Five tracks of heavy desert rock from Australia, with the Drifter trio providing a rowdy blend of punkish guitar, thumping drums, and bumping bass-lines. Things move fast, with just one of the songs breaking three minutes, and the rough-edged energy suits the style well. As the band’s first release, it comes off nicely, excusing some of the faults and making the successful parts that much more impressive. Unfortunately, it seems the band only released one album after this (so far, at least), but it’s still a treat for fans of obscure and well-played rock.
Stoner metal with a splash of heavy psych flavors the four tracks of this EP, with Danzig-like vocals wailing over the knotty guitar riffs and bass rumbles. Some slick drum-work provides both driving beats and garnishes over the slower trips, and while the overall swing of the music is fairly broad, the band packs some nice nuancing into the little details of tone and flair. Not the group’s best work, but a lively and solid batch nonetheless, with some sharp hooks lying in wait.
Giving their usual blend of dark electro-industrial music cleaner and more clearly-mixed production than usual, Velvet Acid Christ’s work on Maldire feels like a reiteration of earlier works with some minor updating, for the most part. The staple elements of hissed/growled vocals, drum machine loops, tangled nests of synth-work, and scattered droppings of vocal samples from a wide array of pop cultural sources are all present, and apart from the beats occasionally seeming to draw from hip-hop patterns, there’s just not much in the way of new approaches to be heard.
That said, for an album which essentially feels like the group restating their musical position, it’s put together with solid arrangements, and feels almost as though it’s the result of VAC coming into some new hardware or a bigger budget and wanting to make sure they could still make stuff in line with the old. Unfortunately, it’s lacking in the madcap energy, unpredictable twists, and sense of depressive misanthropy which so infused those earlier works, while the
lyrics and their delivery feel perfunctory, without spiking into either end of the potential emotional extremes.
Put up against the group’s two-decade musical catalog preceding Maldire, the album ends up feeling like a pale imitation at best, and something of a label-mandated simplification at worst. Removed from that context, it’s a functional batch of dark electronica with industrial stiffness to its percussive impacts, which only manages to really pick up when it goes fully instrumental (e.g., portions of “HyperCurse” and “Inhale Blood”). Outside of that and the raspy vocal timbres, there are very few moments which manage to stand as something distinct from a host of similar acts (including a large chunk of Metropolis’ past roster), and it ends up feeling sadly washed-out in spite of the mix clarity.
Buzzy guitar, bellowing vocals, and laid-back drums kick off the title track A-side of this single, which then digs into a series of fairly standard, but energetically played, stoner metal grooves, with a psych-flavored bridge that dove-tails into drum action ends up as the most memorable portion. The B-side, an acoustic rendition of Astralnaut’s “Back to the Bog”, leads the way out with a chilled atmosphere that ends up feeling more distinctive than the first song. Decent enough, but unlikely to win over any new fans.
Reissued a year after its initial release with two extra tracks attached, this EP by the Japanese heavy psych rock band of Eternal Elysium finds them melding thick atmospherics with quick-moving riffs, in a stepping-stone between their 2009 Within the Triad and 2016 Resonance of Shadows LPs. Hard-plugging bass lashes, wide and warm guitar licks, and deep but flexible drum-work join the passionate vocals for a comfortable set of songs that bypass fuzz crutches in favor of genuine instrumental skill and the members playing off of each other in fun ways. Good stuff throughout, though the CD version does end up feeling too short.
Opening with the sound of 8-bit beach waves before launching into flares of chiptune percussion and tone-drags, this concept album keeps things upbeat, crisp, and colorful, whether wobbling along on pitch-shifting warbles, bouncing along on rainbow-like arpeggios, or driving hard into the breaks. Track titles like “Solar Beam // Unicode Dream” and “Glitch Love Fantasy” provide an extra sense of direction to the (mostly) instrumental tunes, and while the composer keeps things compact (with just the last song, “Everlasting Magic Sea”, breaking the four-minute mark), there’s a nice feeling of depth to each piece.
The effects, tones, and beats are layered extensively, but they’re kept from muddying the clarity and impact of each other with some capable channel-juggling. Pleasant and lively, and successful to a surprising degree in accomplishing its aims of merging the vibes of a hot summer day at the beach with early-’90s entertainment electronics.
Packing four mixes of the title track, plus two for “Light”, this single leads with the base mix of “Bodycount”, a standard 4/4 electro-industrial stomper, with bit-crushed synths and compressed, hissing vocals livening up the hi-hat and bass kick staples. Aside from dragging things out to five minutes and change, it’s not too bad, but that’s about twice as long as it needs to effectively communicate its ideas. “Bodycount (Traumatize remix)” follows, playing up the synths and down-mixing the percussion to put a more dance-friendly twist on the steady pulses; “Bodycount (Count Gets Higher mix by Tactical Module)” brings a harder kick and shriller key squeals into play while shuffling up the rhythms; and “Bodycount V2″ stirs up more fluttery synth touches while bringing the vocals to higher clarity.
On the “Light” side, the original mix of that song moves to a slower pace, rolling along on slow kick-claps and protracted metallic scrapes, while the vocals indistinctly burble and echo, and “Light (Core Red Core remix)” swings the synth sweeps a bit wider, but otherwise stays pretty much the same. Decent material, but nothing outstanding.
Presenting its songs in alphabetical order of their creators, this compilation throws together noise, breakcore, illbient, grind, and more, with little linking the tracks beyond a freeness of compositional style and an almost confrontational counter-cultural attitude. Ranging from clear echoing tones to thick-clustered lo-fi buzz bursts, the compilation appears to have given its contributors entirely free rein on their direction, though that’s likely for the best. There also seems to be little more to the title than the release being issued on Valentine’s Day, with the relatively few anime samples for the genre further cutting off any sense of the claimed “2D Goddess” dedication. Weird for the sake of weirdness, but there are some good tracks lurking in its recesses.
On their first EP, the Californian group of Purge Solenoid demonstrate their oddly-flavored take on prog rock, coming off as something like Zappa fans with less emphasis on the guitar. The weird vocals don’t hurt that impression, but the drummer’s whole-hearted attempts to steal the show do pull the group further in other directions, and the slather of psychedelic effects on the strings help gel a firmer sense of the group’s own character with their bouncing fervor. Twists through stronger jazz riffings, along with use of the guitar to under- and counter-score the drums’ rhythms. give the music a nicely dizzying effect, and the band’s confidence to close with a ~9-minute song (”Nebulous”), it made all the more appreciable by their talented execution of it. A very impressive debut, with lots of little details to pick out and savor in repeated listenings.
Stoner doom with production evocative of garage rock, the four tracks of this EP find the Irish band of Astralnaut bringing blues flavoring out strong while wailing and grinding along through the songs. Quick solos and strong drum backing add a little further distinction to the material, and though the touches of psychedelic indulgence are brief, they form some of the most stimulating moments on the release. A bit too much of the riffing falls into standard fare for the style, but as this was the group’s first release, that’s not exactly unsurprising, and they do land a fair number of successful hooks amid the more disposable progressions. Nothing spectacular, but there’s a nice sense of character to the tunes, and the sparing use of vocal samples adds to the fun.
Scrambled Brains 