GAUHAERT Ygwaet Gwyr Gwynn Novi (Goatowarex) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Sure, we've all heard plenty of viking metal. Every black metal dude somehow miraculously has that Norse warrior blood flowing hot through their veins. "Sure, we're from Idaho, but OUR ANCESTORS WERE MIGHTY VIKINGS!!" Blah blah blah, longboats, funeral pyres, horned helmets, whatever, now it's time for some RAW CELTIC FOLK METAL!! And not just any sort of raw Celtic folk metal, no this is totally deranged and demented and damaged folky buzzy Celtic black metal. Think Benighted Leams, Urfaust and the like, but flavored with a heap of Celtic fiddles and jaunty folk rhythms.
The riffs and melodies are distinctly Celtic for sure, but they are drenched in tinny buzz, wrapped in a warm cloak of blackness, a folky black blast, not all that strange on their own, but then the vocals come in and all bets are off. The vocals are of course of the chanting, sing songy, sea shanty, steins hoisted variety, but the way they're recorded transforms them, and this whole record into something completely different. A soaring dramatic croon, a cross between Urfaust's over the top Ethel Merman-ish warble (Gauhaert does indeed include at least one member of Urfaust!), Circle's Mika Ratto and an anguished black metal moan, but they sound like they were recorded at the bottom of a 10 million gallon iron cistern, a dense cloud of reverb and overtones, the vocals soar and reverberate, until they are a huge swirl that overtakes the music completely, when the vocals stop briefly, the music re-emerges as if stepping out of a fog bank, before the vocals kick back in and the song becomes a dense grey hued swirling smear of sound. There are also a couple of ambient tracks, dark dreamy rumbles, with strange chordal swells and wheezing organs, mournful horns, mysterious and elegiac in its sorrowful trudge. But those are brief respites amidst the dizzying flurries of wild and bizarre Celtic blackness. So weird, but really fucking cool.
MPEG Stream: "Blaasbalg Der Zwijnen"
MPEG Stream: "Bealach Na' Marbh"

GAULT, THE Even As All Before Us (Amortout) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Finally back in stock!! It's been a bit of an ordeal too. The original pressing on Flood The Earth was defective, so we managed to get a bunch that the band had pressed themselves and listed those a while back, unfortunately those quickly ran out and tons of folks missed out. Now after a brief spell of unavailability, we finally managed to get copies of the European version, identical to the original version, only this time released solely by Amortout, the label run by the guys in Diamatregon! Phew, a lot of trouble maybe, but well worth it we think once you hear the dark brooding beauty that is the Gault. Here's what we had to say first time around:
By now everyone should be familiar with SF black metal legends Weakling. A brief existence, a handful of shows, and a single amazing record (released on Andee's tUMULt label, we should mention). Members of Weakling played in and/or went on to play in Amber Asylum, the Champs, Drunk Horse, Asunder, Sangre Amado, Saros and the short lived but now totally cult blackened gothic doom outfit The Gault. Recorded way back in 1999 by Tim Green, The Gault's Even As All Before Us languished for years before the band finally agreed on a mix and a label, and now five years later this mighty slab of depressive doom finally sees the light of day. Some of you may be wondering why we're only getting around to reviewing this now, since it was released a few months ago... and, the entire first pressing is already sold out. So what's the deal? Well, bad news for any of you who already picked up a copy somewhere else. The ENTIRE first pressing was, in fact, defective. But not defective enough apparently for the label to care, as they refused to repress it and continued to sell the defective copies anyway. To our ears though, the harsh digital glitches inadvertently inserted between every track totally detracted from the gorgeously bleak and harrowing ambience. So the band took it upon themselves to have corrected copies pressed themselves, and thus we finally have the Gault record the way it was meant to be heard. Imagine those Weakling riffs, slowed down and wrapped in dense '80s-ish reverb, smeared and stretched into serpentine minor key melodies, throbbing and pulsing and slithering through midtempo dronescapes of shimmering guitar buzz, creeping basslines, ghostlike female vocals, crashing steady drumming all cloaked in a rich blackened haze, suffocating and claustrophobic, but somehow completely epic at the same time. Think a black metal Joy Division and you might be close, due in no small part to vocalist Ed Kunakemakorn's distinctive wail. Equal parts Ian Curtis, Interpol's Paul Banks and weirdly enough, Dutch weirdo black metallers Urfaust, a soaring mournful croon, rich and velvety and quite haunting. Each track is a twisting complex doomscape of fuzzed out drones, pounding downtuned riffage, swirling psychedelic ambience, slow motion crawl and creep, building and building into massive black swells. A gorgeously creepy collection of heaving, lurching, dark and delicate, doomy and dense epics. So emotional and so totally and completely intense!
MPEG Stream: "Obliscence"
MPEG Stream: "Bright White Blind"

GAULT, THE Even As All Before Us (Van) 2lp 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now available on vinyl! Deluxe, double lp in a gatefold sleeve with a patch!!!
Here's what we had to say about this AQ fave:
By now everyone should be familiar with SF black metal legends Weakling. A brief existence, a handful of shows, and a single amazing record (released on Andee's tUMULt label, we should mention). Members of Weakling played in and/or went on to play in Amber Asylum, the Champs, Drunk Horse, Asunder, Sangre Amado, Saros and the short lived but now totally cult blackened gothic doom outfit The Gault. Recorded way back in 1999 by Tim Green, The Gault's Even As All Before Us languished for years before the band finally agreed on a mix and a label, and now five years later this mighty slab of depressive doom finally sees the light of day.
Imagine those Weakling riffs, slowed down and wrapped in dense '80s-ish reverb, smeared and stretched into serpentine minor key melodies, throbbing and pulsing and slithering through midtempo dronescapes of shimmering guitar buzz, creeping basslines, ghostlike female vocals, crashing steady drumming all cloaked in a rich blackened haze, suffocating and claustrophobic, but somehow completely epic at the same time. Think a black metal Joy Division and you might be close, due in no small part to vocalist Ed Kunakemakorn's distinctive wail. Equal parts Ian Curtis, Interpol's Paul Banks and weirdly enough, Dutch weirdo black metallers Urfaust, a soaring mournful croon, rich and velvety and quite haunting. Each track is a twisting complex doomscape of fuzzed out drones, pounding downtuned riffage, swirling psychedelic ambience, slow motion crawl and creep, building and building into massive black swells. A gorgeously creepy collection of heaving, lurching, dark and delicate, doomy and dense epics. So emotional and so totally and completely intense!
MPEG Stream: "Obliscence"
MPEG Stream: "Bright White Blind"

GAY WITCH ABORTION Maverick (Learning Curve) cd 8.98
We first heard the awesomely monikered Gay Witch Abortion on a killer 4 way split we reviewed recently called A Butcher's Waltz, which teamed up this duo with some other aQ faves including Skoal Kodiak, Seawhores and Power Take Off. But for as much as we dug those other outfits, Gay Witch Abortion definitely stole the show, more than living up to the hype, which was a relief as we'd been hearing how great they were for ages.
So here now is the debut full length from these guys, hot on the heels of their collaboration with AmRep head honcho Tom Hazelmeyer, which should come as no surprise cuz GWA definitely sound like they'd be right at home on AmRep, channelling a little Lightning Bolt, reminding us a bit of recent aQ faves Wizard Rifle too, these guys take that bass (guitar?) / drum duo thing and make it their own, their sound more a sort of blown out fuzz drenched heavy rock stoner prog thing, wild chaotic drumming under dense buzzing riffage, the guitar weirdly processed so it almost sounds electronic, their might be keyboards too, but it sounds more like the guitar/bass is run through some seriously fucked up FX, the sound constantly peppered with bits of buzz and hum, little glitches, swirls of hiss and crackle, the songs locking into dense looped mesmer, before slipping into songs proper, the vocals clean and crooned, when there are vocals, but more often these two are like a cobra and a mongoose, a wild squirming sonic tangle, a gnarled, writhing metallic noise rock that flits from droned out dirge to frantic hyperspeed punkprog and back again in the blink of an eye, all that and the group never shies away from weirdness either, peppering these blasts of acrobatic noise rockery with bits of twangy dirgery rife with whistled melodies, or stretches of Torche like fuzz pop, tripped out super distorted psychedelic drones, and even some cool experimental electronic noisiness.
Super intense sweat soaked math metal spazz punk stoner prog heaviness that will definitely hit the spot for anyone who digs Lightning Bolt and other like minded outfits, or really anyone into heavy, dense, noise rock aktion!!
The cd version comes with a Learning Curve beer cozy!!
MPEG Stream: "Down With Giants"
MPEG Stream: "Stain On The Floor"
MPEG Stream: "Scythian Skulls"
MPEG Stream: "Asleep In The Dirt"

GAY WITCH ABORTION Maverick (Learning Curve) lp 13.98
We first heard the awesomely monikered Gay Witch Abortion on a killer 4 way split we reviewed recently called A Butcher's Waltz, which teamed up this duo with some other aQ faves including Skoal Kodiak, Seawhores and Power Take Off. But for as much as we dug those other outfits, Gay Witch Abortion definitely stole the show, more than living up to the hype, which was a relief as we'd been hearing how great they were for ages.
So here now is the debut full length from these guys, hot on the heels of their collaboration with AmRep head honcho Tom Hazelmeyer, which should come as no surprise cuz GWA definitely sound like they'd be right at home on AmRep, channelling a little Lightning Bolt, reminding us a bit of recent aQ faves Wizard Rifle too, these guys take that bass (guitar?) / drum duo thing and make it their own, their sound more a sort of blown out fuzz drenched heavy rock stoner prog thing, wild chaotic drumming under dense buzzing riffage, the guitar weirdly processed so it almost sounds electronic, their might be keyboards too, but it sounds more like the guitar/bass is run through some seriously fucked up FX, the sound constantly peppered with bits of buzz and hum, little glitches, swirls of hiss and crackle, the songs locking into dense looped mesmer, before slipping into songs proper, the vocals clean and crooned, when there are vocals, but more often these two are like a cobra and a mongoose, a wild squirming sonic tangle, a gnarled, writhing metallic noise rock that flits from droned out dirge to frantic hyperspeed punkprog and back again in the blink of an eye, all that and the group never shies away from weirdness either, peppering these blasts of acrobatic noise rockery with bits of twangy dirgery rife with whistled melodies, or stretches of Torche like fuzz pop, tripped out super distorted psychedelic drones, and even some cool experimental electronic noisiness.
Super intense sweat soaked math metal spazz punk stoner prog heaviness that will definitely hit the spot for anyone who digs Lightning Bolt and other like minded outfits, or really anyone into heavy, dense, noise rock aktion!!
The cd version comes with a Learning Curve beer cozy!!
MPEG Stream: "Down With Giants"
MPEG Stream: "Stain On The Floor"
MPEG Stream: "Scythian Skulls"
MPEG Stream: "Asleep In The Dirt"

GEHEIMNIS Das Negras Montanhas (Gungnir Productions) cassette 4.50
Another flood of new tapes, all black and very mysterious, this one from the strangely named Geheimnis. Das Negras Montanhas begins with long drawn out drones and monk like chants before the band launches into its ultra lo-fi black metal buzz. The drums way down in the mix, never blasting really, just sort of pounding away, the guitars way up front, cycling through fuzzy black riffs, very hypnotic, the vocals buried in the mix, a sort of rumbling grumbling gurgle, the strangest part of this tape are the non-metal interludes, fading in and our fairly abruptly, the chanting, the sound of surf crashing, winds and insects, often fading out after only a few seconds, sometimes going on for minutes, eventually the black buzz returns, fading in and lurching into action, another midtempo lope through droning black forests and wide open expanses of bleak black soundscapes. The sound is hissy and lo-fi, but very motorik, sometimes almost sounding like a black metal Circle. Riffs repeating over and over, occasionally slipping into some strange upper register filigree before returning to its glorious black trudge.

GEHENNA Murder (Moonfog) cd 17.98

GEHENNA WW (Moonfog) cd 14.98

GEISHA Mondo Dell' Orrore (Crucial Blast) cd 14.98

MPEG Stream: "How To Kill A Career"
MPEG Stream: "Accidents"

GEIST Der Ungeist (Total Rust) cd 12.98
Not to be confused with the German Geist, whose record we reviewed here a few years back, this Geist is from Israel, and this record, their full length debut, is a furious, tortured, sickening blast of hateful buzz drenched brutality, in fact the sheer blown out, super distorted buzziness ranks up there with groups like Wrath Of The Weak, who at one point we proclaimed as "THEE buzziest black metal band around". The guitar tone here is prickly and crunchy and wreathed in hiss, insectoid and gristly, the sort of guitar sound we can't ever get enough of, that swirling black buzz wrapped around buried blasting beats, harsh howling vox, and some soaring epic melodies, the band blasting along at light speed, only to slip into a woozy seasick dirge, the buzz seeming to ooze and expand, wrapping its inky tendrils around the warbly minor key melodies and the super creepy echoey ambience. And hell, that's just the first song.
Apparently these tracks were recorded live, and left mostly unaltered, to capture the raw fury and unrelenting abject misery of their sound, and it definitely worked. A cascade of in-the-red heaviness, that definitely headphones to truly appreciate it, impossibly lush buzzscapes, doomy swirling almost psychedelic dirges, all manner of haunting spectral sounds, voices, chordal swells, all woven into the bands super distorted blackbuzz crush. And sans those headphones, via just speakers, the sound borders on the Merzbow-ian, each song a swirling squall of face melting heaviness and hellish soul shearing buzz. But it's not all noisemetal punishment, these guys infuse their hellish howl with some gorgeous atmospherics, and some twisted downright catchiness, soaring and majestic one second, haunting and melancholic the next, not to mention some cool proggy almost Voivod-y angularity, and some dense washes of smeary shimmer. At times the sound does veer into something more lurching and lumbering, like the punishing death march of the final track, but the majority of Der Ungeist is spent blasting and buzzing through thick clouds of dense, black hole buzz. So awesome.
MPEG Stream: "Mord"
MPEG Stream: "Von Blut"
MPEG Stream: "Der Wald"

GEIST Galeere (Lupus Lounge) cd 14.98
Geist are a German black metal horde that features the rhythm section of another BM band we reviewed a while back, Funeral Procession, and Geist, much like FP, offer up the same sort of classic Nordic sounding grim black buzz, right out of the gate, their cold atmospheric black metal reminding us of Satyricon, the production tight and slick, but the band have a definite flair for the ambience, creating dark creepy intros and outros, but unlike the usual wolves or wind or rain, it sounds like a seaside, or a harbor, the sound of lapping water, distant foghorns, deep rumbling tones, laid over what sound like field recordings, evoking some serious haunting dread before exploding in a frenzy of lurching super dynamic, mathy start / stop black blasting. Other tracks introduce what sounds like recordings from beneath the surface, a gurgling shimmer wrapped around rumbling pianos, and distant drones, again leading directly into some amazing blasting blackness, tight and heavy and epic, as much as we love raw and primitive and lo-fi, hearing a band this fast and furious sound this tight and heavy never gets old, and these guys DESTROY. Total depressive melodic black buzz majesty.
The record finishes off with a 16 minute sprawl of awesomely complex, gnarled, drone laced doomic black metal, that shifts from lurching crunch and stutter, to loping almost sea sick waltz, peppered with mysterious samples, totally intense and mysterious, eventually drifting into a soundscape of creaking ropes, plucked steel strings, the sound of waves and wind, a mournful seaside lament, the haunting sounds of sea and sky and storm.
MPEG Stream: "Galeere"
MPEG Stream: "Einen Winter Auf See"

GEISTUS s/t (The Funeral Agency) cassette 3.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
An absolutely killer slab of ultra raw, filthy and primitive lo-fi murky black metal. Lots of crusty riffing, blasting drums buried in reverb and tape hiss, bizarre grunted vocal spew, guitars that buzz and warble, and go from insectoid shrillness to tarpit filthiness often in the same song, and loads of low end bassy throb and other bits of random lo-fi 4 track production weirdness that make this freaky and fucked up.
While on the surface this sounds like classic old school minimal buzz and blast black metal, stripped down and blown out, Bone Awl, Beherit, Von, Abruptum... The weird thing is, and maybe this is supposed to be a secret, but we're pretty sure that the man behind Geistus is in fact a former member of doomlords Yob! Hard to believe, but true! You won't hear that much Sabbathy sludge here although once in a while the songs slow down into a gorgeously doomy tarpit trudge, but it's never long before the band lurch back into action, and resume their harsh minimal pummel. So fucking great, the perfect balance of true kvlt blackness and slightly off kilter weirdness.
For fans of all things simple and sludgy and brutal and black and crusty and filthy and EVIL!!!!

GENERAL SURGERY A Collection Of Depravation (Relapse) cd 11.98
A while back we reviewed the reissue of General Surgery's Necrology, which we joked was our favorite Carcass record, that Carcass never made, but it was only sort of a joke, cuz as nuts as the aQ metalheads are about Carcass, at least one of us (ok, it's Andee) likes Necrology as much as ANY of the Carcass records. Partially, because, as we mentioned in that review, as those Swedes attempted to make their very own Carcass record, they managed to create something that was both a ridiculous homage/rip off, and at the same time a slightly more twisted version of what they were shooting for, which in some weird way made Necrology sort of a more fucked up Carcass, which is not a bad thing at all. For all you Carcass loving metalheads who haven't checked out Necrology, do yourself a favor. For those of you, like us, who've already worn out your copy of Necrology, maybe more than once, this one is for you, a massive collection of B sides and compilation tracks, demos and unreleased jams and various songs from long out of print splits, not to mention a Carcass cover from a Carcass tribute, the ultimate irony, or is it? Regardless, this is some gut grinding metallic mayhem, total gorge grind bliss, utter Carcass worship, grinding metallic heaviness that kills.
MPEG Stream: "Pre-Bisectal Corrosive Immersion (Split 12" W/ The County Medical Examiners)"
MPEG Stream: "Unruly Dissection Marathon (Split 7" W/ Filth)"
MPEG Stream: "Necrodecontamination (Split 7" W/ Machetazo)"
MPEG Stream: "Maggots In Your Coffin (Corpus In Extremis Sessions)"
MPEG Stream: "Empathological Necroticism (Carcass) (Requiems Of Revulsion - A Tribute To Carcass Compilation)"

GENERAL SURGERY Left Hand Pathology (Listenable) cd 14.98

MPEG Stream: "If These Walls Could Talk"
MPEG Stream: "Ambulance Chaser"
MPEG Stream: "Arterial Spray Obsession"

GENERAL SURGERY Necrology (Relapse) cd 13.98
We love reissues. We love discovering new music, or more accurately OLD music that we had somehow never heard before. But we also love the reissues that give us the opportunity to rave about records we love, and have loved for years, that for whatever reason, we never got to review on the aQ list. Which is the case with this sick chunk of sounds right here. The debut from Swedish gore grinders General Surgery, who did what any young band might do, and started a band with the intention of sounding EXACTLY like their favorite band, which in GS's case would be none other than the legendary Carcass. But where other bands might take that as a jumping off point, forging their own way, General Surgery seemed to do just the opposite, crafting a pitch perfect slab of grinding medical themed metallic heaviness that KILLS, and that sounds SOOO much like Carcass it's criminal, which it would be if it weren't so goddamn great. We often joke, always in the company of Carcass fans, that General Surgery's Necrology is the best Carcass record, mostly to get their goat, but there is a little truth to that too. Released the same year as Carcass' Necroticism (coincidence? we think not), Necrology is pitch perfect, in fact, opener "Ominous Lamentation" basically IS Carcass' "Genital Grinder", and from there on, it's pure Carcass style gore/grind goodness, check the song titles: "Slithering Maceration Of Ulcerous Facial Tissue", "The Succulent Aftermath Of A Subdural Haemorrhage", "Grotesque Laceration Of Mortified Flesh", the guitar tone, the riffs, the vokills, it's insane. BUT, and this really is a big but, for all of its Carcass aspirations, they aren't Carcass, so in attempting to be a band they are not, they manage, perhaps inadvertently, to make something weirdly sort of original, with a sound that does sound like Carcass, but is also in its own way, purely General Surgery. We know that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But lots of bands start off emulating their favorite bands, but in trying to sound like that band, end up finding their own sound, it just so happens that General Surgery's own sound is like a slightly twisted version of their favorite band's sound. It really depends on your mindset, some aQ-ers love Carcass like crazy, and think this is sorta bullshit, but others, also love Carcass like crazy, but recognize this for what it is, the best Carcass record Carcass never made!
The new version of Necrology finds the disc getting a swank digipak packaging upgrade, as well as tacking on four bonus tracks, all alternate versions of tracks from the record proper, just slightly more raw and noisy versions.
MPEG Stream: "Ominous Lamentation"
MPEG Stream: "Slithering Maceration Of Ulcerous Facial Tissue"
MPEG Stream: "Grotesque Laceration Of Mortified Flesh"
MPEG Stream: "Severe Catatonoia In Pathology"

GENERAL SURGERY / THE COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINERS split (Razorback) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

GENGHIS TRON Board Up The House (Relapse) cd 14.98
It's generally a pretty bad idea to have a pun as a band name. Once in a while, if the band is pretty good, and you put some effort into it, eventually you can get used to it and forget it's a pun (Jucifer), sometimes you don't even realize it's a pun until you finally say it out loud (Vulture Club), sometimes it never gets any easier to say or type (Cream Abdul Babar), and once in a while, VERY rarely, it's actually a pun that makes sense, and suits the music, and thus is actually a perfect name for the band. That just so happens to be the case with Genghis Tron, who combine a punishing super complex grinding downtuned metallic onslaught (like a musical Genghis Khan) and tons of synths and video game sounds, and electronics and glitchery (like the video game Tron?), which is a chocolate-and-peanut-butter combo that is tough to beat.
We've always dug Genghis Tron, but something seems to have happened since the last record. The way we remember it, the old Genghis Tron wielded a non stop torrent of super spazzy buzzy synthgrind, we even described their sound as "synthcorespazzmetalfusion", but Board Up The House, while retaining plenty of spazz and buzz and grind, is a much more mysterious beast, much darker and dronier, with the gnarled blasts of hypergrind, peppered with awesome fuzzy synthy Gary Numan style new wave, all dour and moody, with crooned robotic vocals, tangled swaths of minor key synthdrone, Autechre like skitter, super spare minimal old school electro, some gorgeous washed out dreamy drift, and while some of those sounds end up tangled up with jagged shards of downtuned chug, or churning Neurosis-y sludge, or chaotic screamo freakouts, much of the time the band lets those sounds sprawl, creating gorgeous darkened soundscapes, very cinematic and epic, intense and majestic. It's like John Carpenter jamming with Pig Destroyer sometimes. Very few of the heavy songs make it to their ends without being awesomely complicated by the band's weirdo electronic proclivities, but somehow, instead of sounding like pointless genre hopping, or some infuriating ADD drive aggro rock band, the diverse parts are fused seamlessly, to the point where some soft synth shimmer couldn't sound more perfect than sandwiched between a wall of stumbling grind and a blast of hyperspeed Iron Maiden style guitar harmonies. And actually, the ratio of electronic weirdness and dark droned out synthscapes to full on mathgrind leans WAY more heavily toward the former this time around. And it definitely suits them.
The clincher is the 11 minute closer, "Relief", which is a gorgeous, post rocky dirge, all clean vocals and languorous riffing, the track builds to some serious chugging crescendos, and even offers up a few breathless skittery ambient interludes, but when the band lock into THE RIFF, the one they pound away at for the last 6 minutes, it's total drone-doom-kraut-groove nirvana, a loping seasick drum part, underpinning a slithery minor key riff, thick and relentless, glistening with harmonies, the various melodies slipping in and out of the churning groove, vocals and synths soaring in the background, another one of those parts we wish would go on for another 40 minutes, so much so that we've been driving everyone crazy by playing this track over and over and over.
Like we said above, we always dug this band, but even so we definitely weren't expecting a record this dense and epic and melodically mature. Fans of heavier stuff, of groups like Pelican, Conifer, Isis, Tides, Ice Bound Majesty, as well as dronerock combos like Pharaoh Overlord, Circle, Cave, might get WAY into this record, assuming they can dig some of the more manic freaked out stuff. And this just might be the disc to get Genghis Tron out of the synthspazzgrind ghetto. That is if they even want out.
WAY RECOMMENDED!!
MPEG Stream: "Board Up The House"
MPEG Stream: "Endless Teeth"
MPEG Stream: "Things Don't Look Good"

GENGHIS TRON Board Up The House Remixes Vol. 3 (Relapse) 12" 18.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

GENGHIS TRON Board Up The House Remixes Vol. 5: Remixed By Nadja + Tim Hecker + Dudes You Can Trust (Crucial Blast / Relapse) 12" 11.98
Now this is the one we've been waiting for!! The final installment in the 5 part Genghis Tron remix 12" series. For some reason we only ever reviewed the Temporary Residence 12" (each was on a different label), but there were other volumes on Lovepump United, Relapse and Anticon. We're predicting (hoping for) an eventual cd compilation release, but for now, this is the GT remix record not to miss. Nadja. Tim Hecker. Not sure who Dudes You Can Trust are, but they had us at Nadja and Tim Hecker.
Hecker's mix obliterates the original, in fact, if we didn't already know it was a remix, we probably would assume it was a proper new TH track. All warm and washed out and glistening and gauzy and sun dappled and woozy and blissy and dreamy, organic and shimmery, it's the sound that everyone shoots for, but only Tim Hecker seems to have perfected. The fact that there's a Genghis Tron track in there somewhere only makes it even cooler.
Dudes You Can Trust, which we just learned is actually one of the Genghis Tron guys, most definitely have a Nadja / Jesu vibe happening, the original track is stripped down and then bathed in dense shimmer, until most of the extraneous sounds peel back, leaving just a super minimal rumbly buzz, over a looped drum fill, before slipping into a brief stretch of lo-fi Ariel Pink like FM radio drift, and then finally a bit of glitchy minimal electro (!). Weird, but cool.
Nadja's remix takes up the whole of side 2, the first half of which is all minimal and drifty, with muted electronic bloops and bleeps, subtle effects, all very abstract and ambient, barring some barely there glitchy skitter.
Eventually, bits of the original jam burst through, a pounding howling metallic crunch, that sounds like it could have been looped or processed, but there's no time to figure it out for sure, as it quickly blisses out again into a haunting swirling whoosh of blissed out almost new wave shimmer, draped delicately over the remnants of the original track. So cool.
Needless to say, essential. LIMITED as all of the volumes are, this one is pressed on wicked red and green splatter vinyl!

GENGHIS TRON Cloak Of Love (Crucial Blast) cd ep 10.98
Aaaargh, a band name only an Andee could love... yes, Genghis Tron does rank right up there with, ahem, Corn On Macabre and Cream Abdul Babar, don't ya think? Actually Allan likes the name too. At least, it made him wonder, what does this band sound like? Well, first here's what the label says, then we'll critique:
"The debut EP from Poughkeepsie-based trio GENGHIS TRON. Cloak of Love is a virulent pop mutation that seamlessly splatters acrobatic shred and machine gun blastbeats across soaring synth pop anthems and electronic melodies. Five tracks of absurd brutalia and electro pop glory."
And it's true, some of this does sound like M83 being attacked by Discordance Axis. Some foofy '80s ish electro-dance beat will start up, only to be obliterated by a thunderous shitstorm of aggro axe shrapnel. But although they do make a successful effort at trying something new, Genghis Tron don't really strike quite as even a balance between their blastbeats and synthpop melodies as the description on the disc's obi might lead you to believe. A "virulent pop mutation"? Well it definitely leans heavier on the metal than the pop. Clearly they're more schooled and skilled in the latter. The "pop" elements, if there really are any, come in the form of brief keyboard noodles and retro-techno grooves, but actually that's more about instrumentation rather than style or structure. Alright, we don't wanna get totally sticky about the technicalities, but geez, the aforementioned obi description sure did raise our expectations. But then again, we should have known all that was too good to be true. So let's enjoy Genghis Tron for what they are. Less a true synthesis of synth-pop and metallic blasting than a spazzy collision of the two with the metallic stuff definitely getting the upper hand, the metal secure in crash helmets and seatbelts while the pop gets thrown from the vehicle, crushed on the roadway. But it does make for a spectacular crash, something that fans of The Locust and Mr. Bungle and Knodel and Melt Banana and Schizoid and Agoraphobic Nosebleed and The Daughters oughtta find rubberneckingly riveting. Depending on how you feel about such (diverse) bands, by the time the not-quite-13 minutes of music here are over, you'll either be pressing play again with a big smile on your face, or already have left the room, plotting the destruction of whomever was playing it to annoy you.
MPEG Stream: "Rock Candy"
MPEG Stream: "Laser Bitch"

GENGHIS TRON Dead Mountain Mouth (Crucial Blast) cd 14.98
Genghis Tron might have a joke name, but their music comes across as serious business. Not played for laughs, anyway. They blenderize genres like electro pop, grindcore, techno, screamo, and heavy metal into a delicious smoothie packed with blasting "boosts" and nutritious noise. Their name is still silly, but also fairly descriptive. The power and might of metal meets the computer age of music making! It's 100mph headspinning mayhem and sorta new wavey '80s synth pop sensibilities in collision, one or both of 'em subverting the other, it's not clear. Those of us here into The Locust and An Albatross and Horse The Band and the like were all thumbs up for GT's hyperkinetic debut ep Cloak Of Love and are equally stoked on Dead Mountain Mouth, which spreads their love all over ten tracks, a whole half-hour plus of gonzoid synthcorespazzmetalfusion. Very cool.
Note too, they have a few tracks on one of our recent Records Of The Week, the Drummachinegun compilation!
MPEG Stream: "Dead Mountain Mouth"
MPEG Stream: "Greek Beds"

GENOCIDE (NIPPON) Black Sanctuary (Shadow Kingdom) 2cd 15.98
Yes, the "(Nippon)" in their name means that these genocidal gents are from Japan. Also, they're from the '80s, and very VERY metal. Makes for a cool combo! We'd never heard of 'em until this deluxe reissue recently appeared, but don't doubt it's a cult classic, as we were immediately were struck by the awesome metal craziness of this band. They've got wild dual guitars, evil riffage, and most significantly, truly over the top vocals. INSANE vocals. Dynamic, dramatic high pitched wailings and demonic lower register declamations... Mercyful Fate fans will definitely enjoy this, the guy sounds like an unhinged student of King Diamond, also somewhat like Messiah from Candlemass, but possessed by sinister Japanese spirits, laughing and screaming.
Black Sanctuary was first released in 1988. Musically, the band play classically influenced trad metal (not quite thrash or speed, but sometimes fairly doomy), manic yet melodic, and pretty much hellishly heavy for that sort of thing, though there is one wimpy, almost new agey tune, an instrumental with acoustic guitars and weepy keyboards. What happened? Dunno but as soon as that's over they start killing again, so it's just a weird interlude (on a weird album)! If you picked up the Slauter Xstroyes reissues we listed recently, and are ready for some even more outrageous underground '80s metal with ridiculously expressive vocals, look no further.
It's a nicely done reissue, the cd booklet contains a band history (1979 through the present day!) as well as the lyrics, the English portions of which are exceedingly strange and cryptic, perhaps because of the translation, perhaps not. At the band's request, Shadow Kingdom has provided brand new cover art, but the original cover is also included on the back of the cd booklet, which we always appreciate (so you have the option of which to use, flipping it over if you want). And, there's a whole bonus disc included of demo tracks, different recordings from the album versions.
MPEG Stream: "Last Confusion"
MPEG Stream: "Living Legend"
MPEG Stream: "Doomsday [demo]"

GENTLEMANS PISTOLS At Her Majesty's Pleasure (Rise Above / Metal Blade) cd 14.98
Hey, all right! This British band is back, at long last, with their 2nd album, and once again sound like a blast from the past (the past circa 1972 or so) even though they're from this day and age. We're almost sorta surprised they're not from Sweden, usually it's Swedish bands like Witchcraft, Graveyard, Horisont, and Noctum who do the bellbottomed retro-rawkin' thing this damn well, but heck the bands Gentlemans Pistols most sound like - Sabbath and Zeppelin - were from England, so it's in their blood after all. We wuz big fans of their self-titled debut a few years back, and are damn happy to hear 'em kicking out the jams once more, this time with new axe slinger the one and only Bill Steer (Carcass, Napalm Death, Firebird) on board, GP's upping the ante on all others in the realm of '70s styled stoner rock with their wailing vox, crunchy fuzz guitar riffage, and hard to beat bouncy energy. They're delivering the goods here, is what we're sayin'. A dozen new songs, all catchy and heavy and authentically '70s proto-metal sounding, they could hold their own with Pentagram and Hard Stuff and Leaf Hound and Highway Robbery, etc.... and they've got a sweaty muscularity to 'em that makes 'em more of a powerful proposition than just some kind of imitation or approximation. They're real, and rockin'. A ripping good time. Another one of those bands, in our view, that should be HUGE, and would be if we ran the rock n' roll world! F'ing recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Comfortably Crazy"
MPEG Stream: "Midnight Crawler"
MPEG Stream: "Some Girls Don't Know What's Good For Them"

GENTLEMANS PISTOLS At Her Majesty's Pleasure (Rise Above) lp 33.00
Hey, all right! This British band is back, at long last, with their 2nd album, and once again sound like a blast from the past (the past circa 1972 or so) even though they're from this day and age. We're almost sorta surprised they're not from Sweden, usually it's Swedish bands like Witchcraft, Graveyard, Horisont, and Noctum who do the bellbottomed retro-rawkin' thing this damn well, but heck the bands Gentlemans Pistols most sound like - Sabbath and Zeppelin - were from England, so it's in their blood after all. We wuz big fans of their self-titled debut a few years back, and are damn happy to hear 'em kicking out the jams once more, this time with new axe slinger the one and only Bill Steer (Carcass, Napalm Death, Firebird) on board, GP's upping the ante on all others in the realm of '70s styled stoner rock with their wailing vox, crunchy fuzz guitar riffage, and hard to beat bouncy energy. They're delivering the goods here, is what we're sayin'. A dozen new songs, all catchy and heavy and authentically '70s proto-metal sounding, they could hold their own with Pentagram and Hard Stuff and Leaf Hound and Highway Robbery, etc.... and they've got a sweaty muscularity to 'em that makes 'em more of a powerful proposition than just some kind of imitation or approximation. They're real, and rockin'. A ripping good time. Another one of those bands, in our view, that should be HUGE, and would be if we ran the rock n' roll world! F'ing recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Comfortably Crazy"
MPEG Stream: "Midnight Crawler"
MPEG Stream: "Some Girls Don't Know What's Good For Them"

GENTLEMANS PISTOLS s/t (Candlelight) cd 14.98
Blimey, this is our favorite pure heavy rock n' roll album in a month of Sundays, pretty much, well since the Birds Of Avalon debut a few lists back anyway. '70s stylings to the max, fully indebted to the likes of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and the MC5. And paying those debts with freshly minted $100 bills. (If only, in a perfect world these guys would be raking it in like Wolfmother.) Signed to the Rise Above label over in England, home to Electric Wizard and Witchcraft and sundry other sterling stoner/doom outfits, this British band is indeed kinda Witchcrafty, if Witchcraft were more single-mindedly concerned about kicking out the jams... like a more cock-rock Witchcraft perhaps. Certainly Gentlemans Pistols are as much convincingly "out of time" as those Swedes, a bellbottomed retro-rockin' good time that ought to get your head to banging with such should-be car stereo staples as "Just A Fraction", "Widow Maker", and the MC5-ish high energy "Out Of The Eye" amongst the ten equally rad tracks on offer here. Gentlemans Pistols win us over with confident melodic vox, an abundance of catchy riffs, and a bit of clever... what's up with the song title "Parking Banshee"? They're sly ones, these guys, even when displaying some slightly cheesy, lemon-squeezin' rawk and roll lyrics that we suspect are halfway tongue in cheek, on the track "Heavy Pettin'" in particular, which is a slower, bluesy number a la Zep's "Dazed And Confused"... Definitely an album for Pentagram and Leaf Hound and even Raging Slab fans... Recommended, rockers!!
MPEG Stream: "Just A Fraction"
MPEG Stream: "Out Of The Eye"
MPEG Stream: "Widow Maker"

GENTLEMANS PISTOLS s/t (Rise Above) lp 29.00
Now on vinyl! A bit pricey as it's an import, but a killer record so for vinyl freeks it's probably worth it.
Blimey, this is our favorite pure heavy rock n' roll album in a month of Sundays, pretty much, well since the Birds Of Avalon debut a few lists back anyway. '70s stylings to the max, fully indebted to the likes of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and the MC5. And paying those debts with freshly minted $100 bills. (If only, in a perfect world these guys would be raking it in like Wolfmother.) Signed to the Rise Above label over in England, home to Electric Wizard and Witchcraft and sundry other sterling stoner/doom outfits, this British band is indeed kinda Witchcrafty, if Witchcraft were more single-mindedly concerned about kicking out the jams... like a more cock-rock Witchcraft perhaps. Certainly Gentlemans Pistols are as much convincingly "out of time" as those Swedes, a bellbottomed retro-rockin' good time that ought to get your head to banging with such should-be car stereo staples as "Just A Fraction", "Widow Maker", and the MC5-ish high energy "Out Of The Eye" amongst the ten equally rad tracks on offer here. Gentlemans Pistols win us over with confident melodic vox, an abundance of catchy riffs, and a bit of clever... what's up with the song title "Parking Banshee"? They're sly ones, these guys, even when displaying some slightly cheesy, lemon-squeezin' rawk and roll lyrics that we suspect are halfway tongue in cheek, on the track "Heavy Pettin'" in particular, which is a slower, bluesy number a la Zep's "Dazed And Confused"... Definitely an album for Pentagram and Leaf Hound and even Raging Slab fans... Recommended, rockers!!
MPEG Stream: "Just A Fraction"
MPEG Stream: "Out Of The Eye"
MPEG Stream: "Widow Maker"

GENTLEMANS PISTOLS The Lady (Rise Above) 7" 9.98

GERONIMO s/t (Three.One.G) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
It was sort of inevitable that this disc would end up being an aQ record of the week. But before we tell you the strange tale of how we got to this point, how we discovered this band and this disc, let's offer up a quick, succinct, three word description that might render the rest of this rambling review moot:
CAVEMAN THIS HEAT.
Sold? We would be. Imagine Man Is The Bastard transported back to the early seventies and let loose in This Heat's Cold Storage recording studio, or take the black hypno kraut noise of former aQ record of the week, Aluk Todolo and strip it down to its bare essence, a sound based almost entirely on rhythm. A pounding, Neanderthal groove, pelted with squelches, and laced with a strangled inhuman mewling, huge chunks of grinding minimalism and long swaths of dreamy shimmering bliss, an ultra intense slab of kraut-doom power violence for sure.
The weird thing is, the first time we hear Geronimo was several years ago, when Circle came to play some shows on the West Coast, and so I (Andee) was happily drafted to drive them around, roadie for them, all that stuff. So one of the shows was at Arthurfest in LA Circle were playing with SUNNO))), in a way-too-small seated theater, based on how many angry folks were turned away (as in HUNDREDS!). I spent the whole time, running back and forth, up and down the stairs, trying to sneak as many people into the show as possible, through the emergency exit, the backstage door, every time I went back out I would run into someone who wanted me to get them inside. While this was all going on, a band started playing, and they were AMAZING. A bunch of cholo looking dudes, handkerchief headbands, all sort of just standing there, behind huge racks of busted looking equipment, making the most unholy racket, a gorgeously destructive rib cage rattling pummel, eventually I had to stop running back and forth, cuz this band was totally sucking me in, and so I just sat down on the floor and let the band's vibrations wash over me, the floor literally shaking violently with every note.
Well, we later discovered they were called Geronimo, but no one knew anything about them, and the folks waiting for Circle and SUNNO))) didn't seem to get it or be that into it at all. We never got to talk to them in the chaos of getting Circle sorted. And eventually it sort of just slipped my mind.
So flash forward two years to the end of 2007, when we highlighted that No Skull Left Unturned comp a list or two back, collecting the various offshoots of Power Violence pioneers Man Is The Bastard. And we were particularly taken with the band Sleestak, a doomy math rock variant on MITB's bassy grind, and their sound reminded us of THAT band, the one that opened for Circle back in 2005. Then we sort of randomly stumbled across this here disc, and suddenly everything clicked, THIS was the band we saw and loved so much, and whaddayaknow, Geronimo just so happens to feature folks from both Man Is The Bastard and Sleestak. And it sounds even better than I remember, heavier, groovier, way more fucked up and WAY more freaked out. So here's a song by song breakdown of this devastating chunk of brutal beauty and monstrous minimalism:
The opener, the 18 minute "Firewater", is perfectly placed to test the listener's mettle, an endless epic stretch of looped high end klaxons and choked cymbal crashes, like a metal intro stretched into an entire song. All around this constant crunch and whine, whip flurries of electronic glitch and crunch, swaths of grinding crumbling analog buzz, while beneath it all a rumbling minimal bass line lopes lazily, until about half way through, when the track suddenly switches gears, and turns super abstract, minimal smears of drone and muted feedback, LOTS of space, and huge percussive crashes spread WAY out. It's like a super minimal abstract doom. But with bits of atonal keyboard and strangled vocals. Like the rhythm section of Khanate scoring a Dario Argento movie. That soaring high end from the beginning of the track returns, along with some speaker destroying analog buzz, still spaced out around long stretches of silence, finishing off with a brief burst of intense fury, distorted vocals, thick wall of crumbling distortion, If you survive the first track, then track two, "Headdress", is your reward, a short sharp shock of rhythmic groove, it's all about the drums, a simple, killer rhythm, the drums slightly distorted, locked into a relentless loop, while all around it, malfunctioning synths and skittering shards of glitch and skree soar and swoop, until it too shifts suddenly, into a mathy breakdown, another mesmerizingly minimal and hypnotic looped drum fill, pounding its way through a sky filled with creaks and groans and whirs and garbled grinding lo-fi squelch, finishing off with another furious blast, this time a spray of super distorted bass riffing, howled ultra effected vocals, and total drum destruction.
"Spiritwalker" offers up another side of Geronimo, the strange homemade electronics muted and smeared into much softer shapes, allowed to drift and shimmer, the drums a muffled pulse, lots of low end rumble and whir, darkly droning and cinematic, thick swells of minor key melodies, over a wasteland of glitch and buzz, slow motion tribal percussion, everything wrapped in a gauze-y haze of psychedelic textures, low end murk, and abstract FX, a gorgeous soundscape, of slow black krautrock ambience. "Medicine Man" is another brief chunk of abstract doom. A simple plodding rhythm, a thick grinding rumbling low end synth, huge blasts of effects-drenched crunch, and ominous spoken vocals and shrieked demonic howls,
And then there's "Facepeeler", which begins with a propulsive drum part, a serious metallic jam, huge bass riffs, shrieked maniacal vocals, and speaker shredding, super stereo panned effects, until suddenly the song slows down into a lurching doomic plod, the drums blown out and in the red, locked into another super simple, but completely intense and relentless slow motion rhythm, again, the sky full of FX, squealing and grinding and buzzing and screeching, but now sprawled over Geronimo's angular what-the-fuck minimal math doom, are some of the most fucked up and intense vocals ever, alternately growling, roaring, howling, whispering and mewling, it sounds a bit like an industrialized Wolf Eyes-ian Oxbow, until you realize that the vocals in question belong to one David Yow, of Jesus Lizard and Scratch Acid (if only Qui sounded this bad ass). The suddenly it begins to sound like some Jesus Lizard outtake, slowed down, pulled apart and run through a bank of rusted and duct taped effects. One of those songs that easily could have been stretched out to the length of a whole record. Abrasive and brutal and hateful and super intense and heavy as fuck, but somehow weirdly hooky, and impossibly catchy, it's almost like having your pain and pleasure centers swapped, so having that anvil dropped repeatedly on your head ends up feeling so so divine. Definitely the song we keep coming back to, and playing over and over and over and over...
Finally, the band finish things off with the uncharacteristically mellow "Prints Tie", wrapped around a fluid almost jazzy bassline, drifting keyboard melodies, and shuffling abstract percussion, the Neanderthal electronics are still present, but used much more sparingly, gorgeous and glimmering, a soft smeared minimal workout that almost sounds like a more lo-fi Necks. Super dreamy and darkly shimmery, and just pretty enough to almost make you forget the 47 minutes of glorious sonic punishment you just endured. Almost.
So so so recommended. The minute we threw this one, we knew, THIS WAS THE ONE. Definite contender for record of the year (and actually, since I got it in December, it WAS my record of the year for 2007, even having only had it less than a month!) Folks who dug the Aluk Todolo will for sure dig this too. Likewise if the idea of, say, Mammal doing This Heat songs sounds cool to you too. Basically anyone into brutal rhythms and abstract minimal heaviness NEEDS this...
MPEG Stream: "Headdress"
MPEG Stream: "Facepeeler"
MPEG Stream: "Spiritwalker"

GERSCH, THE s/t (Tortuga Recordings) cd 12.98
A resurrected slab of blown out heaviness from this druggy sludgerock combo, featuring a current member of metallic post rock heavyweights Isis and the Red Sparowes. You won't hear much epic moodiness or brooding metal lope here though. Most folks compare the Gersch to bands like Sabbath, Sleep and Kyuss which is definitely fair, but if you ask us, we're hearing a whole lot more Amphetamine Reptile, like a total timewarp back to the good ol' Amrep days, you know, Halo Of Flies, the Cow Bullies, Lubricated Goat, Unsane, Surgery, Tar, Killdozer, the Cows, Boss Hog, Helmet, Vertigo, King Snake Roost and the rest...
What's weird is that the recording quality sounds genuinely old, almost as if it could have been recorded in the seventies, although the band sounds just a wee bit too metal to actually be from way back then. But the combination of Amrep style heaviness and that seventies production, makes for a deadly combo, and had us imagining the miraculous discovery of some lost tape from this weird band from 1971 called the Gersch, who were somehow channeling the spirit of Sabbath though a super chaotic metallic freaked out buzz. By now you should be able to tell whether this is your cup of tea or not. It most certainly is ours. A steaming hot cup of dense jagged guitars, convoluted mathy rhythms, chugging downtuned grooves, shouted and grunted vocals buried in the mix, massive slabs of rumbling low end, all stretched and twisted into churning, thrashing, pounding seventies-via-nineties metallic RAWK. Awesome!
MPEG Stream: "Listwish"
MPEG Stream: "Magnificent Desolation"
MPEG Stream: "Residue Three"

GESEWA / UTTER BASTARD Rising Sun Fuckers / Kusottare Yankee (Bloodbath) cd 9.98
As much as some of us love grind, we definitely don't get enough grind on the list. This split cd, released we think to coincide with a Japanese tour, features unknown to us until now Japanese grinders Gesewa, and SF grindlords Utter Bastard, who since have broken up, but who happen to feature aQ pal Roberto behind the kit.
Gesewa definitely hit the spot, the songs mostly clocking in at less than 30 seconds, aren't so much blazing fast, although there are bursts of extreme grind, instead, Gesewa are of the weirdo, pounding metallic what-the-fuck school of grind, sharing more in common with say Bathtub Shitter than Unholy Grave. Lurching start stop arrangements, plenty of D-beat pound, wild hysterical dueling vocals, one grunty and low, the other shrieky and high, the guitars downtuned and chuggy, plenty of buzz and chaotic noise drenched thrashing, pretty awesome stuff.
Utter Bastard are much more technical and heavy than their twisted and bizarre Japanese compatriots, and tend toward a more classical grind sound, pounding and relentless, the guitars frenzied and furious, the drums pounding and blasting, with mathy complex arrangements, but UB too offer up some bizarre dueling vocals, only here and there, but for the most part, they chug and churn, spewing out some seriously crusty classic American grind. Rad stuff for sure. Too bad they're no more.
Beautifully designed cd as well, super striking layout, with liner notes and lyrics inside.
MPEG Stream: GESEWA "Gesewa"
MPEG Stream: GESEWA "Eikounohibi"
MPEG Stream: GESEWA "Watarase Suicide"
MPEG Stream: UTTER BASTARD "Morning Broke"
MPEG Stream: UTTER BASTARD "Broke Down Man"

GESTAPO 666 Black Gestapo Metal (Goatowarex) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

GEWEIH Grim Pagan Kult (Funeral Industries / Galgenstrang) 2cd 15.98

GHASH Forest Of Perpetual Pains (Gungnir Productions) cassette 4.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
With a name like Ghash, we kind of expected some sort of old school crusty punk, but this is some seriously unhinged and hateful buzzing blackness. Beginning with a weird ambient dronescape, complete with guttural growls and anguished wails, the band quickly stumbles into some of the strangest midtempo black metal we've heard in a while. Minus the drums, we'd be in serious Abruptum territory, simple riffs, repeated over and over, hovering in swirling fields of black ambience, with completely fucked up, reverb drenched, demented vocals, the sound is so abject and miserable, mournful and hopeless. The ultimate depressive suicidal blackness, but the drums... the drums change everything. Super simple and rigid, no fills, hardly any cymbals, just a never wavering machinelike midtempo beat. It's so relentless it sounds like it must be programmed, and the riffs are locked in perfectly with the drums, making it sound like this black buzz machine. A neverending loop of riff and drum beat, while over the top those vocals wail and howl, so doused in effects they sound like strange animals howling at the moon. Completely bizarre but totally mesmerizing. AWESOME.

GHAST May The Curse Bind (Todestrieb) cd 14.98
We were all prepared to write this review thinking that this Ghast, from Wales, was in fact, the same as the Ghast whose last two split albums we had reviewed recently. The sound was quite different, but hey, bands do that all the time. Thankfully, we dug a little deeper and discovered that indeed there are two different Ghasts, one French Canadian, one Welsh!
This Ghast is the one from Wales, and since they are in fact not the Ghast we already knew and loved, they are totally new to us, but there's plenty of room in our shrivelled black hearts for two different Ghasts, which is a good thing as we're starting to think we love these guys too. Where the -other- Ghast traffic in a crumbling lo-fi slow motion blackened doom, the Welsh Ghast, on So May The Curse Bind, their first proper full length, up the black quotient quite a bit. Right out of the gate, opening track "Crawl, Blighted And Afraid" explodes in a flurry of punkish blast beats, harsh vokills and buzzing frenzied riffage, raw and primal and a bit lo-fi, this is definitely frosty and grim sounding, but before too long the band can no longer resist the black hole pull of doom, and the tempo slows to a lurch, the blast beat transforms into a pound, the riff churns and chugs, occasionally, spinning out into little squalls of furious buzz, the melodies minor key and epic, a relentless black doom dirge, that shifts back to blasting buzz to finish off in a blaze of blackened fury.
The rest of the tracks follow a similar path, veering back and forth between stumbling chaotic frenzy and lumbering doomic crush, buried within the murk and the mire though are haunting hook filled melodies and surprising guitar harmonies, which add a bit of texture and color to the blurred blackness. A few of the tracks slip into a D-beat pound, others stretch out into woozy seasick almost-waltzes, while "Pale Robe" slows everything waaaaay down for a weary depressive crawl through clouds of Burzumic buzz and spidery minor key guitar melodies, a sort of black doom ballad, melancholy, miserable, and weirdly beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "Crawl, Blighted And Afraid"
MPEG Stream: "Give Your Wrists"

GHAST May The Curse Bind (The Flenser) 2lp 24.00
The debut cd from these Welsh black metallers was a HUGE hit with the grim black metalheads around here, and now it's finally available on vinyl, deluxe colored vinyl in a full color gatefold to boot! And as a bonus, it includes the Ghast tracks from their way limited cd-r split with Helvette!! Here's what we said about the record proper when we first raved about the cd version back on list #307:
We were all prepared to write this review thinking that this Ghast, from Wales, was in fact, the same as the Ghast whose last two split albums we had reviewed recently. The sound was quite different, but hey, bands do that all the time. Thankfully, we dug a little deeper and discovered that indeed there are two different Ghasts, one French Canadian, one Welsh!
This Ghast is the one from Wales, and since they are in fact not the Ghast we already knew and loved, they are totally new to us, but there's plenty of room in our shrivelled black hearts for two different Ghasts, which is a good thing as we're starting to think we love these guys too. Where the -other- Ghast traffic in a crumbling lo-fi slow motion blackened doom, the Welsh Ghast, on So May The Curse Bind, their first proper full length, up the black quotient quite a bit. Right out of the gate, opening track "Crawl, Blighted And Afraid" explodes in a flurry of punkish blast beats, harsh vokills and buzzing frenzied riffage, raw and primal and a bit lo-fi, this is definitely frosty and grim sounding, but before too long the band can no longer resist the black hole pull of doom, and the tempo slows to a lurch, the blast beat transforms into a pound, the riff churns and chugs, occasionally, spinning out into little squalls of furious buzz, the melodies minor key and epic, a relentless black doom dirge, that shifts back to blasting buzz to finish off in a blaze of blackened fury.
The rest of the tracks follow a similar path, veering back and forth between stumbling chaotic frenzy and lumbering doomic crush, buried within the murk and the mire though are haunting hook filled melodies and surprising guitar harmonies, which add a bit of texture and color to the blurred blackness. A few of the tracks slip into a D-beat pound, others stretch out into woozy seasick almost-waltzes, while "Pale Robe" slows everything waaaaay down for a weary depressive crawl through clouds of Burzumic buzz and spidery minor key guitar melodies, a sort of black doom ballad, melancholy, miserable, and weirdly beautiful.
MPEG Stream: "Crawl, Blighted And Afraid"
MPEG Stream: "Give Your Wrists"

GHAST Terrible Cemetery (Todestrieb) cd 10.98
This Ghast thing continues to confuse. There's the sick and sludgey Canadian Ghast, and then there's these guys, a Welsh blackened doom horde whose sound is similar enough to keep us constantly wondering if we've got the right Ghast. Both bands traffic in slow and low and heavy, serious doooooom for sure, but the Canadian Ghast are filthier and crustier, more a twisted sludge, like Bunkur or Moss, whereas these guys are more classically black doom, their sound melodic, but still grim and black, flitting easily from epic doomed trudge to frenzied blasting blackness. We've been digging their May The Curse Bind record A LOT (it was also just reissued as a swank double lp!) and had been DYING for more, and finally here it is, in the form of Terrible Cemetery.
First, how amazing is the name Terrible Cemetery, it almost sounds like one of the guys in the band let his kid name the record, grim and scary maybe, but also sorta dorky, which just makes it cooler. The music though does sort of evoke a scary cemetery, the opening track a haunting loping bit of midtempo minor key blackness, with a KILLER main riff, seriously harrowing, lumbering melodic doom, rife with sick guitar buzz, plodding drum pound and maniacal screeching vocals, the second half finds the sound shift into full on black metal, with still more killer riffage, weirdly melodic, wound around a relentless blast beat, and more shrieked vox, total classic (c)old school black buzz for sure, raw and filthy and EVIL.
The 20 minute title track is up next, "TERRIBLE CEMETERY", and right away it sounds like it, buzzing bass plod, spare skeletal drum pound, then clouds of frenzied buzzing guitar, howled demonic vokills, the vibe mournful and menacing, a gorgeously abject miserablist black doom death march, super emotional and intense and heavy, the track explodes in a brief stretch of gnarled black buzz, the guitars droned out and melodic, lending the blackness a strange sense of melancholy, only to shift back into a gorgeously epic plodding dirge, again epic and majestic and gloriously fraught with emotion, and like the first track, totally classic black metal flecked TRUE DOOM!! TROOOOOOOOM!!
MPEG Stream: "O Akhea Rheon"
MPEG Stream: "Terrible Cemetery"

GHAST / ABANDONER split (At War With False Noise) cd 13.98
We're pretty sure we have this Ghast thing all sorted out, there's a Ghast that's Welsh, and whose May The Curse Bind just got reissued on vinyl, who traffic in a sort of doom laced black metal, then there's this Canadian horde, whose sound is way more filthy and fucked up, a sort of glacial blackened crawl, all downtuned sludge, crumbling distortion, and harsh gurgled demonic vokills, not to mention the strange swirl of grit and grime and buzz and hiss that seems to surround everything they do like a glorious black sonic cloud of hiss and crackle. And that's precisely what you get on these two tracks, two extended filthfests, crushing, lumbering dirges, each a lurching sonic behemoth, howling and hateful and despondent and depressive and heavy and brutal as fuck. These ultradoom crawls creep malevolently along, the vocals sometimes doused in reverb, sometimes just grunting and gurgling demonically, melodies played out over minutes, buried in the murk and mire, super dynamic, and a little bit bizarre, especially the second track, the vocals sounding almost like a Muppet, the sonic death march being bombarded by strange electronics and streaks of skittery static. Pretty goddamn great. These guys should really get the same love bands like Moss and Bunkur and Corrupted do...
We'd never heard of Abandoner before, but apparently, they're a sort of blackened post industrial drone outfit made up of members of US doom sludge juggernaut Unearthly Trance. Weirdly enough, UT would have been a perfect sonic match for Ghast, maybe too perfect, so instead, we're treated to, or punished by, Abandoner's caustic soundscapes, all wild bolts of feedback, strange processed noises, loads of buzz, and rumble, guitars not so much played and allowed to spew gouts of crunch and howl and skree, everything wrapped in a hazy field of murky thrum, laced with damaged electronics, noisy, but not NOISE, more like a sort of even more twisted, less melodic Wolf Eyes? But definitely cool stuff, and an interesting foil to Ghast's monstrous downtuned black doom trudge.
MPEG Stream: GHAST "Le Bouc Noir"
MPEG Stream: ABANDONER "Lament For Gilroy"

GHAST / RAPE-X split (Obskure Sombre) cd 11.98
Some seriously grim blacknoise weirdness here...
We first heard from Ghast on their split with Yoga, we were pretty obsessed with both bands and have been on the hunt for more from both ever since.
So Ghast have returned, on yet another split, offering up two more loooong tracks of their unique not-quite-doom, a dirgey crawl, that spends as much time shimmering and buzzing as it does pounding and lumbering. The opener here is 21 minutes of grinding corrosive soft buzz, think Tunnels, Wolf Eyes, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, that sort of thing, deep whirring low end, drifting beneath clouds of metallic buzz, plenty of fuzz and hiss, beneath it all, there does seem to be some sort of thick tarpit like riffing, but it's WAY down, more like a distant drone than anything overtly metal, but it does lend the track a serious sense of dread and foreboding, as if any second the track might splinter into pieces and explode into crushing doom, but it never does, instead ratcheting up the tension, like the soundtrack to some super abstract foreign horror film. An actual rhythm dose seem to develop, but it's cobbled together using hissy white noise, ominous whirring synths, buried and blurred vocals, and a super drawn out low end melody, creeping and creeping before the low end drops out leaving just a sea of high end electrical buzz, and weirdly enough the sound of sheep (!). The second track clocks in at nearly 12 minutes, and again, is more ambient than anything, bits of crackle, melted tape loops, field recordings, processed electronics, all blurred into a strange undulating drone, peppered with fragments of melody, some buried riffing, which finally crawls up from the murk, and the band, for the first time in nearly half an hour, launch into some lurching lumbering doom. But the sound is not massive or crushing, instead, it remains murky and muted, more bass heavy than anything, if there is guitar it's tuned WAY down and is locked in with the rumbling bass, the rhythm mechanical and machinelike, with a definite industrial vibe, the track slipping into brief stretches of ambient drone-like shimmer, before the band lurches back into action, pounding away, stripped down, but still heavy and doomy and mysteriously grim.
Rape-X existed until now, as an MP3 file someone sent us a looong time ago, a half hour slab of blown out metalnoise, industrial drone weirdness. We'd notice it on the computer every once in a while and fire it up, and always think, "wow, this is pretty great, I wonder when they'll have a record". Well here it is. And Rape-X is a pretty good match for Ghast, seeing as they traffic in a similarly abstract doomy ambience, falling closer to Wolf Eyes or Blue Sabbath Black Cheer than any classic sort of doom. The vocals are huge part of the sound, and are harsh and super processed, demonic and maniacal sounding, giving the track a bit of a Whitehouse feel, ranting and proselytizing over a constantly shifting backdrop of blackened noise and droning harsh ambience. A glorious metallic cacophony, wreathed in hiss and skree, a bit like a way more static Sunroof!, the sound roiling and churning below the surface like some rough black sea, while that hellish voice continues to testify, the unholy scripture from some lost black gospel.
Caveat Emptor, though: these have a pressing defect, it's minor, but it's definitely noticeable. The band was contacted about it, but apparently there's some bad blood with the label, so there will never be a new, corrected version, so we figured we would list it anyway, since otherwise it's pretty amazing, and the defect is so slight. Basically, the problem is, there's a digitial click at the beginning of each track. Annoying, distracting, yes, but it doesn't affect the songs themselves, so if you can handle that (you can also edit out the clicks yourself on your computer when you import it into your iTunes or whatever), then by all means pick this up, some seriously abject and harrowing doom-ed blacknoize.
MPEG Stream: GHAST "Tetanos"
MPEG Stream: RAPE-X "Civil Servant: I The Cop"

GHAST / YOGA split (TDS / Choking Hazard) cd 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Yoga is a pretty unlikely name for a black metal band. But then Yoga are a pretty unlikely sounding black metal band. So much so that we're not even sure they really are black metal. Or metal. But they are. Sort of.
The sound of Yoga takes the lo-fi practice space recordings of grimmest of the BM outfits, and combines it with the murky muddy noise drenched blur of bands like Wold. But then take it even further rendering their sound so muted and lo fidelity that even when they're blasting furiously, it still sounds like a busted music box or an old black metal 78. And then there's the fact that Yoga spend a good amount of their time not blasting blackly, but instead, crafting synth heavy Goblin style film music, all throbbing bass and buzzing synths, creepy minor key melodies and tons of haunting ambience. Those songs too are wreathed in a foggy night-on-the-moors sort of murk, which ties those songs closely to the more blackened ones.
The strange combination of grim and Goblin, the tripped out fucked up recording quality, the damaged arrangements, the looped hypnotic quality, turn Yoga into something totally out there, most likely way to abstract and psychedelic and deliriously lo-fi to appeal to folks looking for grim buzzing blackness, but for the rest of you, if you can try to imagine some impossible mix of Philip Jeck, Wold, Goblin, the Skaters and some of the super weird EEE unblack bands, all produced by John Maus and Ariel Pink, thof soaring to the forefront, before drifting off again, the vocals super distorted and effected and harsh. All around this plodding blackness, creepy drones soar and shimmer, wail and keen, offering up a mournful abstract backdrop for Ghast's miserablist blackdoom. There's also a live track, where Ghast's sound is transformed into a crumbling blown out blackened drone, sounding almost like a metal band playing from behind a brick wall, the whole thing captured using a mic in a bucket of dirty water. The result is pretty fantastic, only the drums are at all identifiable, and then just barely, all the other instruments have been transformed into a mesmerizingly damaged, murky, muddy, sludgey pulsing drone. Awesome.
We got these direct from the band, and got the last copies, so once we run out, we might not be able to get more...
MPEG Stream: GHAST "La Noche Del Terror Ciego"
MPEG Stream: YOGA "Deep With-in The Cave Of Sesame"
MPEG Stream: YOGA "Littlefoot"

GHAST / ZOMBIE BLASPHEMY split (Lost Rivers Product) cd 9.98
Must suck to be Ghast, considering that pretty much every review has to start with "not to be confused with the OTHER Ghast", so it probably sucks for the OTHER Ghast too. But in this case, we're not talking about the Welsh black doomlords, we're talking about the Quebecois black doomdronedirge horde Ghast, with an umlaut over the 'A', whose sound is a much more raw and filthy proposition, droned out and blackened, and who strangely enough seem to only release splits. Their first with avant black metal weirdos Yoga, their second with blacknoize horde Rape-X, and now, this one, a brand new split with Japanese ultra doom sludge outfit Zombie Blasphemy.
As always, Ghast do not disappoint, offering up two lengthy slabs of abject, nihilistic slow motion creep, lumbering, lurching, troglodytic crush, the guitars massive sprawls of low end buzz, feedback everywhere, like Eyehategod doused in (more) cough syrup, a funeral crawl, a throbbing cloud of buzz and thrum, the vocals a beastly grunted howl, way off in the distance, keening high end skree plays out a melody stretched out over minutes, the riffing glacial and oozing and black, the track gathering momentum eventually, but peaking at a plod. Somehow, the other Ghast track is even MORE minimal and abstract, loose drumming laid over a haze of feedback and amp buzz, distant sirens, almost ambient, no riffs, just soft swirls of guitar noise, and some strange mewled vox, all the while the drums pounding sporadically and erratically, the last few minutes, the various strands seeming to come together to form something much more dense and droney, still black and abstract, but a strange sort of chanted sludge raga ritual. Awesome.
We had never heard Japanese sludgelords Zombie Blasphemy before, but much like their sonic compatriots in Coffins, they traffic in slow and low extreme doom, with an awesome guitar sound, so distorted it sounds like your speakers are fried, the vocals an impossibly guttural grunt, this is Moss / Corrupted style doom, but even more sludgey and crusty, the guitars occasionally offer up wild tangles of unhinged spidery melodies, almost leads, draped over the woozy warped lumbering chug and churn, the band do crank the temp here and there, but even then, the sound is SO blown out, and low fidelity and in the red, it turns everything into a glorious blackened noise drenched buzzy blur, and when they unfurl some wild psychedelic leads during the final track, it almost sounds like some sort of Tim Hecker / Merzbow mash up. So good. Total metal noise drone doom radness. For sure need to hear more from these guys. And hell, wouldn't hurt to finally get a non split Ghast full length too.
Totally recommended blast of twisted noise drenched extreme heaviness, two different, but equally twisted and genius takes on ultra slo-mo doom drone sludge...
MPEG Stream: GHAST "Jeanne D'Arc"
MPEG Stream: ZOMBIE BLASPHEMY "Cutthroth Machinery"

GHASTLY CITY SLEEP s/t (Robotic Empire) cd 10.98

GHOST Opus Eponymous (Rise Above / Metal Blade) cd 14.98
There's been so much hype about this Swedish metal outfit, before we had ever heard a note, we had heard ABOUT them, seen amazing pictures of the band playing live, the vocalist with a face painted like a skull, dressed in robes like some demonic priest, the album cover, a creepy seventies oil painting of that same vocalist, hovering demon like over an old haunted looking church, their satanic lyrics, their epic heaviness, so we were prepared for something seriously demonic and devastating, black metal or at least black-ISH metal we were assuming, so when we finally heard it, we were lured in by the sound of a church organ, so far so good, haunting and mysterious, and then the first song kicks in, thick buzzing metallic bass, pounding drums, okay, so not black metal, but heavy, fuzzed out, a little psychedelic, and then the vocals, woah, sounding a lit like Voivod weirdly enough, soaring majestically over chugging churning, and them suddenly, so POPPY, the song shifting gears, slipping into something way more melodic, replete with oooh's and aaaah's and some strange liturgical sounding crooning, some cool seventies style organs too, so it may not be what we were expecting but we were loving it, so then the next song started, and wow, even less metal, more like classic rock, seventies psych, a surprise, but fuck it, still pretty damn killer, the guitars still plenty heavy, and then the chorus, holy shit, a dead ringer for Blue Oyster Cult, total hooky pop, and it was then that we realized we were totally hooked.
C'mon, chugging satanic metal meets dark psychedelic rock meets Blue Oyster Cult? How rad is that?! The Answer is VERY. The vocals occasionally sound a bit like King Diamond, the band slipping into some Mercyful Fate-isms here and there, but a way poppier, more psychedelic, less overtly metal version, the leads are awesome. And it's pretty cool to hear actual singing and real melodies and a sort of classic psych rock formula with these explicitly Satanic lyrics.
"Death Knell" gets a little doomy, and features the refrain "Six Six Six" amongst other evil ramblings, but the song is far from fierce and heavy, instead it's trippy and broody and mysterious and haunting, the vocals wreathed in reverb and draped over muted guitars, fuzzy organs, with some cool dynamic stop/starts, as well as some tolling bells and a few definite Sabbathisms. We were sort of hoping "Prime Mover" was a Zodiac Mindwarp cover, but instead it's a pretty stellar original, droned our layered high end guitars wrap around a chugging churning riff, the bassline buzzy and ominous, again, a super dynamic arrangement, maybe one of the heaviest jams on the record, a little mathy, the guitars thick and fierce, and then the vocals come in, and the sound shifts to something more melodic and moody, drifty and creepy and psychedelic.
So yeah, don't be misled by the hype, or the satanic imagery, this isn't black metal, or really strictly metal, but if the idea of some awesomely Satanic psychedelic seventies styled heaviness, a sort of more metallic and WAY more evil and over the top classic rock, sounds like your sort of thing (and why wouldn't it?), then you'll probably love this as much as we do.
Killer packaging too, the aforementioned cover art, a sweet slipcover, and of course lyrics, so you can sing along and perform your own little musical black masses at home.
MPEG Stream: "Con Clavi Con Dio"
MPEG Stream: "Ritual"
MPEG Stream: "Satan Prayer"

GHOST Opus Eponymous (Rise Above) lp 33.00
Now we've got the import vinyl of this hot occult item, hail Satan!
There's been so much hype about this Swedish metal outfit, before we had ever heard a note, we had heard ABOUT them, seen amazing pictures of the band playing live, the vocalist with a face painted like a skull, dressed in robes like some demonic priest, the album cover, a creepy seventies oil painting of that same vocalist, hovering demon like over an old haunted looking church, their satanic lyrics, their epic heaviness, so we were prepared for something seriously demonic and devastating, black metal or at least black-ISH metal we were assuming, so when we finally heard it, we were lured in by the sound of a church organ, so far so good, haunting and mysterious, and then the first song kicks in, thick buzzing metallic bass, pounding drums, okay, so not black metal, but heavy, fuzzed out, a little psychedelic, and then the vocals, woah, sounding a lit like Voivod weirdly enough, soaring majestically over chugging churning, and them suddenly, so POPPY, the song shifting gears, slipping into something way more melodic, replete with oooh's and aaaah's and some strange liturgical sounding crooning, some cool seventies style organs too, so it may not be what we were expecting but we were loving it, so then the next song started, and wow, even less metal, more like classic rock, seventies psych, a surprise, but fuck it, still pretty damn killer, the guitars still plenty heavy, and then the chorus, holy shit, a dead ringer for Blue Oyster Cult, total hooky pop, and it was then that we realized we were totally hooked.
C'mon, chugging satanic metal meets dark psychedelic rock meets Blue Oyster Cult? How rad is that?! The Answer is VERY. The vocals occasionally sound a bit like King Diamond, the band slipping into some Mercyful Fate-isms here and there, but a way poppier, more psychedelic, less overtly metal version, the leads are awesome. And it's pretty cool to hear actual singing and real melodies and a sort of classic psych rock formula with these explicitly Satanic lyrics.
"Death Knell" gets a little doomy, and features the refrain "Six Six Six" amongst other evil ramblings, but the song is far from fierce and heavy, instead it's trippy and broody and mysterious and haunting, the vocals wreathed in reverb and draped over muted guitars, fuzzy organs, with some cool dynamic stop/starts, as well as some tolling bells and a few definite Sabbathisms. We were sort of hoping "Prime Mover" was a Zodiac Mindwarp cover, but instead it's a pretty stellar original, droned our layered high end guitars wrap around a chugging churning riff, the bassline buzzy and ominous, again, a super dynamic arrangement, maybe one of the heaviest jams on the record, a little mathy, the guitars thick and fierce, and then the vocals come in, and the sound shifts to something more melodic and moody, drifty and creepy and psychedelic.
So yeah, don't be misled by the hype, or the satanic imagery, this isn't black metal, or really strictly metal, but if the idea of some awesomely Satanic psychedelic seventies styled heaviness, a sort of more metallic and WAY more evil and over the top classic rock, sounds like your sort of thing (and why wouldn't it?), then you'll probably love this as much as we do.
MPEG Stream: "Con Clavi Con Dio"
MPEG Stream: "Ritual"
MPEG Stream: "Satan Prayer"

GHOST B.C. Infestissumam (Rise Above / Republic) lp 19.98
NOW ON LP!! Pressed on red vinyl, includes a download code too...
Like most of you, we kinda flipped for the 2010 debut record from mysterious Swedish hard rockers / retro metallers Ghost. And some of our pals / customers went absolutely apeshit about 'em - going to every show, buying every possible permutation of the record, picture disc, import cd, along with shirts, hats, whatever. And while we were perhaps not as over the top nuts for Ghost as that, we definitely loved that record, a lot, and played it like crazy. The sound being a strange hybrid of Mercyful Fate like metal, and Blue Oyster Cult like classic heavy rock. The band fronted by a ghoulish Pope-like figure, wearing corpsepaint, and wearing papal robes, often carrying some sort of staff, while the rest of the group were a mystery, their identities hidden by robes and masks. A silly gimmick maybe, but it definitely kept everyone talking about these guys, trying to figure out who they were, which famous metal guys from other Swedish bands were actually involved. And plus, let's admit it, watching some super theatrical performance with costumes and characters, is way more satisfying than a bunch of dorky long haired dudes in jeans rocking out.
So anticipation was high for record number two. The band were rumored to have been given $750,000 to record. They flew to the US, and got a high profile producer, and the results are here, and well, the response has been divisive to say the least. Now re-christened Ghost B.C. due to to some legal difficulties, the new record finds the band almost completely ditching the metal, their sound even more firmly entrenched on the seventies hard rock side of their sound. Some of us were thrilled, as we dug that side of the band WAY more, while others, not so much. In fact one of the above mentioned superfans, hated the two songs he heard so much, he didn't even buy the record, and had no plans to do so. While that seems a bit dramatic, considering, minus the less metal, the sound is ultimately not that far removed from the first record, and in fact, the songs are way better, and way catchier, and the production, while to some ears sounded too slick and polished, ultimately sounds perfect for the songs, and with every listen, we become more and more obsessed. In fact two aQ staffers were really, really keen on making this a Record Of The Week. Certainly those two aQ-ers have listened to virtually nothing else since this came in. But there was some dissent, so we'll leave it up to you. The samples below say more than we ever could, but we'll try anyway.
While the first record was definitely a metal record, the most you could say about Infestissumam is that it's hard rock, but really it's almost more like hard pop. The songs are crazy catchy, the guitars are distorted, and a little bit buzzy, but the production is such that they don't sound heavy exactly, and the organs from the first record are all over the place here, giving some songs a very carnivalesque, circusy feel, and others a weirdly Partridge Family vibe. The songs so hook heavy, with huge choruses, and equally catchy bridges, the solos are simple, the sort that mirror the main melody, and stick in your head like the vocals, the vibe is actually kind of mellow, slightly ominous, a little bit sinister, but only a little bit. It's bouncy, almost power poppy, epic and lush and super detailed, headphone listening reveals so much sonic detail, that at times it's not hard to believe this record could have cost almost a million dollars. When we were all arguing about whether to make this a Record Of The Week, one aQ-er sent this text to another aQ-er: "Ghost is Satanic bubble gum. Total genius. I've listened to it like fifty times already!" And the aQ-er writing this review wouldn't deign to argue. Cuz it is like Satanic bubblegum. Catchy and bombastic and almost orchestral in places, pure pop in others, hard rock in others, but so far removed from the metal that popped up throughout the first record, it seems insane to call them a metal band at this point. But whatever you call them, and however you feel about their sonic progression from their debut to this new one, have a listen to those sound samples, and see if you can resist. We're guessing you won't be able to. And why fight it?? A glorious slab of Satanic bubblegum hard pop genius!
MPEG Stream: "Per Aspera Ad Inferi"
MPEG Stream: "Secular Haze"
MPEG Stream: "Jigolo Har Megiddo"
MPEG Stream: "Ghuleh / Zombie Queen"
MPEG Stream: "I'm A Marionette"

GHOST B.C. Infestissumam (Deluxe Version) (Rise Above / Republic) cd 15.98
Like most of you, we kinda flipped for the 2010 debut record from mysterious Swedish hard rockers / retro metallers Ghost. And some of our pals / customers went absolutely apeshit about 'em - going to every show, buying every possible permutation of the record, picture disc, import cd, along with shirts, hats, whatever. And while we were perhaps not as over the top nuts for Ghost as that, we definitely loved that record, a lot, and played it like crazy. The sound being a strange hybrid of Mercyful Fate like metal, and Blue Oyster Cult like classic heavy rock. The band fronted by a ghoulish Pope-like figure, wearing corpsepaint, and wearing papal robes, often carrying some sort of staff, while the rest of the group were a mystery, their identities hidden by robes and masks. A silly gimmick maybe, but it definitely kept everyone talking about these guys, trying to figure out who they were, which famous metal guys from other Swedish bands were actually involved. And plus, let's admit it, watching some super theatrical performance with costumes and characters, is way more satisfying than a bunch of dorky long haired dudes in jeans rocking out.
So anticipation was high for record number two. The band were rumored to have been given $750,000 to record. They flew to the US, and got a high profile producer, and the results are here, and well, the response has been divisive to say the least. Now re-christened Ghost B.C. due to to some legal difficulties, the new record finds the band almost completely ditching the metal, their sound even more firmly entrenched on the seventies hard rock side of their sound. Some of us were thrilled, as we dug that side of the band WAY more, while others, not so much. In fact one of the above mentioned superfans, hated the two songs he heard so much, he didn't even buy the record, and had no plans to do so. While that seems a bit dramatic, considering, minus the less metal, the sound is ultimately not that far removed from the first record, and in fact, the songs are way better, and way catchier, and the production, while to some ears sounded too slick and polished, ultimately sounds perfect for the songs, and with every listen, we become more and more obsessed. In fact two aQ staffers were really, really keen on making this a Record Of The Week. Certainly those two aQ-ers have listened to virtually nothing else since this came in. But there was some dissent, so we'll leave it up to you. The samples below say more than we ever could, but we'll try anyway.
While the first record was definitely a metal record, the most you could say about Infestissumam is that it's hard rock, but really it's almost more like hard pop. The songs are crazy catchy, the guitars are distorted, and a little bit buzzy, but the production is such that they don't sound heavy exactly, and the organs from the first record are all over the place here, giving some songs a very carnivalesque, circusy feel, and others a weirdly Partridge Family vibe. The songs so hook heavy, with huge choruses, and equally catchy bridges, the solos are simple, the sort that mirror the main melody, and stick in your head like the vocals, the vibe is actually kind of mellow, slightly ominous, a little bit sinister, but only a little bit. It's bouncy, almost power poppy, epic and lush and super detailed, headphone listening reveals so much sonic detail, that at times it's not hard to believe this record could have cost almost a million dollars. When we were all arguing about whether to make this a Record Of The Week, one aQ-er sent this text to another aQ-er: "Ghost is Satanic bubble gum. Total genius. I've listened to it like fifty times already!" And the aQ-er writing this review wouldn't deign to argue. Cuz it is like Satanic bubblegum. Catchy and bombastic and almost orchestral in places, pure pop in others, hard rock in others, but so far removed from the metal that popped up throughout the first record, it seems insane to call them a metal band at this point. But whatever you call them, and however you feel about their sonic progression from their debut to this new one, have a listen to those sound samples, and see if you can resist. We're guessing you won't be able to. And why fight it??
While they last, we have the deluxe version, which tacks on to bonus tracks, one of which is a hazy, strummy, psychedelic sixties sounding ballad, the other their kick ass cover of ABBA's "I'm A Marionette", which weirdly enough sounds more metal than ANYthing on the record proper, which should tell you all you need to know about this glorious slab of Satanic bubblegum hard pop genius!
MPEG Stream: "Per Aspera Ad Inferi"
MPEG Stream: "Secular Haze"
MPEG Stream: "Jigolo Har Megiddo"
MPEG Stream: "Ghuleh / Zombie Queen"
MPEG Stream: "I'm A Marionette"

GHOUL Raping Soul (Battlecruiser / Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) cd-r 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another 'metallic' masterpiece from the Battlecruiser label, the side label of Campbell Kneale's Celebrate Psi Phenomenon label, specializing in all things metal or sort of metal. However the metal found on Battlecrusier releases is not the metal of Maiden or Priest, nor is it the metal of Carcass or Napalm, instead, this is the metal that occurs when drone obsessed minimalist noisemakers take a stab at invoking the beast: everything from from ultra-repetitive riffing, to blissed out expanses of slow motion dooooooom, to smeary stabs of grind, to pounding industrial metal pummel.
The couldn't-be-more-aptly-named Ghoul hit us which just might be the creepiest BC release yet. A haunting plodding doomscape constructed from slowed down Krautrock and Skinny Puppy scraps, with rumbling bass thuds and a skeletal rhythm cobbled together from chopped and clipped vocals, malfunctioning synths, and a distant swirl of Earth-en guitars. Imagine an electro Skepticism, or Red Lorry Yellow Lorry jamming with Sunn 0))). Weird and weirdly hypnotic. Not heavy per se, but quite dark and evil and grim and spare and spooky. As with all things Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, this is VERY VERY LIMITED!!!
MPEG Stream: "Raping Soul (excerpt)"

GIAMON The Old Buried Memories (Rusty Axe) cd ep 5.98

GINNUNGAGAP Return To Nothing (Misanthropic Agenda) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Managed to get a final batch of these. So one more chance to pick this up and then they really are gone for good. A little more expensive this time around as well. Ginnungagap is a term from Norse mythology that means something like "seeming emptiness" and that's a great name for this project, which sounds like it emanates from some abyssal void or abandoned cave or something. Ambient sinister drone improv, reminding us a little bit of House of Low Culture or even Thuja, if they were more creepy and liquid-sounding. Ginnungagap is a trio consisting of Khanate / SUNNO))) dude Stephen O'Malley on guitar, Khanate's Tim Wyskida on gong and tympani, and Gerritt Wittmer (who runs the Misanthopic Agenda label, and records solo as Gerritt) on computer. Packaged in a gold-printed, flat oversized cardstock sleeve, this disc consists of two tracks: "Return To Nothing" being a live recording about a half-hour in length, followed by Gerritt's remix "Nothing To Return" for about 20 minutes more. Like so much Khanate / SUNNO))) related stuff, it's of course a limited edition release...in fact, it's already out of print. We supposedly have the last copies. So...act fast if you want one. Sorry!
MPEG Stream: "Return To Nothing"

GINNUNGAGAP Return To Nothing (Misanthropic Agenda) lp 15.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
The music from Ginnungagap's long out of print Return To Nothing cd is available again, however briefly, on vinyl, super swank swirled yellow vinyl in fact, and limited to 500 copies...
Ginnungagap is a term from Norse mythology that means something like "seeming emptiness" and that's a great name for this project, which sounds like it emanates from some abyssal void or abandoned cave or something. Ambient sinister drone improv, reminding us a little bit of House of Low Culture or even Thuja, if they were more creepy and liquid-sounding. Ginnungagap is a trio consisting of Khanate / SUNNO))) dude Stephen O'Malley on guitar, Khanate's Tim Wyskida on gong and tympani, and Gerritt Wittmer (who runs the Misanthropic Agenda label, and records solo as Gerritt) on computer. Packaged in a gold-printed, flat oversized cardstock sleeve, this disc consists of two tracks: "Return To Nothing" being a live recording about a half-hour in length, followed by Gerritt's remix "Nothing To Return" for about 20 minutes more. Like so much Khanate / SUNNO))) related stuff, it's of course a limited edition release...
MPEG Stream: "Return To Nothing"

GIROUX, ANNICK Hellbent For Cooking: The Heavy Metal Cookbook (Bazillion Points) book 27.95
The lucky few who managed to snag a copy of Canadian metal mag Morbid Tales #6, also got a glimpse of something pretty spectacular, strange and unexpected: a heavy metal cookbook, recipes from famous rockers, their own peculiar and particular metal food faves, compiled by Morbid Tales editrix Annick "Morbid Chef" Giroux, who has now taken her love of metal, and food, and that little cookbook supplement, and expanded it to a full on, honest to goodness cookbook.
And it's awesome. We really can't imagine a metalhead who wouldn't want this, even if they never planned on actually making all the recipes. Pretty much the perfect gift for the metaller in your life, and who knows, maybe this cookbook will be the catalyst for some homemade meals. Although some of these recipes might have you thinking twice. Some sound delicious for sure, and the pictures are appropriately appealing, but others maybe not so much, and some seem to be purposefully disgusting, something only a very drunk metalhead would eat. But that's part of the fun of the book. We wanted to make a bunch of these before we reviewed it but ran out of time. We will though, already have a few bookmarked.
For all her troo metal cred, editor Giroux is just too cute, on the cover in her metal patch-ed apron and huge knife, or on the dust cover chowing down on a sausage, heck the book is even dedicated to her grandmother, but let's get to the meat of this here cookbook. Every recipe features a full color photo (which at first glance seem like standard cookbook photos, until you begin to notice various metal items in the background, leather jackets, spikes, album covers, beer cans, wine bottles, etc.), the band logo and bio, the ingredients and instructions from the chef, as well as a little note from the Morbid Chef, her own take on each recipe. Some highlights include: Mummified Jalapeno Bacon Bombs from Chris Reifert of Autopsy/Abcess, Candied Sweetbreads On A Bed Of Sacred Heart from Balsac The Jaws Of Death from Gwar, Fried Egg Rigor Mortis Cure from Ustumallagam Of Denial Of God, Devil's Porridge from Montalo of Witchfynde, Welfare Nachos from Jason Decay of Cauldron/Goathorn, Bull Testicle Surprise from Tomas 'Necrocock' Kohout of Master's Hammer (and while many of the recipes have funny metal names and in fact are something else entirely, this one is in fact bull testicles!), The Stew Of True Doom from Karl Simon of Gates Of Slumber, Thundering Beef Brisket from Lips of Anvil, Doro's Black Forest Cake from Doro of Warlock, Beer Pizza Crust from Olaf Zissel of Tankard, New Orleans Blood Red Beans And Rice from Mike IX Williams of Eyehategod, Shellfish Crossfire from King Ov Hell of God Seed/Gorgoroth, and we could go on and on...
More than 100 recipes from more than 30 countries, other bands contributing their favorite delectables include: Abigail, Accept, Amebix, Anthrax, Tygers Of Pan Tang, Uriah Heep, Thin Lizzy, Trouble, Electric Wizard, Destruction, Mayhem, Melechesh, Death SS, Judas Priest, Budgie, Impaler, Brutal Truth, Mutiilation, Lord Vicar, The Lord Weird Slough Feg, Piledriver, Pentagram, Rigor Mortis, The Rods, S.O.D, Stiny Plamenu, Warpig, Kreator and more more more.
Separated into sections for: appetizers and side dishes, beef, pork, lamb, poultry, seafood, vegetarian, desserts, even drinks (of course - and many of the food recipes include instructions to drink beer WHILE MAKING the food, not just when eating it), with lots of awesome illustrations, photographs, record covers, it's pretty epic, and totally metal, and we really can't recommend this enough. As Giroux says in her intro, making a meal is a great excuse for drinking and listening to metal! INDEED!!!