Hey, it's tape spinning time again! So here are the latest cassettes which found their way into my collection. (I also found a kaleidoscopic lens in a cardboard box when I was preparing for a flea market the other day and played a little with that in front of my Digital Harinezumi toy camera. Also went outside for that btw.)
CHURCHLICKERS - Churchlickers (2023)
This trio from Hamburg opened for Divide & Dissolve onboard the MS Stubnitz a week ago, where I grabbed one of their sixty-six hand-numbered tapes from the merch table. The self-titled debut not only wears a potentially iconic cover artwork, but also convinces with a punk-ish low-fi take on Post Rock, which juxtaposes a dry and raw production and minimalistic line-up of electronic piano, guitar and drums with unexpected grandeur.
It certainly is a little rough around the edges, but that is a part of what makes the sound of Churchlickers so unique and engaging. Having the interplay between keys and guitar without a bass as base is an interesting memorable choice and the four tracks on this tape (which are the same on side A and B) are a great first vital sign and make me very keen to see what the band will have to offer in the future.
This trio from Hamburg opened for Divide & Dissolve onboard the MS Stubnitz a week ago, where I grabbed one of their sixty-six hand-numbered tapes from the merch table. The self-titled debut not only wears a potentially iconic cover artwork, but also convinces with a punk-ish low-fi take on Post Rock, which juxtaposes a dry and raw production and minimalistic line-up of electronic piano, guitar and drums with unexpected grandeur.
FLESHVESSEL - Yearning: Promethean Fates Sealed (2023)
This would surely have been a part of my last I, Voidhanger Records special, which also included the predecessing debut EP of Fleshvessel - if I hadn't decided that I wanted the cassette version, released by Xenoglossy Productions.
On their first full album the band from Chicago continues the same overwhelming thing, yet not in one twenty-five-minutes composition. Here we "only" get four longtracks below the twenty-minute mark plus three short interludes of instrumental improvisation. And there already ends the part which still is easy to describe, because the musical trajectory is just so wild.
Imagine a Technical Death Metal band playing the show of their lives, but the audience consists of Folk musicians, ex-Rock stars from the 70's, a Jazz posse, Ambient hooligans and two competing Chamber music gangs, who all instead of just enjoying the performance constantly try to out-heckle each other by grabbing mics or plugging in their instruments, so there's always some organ, bell, piccolo flute, viola, clarinet and whatever else you can imagine jamming to the Metal brutaly. At some points that heckling goes so far that the band just gives up and lets the crowd jazz it out.
"Yearning: Promethean Fates Sealed" definitely is an extremely fine Death Metal album in the first place, but starting from there it's amazingly boundless, without ever getting too gimmick-y or outlandish to follow. If you love the direction both labels involved are following with their artists, Fleshvessel can impossibly disappoint you. This thing is enormous!
With the tape Xenoglossy once again shows how it's done, great artwork and layout, actually readable lyrics and all.
On their first full album the band from Chicago continues the same overwhelming thing, yet not in one twenty-five-minutes composition. Here we "only" get four longtracks below the twenty-minute mark plus three short interludes of instrumental improvisation. And there already ends the part which still is easy to describe, because the musical trajectory is just so wild.
Imagine a Technical Death Metal band playing the show of their lives, but the audience consists of Folk musicians, ex-Rock stars from the 70's, a Jazz posse, Ambient hooligans and two competing Chamber music gangs, who all instead of just enjoying the performance constantly try to out-heckle each other by grabbing mics or plugging in their instruments, so there's always some organ, bell, piccolo flute, viola, clarinet and whatever else you can imagine jamming to the Metal brutaly. At some points that heckling goes so far that the band just gives up and lets the crowd jazz it out.
"Yearning: Promethean Fates Sealed" definitely is an extremely fine Death Metal album in the first place, but starting from there it's amazingly boundless, without ever getting too gimmick-y or outlandish to follow. If you love the direction both labels involved are following with their artists, Fleshvessel can impossibly disappoint you. This thing is enormous!
With the tape Xenoglossy once again shows how it's done, great artwork and layout, actually readable lyrics and all.
BLUT AUS NORD - Disharmonium - Nahab (2023)
Wow, this band! When "Disharmonium - Undreamable Abysses" had already been the score for spiraling towards the abyss inside a lovecraftian maelstrom - then what it this next part of the Disharmonium series now? I guess we have arrived?
Indeed this album is very much a stylistic continuation, but I feel there's a slight shift from synth howling to more forceful dissonant riff and eery lead guitar brutality. Which would fit in with my picture that we're in hell now and a million demons are poking at our eyes and ears and butt cheeks. Hard - and unnecessary, if you ask me - to say if this is en par or even better than the last album. All in all it's pretty much a you dig X, you'll also love Y situation.
This music still is larger than life and death and just a completely sensory overload of unspeakable horror. Yet again this is somehow presented in an astonishingly listenable and enjoyable format. Which is quite a feat considering how intimidating and incomprehensible this Avantgarde Black Metal monstrosity is. By now we're probably at a point where we just can let every new Blut Aus Nord release through on the nod and stamp it as WTF and Masterpiece.
Indeed this album is very much a stylistic continuation, but I feel there's a slight shift from synth howling to more forceful dissonant riff and eery lead guitar brutality. Which would fit in with my picture that we're in hell now and a million demons are poking at our eyes and ears and butt cheeks. Hard - and unnecessary, if you ask me - to say if this is en par or even better than the last album. All in all it's pretty much a you dig X, you'll also love Y situation.
This music still is larger than life and death and just a completely sensory overload of unspeakable horror. Yet again this is somehow presented in an astonishingly listenable and enjoyable format. Which is quite a feat considering how intimidating and incomprehensible this Avantgarde Black Metal monstrosity is. By now we're probably at a point where we just can let every new Blut Aus Nord release through on the nod and stamp it as WTF and Masterpiece.
SARCÓFAGO - The Worst (1996/2018)
But now let's listen to something not beyond all doubt fantastic, haha! Sarcófago, the great cringy Blackened Thrash legends from Brazil, who somehow... dismantled themselves?
If I'm honest the only album I always loved despite some lyrical flaws was their most ambitious 1991 work "The Laws Of Scourge", which has some real classics on it. Something the ridiculously excessive Black Metal successor "Hate" with its laughable machine-gun drum computer can't really claim for itself. I know that I should write this way about the album, because I'm trying to sell it for a pretty high price on Discogs. But seriously: From the artwork to the lyrics and the production this thing has very few redeeming qualities and must be listened to with a dose of humour.
I didn't even know that there had even been another album after that. Until I discovered this 2018 tape reissue of "The Worst" (could it really be?) on the online shopping spree, which also included Blut Aus Nord. Speaking of: An obvious drum machine doesn't have to be a bad thing, right?
And somehow Sarcófago also made it cool on this album, probably because most this stuff is in mid-tempo, where Wagner Lamounier also used to write his best guitar riffs.
Even though the preconditions were the same as for "Hate", they somehow made this thing work better. Of course it's still funny, how of all things this one-third artificial trio claims to fight the trve Metal fight against the 90's sellouts. But hey, a bit of cringe is part of the game here!
All in all this album is far from being a masterpiece and clearly "The Worst" of this bunch, but it still has just the right balance of trying too hard, not trying hard enough and actually cool stuff to enjoy it every now and again.
If I'm honest the only album I always loved despite some lyrical flaws was their most ambitious 1991 work "The Laws Of Scourge", which has some real classics on it. Something the ridiculously excessive Black Metal successor "Hate" with its laughable machine-gun drum computer can't really claim for itself. I know that I should write this way about the album, because I'm trying to sell it for a pretty high price on Discogs. But seriously: From the artwork to the lyrics and the production this thing has very few redeeming qualities and must be listened to with a dose of humour.
I didn't even know that there had even been another album after that. Until I discovered this 2018 tape reissue of "The Worst" (could it really be?) on the online shopping spree, which also included Blut Aus Nord. Speaking of: An obvious drum machine doesn't have to be a bad thing, right?
And somehow Sarcófago also made it cool on this album, probably because most this stuff is in mid-tempo, where Wagner Lamounier also used to write his best guitar riffs.
Even though the preconditions were the same as for "Hate", they somehow made this thing work better. Of course it's still funny, how of all things this one-third artificial trio claims to fight the trve Metal fight against the 90's sellouts. But hey, a bit of cringe is part of the game here!
All in all this album is far from being a masterpiece and clearly "The Worst" of this bunch, but it still has just the right balance of trying too hard, not trying hard enough and actually cool stuff to enjoy it every now and again.
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