cassette craze chronicles XXVIII feat. BLUT AUS NORD, CHURCHLICKERS, FLESHVESSEL and SARCÓFAGO

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.

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.

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.

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.

Me, voidhanging again, this time with FLESHVESSEL, ONKOS and SARMAT

You know why of all cruel things Nu Metal is a thing again? It's a matter of cosmic karmatic balance, the necessary nuisance, because there's so much excellent merging of Extreme Metal and Jazz out there! And one label (among others) definitely responsible for that wave is I, Voidhanger Records.  My latest little haul of CDs here leaves no doubt about that.

SARMAT - Dubious Disk (CD+DVD) (2023)

"Dubious Disk" is a misleading title for the EP, because this "strictly limited to 200 pcs and never to be repressed" EP actually consists of two discs: One is the CD with one seventeen and a half minutes long track and the second is a DVD (or is it even really with an mp4 file on it?) with the same thing on video plus a couple of short behind the scenes interview snippets.

That doesn't sound like much yet? Let me tell you that it fucking is, because this live studio jam is complete Jazz Death Metal insanity. The members of Sarmat are all active in other projects too, and the most prominent (normally mostly masked) face is bassist Steve Blanco from the mighty Imperial Triumphant, who also adds some grand piano here. Together with two guitar players, drums, trumpet and a Death Metal growler he unleashes an incredibly fluid and just super legit (Free) Jazz Metal inferno that is just spectacularly good. Both sides inform this insanity in equal measure and it's just absolutely glorious, among the best things you'll ever have heard in this direction.

So don't let yourself be held back by the short total running time! This is absolutely worthwhile. Plus you get the bonus of a brilliant artwork, which also - finally! - is printed on matte cardboard. Why not always, I, Voidhanger? Sorry, but the usual glossy digipaks are an aesthetic Irrweg!

It should be mentioned that the EP also documents the first time the band actually came together to play after working apart from each other on their full debut for years. And while the title  of the the track isn't reveales yet, it actually is a drastically enhanced double-length version of "Disturbing Advances" from that now also released album...

SARMAT - Determined To Strike (CD) (2023)

Surprisingly the album doesn't start that ultra jazzy at all. The first couple of tracks are rather full-on technical Death Metal with a lot of sick Nocturnus leads and the guitar providing weird sounding higher counterpoints to the very deep and guttural, yet astonishingly pronounced vocals. The most Jazz-adjacent things happening during the first two (of six) tracks are the typiccal Dissonant Death Metal usage of "Voivod chords", a brief piano intro and some solos / breakdowns with a Masvidalian/Schuldinerian Fusion feeling to it.
Naturally there's more than one part which would also feel at home on an Imperial Triumphant record, but while also being chaotic and brutal the overall sound of Sarmat seems a little bit less monolithic and oppressive and more colourful.

It's only in the middle of the third song "Arsenal Of Tyranny" however that we get into territory the "Dubious Disk" had prepared us for. Yet still the first trumpet solo doesn't actually scream "Look at me, I'm the Jazz thing!", but rather radiates a casual naturalness of that instrument shredding a nasty solo in this context, just as a guitar would do it.
From here on however the floodgates are wide open: Almost as a starting symbol we get meditating android Cynic background vocals, and now the free soloing on this album - by guitars, brass or bass - knows no boundaries. Sickness, brutally and Jazztasy all permanently outdo each other in a brain-melting firestorm vortex, until we reach the Dubious "Disturbing Advances" and the Sarmat circle closes in a final, mental spectacle.

I already know that chosing my favorite Metal albums of the year will be a daunting task in 2023. These Deathjazz cats however are definitely in the running!

ONKOS - Vascular Labyrinth (CD) (2023)

"I, Sycophantom, the fig-bearer, with Acid and Cologne,

My innumerable hands resting reverently on the illustrious Codex Aktinic.

Rummaging around in my giddy head, quivering like sparrows in the belfry."

So you thought we've already reached the end of the Avant-Garde flagpole? That couldn't be further from the truth! *laughs in Onkos*
This former one-man project turned seven-members ensemble goes about the whole Extreme Metal/Jazz  merger in a very singular way, which still was able to really surprise me.

"Vascular Labyrinth" is a holistically coherent package of artwork, cryptic lyrics and a creatively unlimited blend of Metal, Jazz, Acoustic, Folk, Neo Classical, Electronic etc. with one simple twist: While Progressive Extreme Metal is embedded in the core of most structures and arrangements, it's not mirrored in the instrumentation at all. We can hear brass and woodwinds, vibraphone, marimba and keyboards. There are multiple percussion sounds, but not a Rock drumkit. There's a guitar, but it's almost exclusively acoustic. In fact two of the nine tracks on this hour-long album are actually nothing more than this acoustic guitar, yet they are not mere intros or interludes, but feel as whole and important as every other song.

Very few instances remotely resemble any kind of Rock music at all. The only thing which actually always sounds Metal as rotting fuck are the gurgling Death Metal growls. On first listen that's a quite funny contrast, but once you're accustomed to the combination as it is presented here, it's just a very unique and compelling musical language.

Of course - once again - it helps to be accustomed with the John Zorns and Toby Drivers of this world. Or obviously labels like I, Voidhanger Records. But ultimately you won't find many record sounding even close to "Vascular Labyrinth". And that's nothing but an unequivocally good thing, because each and every minute of this huge statement of artistic nonconformism is fantastic! 

FLESHVESSEL - Bile Of Men Reborn (CD) (2020)

As if my brain wasn't already frizzling, here come Fleshvessel with their twenty-five minutes one-track EP, which employs a line-up of special ingridients quite similar to Onkos, yet here the unreadable band logo shirt is turned back from inside out again!

The Death Metal on this multi-part epic is brutal, viscious, cavernous... and paired with Classical piano / flute duets, 70's Prog, Doom, Jazzy Folk, Clerical vocals... well, actually much more musical information than one should be able to process after already voidhanging through the rest of this haul, but yes Baby, this also just is the shit!
No matter which unexpected turn this band takes, it's all done tasteful and expertly. Total freedom of expression in an uncompromising flow from Neoclassical Ambient to pummeling Death Metal grandiosity. Look how far we've come since My Dying Bride released "Symphonaire Infernus Et Spera Empyrium" in 1991! This is absolutely magnificent.

And yes, I have noticed that this release is already two years old and Fleshvessel have recently put out a full-length album. But that one I ordered from a different label, so it will reviewed in he next part of my cassette craze chronicles.

Until then please check out all this gloriously sick and amazing stuff! Nu Metal might be the universe's price for the sheer existence of these bands, but that's ok with me. I'm content to pay it.