Odd electric ruminations, offbeat alt pop, and traces of folk gentility ocme together in this release, its four songs drifting through their moods with disarming freedom and subdued heartache. The electronic textures are used sparingly but effectively, and the melancholy of the strings is kept brief enough to spike its point in before becoming dull. It’s a bittersweet collection, and one which makes its weirdness serve the music instead of just gilding it.
The seven tracks of this debut EP go for an earnestly earthy approach, with titles like “Whiskey” and “Fuck You” easily getting the atmosphere across even before the music kicks in with its stony guitar tones, heavy drums, and low-yell vocals. Once the music is in full flow, though, it quickly becomes apparent that there’s not much more to it than that, with little variety to the band’s channeling of heavy metal; something of a shame, as a first release tends to be a place for the widest range of experimentation as a band figures out its dynamic.
Instead, Desert Kingdom come off as constricted in their speeds, rhythms, riffs, vocals, and moods, essentially playing the same song six times (”Fuck You” being the outlier, bringing some punk energy reminiscent of Sick Of It All) with minor tweaks outside of the lyrics. Though that’s kind of bold in a certain way, it doesn’t make for interesting listening, or much of a first impression, so hopefully the band will take some time to figure out new approaches before returning to the recording studio.
In this one-track single, the most recent from the two-piece Canadian black death metal group of Suncross, the band infuses a bit of folk by way of a flute intro before jumping into the hammering drum-beats, twining guitar riffs, and snarling vocals. The hooks are deployed well, with the guitar’s tones standing out clear and loud, and the six minutes or so of run-time gives the band room to play around with variations on the main theme, while also being compact enough to avoid wandering too far, and it wraps with a firm finish drawn naturally from the rest. A solid song, and hopefully not the last to come from the group.
On what seems to be the band’s first release (since removed from their BandCamp), Worship of Keres turn out three tracks (”Book 1″, “Book 2″, and “Book 3″) of sludgy heavy metal, with the main distinguishing point being the lightly-fuzzed female vocals. Aside from that, the grumbling riffs and heavy beats, though competent, don’t do much to arouse excitement. The splitting of the songs also seems almost cosmetic, as the tunes are highly similar to each other, outside of a mid-way pick-up into soloing in “Book 2″, but it does help chunk them into more digestible sizes. Not that enticing, despite some fun ideas in the more psychedelic leanings, but as a first EP, not too bad.
With selections ranging back to 1999′s Fun with Knives album (skipping past the group’s first seven years of output), this ‘best of’ compilation features some of Velvet Acid Christ’s singles alongside new remixes and a few more recent/obscure picks. The group’s characteristic mix of EBM synths, dark beats, hissing vocal treatment, and handfuls of samples from films and video games fills the collection, and though it’s not quite a direct chronology, the track order does trace a general path from older to newer material, which helps highlight the shift in style from manically cartoonish energy to more reserved brooding.
As it covers almost two decades of the band’s history, it’s perhaps not the outright shifts in style which are notable as much as the refinement of retained qualities along the way. The drum machine percussion, for instance, is practically the same in terms of song-writing through the years, but the cleaning up of its sonics and lining against the other rhythms attains audible improvement, while the meshing of textures and improved balancing of the volume dynamics also stand out with their rising polish through the track-list. A little too broad in scope to give listeners a clear idea of VAC’s most common MO, but as a cross-cut of their more commercially successful years, it does its job well.
In the first of this short album’s two tracks, “Umpire”, Soothsayer build a thick atmosphere of bass rumbling and keening guitar licks, backed by slow-moving drums and a treacle-speed swell of feedback. Rising into growls, howls, and pounding beats, the song makes the transition to higher energy with a nice degree of control, and the violence which emerges is fitted smoothly to the growth of the running melody. “Of Locusts and Moths” follows a similar structure at half the length, with further background texturing, a sharper shift into speed, and a stronger main riff. It does drop off somewhat abruptly, but that plays to its debut album status by, along with its overall strong song-writing, leaving listeners wanting more.
On Cult of Lilith’s first (and so far only) release, the Icelandic group provides five tracks of hard-edged death metal, with blackened vocals and fast-moving drums. Some nice use of keyboards on the bridges sticks out as the most creative part of the music (along with a nice shifty riff on “Tomb of Sa’ir”), but otherwise it’s pretty stock stuff. A nice demonstration of technical skill, but outside of that and a sample from Legend, nothing too interesting.
Scrambled Brains 