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.

  

cassette craze chronicles XIX (feat. AIRLINES OF TERROR, BRÍI and WORMROT)

Tapes, tapes tapes, I'm looking for a grind time...

But first some ambient!

BRÍI - Corpos Transparentes (2022)

Ambient? Seriously? No, with the Brazilian one-man project Bríi it's of course ambient black metal. And I'm decidedly not calling this music blackgaze. The term could be applicable, but also a bit misleading, because no matter how dreamy that subgenre gets, you still expect metal guitars, right?
And on this mammoth track of 36 minutes and 36 seconds mastermind Serafim decided to forgo those completely. Given how far he went into completely non-metal terrain for sometimes quite long passages on his previous releases, this isn't exactly off-brand for the experimentalist, but still works as a surprise.

On "Entre Tudo que é Visto e Oculto" Bríi tapped into ambient synth sounds and trance music, while "Sem Propósito" paired black metal, techno and synthwave with psychedelic rock.
Some of all that is also present on "Corpos Transparantes", but of the black metal part only the harsh vocals and the blasting drums remains. Most of the rest are ambient, piano and dulcimer-like synth sounds plus clean solo and choir vocals, which drift between fantasy epic score and zeuhl. Especially the piano work goes far beyond what you would usually expect from a metal something crossover. For a couple of minutes you're adjusting to this contradictionary soundscape, wondering if this will really work until the end. And it works perfectly, as the album flies by, alternating between various modes of hallucinatory mood. If you dig Botanist, Blut Aus Nord's "Hallucinogen", hypnotic electronics and fairies flying over deadly moors during full moon nights, this should be for you. Original and eerie beautiful!

WORMROT - Hiss (Cassette Collector's Set) (2022)
including:

WORMROT - Abuse (2009/2022)

WORMROT - Dirge (2011/2022)

WORMROT - Voices (2016/2022)

WORMOT - Hiss (2022)

Obviously this is the main dish of this chronicles edition. And even more obviously I cannot review this four MC box from Earache Records even close to the extent it deserves. Wormrot from Singapur are grindcore giants.  As the genre demands it most of their songs are short and sweet and oh boy, there's a lot of them!

The new album "Hiss" alone consists of twenty-one tracks. Those are mostly under two minutes short, but they cover such a wide array of everything you can do in and sometimes beyond the genre, that it would justify a track for track review just to get is full diversity across.

Similar to Napalm Death this band can incorporate almost any kind of tempo, vocal style and texture far beyond pure high speed brutality without you ever questioning that this still is in-your-face fucking grindcore. If there are instances where you're wondering for seconds if it isn't too catchy, too death metal, too post rock ("Sea Of Disease", "Voiceless Choir"), too thrash metal (also "Voiceless Choir"), too tribal ("Pale Moonlight"), too punk ("When Talking Fails, It's Time For Violence"), too Voivod ("Noxious Cloud"), too blackgaze ("Desolate Landscapes"), too melodic, too symphonic or whatever to count as grindcore anymore, you're instantly corrected, because no matter what Wormrot are throwing at you, it always only intensifies the grind. And to make it absolutely clear: This is one of the very best grindcore shit I have ever heard!

When the last notes of the final epic longtrack (hey, four and a half minutes is four times the average song lenghth here!) "Glass Shards" are gone, you might just sit still for a minute to process what just happened, but the ultimate conclusion can only be that "Hiss" is just masterful madness and ferocity of the greatest kind and surely one of the most compelling extreme noise stuff releases of the year.



Alongside death metal grindcore is probably one of the most comfort-zonal genres for me to just have fun with, but I never was the biggest collector of it. So even though it is quite a pricey item, getting the whole album discography of Wormrot with this box presented itself as a perfect opportunity to catch up on this awesome band. And if you're buying this from the label source, you're not only getting the value for money of "Hiss" and its three predecessor albums, which sums up to ninety-three tracks, but you can also download the content of the 2007 demo, the 2008 EP "Dead" and Wormrot's half of the split with Diseptic. All in all thirty more bonus tracks of furious grind glory.

So yeah, this really is a lot. the box allows you to follow almost the whole evolution of Wormrot's recordings. And fuck yeah - they always slayed!

The only flaws of this compilation lie in the box itself, which isn't slim enough. Some more padding inside or maybe even goodies like a booklet to stuff it would also have helped, but as it is, there's way too much empty space inside the box, which in case of my copy resulted in the content moving around freely and two cassette trays being broken at arrival. That's definitely a mistake to learn from for similar future releases!

AIRLINES OF TERROR - Requiem For Wings And Propellers (Tape+CD) (2022)

Anyone else here, who still needs a little more grind? Airlines Of Terror deliver at least a bit of that, albeit the Italians rather sound like a band with grindcore experience which has moved into a slightly different direction. Yes, of course that goes for a good portion of Wormrot's new album too, but this thirteen minutes short EP really could be described better as post hardcore with death and thrash metal (and a little grind) influences. Whatever you call it, it kicks ass, shouts in your face and sports some sick guitar work. It's brutal, yet intelligent and has an interesting aircraft theme to it. I ordered it from Mospharic Recording Limited mainly as a supplement to the Bríi tape, but this shit can actually stand on its own perfectly fine. Sick!
As a bonus this release is accompanied by a CD copy of the EP.

cassette craze chronicles VIII (feat. BRÍI, LUCY ADLINGTON & MIKE VEST and REPEATED VIEWING)

New tapes, new spinning... and already with the first one it's going out of control...

REPEATED VIEWING - The Family (2021)

Spun Out Of Control is a label specialised in limited cassette runs of synth music, which I am familiar with since Heinrich Dressel's "Shapeshifting". Yeah, that's not super long, but anyway here's the second tape I ordered from them. In the realm of John Carpenter inspired synthwave music, there are three, probably equally represented kinds of albums: just an album albums, actual soundtracks and soundtracks to imaginary obscure VHS movies. "The Family" is one of the latter.
Something with the involvement in an accidental death, satanic bikers, forbidden love and an unhappy ending, horror/slasher stuff, probably with a pinch of laboured and pretty bad humour. But honestly, you're only watching this trash for the astoundingly cool music in it anyway, right?
There's not much on this album by Alan Sinclair's one-man project Repeated Viewing, on which I could elaborate in detail, but if you're into Carpenter Brut, Zombi, Mitch Hunter and shit like I am, then chances are good that you might dig this. Cool.

BRÍI - Sem Propósito (2021)

Oh, another synth soundtrack release! At least for the first three or four minutes you could think that. Than it dawns to you, that it might rather be trance music - before it takes a turn to blasting black metal. And of course it does! This is a new album of Brasilian avant-garde extreme music project Bríi after all. And it seems like the shackles of genres and conventions are sitting even looser than on "Entre Tudo que é Visto e Oculto". Or at least the execution of the idea is even more radical now, as Serafim, who is only aided by two guest vocalists on this album doesn't give us any real time to breathe and digest what we're hearing. Instead he feeds us an hour of ideas in only two big unnamed chunks, each filling twenty-eight minutes and twelve seconds of one side.
Beside the ingredients electronic trance music (as in ambient, techno and synthwave) and black metal there are also elements akin to post rock and also - fitting, since the tape is being distributed by Lovers & Lollipops - a good amount of guitar-driven psychedelic rock.
I've already mentioned a spiritual connection to Esoctrilihum in my last Bríi review, yet in comparison this stuff is a lot more seamless, accessible and hypnotic. In its endless flow this album rather reminds me of the mesmerizing Russian blackgaze masterpiece "Ladoga" by Olhava. One hour is definitely not too long fo this album, especially since around the forty-minutes-mark, where a normal LP would end, the whole things just kicks itself to another level of awesomeness.
Even though huge amounts are something entirely different, I think I can already count "Sem Propósito" among my favorite metal releases of 2021. 

LUCY ADLINGTON & MIKE VEST - House Of Worship (2021)

No track titles, just side A and B, both sides filled with sound to the brim. Same as we just had with Bríi, albeit in this case both tracks are only twenty-two minutes short each. Other similarities these two tapes share are their love for ambient atmospheres and repitition. The genre is a different one though.
Lucy Adlington is a new artist for me, while I'm familiar to her cooperator Mike Vest as grandmaster of drone doomers Bong. And there you have it: "House Of Worship" is pure drone, recorded in a church, like its title suggests.
The trademark Bong guitar tone, which seems to carry Eastern enlightenment and mysticism is clearly recognizable, but there are more things going on. More guitar noises and feedbacks, scattered percussions - and my favorite, an old detuned piano, which opens the second half.
While a certain viscious darkness lurks deep in the shadows of this live recording, this isn't a drone which forces itself onto you as a purely punishing experience, yet rather lets you chose how you want to go through it yourself. And especially during that atmospherically thick and rich second mass I choose transcendence.
With an edition of 30 copies, coming with an original petal from the house of worship, this release could hardly be much more limited, so I'm very glad to call this treasure my own.

And whatever reasons UK customs had to return the little package to Lucy without explanation, so she had to try to send it a second time, I personally just file it under fuck Brexit, once again, for the bazillionth time. 

BRÍI - Entre Tudo que é Visto e Oculto

Ich habe Fragen. Ok, vor allem habe ich eine Frage: Warum benennt ein Brasilianer, den gewiss seine Eltern auf den den bürgerlichen Namen Serafim getauft haben, sein advantgardistisches Black-Metal-Soloprojekt nach einem Käse?

Oder bedeutet Bríi etwas anderes? Mein Portugiesisch (in dem hier auch die Texte verfasst sind) ist ein wenig eingerostet. Davon abgesehen deutet ja schon das ungewöhnliche Coverartwork an, dass auf diesem Album einiges anders als gewohnt läuft.

BRÍI - Entre Tudo que é Visto e Oculto (Tape) (2020)

Zunächst einmal sollte ich vielleicht zum Begriff Advantgarde Black Metal schleunigst noch weitere Stilmerkmale ergänzen. Denn auch wenn in allen vier fünfzehn bis einundzwanzig Minuten langen Tracks von "Entre Tudo que é Visto e Oculto" der schwarzmetallische Anteil für die meisten Hörer entscheidend dafür sein wird, ob sie dieser Musik überhaupt eine Chance geben möchten oder nicht, stehen hier doch - teilweise über sehr lange Strecken - auch andere Merkmale im Vordergrund.

So wird das vielfältige harsche Geschrammel (Serafim wirft ähnlich viele Ideen an die Wand wie sein französischer Geistesbruder Asthâghul aka Esoctrilihum) durch sanft wabernde Ambient-Synthiesounds balanciert, zu denen sich auch entrückte Meditationsroboterstimmen der Marke Cynic gesellen können.
Die elektronischen Elemente hören da aber noch längst nicht auf, sondern steigern sich von Tangerine Dream-Kraut zu modernen Trance-Club-Beats und über der sägenden Gitarre polternden Industrialsounds.

Die Blastbeats sind ziemlich weit in den Hintergrund gemischt, was den interessanten Nebeneffekt hat, dass die brutalen Metalparts eine viel entrücktere Qualität haben als der eigentlich auf diese Wirkung ausgerichtete Teil der Musik. Und das ist gar nicht schlecht, entstehen hier doch sehr interessante Dynamiken.

Dafür dass das grundsätzliche Konzept viertelstündiger Ambient-Elekro-Black-Metal-Monolithen ja nicht gerade auf Rotation im Hitradio angelegt ist, bleiben hier auch sehr viele gute Ideen im Ohr hängen.

Zu haben ist das Longplayer-Debüt von Bríi digital über Bandcamp, oder auf Kassette, die mir als Medium für diese Veröffentlichung absolut prädestiniert scheint.

Estou animado!