Monarch! - Sacrifice Your Parents, Satan Wants You To 7"

France's premiere doom exports Monarch! have been on my radar for a while now, but it wasn't until their appearance at the second edition of Bristol's Temples Festival that I became a convert to their terrifying take on drone doom.

Their incredible set had me slack-jawed in wonderment, and as soon as I got back home I immediately forked over all my leftover merch funds to start catching up on their discography. The latest release they put out is this nifty wee 7", featuring covers of The Runaways and The Misfits. The white ink screened cover illustrations for each side, by super-prolific artist Nagawika, are the perfect balance of gimmkvlt and hilarious.

Monarch!'s version of 'Cherry Bomb' takes the original's driving rhythm and coy rebellion and contorts it into a malevolent sacrificial dirge, all inhuman shrieks and howling feedback. Emilie Bresson's usually abstract vocals are far more direct here, so much so that the classic chorus lines are actually recognisable, albeit terrifyingly delivered.

I haven't been able to get this version of the song out of my head for weeks now. I'm okay with that.

Their take on 'Die Die My Darling' is even more unsettling, as they reduce the original's stabbing rhythm and b-movie organ jabs down to a funereal pace, punctuated by eerie piano and Bresson's breathy whisper. She sounds as if she's serenading her victim, the layers of "Don't cry to me, oh baby" build and build over mournful guitar, her detached delivery far creepier than Danzig's psychotic snarl in the original.

The sort of track you'd put on a mixtape to a lover if you wanted them to flee the country in fear.

As an introduction to the band, this doesn't really convey what Monarch! do best, which is mostly long-form funeral/drone doom, but taken as a fun little curiosity, this is one of the coolest things I've heard this year.

You can pick up this 7" as well as other excellent Monarch! records from France-based label MusicFearSatan.

Monarch! on Facebook | Twitter | Sabbracadaver / Mer Morte / Omens on Bandcamp

Hipoxia / Gangrened split tape

Despite having my ear to the ground for all things disgusting, horrifying, slow, fast and everything inbetween, occasionally a release will come along out of nowhere and completely blow me away. Okay, when I say nowhere, this one came from both Finland and Spain respectively.

A tape release between Finland's Gangrened and Madrid's Hipoxia, released through no fewer than nine, fucking nine, labels, it landed in my inbox through unknown channels. Out of curiosity as to the contents of this mysterious email I cued up the stream via bandcamp, and had my mind completely melted by what I heard.

Hipoxia's track 'Gangrened Reality' is 16 minutes of corruptive brutality, comprised of droning organs, gigantic cymbal crashes and howled vocals. It's interminably torturous, and anyone who enjoys ambient noise, drone doom, and total fucking misery will feel right at home within it's suffocating confines.

On the other side, Gangrened expel two tracks of black doom that will have fans of Cough, Tombstones and Electric Wizard putting down their bong long enough to pick up a copy of this tape.

Their track 'The One That Leads The Way' exemplifies this perfectly, as well as featuring vocals that at times have an almost Unsane-like abrasiveness. Fucking lovely.

 

If writing this blog is encouraging bands from all over the world to send me their latest filthy output, I'm more than happy about it if everything sent my way is as excellent as this tape! If you make the sort of racket that encourages people to ingest hallucinogens and leave the house with a clawhammer just to see what happens, please get in touch!

The Hipoxia/Gangrened split tape is available from the following EU labels:
Boue Records | Filthy Rat | Strange Records | Discos Macarras | Féretro Records | The Bloody Dirty Sanchéz | Twin Souls | Laserblast Records | Desfiladero Records

Gangrened on Facebook | Hipoxia on Facebook 

Wolvserpent - Perigaea Antahkarana

When Boise, Idaho duo Pussygutt reinvented themselves as Wolvserpent with the release of 2010's incredible debut album Blood Seed, it was more than just a mere change of monicker; it reflected their transition from sparse, abstract dronescapes towards a more structured, malevolent sound that put them within the wide-ranging classification of metal, albeit at the outer fringes.

The blackened doom they conjured with that album held me utterly captivated, so much so that it was the very first album that ever moved me to try to put into words what I felt for its haunting, otherwordly ambiance.

Listening to it again many times after my initial review, I don't think I'll ever adequately describe the feelings it evokes, nor the nightmarish worlds it creates within my mind.

When the Perigaea demo became available late last year it coincided with a dark, isolated period in my life, and quickly became my escapist soundtrack, a creepily comforting collection that I would retreat to time and time again. The band's assertion that the demo was only "the early stages and younger concepts" that would inform the finished work, and that it would be "an entirely different manifestation of the ideas heard on the demo" made me eager to hear where they would take what was already an accomplished recording and concept.

The culmination of a two-year writing and re-writing period, with the finished album recorded with renowned producer/engineer Mell Dettmer (Sunn 0))), Boris, Earth), the release of their sophomore album Perigaea Antahkarana is upon us.

Considering that Wolvserpent is comprised of only two members, Blake Green on guitar, vocals, and keys, and Brittany McConnell on drums, percussion and violin, the way they build up the various layers in each song without them sounding cluttered or over-thought is miraculous, and their use of loops and effects pedals to produce such a wide variety of sounds is especially impressive in a live environment.

At 81 minutes this is not the sort of album you'll throw on for some easy-listening, but if you're willing to dedicate yourself to it, to submit to an awakening of your atavistic instincts, it's one of the most rewarding immersive experiences that metal on the more avant-garde end of the spectrum can offer.

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

nåtür

'This is an improv, minimalist solo project based on feeling and impulse, recorded by Stevie Floyd in 2009'.

That is the only information available on the internet about this release from Dark Castle guitarist/vocalist Stevie Floyd, which lends an appropriate air of mystery to the music. I wanted something to take me away from the draining day I've had, and lying on the floor listening to drone-y minimalist soundscapes was just what I needed.

my copy

The version I got is different from the initial run, in that the design and text have changed, and it's not hand-numbered, but I don't really give a shit about that sort of thing, because despite this pretentious blog, I'm not an elitist record-collector asshole. Well, not TOO much...

original run copy

Anyway, time to turn the volume up, lay my body low, and get into this...

Opening with cleanly picked notes with bright clear tone that instantly fill the darkened room, it's clear this isn't going to be merely 'Dark Castle minus drums'. I try not to compare musicians, but my first thought is that it reminds me of a slightly fuzzier take on Earth's more recent recordings. Slow, mournful, low-sung vocals creep in atop the repeating guitar motifs, a mix of crooned, sung, growled passages, all melding together to produce a really haunting mood.

The guitars break up, with so much delay and reverb, they're more akin to chiming bells than any kind of stringed instrument. They wind, weave, never settling on one passage for long before they veer off into new textures, notes, scales. It's an unsettling effect.

I desperately want to relax, but my attention is demanded, I need to hear where the sounds will go next. The unmarked packaging, devoid of tracklist or running time gives me no clues. The deceptively bright guitar tone and deeply sung vocals heighten the ominous, creeping, crawling nature of the music. By the time the album fades out, I'm officially creeped the fuck out.

This is a soundtrack for haunted wastelands, for forests in the dead of night, for feeling insignificant under the stars.

I got to talk to Stevie about this recording after seeing Dark Castle play in Edinburgh a couple of months back, and mentioned how interested I was in hearing this, and she told me that there may be more Natur recordings in the works, that she'd been playing music with a drummer. I'm not sure how the inclusion of a more percussive sound in the mix would affect the mounting tension I experience listening to this initial recording, but I'm really interested to find out!

You can check out the recording here, if you can get myspace to work, that is...
http://www.myspace.com/natur
Buy it direct from Dark Castle's bandcamp page, as well as other great music/artwork Stevie has created
http://darkcastlemetal.bandcamp.com/
And go talk to Stevie if you get the chance to see her play, one of the coolest people I've ever had the pleasure of annoying at a show.