theradicald

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HAHAHAHA holy shit is that photo fucking real?! Vince looks like the end result of a Walt Disney, Vincent Price, and John Waters teleporter accident.

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Just Before Dawn

Ok, I'm gonna come right out and say it: Just Before Dawn are pretty much a just a grainy xerox of Bolt Thrower with an added splash of melody... Like to the point it borders on plagiarism. But, at the same time, Bolt Thrower have probably been my pound for pound favorite death metal band since about 1995 so truth told I'm pretty fucking jazzed to hear the rest of this EP when it comes out later this month.

Are these guys doing anything original? Not at fucking all... But like I've said many times in the past: When it comes to this particular style of pulverizing mid-tempo death chug I'll take pretty much anything I can get.

File this one alongside your Chainswords, 1914s, Hail of Bullets, etc.

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Hell

Not even remotely new, but easily one of the most punishing sludge/ doom releases of the past 20 years... Totally forgot I had this on cassette but stumbled across it while looking for something else the other day and wound up floored all over again.

Massive is a fucking understatement.

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Swans

If I'm being honest I didn't particularly care for Leaving Meaning when it was released back in 2019, but I find that it has definitely grown on me over the past couple years... Especially the quieter tracks like Annaline, Amnesia, and Cathedrals of Heaven all of which hit my ears like a tense, murderous reinterpretation of something like The Velvet Underground or "Songs of Love and Hate" era Leonard Cohen.

Still gotta be in the right mood for this one to "click," but when I am it's a pretty fitting soundtrack to being essentially locked in a room for two years straight with not much to do but choke down panic and think about people who have died.

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Poison Ruin

Local weirdos slinging a hybrid of punk, post punk, goth, and, I'm so sorry to have to say this, dungeon synth... Recently described them to a friend thusly: "The parts that sound like they're from 1982 are fucking rad but the parts that sound like they're from 1682 are much, much, less rad."

More seriously though, the band parts of this are absolutely incredible. Equal parts English Dogs, Broken Bones, Crisis, Killing Joke, and that one kinda post-punky Blitz album... But maaaaaan, those dungeon synth interludes can kinda fucking blow me.

Ok look, let me be diplomatic and put it this way: Their "dungeon synth" parts are far from the worst thing I've heard ooze out of that absolute cumsock of a genre, and tend more toward a blurry sort of ambient than the usual half-assed medieval bullshittery, but I've gotta be honest and say that Burzum and Mortiis are probably my two least favorite recording artists who have ever lived so getting me to tolerate anything that even kind of references their music is gonna be a heavy lift.

But lemme say again: The band parts of this are great.

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Shedfromthebody

Absolutely breathtaking one woman shoegaze/ doom project from Finland. Sort of in the general ballpark of something like Jesu or Sinistro with an added hint of funeral-doom-ish melody and vocals that seem to situate themselves somewhere between Sarah "Chibi" Taylor, Julie Christmas, that goth/pop singer Kanga, and Alison Shaw from Cranes.

YMMV but I've listened to the first track on this like six times in a row and I'm starting to think this might be my favorite EP of the year.

Thanks to Rennie for the heads up on this.

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Geremiah

Ran across this band completely by accident while poking around on a Bass VI forum earlier tonight and the first thing that popped into my head was: "Holy shit they sound like the second coming of The God Machine shot through with semi-dissonant AIC style vocal harmonies."

But then they kicked in way heavier than I was expecting and all of a sudden I'm thinking they sound like a 90's Midwestern college rock version of Sumac.

And it seems like they're kind of both of those things, often at the same time, but then there were a bunch of guitar parts that reminded me of Pinebender and a bunch of other guitar parts that reminded me of PAW which is cool because I fucking love PAW and wish more bands would touch on those kind of riffs, and then the recording totally made me think 1990's Chicago even though they're from current era Portland.

So yeah, they've got a real weird blend of things happening here, but it all hangs together and works really well.

I fucking love this.

[theradicald]

Welcome to the Second Cup of Coffee! I don’t know about you, but that’s when I get my best work done. 

For my first post I thought I’d share some art I made in my old Phaser Filters audio program - a MaxMSP patch I hope to resurrect one day that created visuals like this linked to the music created through the program. 

#generative #electronic music #maxmsp