MIXED BAG OF SUMMER TIME REVIEWS

 There's all sorts of stuff in store here for this reviews edition.  No two releases alike!  Multiple subgenres represented, as well as one great autobiographical graphic novel about a year in the life of a young punk!  So whatever your interest I'm sure you'll find something to pique your curiosity here.

CANDY, “Heaven Is Here”

A band that truly encapsulates utter chaos within their music, the kind of extremity fit for raging in a wasteland as things resembling humans circle pit around a burning cop car under a toxic sky, Candy release their second full length and there’s all sorts of stuff going on here.  They somehow manage to combine doses of punk, metal, thrash, hardcore, industrial, and powerviolence into a melee and it all flows together.  The first half of the record tries its hand at all these subgenres a bit more while tracks like “Hysteric Bliss”, “World Of Shit” and “Fantasy/Greed” lean more into Japanese hardcore, thrash, and ridiculously speedy punk for a trio of fastcore blazers.  However, both “Transcend To Wet” and “Kinesthesia” are full-on industrial experiments that honestly don’t do a thing for me.  I enjoy when the band has added those elements to songs just to make even more noise within their music, but as stand-alone tracks it just feels like filler.  The final track- a 10 minute soundscape further makes this album feel more like an EP with a bunch of added experiments that go on too long.  It’s cool that Candy continue to expand their sonic terrorism into various styles and make it all sound like a chaotic nightmare (the album cover essentially gives you a visual impression of what to expect).  However, the live instrumentation, coupled with various samples, is where the band shines.  I can do without all the added stuff in there. (Relapse)

 

CHIME OF BAYONETS/ PERSONAL STYLE, “Tap To Load” b/w ”Black Sage”  split 7”

We live in a time where the idea of bands self-financing (well, mostly) a two-song 7” record that clocks in with a total of probably 6 minutes of music seems outrageously foreign to me.  Like, do you know how much it costs to press a record, like any kind of record?  And how long you have to wait to get that record pressed?  If I were to do that (and this is primarily why I don’t make 7”s anymore) I’d have to be convinced that those were the two best songs I’d ever written in my entire life.  The ‘more bang for your buck’ allure towards pressing an LP really makes the expense and patience one must have feel a bit more worthwhile.  Just putting that out there.  Yet the dudes in Chime Of Bayonets and Personal Style have pressed a couple 7”s at this point, pretty much on their own.  I’m unsure if they consider these the two best songs they ever wrote, but they certainly are consistent with the rest of the music they have created, which errs on heavy indie rock/punk I suppose?  When I listen to them I really feel like I’m back in the late 90’s checking out random selections from the Southern Records catalog, or anything advertised in Punk Planet and being satisfied with having taken a chance on a new band.  One song here is slower, a bit more somber, and adds some horns here and there while the other track is way more upbeat and energetic.  The cover is printed on clear plastic (acetate perhaps?) and it makes things look both interesting and confusing.  (HabitForming Records)

 

CLOAK/DAGGER, “Temp Life” b/w “Dawn Patrol” 7”

They stay quiet most of the time, but every few years the VA-based Cloak/Dagger will emerge from their slumber to dish out some garage rock punk action that is sure to be a worthwhile listen.  While this newest offering is only a two song 7” it does offer a glimpse of what they’re up to.  I feel that since they are such an extremely part time band anything new they put out will undoubtedly bring in a new audience and this is a fine place to start.  However, I’d like to offer my opinion that their last full length, “I Want Everything” (from 2017) is probably their best material to date so if you want to explore more than just the two tracks here I’d highly recommend that record as well.  So you get a 7” that looks a lot like those Sub Pop singles you see here and there and sounds a hell of a lot like Hot Snakes with more gruff vocals.  (Quit Life)

 

DEADGUY, “Buyer’s Remorse”

I’m going to reiterate some things I stated when reviewing a 7” of lost material released by Deadguy a few months ago and that’s that I never thought I’d ever see this band do anything ever again.  They didn’t exactly part on the best of terms and I figured too much time had elapsed for them to even give a shit about giving it another go.  But here we are and they have played several shows, the first of which (from 2021) is documented in full on this live LP.  There was another live recording from the band from their second lineup where the sound quality is pretty awful that was released 20 years back.  I saw that incarnation of the band a bunch of times and was happy to have been able to see that.  But I never saw the original lineup of the band and my feeling (backed up by some grainy 90’s footage) is that it was a chaotic trainwreck of broken guitars, damaged eardrums, and permanent injuries is only half true with this recording.  The setting of this live document comes from a much better sound system, far better live recording techniques, and a large stage mostly out of harm’s way of Huckins guitar swiping you across your scalp.  So it sounds pretty darn good.  The band hits a few off-notes, which, given this is Deadguy going off, they had better be.  But overall they play really well, on the cusp of all-out chaos and legitimately ripping it up.  The songs are pulled from both “Fixation..” and earlier material (I never got to see them play “Puny Human” live so this was an audible treat).  Having the added visual presentation from Tim Singer is always a plus and that almost hidden watermark imagery on the front and back cover is just a little chef’s kiss on top of an already good-looking (and sounding) LP. Here’s to hoping those maniacs keep this up, squeezing a little more life out of Deadguy for all us misanthropes who swear by their material.  (Decibel)

 

HIGH DESERT, THE, by James Spooner

There’s something immediately familiar, as well as some things outside my experience, that make “The High Desert” such an appealing read.  Some may be familiar with the author/artist of this graphic novel James Spooner via his documentary “Afro-Punk”, which came out over 15 years ago (yet it still makes the rounds), as well as the accompanying music fest of the same name that went on for a number of years afterwards.  This is his first foray into the world of comics and it is an autobiographical telling of his time coming up as a young punk in the middle of nowhere.  What was a familiar concept to me is that I’m likely about the same (or similar) age as the author so I’m aware of discovering the mystery of punk rock pre-internet when you had to search around for things, find ways of making conversation with the local skaters and weirdos, and just fumble your way through it.  But what a payoff!  I also came up in the early 90’s with similar experiences of knowing a few punks a little older than myself who introduced me to that life, or people my age also trying to just figure it out and dealing with social pressures from high school peers who made fun of you for the way you dressed day in and day out.  The difference, though, is Spooner had the distinction of growing up in the middle of nowhere (I also grew up in a small town but it just happened to be one of the hardcore epicenters of the world at the time so access to things was a little easier to come by), and being a black kid in a predominantly white scene (snow is my natural camouflage like most of the punk kids I grew up and became friends with).  It’s a great story about a year in his life when he was just getting into skateboarding, figuring out his relationship to his family being not only bi-racial but also bi-coastal, expressing his identity, and dealing with straight up Nazis in small town America some 30 years back.  I always love a good ‘punk kid coming of age’ tale and the 350+ pages of this kept me reading pretty much non-stop to the end.  (Harper or your local indie comic retailer)

 

MUSEUM OF LIGHT, “Horizon”

Imagine yourself out in the forests of the Pacific Northwest near a mountain lake.  It’s a bright, crisp summer morning.  The weather is cool, the air calm.  You contemplate the scenery for a bit and then begin your hike up the massive mountain that lies before you.  Throughout your day-long upward journey you take in the monumental size of the thing before you, how it expands above seemingly forever.  Yet you push on. You know you can reach the top, even though your calves ache and your back is becoming permanently hunched.  As you get closer to the summit you round a switchback and the sun casts a striking, golden glow upon the peak within your view and it’s glorious.  Moments such as these are few and far between, and often best experienced alone.  One person versus a mountain.  You reach the top, plant your feet, breathe in the cool air, contemplate for a bit as you survey the land 40 miles in every direction around you and take it all in, and then you begin to descend.  Museum Of Light is the soundtrack the whole time.  They make big, giant rock songs that move slow but fill with melodic howls of victory.  They are masters of tone, executing perfect giant sounds.  The songs are semi-lengthy, but never overstay their welcome.  It’s just enough. “Horizon” is the mountain climb and the massive apex all in one.  Enjoy.  (Spartan Records)

 

NEOLITHIC, “Shattering Vessels”

While a couple of the guys in Baltimore’s Neolithic may be rooted in the hardcore scene (Pulling Teeth, End It, Ruiner, etc) the closest these dudes come to playing anything remotely hardcore might be on the track “Impious Devotion”, which has an All Out War feel to it….  So still pretty metal.  The rest of this debut full length is straight up death metal.  There’s lots of chunky, double-bass groove, a fuck ton of blasts, and a whole bushel full of guttural growls.  And what sort of apocalyptic ode to the end times would be complete without some samples of a wise, yet broken, old man poetically musing about the folly of mankind and our hubris in the face of extinction?  It’s got it all I tells ya.  There’s even a painted cover depicting a frost giant or something approaching Dracula’s castle or whatever.  I’m no expert on death metal, and I’m generally fine when it comes my way, but judging this in comparison to other death metal records is above my pay grade.  I have no idea.  I’m typically no fan of death metal vocals but the music does the job of shoving extremity down your throat.  So there ya go.  (The Other Records)

 

PASSIONPLAY, “Sinking”

I can only imagine the dudes in Providence’s Passionplay spent a good chunk of lockdown practicing a lot because the songs on their second release are such a big step forward in terms of technical mastery and intensity. It’s not that their previous record was disappointing in any way.  I enjoyed that one too.  This just ups the ante with their (sort of) Converge-school of metallic fast hardcore with totally insane drumming, plenty of blasts, lots of technical guitar riffs that do some showing off, but not so much that it doesn’t let the song flow, and most songs under (or at) two minutes.  That’s what I’m talking about.  Save for a short instrumental in the middle and the last track doing a lengthy (comparatively) outro the rest of this thing is fast, blasting hardcore that is undeniably raging.  Bonus points for referring to children as ‘faithful, hateful, little shits’ in “Rubberneck” and it’s ode to God and guns and the deranged parents who can’t get enough of either.  (self-released)

INTERVIEW WITH MULTICULT FROM TRANSLATE ZINE #10

 So back when I released TRANSLATE issue #10 I intentionally only interviewed bands associated with Hex Records.  I snuck in an interview with MULTICULT as a hint that I'd be doing a record for them in the near future, but didn't say anything.  The intention was that people would say 'wait a minute, they haven't released anything through the label!' and then a couple months later I'd spring the freshly released MULTICULT/CHILD BITE split 12" on them as a surprise.  Of course, that was over a year ago.  Things kind of got delayed but I still kept the release a surprise, which came out last week.

That all being said, I always intended to put this interview up online because it's an awesome interview and it helps promote the record.  

There's still a few copies of TRANSLATE #10 (and for that matter #11) HERE if you like physical media, and, of course, you can get the split LP HERE. 

 

REBECCA BURCHETTE lays down the low end in Baltimore's Multicult and she is a certified technical wiz.  Outside of rocking one of the meanest bass tones on Earth she runs Robo Pedals, where she builds custom guitar pedals for others.  If you enjoy technical talk you will enjoy this.  If you also like a good story this will be a kicker.  Enjoy.

When you’re playing with the band do you exclusively use only pedals that you have made, or do you use other pedals that you haven’t built yourself?

 

What’s funny is that I’ve never been a big pedal person.  I’ve always thought that less is more.  So people are always contacting me about their tone and stuff, and I have this pretty developed sound, so they want to know how I do it and what I use.  And my response is, ‘Nothing!  Just stop using a million pedals to cover up your whole sound and start playing the actual instrument!’  You can get a lot of sounds by how hard you’re hitting, and I concentrate on the actual physical instrument to get my sound.  The pedals come last.  They add a little bit of color.  I only use two pedals.  And those are two pedals that I built.

I never think about adding in other pedals because I don’t need to.  I’m good.

So I think it’s funny that I build pedals, but I don’t have this huge pedal board or anything.

Do I try other pedals?  Maybe if I was in a different type of band, or trying to do something differently, but I don’t need that for Multicult at all.  Too many pedals would just ruin the sound.  Each time you put another pedal into your circuit you’re downgrading your signal once it gets to your amp.  Even the pedals I use are not being pushed very far.

But would I use other pedals?  I’ll give them a try.  I’m more of a tech person and I look at things from a technical level.  So I’ll see a pedal and say, ‘oh, it’s this type of circuit with this added, and I can just look up the layout of the circuit, and I can make it myself.’

I’ve always been a DIY person and I know how to make all the stuff.  I have my own workshop, I know how to make the boards, I know where to get the materials, I know how to do circuit layouts on the computer and print off boards.

I don’t have anything against trying them, or giving them a listen.  It’s cool.

 

So despite using only a couple for yourself with your business you make a variety of different models for others, correct?

 

Right.  When I first started I would pretty much build anything anyone asked me for, as long as it was analog.  I’d say ones that were considered ‘vintage’, or it was wasn’t made anymore and you had to find it somewhere like Reverb.  But when you buy old pedals from the 70s or 80s the components in those pedals have been used for many years and those components degrade over time.  So the sound degrades as well.

So I would build people a vintage circuit with all new stuff and parts so it will be louder and more clear.  Also, if someone wants me to build them a pedal and they send me a link to what their band sounds like I can check out that sound and build a pedal with certain types of caps that will get the sound they’re looking for.  I don’t even tell the people I’m doing this for these types of things because most people are not that geeky.

So I’d build these pedals tailor-made for the person, but also add an aesthetic thing with the colors they like, or being intuitive about what I thought they would like and surprising them with something no one else had.

So the ones I was building and re-naming as my own thing, and was building a lot of, were what people asked for.  And I sort of just fell into it.  Though once I was posting online about them people thought it was MY pedal, like I invented it.  But I really wasn’t.  It’s just an old circuit that isn’t available anymore.  I personally like the old stuff a bit more that just has the intent of having a good sound.  Older pedals, with new parts.

 

Related to that, what was your learning process for doing this?  Were you self-taught, or was it something you actively pursued through classes or a mentor of some kind?

 

I’ve been working in audio industries since I was 18 years old.  I worked at a very big audio company, a job that I got two weeks out of high school.  I happened to be, at that time, playing in a band with a guy whose father was the boss at the local office of this company.  I didn’t even know his father did that.  So I’d go to practice at his house and on breaks I’d hang out with his parents while everyone else hung out.

On the day of my graduation I went to his house to pick him up and his dad asked me what was next- was I going to college, or whatever.  So I told him I wanted to do something with music, or sound, or be a sound tech.  But I didn’t have direction.  And he said, ‘that’s what I do!’  He would go and build weird drums out of…  I can’t remember, like some weird fruit?

 

You mean a gourd?

 

Yes exactly!

 

So he told me to come by his office next week and check it out to see if it’s something I’d be into.  So I did and I was hired, just as a tech, and I worked my way up from the ground.  After 7 years I was the fabrication manager of pretty much the largest audio shop in the country.  So I remained the fabrication manager for another 8 years, and then I flipped out and I couldn’t take the stress anymore because our jobs were huge- we would do NFL stadiums, baseball stadiums.  But after 9/11 things started changing a lot from doing the more fun audio projects, like systems for Universal Studios and Disney, and a lot of our contracts were coming from places like Raytheon and Boeing, the NYPD operations center.  And it suddenly hit me that ‘I don’t want to do this.  I’m participating in putting in systems for everyone to be surveilled.’  This isn’t audio, this is Big Brother.

 

Holy shit.

 

I kind of flipped out and I wanted to leave the company.  They begged me not to go, and they made me an engineer, which they had been promising to me for years and hadn’t followed through.  So I was an engineer for two years, by which point I had already lost interest.  So I would be going in and pretending like I was working, and doing drawings, but I really just wanted to do something fun again.

I had started building a workshop when I bought a house in 2008 so I could build all sorts of cool things.  And Nick (guitarist/vocalist of Multicult) was building a studio in another part of the house, which I helped with.  And at some point I just decided I was going to build myself a couple of pedals.  And it was so easy, compared to the work that I had been doing, which was like equipment racks seven feet tall filled with all sorts of stuff, and drawings that were hundreds of pages long, with wiring we had to pull, solder and  crimp the ends of ourselves, and labeling every end.  It was very intense.

So I eventually kind of lost it, but I stayed with the company a couple more years and in those two years I was often going into my cubicle and building pedals underneath my desk!  I became obsessed!

So I built a simple Gain Boost, and then re-built a vintage RAT pedal.  I sold that one.  And the one I re-built sounded better than the original!

I liked ordering the parts, I liked putting the circuit boards together, and I liked making the pedals aesthetically pleasing for me with bright colors, artwork, and so on.

Other people started seeing them and ordering them from me.  So then I just wanted to build every pedal circuit there was!  I looked up all the layouts and I was just obsessed, but that’s me.  It was very easy for me to do to solder these little wires and circuits, especially coming from where I was coming from with these huge projects.  It was so easy.

I didn’t have to teach myself anything.  I knew how to solder, I knew layouts and schematics.  I had already been doing that stuff for 17 years on a much larger scale.

 

So I guess around this time it became your own business then?

 

Pretty much.  I didn’t need to make it a business, but it kind of fell in my lap.  Also, around this time, Multicult was doing more and becoming a bit more known.  And since the beginning of the band people already knew about my tone and I was getting messages every day from strangers about my sound and what sort of gear I was using.  So, discussion about my pedals naturally came from that and people would then order pedals from me.  So it became a business.

The day I decided to quit my job was very much an ‘Office Space’ sort of experience.  I just kind of said ‘fuck it’.  I just quit.  And that same day I got my first official order from somebody for a pedal, and it just began picking up right from there.

 

That’s great!  Kind of an unexpected door opening ya know?  So I always find it cool when bands can involve themselves in another aspect of their craft aside from just writing music and playing shows, whether it’s recording, or a graphic design, or building their own guitars.  So Multicult seems really DIY in that respect, particularly between you building pedals and Nick doing recording/engineering.  Aside from pedals, is there any other aspect of your band that you have taken on the task of creating yourself?

 

I built my own bass cabinet.  It’s a Frankenstein cab I built myself.  It’s hard to explain because I come from a nerdy, technical background.  But just using my ears I know what I want to hear.  My cabinet is an old Peavy cabinet, just the shell itself.  It was in a friends basement, it had water damage, it had two blown speakers.  It was a 2x15, which is what I have always preferred to play out of.  I asked what they wanted for it, and they asked for $25.

So I took out the blown speakers, kept the shell itself, pulled off all the old Tolex.  I sanded down the wood and re-Tolexed it, and put on some new corners.  But there’s stuff going on inside that cabinet that people don’t know about it.  I picked out my own speakers.  I use PA speakers, not bass speakers, because PA speakers can do the bass frequency and more.  The speakers are 400 watts each, but I wire them in series so they can actually do 800 watts.  Bass cabs in particular are different from guitar cabs because the bass frequency is so low, so the actual wave of sound is a lot bigger and is pushing differently.  So the inside of the cab itself is actually lined with acoustic stuffing and held up with a nylon netting to ensure no sound is coming out the little cracks in the cabinet.  This is the sort of stuff people don’t know.  I wired it myself and even put in my own connector plates.  It’s acoustically treated in a way so I get the particular sound I want.

Really the only thing I didn’t build, or fuck with in any way, would be the head that I use, which is an Ashdown head because it has the right wattage, it has a lot of power, and it doesn’t have a whole lot of weird features, or extra knobs, that I don’t need.  I like it to be simple.

 

From a complete layperson’s perspective, which would be me, what would be the basic run down of building a guitar pedal. Like an understanding of what goes into it.

 

I’m such a detailed person that I would want to go back to teaching about basic soldering and circuitry.  But if anybody would want to know, as a beginner, how to do it, you have to know how to solder.  You have to have the proper tools and the right soldering iron.  The actual building of it you could literally get a kit.  They make all these pedal kits for beginners that you can assemble so long as you know basic soldering. 

As a little girl I grew up overseas and didn’t have a lot of American TV to watch so I was always doing stuff like cross stitch.  And if you open up a cross stitch, or some crafty item, there’s these charts on how to build this thing out.  And it’s the exact same idea with these pedal kits.  It will tell you where these different transistors go and the chart will tell you the values that go into each one.  So it’s like building a little cross stitch, or a model kit.

That’s a good way for people to learn.  And as you follow the directions and start building it begins to make more sense.

But what goes into building a pedal is a complicated question because it can go in so many different ways.  There’s no one way to do it.  You can get into etching your own boards with chemicals, which I have done, and drilling them yourself, and loading them with parts, soldering in the parts, and soldering on the wiring and loading it into an enclosure, and wiring it to the connectors and foot switch.  Typically, once you have a board into a pedal enclosure the wiring stuff that goes on is basically the same.

It’s hard to talk about stuff like this because I’ll get into it and-

 

It’s tough to lay out in a simple way.

 

Yes!  Because I already know too much to be somebody who doesn’t anymore.  I started learning about this stuff when I was 18 so it’s hard to go back to being someone who doesn’t know. 

 

The curse of knowledge.

 

Yes, your brain gets wired differently after knowing all this stuff and it’s a skill in and of itself to try to revert back to not knowing, or explaining it to someone who doesn’t.  At the same time this isn’t rocket science and if someone wanted to learn about this they could by just learning a few basic skills that I feel I could teach almost anyone.  I’ve taught so many people to solder well.  I’ve written standards for the entire company on how to do this perfectly.  When I worked for that big company I tended to hire people that I already knew, but who also were musicians who had a great attitude and an interest in learning how to do this sort of this stuff.  They might be really intimidated by it at first, but then just learned to love soldering!  Once you see it and you realize the basic concepts of what you’re doing, and just build from there.  It’s a process of many years of staying interested in it and building your knowledge base.  You have to be into it to take to it

 

 https://multicult.bandcamp.com/

Robo Pedals

SURPRISE! MULTICULT AND CHILD BITE SPLIT 12" OUT NOW!

 

SURPRISE!  No pre-order, no waiting, no ‘unexpected delays’, this is out right now.

A record nearly three years in the making, numerous hindrances kept this a hard secret to keep. But here it is in all its weird glory.
Witness the pairing of these two beasts of bands.

Multicult- calling Baltimore home and laying down three incomprehensible slices of skronky guitar noodling, bass tone perfection via deft musicianship, and spring-loaded percussion.

Child Bite- motor city maniacs adding a trio of tracks to their already prolific output the group emerges from hibernation to inform you all that you are, in fact, a human popsicle. Guest drumming on these songs by the one and only Urian Hackney (The Armed, Rough Francis, Converge).

 

This is a one-time pressing limited to 300 copies so get on it. The record features screenprinted covers courtesy of Sean Clancy and Shawn Knight (of Child Bite) at EMP.  It’s in our bandcamp store right now, and in the band’s individual stores, and up on all streaming services too as of 7/1/2022.

 

Child Bite will also have their copies on sale for their short trek with Psychic Graveyard going on now:

6/29 – Chicago, IL @ Subterranean

6/30 – Youngstown, OH @ Westside Bowl

7/1 – Montréal, QC @ l'Escogriffe Bar Spectacle

7/2 – Toronto, ON @ The Baby G

7/3 – Ferndale, MI @ The Loving Touch (record release show)

 

GET A COPY OF THE RECORD NOW HERE.

A NEW ISSUE OF TRANSLATE ZINE!

 

Another issue of the publish-when-I-feel-like-it zine TRANSLATE is now available! This one came together pretty quick, complete with smears, imperfections, typos and I'm totally OK with it. Still made a cool linocut cover and some of the features within this issue include interviews with Truth Cult, Mums, and artist Caroline Harrison. Also, a thorough run through of my favorite vegan donuts across this big country and a weekend trip through the Northwest to see Pinko on tour. 

Grab a copy HERE. 

FIRST SINGLE FROM WIPES LP IS UP NOW. CHECK OUT "SUMMER"!

 It's the first day of Summer so why not check out the song "Summer" from the debut LP "Making Friends" from Allentown, PA's WIPES.

It's a little too early for a pre-order just yet (the record will be out in the Fall), so this is coming out as a stand-alone single for now.  And it gives a taste of what's to come on this amazing full length.

Decibel Magazine is premiering the track and you can check it out HERE.

And since it's the longest day of the year that means you can listen to it a bunch of times throughout the day.

Enjoy!

NEW STILL/FORM TRACK AND VIDEO FOR "GUMS"

 

Portland, OR’s STILL / FORM have released the second single from their upcoming debut full-length “From the Rot Is a Gift” (out 8/19/2022)

With “Gums” the band has made an unsettling and weird video to accompany the equally disturbing heavy music to go along with it. The video was created by bassist Kirk Evans and makes for a cool visual accompaniment to go with the song.

If you haven't pre-ordered the record yet you can do that HERE

SO MUCH COOL STUFF TO LISTEN TO. JUNE REVIEWS

 Alright 2022, seriously, calm down.  It's getting kinda hectic.  I'm beginning to gt a bit overwhelmed over here with all the cool new stuff coming out and this batch of reviews is no exception.  There's a real mixed bag here with lots of different kinds of stuff so open up yr ears/mind and check out what's below.

CAVE-IN, “Heavy Pendulum”

Right off the bat I’d like to mention that this is one of the most beautiful record covers I’ve seen in recent memory.  Whatever your feelings about Cave-In, or their music, might be there is no denying this thing looks incredible.  Anyway, all that being said, I personally have always preferred the more metal-leaning Cave-In to space rock Cave-In.  That’s not to say they don’t know how to dabble in numerous styles and do them all really great.  I just plant my fandom flag firmly in “Until Your Heart Stops” territory.  A lot of people tend to overlook “Perfect Pitch Black” too, which I felt totally nailed the mix between their metallic and space rock styles to the point where I think I’d consider it my second favorite record of theirs.  So that’s where I think “Heavy Pendulum” fits in.  I don’t think they’re trying to re-create “Perfect Pitch Black”, but I feel like they’re making a concerted effort to marry the two styles they’re most known for and it, overall, comes off pretty good.  There’s a few total bangers on this record- “Blood Spiller”, “Amaranthine”, and “Searchers Of Hell” immediately come to mind.  But there’s a couple growers (not showers) too that take a long time to build yet have an exceptional payoff such as “Blinded By a Blaze” and the title track.  And there’s “Reckoning”, which is kind of a clunker that would have been better left off the record.  Still, Cave-In have also never shied away from writing longer songs (or albums for that matter), and at 14 tracks and 71 minutes it’s quite the exercise in focus and taking in the album as a whole. So strap in, get a snack, and get ready for a journey. It’s a worthy sort-of return for a band that has consistently stretched their musical muscles in numerous directions for well over 20 years now and always managed to pull off something deserving of your attention. (Relapse)

 

COME TO GRIEF, “When the World Dies”

Usually sludge/doom has like a 70% chance of being boring.  At least to me anyway.  I want to like it, but dragging a single note for too long is just painful.  Thankfully, Come To Grief make their hateful, seismic sludge both slow and low, but with momentum at the same time. They know how to add some groove in there, pick up the tempo when they damn well feel like it, and screech with so much vitriol you’d guess they all burst a blood vessel in their collective heads.  Still, these guys ought to have a firm grasp on what they’re doing since most of them were in the 90’s version of this group (AKA ‘Grief’), so they’ve been at it for a long time, even though this is a new iteration of that band, some 20 years removed.  They summon forth monumental riffs and absolutely thunderous drums that, at times, recall early High On Fire riffstravaganzas. But as they get into the second half of the record things change up a little bit, particularly on the title track which opens with eerie ambience and moves into a plodding slough where the bass has some room to show off, along with some tasteful guitar acrobatics.  I’m not one to typically highlight a record’s engineer, but getting Kurt Ballou on this to twist some knobs (as well as his Converge colleague Jacob Bannon to lend some back up vocals here and there) truly makes this record sound incredibly huge.  It doesn’t make this just another sludge/doom mopey bongfest.  It draws out the raw emotion, the piss and vinegar, and complete spite seething from every feedback-soaked riff pounding into yr damaged skull. (Translation Loss)

 

DROWNINGMAN, “Later Day Saints” 7”

The once-more re-activated Drowningman has tested the proverbial waters by releasing this limited 7” with one older song they never got around to using, as well as one new track.  Once a staple of the fertile metallic hardcore scene in the late 90’s and early aughts Drowningman took inspiration from a bevy of the best and put their own spin on it, usually with pretty awesome results.  As they went on their music got more technical and complex, which sometimes made it difficult to follow (or remember), though they continued to prove themselves as an amazing live band to go see what with the mix of all-out danger (vocalist Simon Brody regularly swinging his mic around by the cord like a goddamn lasso) and astute technical skill.  So what should you expect with this go-around?  Both songs feel like mid-era Drowningman, closer to the “How They Light Cigarettes In Prison” or “Still Loves You” EPs- not as chunky or riff-centric as “Busy Signal..”, but not nearly as technical as “Rock N’ Roll Killing Machine”.  So as they eventually lead up to a new full length record it’s difficult for me to say how well material such as this holds up in the 2020’s- that combination of metallic and technical with singing somewhere between way-old Converge, Deadguy, and then the onslaught of Ferret/Trustkill Records polished metalcore of the early 2000’s.  Younger heads will have to put into context for themselves.  Personally, I’m fine with it and this is a decent representation of a good band from that era giving us a solid old track they never used for whatever reason, as well as a new one that measures up fine with that older material.  (The Ghost Is Clear)

 

EDITRIX, “Editrix II:  Editrix Goes To Hell”

Damn, talk about a band that’s really difficult to classify. I think part of my initial curiosity of this band began with that challenge on their first record, which was kind of a mixed bag for me.  Now, on their second full length, I’m not sure if I’m more down with their thing because I’m going in with the expectation that it’s going to be weird, hard-to-pin-down music, or if the band has just gotten to be better songwriters.  I think it’s a bit of both.  Regardless, what is Editrix doing that’s so out there?  Well, they play very herky-jerky- and quirky!- indie rock that veers into some aggressive territory now and then with semi-chaotic parts.  They’re all music school types that throw in all sorts of math-y, noodly parts to their songs ranging from Minutemen-style funk curveballs to Dischord 21^st century-era post-hardcore rocking a la Q and Not U and Faraquet.  The vocals are the real standout here most of the time though, as guitarist/vocalist Wendy Eisenberg coos softly over all this eccentricity to keep the listener at least a little grounded.  Her voice is a dead ringer for Karla Schickele, from 90’s indie stalwarts Ida and Beekeeper (please look them both up), and maybe in a more current sense, a little bit of Melkbelly too.  It all sounds random and confusing on paper, but give it a few listens and Editrix somehow worms their way into your brain and their sound sticks somehow.  It’s weird, it’s cool, there’s a really odd picture of a dog on the cover of the record.  (Exploding InSound)

 

GOSPEL, “The Loser”

Bands reuniting in this day and age is no big deal.  It’s so much easier now to connect with old bandmates who moved to the other side of the country and drag them back in for either a cash-in nostalgia tour, or some half-hearted comeback album that frequently sounds like a cover version of themselves.  But every once in awhile a band that never made a big impact decides, without anyone necessarily pining for a reunion (or expecting one), to get back in the saddle and they just kill it.  The best results often come from the bands who never made a huge deal of things in the first place and didn’t have massive pressure weighing on them from the fan community.  Gospel is one such band.  They released one album in the mid-oughts that was met with both adulation and confusion- the pretty spectacular “The Moon Is a Dead World”.  They never toured much and then they sort of just dissolved, leaving this super weird, but really exciting document of what would happen if you mixed wild screamo music with 70’s Yes and Genesis.  In 2010 they hinted at a comeback and recorded a demo, but then just disappeared once again.

Now they have resurrected those couple demo tracks, and wrote a bunch of other songs to make an entire new album and it’s just as fascinating and weird as their initial output.  The only big noticeable change is in the vocals, which were originally a higher pitch and more, ya know, scream-y.  I suppose with age things change and now the vocals are in a lower register, slurred more, and come off in a sort of David Yow-meets-Creston Spiers sort of drunken howl.  It’s not a bad change by any means, but it once again throws a wrench into any potential prog fans notion that everything ought to sound like it came out of a music school.  Of course the drumming is still ridiculously off-the-rails, wildly inventive, and propels many of these songs into a whole other territory.  The space-y keyboards further add to the ‘prog’ tag, bringing out the band’s signature unique sound while the rest of the band plows through pretty long songs (mostly), yet always keeping you reeled in.  It’s an excellent follow-up, albeit over 15 years later.  But I’m not complaining.  I never expected them to do anything ever again so it’s a nice surprise and worth really digging into.  Music made for super scientists. All it’s missing is a Roger Dean cover painting. (DogKnights Productions)

 

KRAUSE, “The Art Of Fatigue”

Not often will you hear me extol the virtues of Greek noise rock (OK, that really never happens because I know fuck all about what happens in Mediterranean Europe), but I’m just going to go ahead and guess that Krause has that particular niche scene on lock.  They have quite the discography already, and certainly know their way around a RAT pedal so let’s just assume half of Athens rock fans are deaf because of this group.  I first came across them on a random bandcamp spree last year and was drawn in by their freaky pulp monster art adorning their last EP.  It was a solid bet, so I’ve been keeping an eye on what they’re doing since then.  So here is their new full length and it’s just as full of piss and vinegar, just more of it because it’s a full length.  Once again, they have some wild art going here and that’s always a plus.  As for the songs- not bad either.  With a bass sound that’s got more dirt on it than a corpse, sans coffin, in an unmarked grave and a seething sneer that operates on a ‘some songs fast and pissed, others slow and menacing’ it’s pretty easy to feel the anger and resentment here on “The Art Of Fatigue”. My favorite track is probably the smash n’ grab aesthetic behind “Sloppy Human Excess”, followed closely by the song with the most accurate title ever- “Stressworld” and it’s creeping bass intro with off-time backbeat, bursting into a perfect summation of the song’s title through ugly rage.  The album, as a whole, is a little more polished with the recording than their last effort, but in this case it just means the heaviness comes out more. (Venerate Industries)

 

NERVER, “Cash”

The second full length from the Midwest’s Nerver takes no time to get down to business.  Right from the jump they dig in with grimey, heavy-ass noise rock.  It’s a great introduction really.  However, some of the songs feel a little long (they’re not actually all that long, they just feel that way) when compared to the overall more immediate, faster, and less involved songs from their first LP “Believer’s Hit” from a couple years back.  On the other hand, “Cash” is a bigger, more menacing-sounding record so take that all as you will.  While taking some cues from fellow brethren/contemporaries Bummer in terms of the harshness they deliver much of this reminds me a lot more of Pigs (the Dave Curran-helmed Unsane side band).  While a song like “Purgatory” takes a slow and somber approach to creating a sense of malaise, songs like “Blood Boy” and “The Chair” kick you right in the fuckin’ teeth with fast stop-start riffs and sections that just drag you by the feet through a marsh of mud and sharp rocks.  The Midwest doesn’t fuck around, let me tell ya.  (The Ghost Is Clear)

 

RIP ROOM, “Alight and Resound”

This is definitely what one could consider to be art-punk, but not with a collective nose so high in the air as to be insufferable.  Often there is a sparseness to the sound of San Francisco’s Rip Room, focusing on simple, yet solid bass lines and wire-y guitar that gives it a strong post-punk lean as well.  I suppose you could liken Rip Room to certain Dischord Records bands existing in Fugazi’s shadow in the early 90’s, or perhaps nearly anything emanating from the Lovitt Records roster.  It’s not quite what the label write-up implies it to be, but it’s also a decent record from some up-and-comers keeping you bopping with those thoughtfully restrained and catchy basslines. (SpartanRecords)

 

TRUTH CULT, “Tour ’22 Tape”

Let me tell ya’, Truth Cult just had themselves a hell of a Spring.  They got to open for the biggest hardcore band on the planet for a month and came really close to blowing them off the stage each night.  In my humble opinion, this Baltimore-based group is about the most exciting hardcore (or HC-adjacent if you will) band out there.  If you haven’t had the chance to check out their absolutely wonderful “Off Fire” LP from a year or so ago do yourself a favor and stop reading this now and go grab it.  But this new collection of songs, four tracks in all, was meant as a taste of things to come I can only assume (I know they have a whole new album in the can) and they made some copies to bring on the aforementioned tour with them.  Now they’re up online so you need to get on it.  Recalling the best of late 80’s/early 90’s DC/Dischord punk and hardcore, but occasionally veering off into other lanes here and there this is super energetic, rocking, and uplifting punk.  Hoarse, impassioned vocals with occasional sung back-up’s, gonzo drumming, and loose guitar riffing straight from the school of Farrell make Truth Cult a band I’m happy to support.  Opener “Resurrection” will be the jam of the summer- floating between spastic/driving and beautiful/ uplifting, while “The Bodies You Keep” and “Remain In Light” continue with the style they brought on the LP with a little more experience and thoughtfulness.  “Roadside Picnic” is the final track and it’s the weirdest of the bunch as it takes numerous twists and turns through ripping sections, some seemingly freeform parts, and a lot of noisy jamming.  Like I said, quit reading and just go listen to this band and if you have the chance to see them live do not miss it. (self-released)