal lyrics.

The last act of the story, those tortured cries of guilt set to foulest, catchiest sludge makes this my favourite track on the album.

'Man Made Monsters' sounds to me like being stretched to bonebreaking point on the rack, that sick discordant twist of the guitar and the ratcheting of the double kick drumming.

This track reminds me of something Tim Bagshaw would write, that underlying menace in the guitar tone definitely sounds like Ramesses/Serpentine Path to my ears.

The second side of the record opens with 'Say You Love Satan', a foot-stomping, fist-throwing anthem to antichristianity. Ilsa have this ability to make even this harshest of music seem catchy, they've got hooks that dig in like the cover of Severed Survival. I really hope I get the chance to catch them live sometime, so if they ever make it to the UK, there's a floor and a lot of whiskey waiting for them.

'The Scream' is another exorcise in torturous tempo and the strangling of strings. The everyday horror of the lyrics makes it a more disturbing proposition than all that 'anal goat blasphemy' shit kids on tumblr think is evil. The apathy of modern society is far more terrifying than any fictional demon.

The pounding of skins that opens 'Fluid Bound' drives a vertebrae-flexing rhythm, though this track doesn't really vary enough to hold my attention.

'Martyrs', inspired by the disturbing-as-fuck French movie of the same name, is a breakneck bludgeoning that leaves you reeling just as much as the film it takes it's name from. If this track alone doesn't convince you to pick up this record, you're a fucking lost cause.

The album closes out with 'Skin and Bone', which on first impression reminds me of Cursed when they dropped the tempo, the waves of distortion emanating from the speakers hitting with a heaviness I can feel in my gut. An almost melodic guitar solo signals the start of the slow disintegration of the track, the whole structure decaying and dismantling itself til there's nothing left but the scratch of static noise and the wail of air-raid sirens. I almost expect there to be a bonus cover of 'War Pigs' after that, but the sirens die out, the needle scrapes it's last groove and lifts.

I highly recommend that you pick up a copy of this revolting slab from A389 Records
http://shop.a389records.com/products/ilsa-intoxicantations-12

And someone book this band to tour the EU/UK with Coffinworm or Brainoil or something.

Kadavar - Abra Kadavar

Kadavar are the soundtrack of my summer.

I know that's a bold statement to make when its only May, but on my first spin through Abra Kadavar I already knew there wasn't going to be a better soundtrack to hanging out in the sun and putting away beers.

When I caught the band live a couple of weeks ago I'd spent the day doing just that, and their set was even tighter than their vests. I was anxious to see whether their recorded output would measure up to their live show, and this new album from those bearded boys from Berlin perfectly captures their high-energy 70's-inspired hard rock.

Abra Kadavar is a distillation of all the things that people return to those classic records for, and is a perfect reminder of just how damn GOOD rock music can be. Grow your hair, grab a drink, and drop out this summer with a copy of this album on constant rotation.

Available on vinyl, as it should be heard, from Nuclear Blast. Get it HERE

Read my full review at The Sleeping Shaman...

Iron Witch / Corrupt Moral Altar - Classic Grand, Glasgow

13. Unlucky for some, as it was the night of the Iron Witch/Corrupt Moral Altar show, when an unfortunate plumbing situation in the basement of the 13th Note caused the show to be cancelled. The promoters managed to find another venue at the last minute, and the two touring bands were able to set up at the Classic Grand, though unfortunately that left no time for local openers Headless Kross and Skeleton Gong. Bummer.

After finding a pub with much cheaper/better booze than the new venue, I eventually headed upstairs to find Iron Witch just starting their set. I was so fucking relieved that the show was still going ahead, I'd been waiting to see them for a couple of years, and they were well worth the wait, their filthy take on vintage sludge the perfect accompaniment to many, many alcoholic beverages.

Their lineup has changed significantly, now incorporating two members from Corrupt Moral Altar, though Chris Fane's acerbic howls are still as tortured as ever, the stumbling, disoriented march of impressively bearded rhythm section, drummer Will Adams and bassist Rick Owen now screeched over by CMA's Tom Dring and John Cooke on guitars.

The set passed by in a whiskey-fuelled blur, at least it seemed pretty short to me, but then I could listen to this strain of feedback and misery for hours. It was just great to finally catch them live, and I can't wait til my next opportunity.

Corrupt Moral Altar's set was a bit more chaotic in terms of both sound, and crowd reaction; people were hanging from the ceiling, throwing each other across the room, spilling drinks all over each other and generally acting like drunken morons, to their set of thick, nasty grind. It was fucking brilliant, the sort of band that would work perfectly on that mud-caked and booze-flooded stage at Obscene Extreme, so someone make that happen, eh?

Despite the setbacks, venue change and losing half the lineup, this was still an excellent show, and the bands and promoters should be commended for their work to make sure it still went ahead. If you missed out, tough shit, you'll just need to wait 'til the next time these reprobates venture north of the border.

Check out both bands here:
http://ironwitch.bandcamp.com
http://corruptmoralaltar.bandcamp.com/

Plague Survivors - compilation tape

Part of the reason I started writing about the music I love was in the hope people would read it, and recommend me more bands I'd be into. Though I've been doing it for a while now, only a few people have sent me stuff, but nothing that's had quite the impact of Massachusetts' Plague Survivors.

Andrew at Dry Cough Records sent me this tape after having read my review of his next release, On Pain Of Death's Year Naught Doom. If he keeps putting out releases of this calibre, Dry Cough will be one of the labels to watch in the coming months.

Opening track 'Grim Note' is all thick fuzz and torturous feedback, with occasional lapses into something like a song. I'm so glad people get what I dig about bands like this; the filthy, sour tones, the contempt in the vocals, the sort of lurching rhythm that's perfect to spill beer to... As the last sounds die out, I'm immediately sold on this band.

'Foul Voice' begins with a lumbering, crashing stomp, and with a scream the tempo is ramped up to a chugging rhythm the meanest hardcore band could only dream of. The speed picks up again before the track collapses back to the start, the whole nasty cycle repeated before it comes crashing to a halt.

A distorted, warbled voice sounds like the sort of sample heard at the start of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, before the building feedback erupts into the agonising crawl of 'Low Places'. You couldn't even describe this is a song so much as it sounds like the death throes of a depressive set to woozy, swaying bursts of distortion, following the tradition of Grief's 'Lifeless'. About halfway through the thickening feedback and agonised vocals coalesce into a rabid, raving beast of a track.

'Funeral Pyre' closes out side A with the eerie atonal tolling of guitar strings being played with a rusty hacksaw. Dirty drones and the scrape of fingernails on a casket lid build and build, the tension unbearable, the suffocating sensation seems neverending... Until the whole thing burns itself out in the dying howls of distortion.

Disgusting. Perfect.

Side B opens with 'Witch Crusher', a mangled, angular nightmare, with vocalist Matthew Willwerth spewing furious bile over the whole mess. Halfway through there's a truly fucking weird midsection, discordant plinking on piano, backwards-masked invocations and creepy crawling bass. The rest of the track that follows decays further and further away to nothing.

'Ditch Digger' slithers from the speakers, vague whispers like snakes, before the hissing gives way to a sound not unlike the equivalent of having your head slammed against the floor. The bludgeoning subsides, replaced by a Dystopian crawl towards the merciful end.

The tape closes out with a pretty faithful cover of Sabbath's 'Electric Funeral', the usual vocal style abandoned in favour of a more traditional singing style that reminds me of the departure of Olly's vocals on the latest Moss record. You already know what this song sounds like, and if you don't then you've no business reading this blog.

Apparently they have more Sabbath covers recorded, and I really can't wait to hear them, as well as the next release of their own material that they put out.

If you like your sludge on the creepy, hateful side (the way it fucking should be), get into Plague Survivors.

You can pick this tape up from Dry Cough Records here:
http://drycoughrecords.bigcartel.com/

And download the various releases that make up this compilation here:
http://plaguesurvivors.bandcamp.com/

Black Cobra / Bison BC / Årabrot - Ivory Blacks, Glasgow

Don't you just hate it when the local opening band turns out to be pretty good, yet leaves the stage without telling you who the fuck they are? I do. At least duct-tape your name onto the kick drum, scrawl it on your bassist's forehead, do something to let people know what your band is called.

So yeah, the opening band was decent, and if they want to let me know their name, that'd be swell.

[Edit: Turns out it was Easy Bake Oven. They rule. Check them out.]

Norwegian weirdos Årabrot take the stage looking like extras in some bizarre Nordic barbarian b-movie. Their set of writhing, (amphetamine) reptilian noise-sludge is an unusual fit on this bill, but it works well. Their abrasive tones are offset creepily by Bison-horn-hatted Kjetil Nernes' whispering/purring/strangled-throated Yow yelps.

If you got hard over the Melvins/Unsane tour that happened last year, and are really into denim shorts, Årabrot are your new favourite band.

I'm a big fan of Vancouver's Bison BC, but I still haven't gotten around to listening to their latest record Lovelessness, so much of tonight's set was unfamiliar to me, but based on how they ripped through their new set, I am really fucking up by not owning their latest slab of expansive sludge. Soon as I have money guys, I promise.

Since I last saw the band, they have a new drummer who kind of terrifies me. He looks like a clown with no make-up on, his relentless grin never failing even as he smashes the hell out of his kit, splintered sticks flying everywhere.

When they tear into 'These Are My Dress Clothes' from 2008's Quiet Earth, I was back in familiar territory, bellowing along to the weirdest refrain ever. The next song 'Stressed Elephant' is just as heavy as its name implies, and I start to worry I won't even be able to hear the last band's set.

I last saw San Francisco's finest Black Cobra close out Roadburn 2012 to a packed main room, the two members somehow managing to fill that stage with sheer relentless riffage and percussive abuse. Considering they managed to get hundreds of exhausted stoners to bang their heads one last time after 4 days of Olympic-level narcotic intake made their set a total triumph.

This was a week after I'd also seen them play to 20 disinterested Germans as support to the legendary Corrosion Of Conformity. I had really hoped tonight's show would be more like the former, but instead the absolutely dismal turnout kind of put a damper on the atmosphere of the show. What the hell, Glasgow?

Regardless of the low attendance the band were as tight as ever, the short sharp set leaning more towards their relentlessly pummelling material, with none of their more atmospheric, slower songs. So no 'Corrosion Fields'. Bummer, but I can't really complain when given the chance to be one of the few to experience the sheer sonic devastation wrought upon Glasgow that night. My ears are still ringing 48 hours later.

Next time any of these bands come around, miss them at your peril.

All photos by Steff Vogeler.