cassette craze chronicles XLIV feat. AGRICULTURE, NOIR NOIR, RITUAL ASCENSION, TEMPÊTE SOLAIRE, TERZIJ DE HORDE, UBOA and WHITEHORSE

Are we still spinning tapes here? Of course we are! And we're starting the haul of my latest bunch with one of the many reasons I haven't even decided what my TOP 25 albums of the year are, because this is yet another burning hot candidate...

AGRICULTURE - The Spiritual Sound (2025)

I recently listened to most of the new Deafheaven album. And in shocking contrast to my previous experiences I actually liked it. So that kind of ruined what I wanted to say about the work at hand here, which was that Agriculture actually redeem what Deafheaven promise... Well, at least they're still doing it better.

"The Spiritual Sound" is made of Black Metal and Shoegaze, of hopeful celestial melodies and wild Rock star shredding. It comes pure, raw, radical and in your face, but it can also be quiet and fragile. It's beautifully brutal and brutally beautiful, half-way between Alcest and Boris. If you understand the term beyond a specific subculture and music genre,  Agriculture are most definitely Punk.
This is a serious work, but it's so much fun to listen to! The wild energy it radiates has such a cleasing yet life-affirming quality - just an album unlike any other. And surely one of the prime Metal releases of 2025.

The tape looks good, I especially dig the back cover. Putting the track titles only onto the cassette shell itself is a minor annoyance though.

AGRICULTURE - Agriculture (2023)

While I was ordering "The Spiritual Sound" it was a no-brainer to also get the Californians' 2023 debut album. Relatively speaking the Ecstatic Black Metal on the self-titled "Agriculture" may not take as many detours in style and intensity yet, but the difference is actually not that huge. All the trademarks including super sparsely instrumented ballads and the brute yet perfect production are already in place.

Other than its successor, which only has Emma Ruth Rundle on its final track, the debut even features several guest musicians on violin, saxophone (hey, it's Patrick Shiroishi!) and lap steel guitar. So both albums have their unique details. And while yes, Agriculture are even better today, this shit already fucking rules!

TERZIJ DE HORDE - Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone (2025)

We're not leaving (Post) Black Metal territory yet, but we're moving from The Flenser to Tartarus Records, and from the US west coast to the west of Europe with the Dutch steamroller Terzij De Horde.

"Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone" contains more and shorter tracks than their last 2022 album "On One Of These, I Am Your Enemy" and adds to a ten minutes longer total playing time. A little over fourty minutes still aren't Swans dimensions, but for the angry ferocious high-speed assault this group delivers it's really more than enough.

With a vocal performance closer to Hardcore than to Black Metal, this album feels seriously pissed off - and the melodic layers in the killer guitar riffs are not designed to tame, yet rather to amplify that relentless, never pausing anger. 

An album with long and winding song titles like "A Hammer To The Great Matter Of Birth And Death", "The All-Consuming Work Of The Soul's Foreclosure" or "Justice Is Not Enough To leave The House Of Modernity" of course deserves a seperate booklet for its lyrics. This comes with the tape in one of those Tartarus-typical  black deluxe boxes with golden hotfoil print. Nice.

I don't know if it's just my copy of this edition of 100, but it features the classic switcheroo with sides A and B being interchanged. No biggie, shit happens. The music of course still absolutely rips!

UBOA & WHITEHORSE - The Dissolution Of Eternity (2025)

If Black Metal is too light and upbeat for you, Tartarus Records also has something more malicious for you with this Australian split tape of artists who really give down under a double meaning.

Side A features two tracks of nasty life-hostile Sludge from Whitehorse. Slow, deep and soul-crushing their Doom strikes with inhumane vocals, crawling killer riffs and great supportive electronic effects, as well as a giant drum sound. These two songs are surely among the best of this genre released this year. I assume it has something to do with line-up changes at the time, that these recordings from 2017 had to lie dormant for years. Good this sick shit is out there now!

Still not brutal enough? Enter Harsh Noise artist Uboa with five recent tracks on side B! She starts off with flavours of hardly and then even less musical mayhem, filled with tons of tension and destructive expression. The interesting turn however happens first with the piano interlude "Dreamwalker, Fuck I Miss You" and then the shoegazy "Pareidolia Shadow", both drowned in Ambient sounds and Noise, before "The Apocalypse Of True Love" summons the whole spectrum of both beautiful and uncomfortable textures in Uboa's repertoire and even evolves into a Post Rock hymn for a while - before descending into hell and finding peace there. Cathartic.

NOIR NOIR - Black Curtain / Divine Swelling (2016/2022/2025)

We're continuing with another solo artist, Noir Noir from Spain, who also incorporates Electronic Noise into his sound, but all in all leans more into Industrial, als well as Dark Wave, while being rooted in Death and Black Metal. This cassette released by Sentient Ruins Laboratories combines two EPs from 2016 and 2022, thus giving us a good overview of the range of low-fi raw and rather polished majestic noises. Be ready for some extreme shifts! This is a weird one. But it's dark, double dark, one could even say. And definitely not your ideal soundtrack for going to bed.

While the outburst of drum computer Old School Black Metal in the middle of these apocalyptic soundscapes still confuses me a bit, as a whole - or the sum of two wholes if you will - "Black Curtain / Divine Swelling" is as evil as it gets and a pretty powerful and overwhelming experience.  

RITUAL ASCENSION - Profanation of the Adamic Covenant (2025)

This next ejection of Dissonant Death Metal and Doom has already been reviewed by me back in February, when it came out. But as so often with Sentient Ruin releases it took a while until the tape was available within Europe and found its way onto my shopping bag.

Since my opinion about this album hasn't changed, I could only repeat myself here. Ritual Ascension's filthy journey into the swamp is still as foul, mouldy and ghoulish as ten months ago. Some listeners may have decomposed already, so my advise comes too late for them, but I suggest at least one thorough shower after listening.

TEMPÊTE SOLAIRE - La Précession Des Équinoxes (2025)

Last but most definitely not least a tape I bought at this year's last show for me, which was Thisquietarmy x Otay:onii. This is the second release of Eric Quach's bass, drums and saxophone trio Tempête Solaire.

Even bolder than on "Heliospheric Dialogues" Quach, Eric Craven and Elyze Venne-Deshaies are exploring their explosive take on Free Jazz, which includes traditional Jazz trio aethetics as well as broader Fusion and Post Rock sounds, electronic effects, Drone textures, doom-ish heaviness, Punk, Prog, Ambient and Noise. It's a wild mixture that comes together much more natural than one would assume and even in its most abstract and experimental passages like during the seventh track "Manicouagan" always stays enganging. A brilliant album!

cassette craze chronicles XLI feat. CH'AHOM, DÉLIRANT, DIRK SERRIES, GORGONIS, HAGER/KAPUTT, MIIRA, NEVER SOL, THE MOND and URN

Phew, they keep piling up! Time to spin some tapes again!

DIRK SERRIES - Fog Curtains (2025)

Let's start with the elephant in the room, the one which obviously sticks out in the picture above! Released by Momentarily Records, a label specialized on small cassette releases in special packaging, Dirk Serries' latest(ish?) solo album comes as an unexpected haptic experience in a grey block of concrete.
There's something oddly satisfying about this inconvenient housing which you cannot even fully close. Just holding this solid thing in your hand, feeling its surface - and also being glad that this is not the standard for all tapes.

The music fits the grey colour and just like the concrete surface is a rather textural experience, in which maybe three or four layers of sound keep meandering around each other, just like... uhm... "Fog Curtains". Droning, whooshing, resonating, this is a pure sound experience, the core of Ambient guitar music.

The Bandcamp description actually almost says it all:
"The four songs on the album are a beautiful and captivating journey through a misty landscape. The artwork consists of a self-cast concrete shell and a colourful credit inlay, which perfectly matches the slightly hazy colour of the tape."

One might only add that you probably won't even notice that these forty minutes are divided into four parts, because all changes are very subtle, the principle of organic formlessness never changes. "Fog Curtains" certainly requieres attention and deep listening - yet the album rewards you with a freeing and relaxing sensation not meant to be put into words.

GORGONIS - Choice Paralysis (2025)

A pink mutant cat shooting lasers from its eyes - yeah, this release by Fuzzed Up & Astromoon Records surely caught my attention with its packaging, too. Even though I was at work I immediately checked it out hoping that the music would be good enough to justify ordering it. And damn, this shit is not just good, but absolutely on fire!

Gorgonis from Boston are a big band project with a Rock'n'Roll line-up plus a brass section and additional gang vocals, combining a wide array of styles like Garage Punk, Rockabilly, Horror and Morricone soundtrack music, Psychedelic Rock and johnzornish Avantgarde Jazz to an exciting wild ride that could totally work as the score for a Super 8 Tarantino tribute short film.

Speaking of short: The songs are compactly on point, so the nine tracks don't even add up to a total playing time of twenty-five minutes. But that's just the right length for this fun little album. You can - and should - just always spin it again if you need more. It's a feral, loudly meowing killer!

DÉLIRANT - Thoughteater (2025)

I've already reviewed this deliciously horrifying slab of Dissonant Deathened Black Metal back in February, but as so often with releases from Sentient Ruin Laboratories it took a while until this awesome looking tape became available for a reasonable price in Europe.

And not that this fact needed further confirmation - but yes, Délirant's "Thoughteater", a sonic nightmare in seven chapters, remains of of the sickest Extreme Metal releases of the year. Yet after almost six months I still cannot close my review of this gloriously discordant maelstrom better then I already did, so I'll just lazily copy that whole last paragraph:

"Thoughteater" feels like the horrific freeze frame of the moment Saturn's son realizes that Francisco Goya is making his father fucking eat him alive. What a dickhead! And what a brain-levelling blast!

CH'AHOM - Knots Of Abhorrence (2023)

Alongside Délirant I also purhased a Sentient Ruin tape, which is a little older. Ch'ahom's debut album has been released in 2023, the same year I got the compilation of their first four demos.

"Knots Of Abhorrence" doesn't stray from the band's former path, yet only increases the quality of the German Death/Black Metal group's music. It's still dedicated to Aztec blood cults, intercuts its attacks of dissonant brutality with accordingly ritualistic flutes and percussions - and almost tries to hide its Progressive influences and technical masterclass in a swampy low-fi aesthetic. So if you don't pay attention you might miss that this actually a pretty amazing, atmospherically dense Death Metal killer.

With "Path to Ixtab" there's only one track that had already been released previously, the other five tracks (including the digital only twelve-minute bonus "Ts'Ono'Ot") are all new - or were new in 2023 -, so there's absolutely no reason not to include this in your sick collection of advanced ghoulish insanity.

NEVER SOL - Tell The Sea I'm Coming Back (2024)

From Sentient Ruin Laboratories to a label which dedicates itself even more to tapes, the diverse Czech underground herald Stoned To Death!

A while ago I couldn't resist their friendly discounts, which introduced me to the singer and solo artist Sára Vondrášková aka Never Sol. Her three-song EP "Tell the Sea I'm Coming Back" is based on the full droning sound of the pipe organ, so there's of course no way around comparisons to the great Anna von Hausswolff. And concerning the slowly moving monolithic instrumentals this is more than fair.

Vocally however Never Sol doesn't reach the same eccentric Kate Bush heights, but mostly stays more reserved inside a warm range which reminds me of the lower registers of Angel Olsen.
It's only during the mini album's second half that the singer explores a higher, more mystical and dramatic tone with higher notes. Both organ (plus some added synths) and voice build a huge and intense atmosphere, contributing to a very good release.

Even though I don't feel that Vondrášková has reached her full potential in terms of songwriting yet - the pieces are still missing a certain something to really make them stand out - I can only recommend this tape.

URN - Self Sabotage (2024)

Slovak composer, guitar player and long-time Danish resident (now living in Tuscany) Jakub Volovár released another album of tracks recorded in Aarhus under the moniker URN. And no, "Self Sabotage" isn't much easier to put into a box than "Recitál" from 2019.

Or maybe it actually is? Yeah, especially since with very few exceptions the upright bass and drumming remain stylistically consistent this can all in all safely be labeled as Jazz, even if the guitar occasionally explores other territories like Blues, Flamenco or Experimental Ambient.

Reading the description on Bandcamp I would argue that I don't experience the album by far as depressively melancholic as intended. The vibe of "Self Sabotage" is intimate and most the thirteen tracks seem rather relaxed - at least on the surface. There are subtly interwoven dark undertones. And there are also hints of funkier Fusion on one and rebellious Heavy Jazz on the other side. But URN doesn't approach these influences in a radical way, yet rather introduces everything harmonious and playfully. This whole album by design feels more like an eased juggling of ideas than a presentation of completely finished songs - and that's what actually makes up a large part of its appeal.

An interesting, somehow very private take on contemporary Jazz.

THE MOND - The Mond (2016)

The third Stoned To Death tape of this bunch is clearly the oldest release here. Yet as I am writing this there's still one last copy of this insane live recording available! So if you're a friend of chaotic improvisations between Psychedelic Rock, Avantgarde Jazz and Noise - don't think twice and get it!

The 2016 debut of Experimental maniacs The Mond delivers a very enjoyable take on free musical madness, mainly because the trio's instrumentation of "electrified trumpet", modular synths, drums and keyboards establishes an interesting, recognizable and hands down just cool trademark sound. "The Mond" is not the reinvention of music, but a very fun album for fans of raw Heavy Jazz and pleasently weird soundtracks to stuff falling down stairs.

MIIRA / HAGER/KAPUTT - Split (2025)

Am I saving the best for last? Maybe. I actually don't want to tie myself down on that. Yet undoubtly this split cassette on Nasse Records (limited to fifty copies) is something special.

Side A belongs to the German guitar/drums duo Miira and their twenty minute Post Rock epic "Unfollow Function". It's just amazing how big their sound feels. And this piece is more emotional, sophisticated and dynamic than their previous album "Wellness".  Huge and heartfelt.

Framed by church bells side B belongs to the duo of Philipp Hager (Zement) and Franz Joseph Kaputt, whose even longer track called "Beschluss der Ewigen Anbetung" ("Decree of Perpetual Adoration") is a calmer affair, which mixes a beautiful saxophone with acoustic guitar and Ambient sounds. It feels as if Smooth Jazz was meeting Appalachian Folk under the umbrella of Post Something on a small, softly lit living room stage.

Both sides complement each other perfectly, making this cassette an exemplary split release, which leaves nothing to be desired. 

cassette craze chronicles XXXVI feat. CHAT PILE, MIDWIFE, MIDWIFE & VYVA MELINKOLYA, NADJA, RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON, TEMPLE FANG, TEUFELSKELLER, THE NAUSEA and TORU & CR3C3II3

I must admit that I procrastinated this edition of my tape series for a while, because my tape deck (a modified Sony from the 90's) has gotten a bit erratic, just refusing to play one cassette - or just one side of a cassette - while allowing others without any discernable logic behind it. And sometimes trying back and forth multiple times until the desired music finally plays takes me out of the mood to listen to it... so yeah, I'm caught between that annoyed frustration and not wanting to look for a replacement player yet again.

Meanwhile the new tapes are beginning to pile up and I don't want to wait until I have to review a double-digit number of reviews at a time, so here we go:

RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON - Vomitorium (2024)

Let's begin this with a raging banger! But wait, I already used the Rage Against The Machine comparison with the phrase "Radar Men Against The Machine" when I talked about the Dutch Psych/Drone/Noise/whatevertheywanttodonow collective RMFTM's previous album "The Bestial Light". "Vomitorium" pushes into a similar direction and reprises the line-up with two guitars, bass and two drummers, yet introducing a new vocalist with Niels Koster.

Radar Men From The Moon live

It's hard to ultinately pin down references which apply to all eight tracks, but most of them are definitely on the aggressive side, mixing influences from Industrial Metal, Heavy Psych and Post Punk, which in the case of the second track "Psychic Warfare Now!" can lead to some strong Voivod vibes or on the title track takes us back to Temple Ov BBV, the fantastic collaborative project with Gnod.
Overall however a lot of this album takes me back to classic Ministry. Especially "Altered States" with its shift to more Electronic sounds instead of guitar walls has some delicious "The Land Of Rape And Honey" flavours.

The whole album feels like Radar Men From The Moon have descended onto Earth and are rampaging through a dystopian scenery, aggressively waking people up and screaming into their faces. Undoubtly a proper soundtrack to our times!

The cassette edition comes in the familiar Tartarus Records cardboard sleeve.

THE NAUSEA - Requiem (2024)

This album I picked up after a show onboard the MS Stubnitz in September. The Nausea is a solo project of the Canadian violin/viola/cello player Anju Sing, who mixes powerful haunting Neoclassical string loops with Dark Ambient and Harsh Noise sounds and occasional evil vocals.

The Nausea live

Do you know Laibach's "Kinderreich"? If not: Drop everything right now, get your hands on the album "Kapital" and then return here! If yes: Well, you already know the general mood of "Requiem".

I called it "Pharmakon with violin" in my live review, and it's hard to come up with a better short description, even though the music feels more layered and nuanced in the studio recording. Most of all the atmosphere The Nausea is creating here is incredibly strong. If you want an album to reach its arm out of the morass, grab you and pull you down to be completely engulfed by a Dantean purgatory - this is for you!

NADJA - Querétaro (2024)

On the night I saw The Nausea I could have also grabbed this tape from the merch table. Unfortunately I had already ordered it from Zona Watusa before, so that meant waiting a couple of weeks longer.

Nadja live

There isn't much to say about this one. "Querétaro" is a recent live recording (February 2024 in Mexico) of the Doomgaze / Drone Metal duo Nadja. Four songs including the "Luminous Rot" title track and "Blurred" from "Labyrithine", all in completely instrumental rendititions. A crushing wall of rumbling bass, distortion and levitating feedback, driven by a surprisingly elaborate drum machine. The special kind of Godflesh/Jesu worship we know and love from Aidan Baker and Leah Bukareff. Over fifty minutes of hypnotic slow heaviness. What's not to like?

Maybe that the tape misses a clear indication of side A and B side, yeah. On the other hand I really dig the photo on the front, which might really be one of my favorite cover artworks of this year. 

TEMPLE FANG - Live at Krach am Bach (2024)

We're staying in the realm of live music with a tape I bought at the Lazy Bones Festival in October. And it's a really good one. How can it not be, when it's coming from the Dutch premium epic long format Psychedelic Rock masters Temple Fang. The two track setlist of their performance at the rainy Krach am Bach Festival looks pretty familiar, because it consists of the two pieces "Gemini" and "Not The Skull" from their 2020 debut "Live at Merleyn". 

Temple Fang live

But already the latter being ten minutes longer tells you that this is far from being a mere rehash. The new drummer, reworked arrangement and the band's general approach of making each show its own unique beast with all the space for varying improvisations make sure of this.

I've seen them from up close five times now and from that experience alone I can assure you that Temple Fang are one of the most amazing pure, all centered around the music itself Rock'n'Roll experiences out there today. And this is a recording of a show which felt special even to their standards. I've already said it: It's a really good one!

MIDWIFE - No Depression In Heaven (2024)
[MY REVIEW ON VEIL OF SOUND.COM ]

I could be lazy and just point to my previous review in my last Veil of Stuff roundup about the last four albums I have reviewed over on Veil of Sound. Unfortunaly I had already been lazy there and pointed to the next issue of cassette craze chronicles. Damn. Well, I could still just tell you to read my VoS review, right?

Midwife live

Once again Madeline Johnston brings us a mesmerizing collection of minimalist Ambient Shoegaze. Slow clean guitars, subtle noises, far-away washed-out ethereal vocals. Beautiful songs from the road, watching America pass by through a Lynchian haze of melancholic longing. Despite being made of simple parts Midwife's Heaven Metal, as she calls it herself, occupies a unique sonic space. And it's a place you want to linger and float in for eternity. Eery, peaceful, sad and dreamy at the same time. A sound like clouds of breath forming on a cold winter day.

The artwork suits the cassette format, so it's a nice companion to "Luminol". 

MIDWIFE & VYVA MELINKOLYA - Orbweaving (2023)

On the occasion of ordering the new Midwife album I also finally caught up with her last release from the previous year, which is a collaboration with Shoegaze artist Angel Diaz aka Vyva Melinkolya. Since both artists are on very similar musical wavelengths, "Orbweaving" actually doesn't sound radically different than regular Midwife albums, especially the first two songs, which were written by Madeline Johnston. The spare quiete arrangements and dreamy atmosphere are both definitely there. There are a couple more soft layers of synths, guitar and vocals though. And of course there is the title track, which stands out as a twelve minutes long excercise in pure textural Ambient music.

All in all this doesn't feel as different as I would have expected, but it still is a beautiful, soothing and captivating mini album. The artwork / layout of the tape is also a plus.

TEUFELSKELLER  / TORU & CR3C3II3 - Split (2024)

But now let's get to some good old - or rather new - senseless destruction!

"Tour de Force" is quiet an apt title for the ride the exile Russian trio Teufelskeller has us saddling up for. Demon-excercising drums, relentlessly pumping bass, rumbling electronic Noise and one of the glitchiest saxophone performances in the history of instrument abuse give us thirteen minutes of raw improvisation. It's actually not as harsh as Anton Ponomarev's other project P/O Massacre, yet a bit more naturalistic somehow. Ultimately however it plays in a similar ballpark of cathartic aural assault.

Side B of this beautiful split EP belongs to the French experimental trio Toru in collaboration with Noise artist CR3C3II3. And their two tracks "Rattles Are Out" and "Rattles Are Back" are actually even wilder and more erratic, giving us their own spin of Mr. Bungle's "Disco Volante" mindset. Or they just tapped into the overheating brain of a robot on a psychotropics overdose. Very sick shit, and astonishingly rewarding, especially on headphones. 

CHAT PILE - Cool World (2024)

And last but probably biggest and most-awaited... Chat Pile! This new heap of bleak misery and frustration is definetly hard to judge in comparison to its predecessor "God's Country", since the new album certainly cannot have a second "Why" or another insane bad trip like "grimace_smoking_weed.jpeg".
But then "Cool World" is exclusively made out of bangers, too. Beginning with the opener "I Am Dog Now", "Camcorder", "Tape", "Masc", "Milk Of Human Kindness"... so much killers, I already know that I'll have to miss great tracks for a lack of time when I'll hopefully see them live again.

Chat Pile live

I also think that on this album it's even more appearant that probably no other band has internalized the raw sound and brutal precision of Godflesh's rhythm section as much as Chat Pile - with a very real drummer instead of a machine, mind you. Yet while the Oklahomans carry this influence openly on their sleeves, it never comes of as a copy, because it's applied too creatively and always combined with all those Post Punk, Hardcore, Grunge and Noise Rock influences which form Chat Pile's distinct sound.
And on top of that there's of course Raygun Busch's no fuck's given narrative vocal performance, which pulls it off to be so resigned yet fascinating at the same time.

Chat Pile are bleak and bitter, but also just brutal fun. Their "Cool World" feels old school, but actually offers a sound of our time. And echo of rage and anger from the Eighties and Ninetines, still perservering and even amplified by the  ongoing shitshow of the present. The hype remains deserved!

cassette craze chronicles XXXV feat. BRÍI, DIABOLIC OATH, ERSHETU and HAVE BLUE

Hey, finally! It's tape spinning time again. So without further ado let's start with  blasting some sick Blackened Death Metal!

DIABOLIC OATH - Oracular Hexations (2024)

Oh, I worded that wrong: Let's start with that one of these mini reviews I could totally skip! Because yes, I've already written about this slab of disgusting fretless Dissonant Death Metal back in April. As with most releases from Sentient Ruin Laboratories it just took a while until it was available in physical format in Europe.
Of course this album is still a sick blackened nightmare of awesome performances deliberately drenched in cavernous abysmal chaos. It's absolutely delicious!

And as nice as it had been to have the digital (promo) copy, it felt a little too convenient and untrve that you're actually able to read the tapeworm track titles like "Rusted Madness Tethering Misbegotten Haruspices" on the screen. No, this needs to be in a challenging font, printed red on black!

DIABOLIC OATH - Aischrolatreia (2022)

Well, if you love the album you will also love Diabolic Oath's previous EP. It's the same brand of Technical Death Metal which doesn't care to showcase its Progressive chops, but just uses those as one of various elements to create stress and exhaustion. It also features the band's trademark of exclusively using fretless guitars to even enhance the twisted nature of their maelstrom invocations.

The song titles alone are pure Death Metal bliss again:

"Thrones Before Slobbering Gods"
"Grand Atrocities Through Foul Miscreations"
"Poisoned Bodies of Swine Imbuing"

The arrangements are not quite at the point they achieved later with "Oracular Hexations", but on the other hand this is even a bit more filthy, raw and chaotic. This dunks your bones in demon blood soup, makes you bathe in it and feeds the fire under the kettle. Blessed are the diabolic.

BRÍI - Último Ancestral Comum (2023)

It took quite a while until the latest Bríi was finally released on cassette. So long in fact that I thought there maybe just wouldn't be a tape this time and ordered it as a CD from the Chinese label Pest Productions. And of course even before that one arrived the cassette came out. Ordering it too admittedly was collector's greed, just because I already have the three previous albums of the Brazilian project in that format. If you can get your hands on the disc - that one's absolutely fine as well.
On the other hand the cassette is quite a beautiful item and definitely features my favorite shell of this bunch.

And musically? In four long tracks once again Bríi hallucinates its weird dream of Ambient powered up with Electronic club sounds infused with Post Rock and smashed down by brutal epic Black Metal. Many movements on this album flow into each other very smoothly, others are sudden absurd bursts. And both approaches work on this exciting, highly unpredictable album.

The only thing which bothers me is that the production of the Metal parts could really be clearer. Low-fi attitude or not, the way the musical richness is drenched in swampy dullness sometimes is just too much. Especially since the Electronic grooves can be so satisfying (love the trance of the final track "Cada Canto Du Universo") that makes the production feel unbalanced. The only solution as a listener is to compensate with volume. And if you boosted "Alienígena Interior" enough to enjoy it, you will surely also have a great time with all the rest. The unique genre mix this artist is once again presenting here deserves it.

ERSHETU - Xibalba (2023)

On the level of being something different Ershetu can surely rival, if not even beat Bríi. The concept of the band which among others features vocals from Solefald and guitars from Blut Aus Nord is the meaning of Death in different cultures. The debut album starts this exploration with the Maya.

So yes, between the blasting cinematic orchestral Black Metal with harsh and clean vocals you should expect some pan flutes and other ethnic sounds, which are probably as authentically Mayan as Wardruna are Viking. Has anyone heard Central American music from that epoch? There you have it, let's rather file this under fantasy!
And that's not meant as a downgrade, because this stuff actually is super creative, unique and epic. Actually, had I endulged in this earlier it maybe could have been among my favorite releases of 2023. 

A nice bonus to the cassette is that the digital download also includes all six tracks as instrumental versions.

HAVE BLUE - Minus Minus (2024)

And now a more recent album again! Is the title a Jazz reference? And didn't I only just feature Have Blue's last release "Trübe" in the previous edition of my cassette craze chronicles?

Recorded in the beginning of 2024 in the band's rehearsal space, the eight German and English tracks on "Minus Minus" once again show us that Punk shouldn't be defined solely by sound, but mostly by attitude.

Because while the raw immediacy, D.I.Y. sound and spirit of their music always screams Punk, Have Blue are not afraid to add proggy time signatures, bluesy or funky parts, Garage Space Rock, Noise Rock and Metal influences whenever they see fit. In some fast and heavy instances the trio even reminds of the punkish side of Voivod including chord choices and the gnarly bass sound.

And all that happens without Have Blue never actually not being Punk anymore. I have absolutely not been raised on the genre, but this blend just is the shit for me. I think I still slightly prefer "Trübe" though, but that's above all a matter of quantity, since that album simply was twenty minutes longer than this quick half hour.