Summoning – Old Morning’s Dawn pre-order

summoning-old_mornings_dawn-pre-orderTolkien ambient black metal project Summoning have unleashed their latest recording, Old Morning’s Dawn, via Napalm Records. The pre-order links are now active and the final product will be released June 27, 2013.

Napalm Records promises that “Despite the long break, the congenial duo Silenius and Protector did not stray an inch from their patch. Their distinctive melodies are the heart of all the songs on the latest longplayer, and bring the listeners directly into the fantastic world of Middle-Earth.”

Old Morning’s Dawn follows up on 2006’s Oath Bound, which united the epic spirit of power metal with the gentle melodic atmosphere and inner savagery of black metal, making the ideal soundtrack for medieval battle or spiritual occult warfare against the modern world.

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pre-order CD 12 EUR / pre-order DLP 23 EUR

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E-Musikgruppe Lux Ohr – Kometenbahn

e-musikgruppe_lux_ohr-kometenbahnThe most immediate comparisons E-Musikgruppe Lux Ohr will attract are to Tangerine Dream and other “cosmic” bands of the 1970s, but while the technique of this trancelike electronic waveform fits that description, its composition reflects on something more like the “chill-out” albums of the middle 1980s.

Kometenbahn uses many of the same samples and sounds as old Tangerine Dream. The Moog keyboards intermix with the highly sequenced percussive synthesizer that keeps time, and lengthy and intricate guitar solos use the same distortion and tuning. Even the studio sound is very similar.

How E-Musikgruppe Lux Ohr differs from the cosmic musicians however is in structure. This music is built more like the 1980s techno and chill-out albums, like the KLF’s album titled after the genre, than the 1970s bands. The electronic acts of the 1970s had a lot more in common with progressive rock, and so structured each song around either a set classical form, or as an adaptation to the content being expressed.

In contrast, more like the 80s material Kometenbah is composed in layers shaped around a central circular structure. This is not verse-chorus, but more linear, with the idea that one alternating pattern attracts others and then variations are made to those to tweak intensity and build up an experience of their atmosphere and immersion of mood.

This album offers powerful stuff to those who love ambient music. It is a feast of sounds, textures and rhythms. While it does not use the cosmic song forms of Tangerine Dream and friends, it produces a more contemporary atmosphere of suspension of disbelief and exploration of not a labyrinth, but deepening detail of an intensely ornate and beautiful object.

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Sinistrous Diabolous – Total Doom // Desecration

sinistrous_diabolous-total_doom_desecrationSinistrous Diabolous creates funeral doom metal from the fragments of death metal. It uses the rapid strumming of slow chording that made Incantation so thunderous, merged with the abrupt tempo changes of Autopsy, and the mixed sounds and dynamic variation of Winter.

Total Doom // Desecration is as a result both shockingly absent of any of the trimmings of civilization or what we recognize as music, and also momentarily beautiful, like a ship emerging from the fog only to be lost again. Its primitive production and dark chromatic riffs enhance this sense of naturalism emerging against the hopeless mental muddle of humanity.

The atmosphere of murky ambiguity that enshrouds this album also grants it a resonant sense of purpose. Between power chorded riffs, interludes of pure sound or lighter instruments pervade, creating a sensation like slowly poling a raft through a dense swamp, looking for enemies.

Of note are the vocals, which deliberately abstract themselves into an uncivilized and primitive growl that calls alongside the music like a pack of dogs howling at a kill. Percussion fits the Autopsy model, being both alert and intense and knowing when to fade out into the drone.

Sinistrous Diabolous use heavy sustain not only on their guitars, but in the way riffs are sliced into these songs. Notes of doubt and ambiguity hang over every change, waiting for the song to roll over again and from the relentless ferment of its imagination, pull forth another riff.

While many doom albums come and go, and most either slide into the 1970s style or death-doom, this album cleanly integrates the last two decades of the variation in the latter styles, and comes up with something that is not only bone-crushingly weighty in sound and meaning, but also brings forth a beautiful melancholic isolation at sensing what has been lost.

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Hellbastard – Sons of Bitches EP

hellbastard-sons_of_bitchesThe limitation of metal is that it has such a strong identity that it can easily become repetitive. The danger of going the opposite direction is that with no sense of identity music loses its own character in an effort to be open-minded.

Hellbastard hover on the lintel of that conundrum. Famous for their mid-1980s crustcore (and possibly for coining the name of that genre) the band detoured into metal on 1990’s Natural Order, but return here in a blur of distorted power chords and hoarse vocals.

The first four songs are relatively straightforward Amebix-style crust with interesting time changes. Vocals are searing and impressively aggressive. In addition to some ideas borrowed from rock, many riffs bear the stamp of middle-period Slayer.

Sons of Bitches mixes in the jaunty rhythms of late speed metal, conveyed mainly through the vocals but causing all of the music to be pulled by the catchy, repetitive chorus phrases. If you can imagine later Destruction fused with Pantera, embedded into a crust band, that’s the rough idea.

There are two outlier tracks. “We Had Evidence” starts a metal-styled instrumental that acquits itself quite well and then veers off into jazz fusion technique while recorded loudspeaker voices play in the background; then becomes a chanty metal-crust hybrid. Then “Throw the Petrol Bomb” comes on, which is some form of reggae lite with lyrics taunting the anger and frustration of political protesters.

The strength of this EP is its pure crust orientation. While the Slayer-style riffs give some power to the underlying material, the speed metal chant-vocals and assorted odds ‘n’ ends tossed in from rock and metal distract from the power of these songs. Perhaps on a full-length the band will focus more on its strength and slash out a slew of crust anthems.

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Absu North American Tour 2013

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Many know Absu as the band that transitioned from mythological death metal to heavy-metal tinged black metal to finally a progressive, jazzy, and eclectic blend of metal, Celtic folk and psychedelic fusion styles.

According to percussionist/vocalist Proscriptor, “We’re attempting to divide the concerts into two sections: the first act will showcase songs spanning from our entire discography, as the second act will focus on Phase Two from the album Tara: The Cythrául Klan’s Scrutiny. For the past couple of years, many of ABSU’s followers have requested specified songs from this chapter of Tara, so it is our aspiration to give the people what they want.”

The tour covers North America in the blood of the righteous, and gives Absu a chance to show off their psychedelic rock-metal fusion trilogy: Absu, Abzu and the upcoming Apsu. As always, it is expected that the tour will showcase fantastic musicianship, chaotic pits and manic scrambling of residents for talisman artifacts of protection against the summoned evil.

  • 4/05/2013 Millcreek Tavern – Philadelphia, PA
  • 4/06/2013 Roger’s – Chesapeake, VA
  • 4/07/2013 Strange Matter – Richmond, VA
  • 4/08/2013 The Windup Space – Baltimore, MD
  • 4/09/2013 Middle East upstairs – Cambridge, MA
  • 4/10/2013 St. Vitus – Brooklyn, NY
  • 4/11/2013 St. Vitus – Brooklyn, NY
  • 4/12/2013 El N Gee – Hartford, CA
  • 4/13/2013 Theatre Plaza – Montreal, QC
  • 4/14/2013 L’Agitte – Quebec City, QC
  • 4/15/2013 Wreck Room – Toronto, ON
  • 4/16/2013 Ace of Cups – Columbus, OH
  • 4/17/2013 Mojoe’s – Joliet, IL
  • 4/18/2013 Rocco’s – Milwaukee, WI
  • 4/19/2013 Station 4 – St. Paul, MN
  • 4/20/2013 Zoo Cabaret – Winnipeg, MT
  • 4/22/2013 Dickens Pub – Calgary, AB
  • 4/24/2013 Biltmore Cabaret – Vancouver, BC
  • 4/25/2013 Highline – Seattle, WA
  • 4/26/2013 Ash Street Saloon – Portland, OR
  • 4/27/2013 Shinneybrook Creek Cabins @ Festum Carnis – Soda Springs, CA
  • 4/28/2013 DNA Lounge – San Francisco, CA
  • 4/30/2013 The Vex – Los Angeles, CA
  • 5/01/2013 Ruby Room – San Diego, CA
  • 5/02/2013 Rocky Point Cantina – Tempe, AZ
  • 5/04/2013 The Boiler Room – Dallas, TX

For more information, check the Absu web coven.

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Hautakammio – Kukaan Ei Opasta Teitä Pimeässä

hautakammio-kukaan_ei_opasta_teita_pimeassaDuring the early days of black metal, it was acknowledged that punk had been a major musical influence on the genre. In particular, Discharge was cited as a foundation for seminal black metal band Hellhammer which later inspired a generation in the form of Celtic Frost.

The descendants of that heritage were the legendary Darkthrone, who fused punk energy, powerful riffs, and the searing bleakness of black metal into a musical maelstrom that had never before been heard.

Two decades later, Finland’s Hautakammio emerge with an even more intense attack. Sounding like a black metal crossover band, Hautakammio fuses the punk style with a black metal sound similar to Gorgoroth, producing a blistering aural assault. Riffs organically transition from dashing powerchord riffing to rapid tremolo picking while decidedly black metal vocals occupy the background.

Unlike Darkthrone however, Hautakammio does not sound greater than than the sum of its parts. While powerful music, it does not invoke a landscape of sound, remaining confined with linear production and direction. Nevertheless, this track is a solid composition with a unique take on a genre often stagnate.

For those interested in hearing more, the album Kukaan Ei Opasta Teitä Pimeässä will be released later this year through Darker than Black Records.

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Killing Joke – MMXII

killing_joke-mmxiiStaying true to roots is difficult because as time goes on and learning increases, one must necessarily spread wings and soar to more ambitious ground. Killing Joke do both on MMXII, an album that showcases the style of their first album as interpreted through a more modern style and revisiting their influences.

Categorizing Killing Joke has never been easy. They sound like they should be an electronic music band, with spacious beats and future pop song structures, but then they add in guitar which sounds like a lighter version of Amebix, and a distinctly sweet-sour male vocal that gives the music an expansive mood and lightens the sometimes intense distortion on the guitars. They augment this with atmospheric keyboards and a throbbing, pulsing aggro-pop bass groove.

On MMXII, the band get closer to their roots in early electro and British techno pop, using melody to lead the otherwise unstoppable fusion of industrial, pop, punk and rock that they wrap into a final product that is both passionate and furious. While this is no way a metal band, Killing Joke has influenced a good many metal bands because it shares a similar mood: mythological, metaphorical, distanced from the human and yet emotional in the sense of someone watching a lovely mountainside burn in a drought.

As fierce critics of the modern life and its favorite crutches, Killing Joke also have a mood that is more punk than the most righteously self-proclaimed punk. This gives the music a surging quality, between a contemplative Britpop melancholy and harmony, and a driving rage during which the vocals distort to the edge of black or death metal territory. The result is an enclosing wall of sound that catches the listener in its emotion.

MMXII presents an amazingly consistent package. While songs are generally verse-chorus with strategic breaks, and cycle around to circular structures that repeat with changes, they are not consistent and each one has a different set of moods. Like actors playing a role in the drama of the album, each seems like a shard of the glass face reflecting the true experience of this album, which is both elaborate and brilliantly compelling.

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Monsterworks – Album of Man

monsterworks-album_of_manThe job of a reviewer is to describe music, not judge it. Assessment ultimately becomes obvious from the context of expectation created by the reviewer which shows where all things must fit in the bigger pattern.

Monsterworks resembles a mixture of things and prefers to stay that way. The majority of the structural parts of songs are like Led Zeppelin mixed with Southern Rock and early doom metal, using metalcore style rasp vocals, so that most of what you hear is very guitar-rock styled heavy metal. This is a welcome change from the less organic metalcore of late.

If you like guitar playing that is bluesy, varied and emotional, this album will pique your interest. While the vocals rant, guitars hit all the right rhythms and then work in leads with the fills, slowly building up intensity until the song explodes in sound. If you can imagine Led Zeppelin and Ion Dissonance collaborating on a stoner doom album, this might be about it.

Monsterworks create very much in the 1970s style, and yet with its vocals and aesthetics, very much in the 2010s style as well. The result is both deeply engaged and like newer metal hybrids, incessant in its peak intensity, which can make it meld together indistinctly. It often detours into “different” arenas, like progressive rock, tech-deth, and straight up hardcore, as if a variety show.

Album of Man reforms the anti-technical side of post-metal and metalcore however by using the guitar as a voice of its own, and breaking up the strident extremity with old fashioned instrumentalism. This both brings rock and metal back to their core and renews the intensity of the vocals. By doing so, it takes newer metal to a better place and makes for a more satisfying listen.

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Interview with Satan

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Satan‘s Life Sentence is going to hit a lot of best of lists for this year because it is the root of the most lastingly popular metal genre ever created.

In the early 1980s, speed metal bands like Metallica popularized the style, but acknowledged their debt to NWOBHM including Motorhead, Diamond Head and Blitzkrieg. These bands were from the far side of NWOBHM as it incorporated more punk influences and as a way of differentiating itself from the earlier versions, got harder, heavier, riffier and generally more aggressive.

Back in those times, Satan’s Court in the Act was considered one of the fore-runners of speed metal. With the advantage of 30 years of wisdom, Satan re-assembled — now with experience spent in bands like Blitzkrieg and Skyclad — and restored its vision of the past with an album that is harder, faster and heavier than their earlier works.

Life Sentence however also includes the best aspects of NWOBHM, which includes the melodic vocals and melodic guitar-based songwriting, with technical chops that aren’t overstated, and a good sense of developing theme. It makes many of the post-Metallica imitators of speed metal seem like two-note template-based song construction, and shows metal a way to renovate its own flagging fortunes: improve songwriting.

It won’t be hard to convince people to enjoy this album. As we pointed out in our review, it’s a winner with metalheads who like musicality with their speed thrills. We were fortunate to be able to talk with guitarist Steve Ramsey.

Back in the 1980s, when asked about the origins of speed metal (Metallica, Exodus, Anthrax, Testament, Megadeth) many people pointed me toward Court in the Act, and others mentioned the “Into the Fire” demo you released in 1982. What do you think your contributions were toward inventing this new style? Do you think it was widely recognised?

I think on the underground it was recognised that the album had some significance. Unfortunately it didn’t seem so to us at the time, hence the name and direction change. We knew we were pushing boundaries in our own way.

What floors me about Life Sentence is how you mix melodic guitar playing with aggressive and fast riffing. Do you get a lot of comparisons to Judas Priest’s Painkiller? How do you think this album is different from your past works?

We were heavily influenced by early Priest, especially the Unleashed in the East live album and the older material on that album. No one has mentioned this until now. Their earlier material in he seventies was very progressive, unlike some of the stuff that made them popular in the eighties. We tried to create what we think would have been our second album had the lineup stayed in tact. We had a few rules we made and stuck to. For instance, we didn’t think we would have written much in odd time signatures.

The term “power metal” popped up a lot in the late 1990s to refer to bands that were melodic in composition but used the more aggressive riff styles of speed metal and death metal, like Helstar and Stratovarius. However, Satan was doing all of this back in 1982. Do you think the community caught up to you, and do you think that your first album would be received differently today?

If the reaction to the new album is anything to go by then yes, I think the album would have fared better now. Aggressive melodic speed metal is a term that could be used to describe a lot of what we are in to writing and performing as a band.

Life Sentence is a remarkably complete album in that every song seems to fit and there’s not a dull moment. What’s your songwriting and quality control process? How do you start writing a song — with an idea, an image, a riff, a melody, or what? — and how do you determine what goes on the album?

It’s strange really, we didn’t have any left overs. Everything we put together is on the album. Russ is the main writer of the music along with myself, but a lot of the stuff is a collaboration between us and the other members adding their bits and pieces to the general picture and overall performance. It’s a true team effort.

Members have gone on to other bands, including Skyclad which claimed your guitarist and bassist for some time. How is Skyclad different from Satan? It is famous for mixing folk music in with metal. Is this a natural progression from what you did with Satan?

Not at all. That was a concept perceived by our ex-singer Martin and myself. We started off playing a more thrashy form of music and gradually added more of the folk element as we went on. Sabbat were a thrash band that Martin was in previous to Skyclad. His vocal style determined what we were able to do too.

How do you see yourself as different from death metal? In the Metal Forces interview, you say Satan changed the name in part to avoid being seen as being like Venom and Slayer. Musically and artistically, how do you see yourselves as different from these bands? In an interview with Snakepit magazine, you mentioned that Satan chose its path before black metal and death metal. What do you think of these movements which have built on what you’ve created?

When we formed the band Russ and I were 15 and still at school together. We thought Satan was a true heavy metal name for a band and of course we’d come up with a fantastic logo. We were into Black Sabbath but they weren’t branded by their name with everyone thinking they were into the occult or whatever. This happened later to the music scene. In the eighties we had some towns trying to ban us from playing and Christians demonstrating outside shows because of the name. We tired of this and having to explain that we weren’t preachers of evil etc.

I think nowadays it’s taken a little more tongue-in-cheek what a band decides to call itself. I like aggressive music and we write songs about the evil things that happen in the world but we have nothing to do with devil worship and all of that stuff and dont want to be associated with it. The forms black and death metal weren’t the issue, it was the message that some of these bands were tring to deliver. Slayer are one of my favourite bands.

In the German TV interview posted on your website, you mention how metal audiences are too trend-orientated. How do you think this has helped you or hurt you over the years? You mention in the context of Skyclad, that not being popular isn’t a judgment on musical quality. Can you tell us more about this?

This is especially what happens in the UK. The popular press lead the fans into liking the music made by the major labels, and of course those labels are the ones that fund the magazines through advertising. We’ve had situations in the past with press in Germany too where you’ll get an album review but no feature because your label aren’t paying for a big full colour advertisement in that mag. This makes it more difficult to be heard if you’re trying to create someting new on a small independent label. It’s really not the audience’s fault, they get into what they get to hear and that goes for mainstream too. This has changed a lot since I made that statement due to the internet and fans being able to find what they like themselves.

In the Snakepit interview, you say that your first gig involved playing covers by Black Sabbath, Motorhead and the Ramones. How much influence did punk have on your music? Where did the Motorhead influence come in? Was it balanced by another influence, that sounds more like traditional NWOBHM and guitar-oriented rock?

We listened to a lot of punk stuff in the seventies and wanted to involve that raw energy in our music. Motorhead were one of the first metal bands to do that for us. Also we played punk stuff because it was easy to play and people would identify with it at school where our first gig was! We were also listening to Deep Purple, Rainbow, Priest and Rush but couldn’t play that yet. We would play a lot of Priest songs from Unleashed in The East, “Kill the King” by Rainbow, “The Trees” by Rush and others later on in our early days.

How is it that people confuse writing about evil, with suggesting that evil is a good idea? Does this reveal something about them? I’m thinking of your comments (Steve and Graeme) in the German TV interview on the Satan page about how people would boycott Satan without knowing anything about the music.

Yes, it is a little naive. Unfortunately there are people out there who make assumptions without listening. There were bands promoting it through their lyrics too though and that didn’t help with us being called Satan.

In an interview with Metal Forces magazine, you said you wanted to get away from darker themes and “all this black death, killing people and devils. We want to get some life into metal. Music isn’t about death, it’s about life.” — is there a way for bands to be about life even with dark themes, or are the two mutually exclusive? Do you think many metal bands are going about this the wrong way?

I think what I was trying to say was that some bands try to deliver a message through their lyrics and sometimes it’s not good. We certainly did that with Skyclad and still do but Satan was never about that. We want people to enjoy listening to the band and the dark lyrical themes suit the music we make but were not trying to deliver any kind of opinion or message with them. There are also a lot of bands that share the same attitude.

You’ve now played a number of festivals, and come out with what I think will be a strong contender for album of the year, and you’ve got a powerful lineup ready to go. Are you going to tour more, or focus on recording more material?

Thanks for that accolade. Everything is very much up in the air and in the lap of the gods! If you’d asked us a couple of years ago are we going to make an album we probably would have laughed. The interest in what we do is leading us. This album went so well that there have been whispers in the camp about maybe doing another. We take the shows we get offered and we have some good ones coming up.

Thank you very much for the great review Brett. It’s great to know there are people out there who really get what were doing and appreciate it and that really came across when we read it.

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Bode Preto – Inverted Blood (2013)

bode_preto-inverted_bloodIt’s not often that a new band appears that warrants much attention from these old, somewhat jaded eyes. Indeed, there are still good releases that pop up from newer bands — even releases that are good enough in my opinion to support by buying them. In today’s age of over-saturation it’s really difficult to wade through the muck in an effort to find that diamond, if one even had the luxury of time to want to.

So when I received a message from Mr Adelson Souza, former member of the renowned Brazilian early 90s band The Endoparasites, I was quite shocked to say the least. Being a fan and vinyl collector of what was coming from Brazil in the 1980s and early 90s my interest piqued…and wasn’t this guy just making the rounds on the latest Grave Desecrator album Insult? That release is a phenomenal thing, and ranked high enough for me to actually buy the LP/CD combo from Hells Headbangers Records.

Adelson says he’s left Grave Desecrator and if I was interested he would send some advance early mixes of the currently new material, songs not at all near completion, with his new band called Bode Preto (in Portuguese, meaning Black Goat). Hell Yeah! Of course I wanted to check that out — and then I sort of went on with my own thing until one day that material showed up and life changed, again.

What hit me so unexpectedly was this barrage of music coming from just two men, which hurled me back into about 1987’s fetid Brazilian tape-trader jungle metal, but at the same time carrying a dominant genetic stamp throughout it that was distinctly Bode Preto’s. That usually just doesn’t happen — new bands are usually so hyped up and full of their own bullshit, sporting ripped off cover art and/or bastardizing someone else’s logo and when it boils down to the main body of their “art”, the music, well, to me it’s a meaningless string of riffs and rhythms sewn together to make a “song” with no conviction and leaving the listener feeling shafted and devoid of feeling.

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That might be OK for some, but not for me — and that’s where Bode Preto comes to play so solidly. I feel Bode Preto — and that’s what I want from music. It’s this way with any medium, or should be. These guys simply let their art do the talking and we garner from it what we will. I don’t think hell is supposed to sound this good though. The song “Elytron (Succubus)” for me denotes a truly classic release. I urge you to tap into that drumming which was not recorded in any studio, but simply a plain room, and absorb the feeling, and you’re on the path which has at least as many layers as Dante’s Inferno, if not more.

The exceedingly rich tradition from which Josh and Adelson come collectively, being from Brazil, shines right through not only musically but lyrically since Inverted Blood‘s lyrics have roots in the socio-political (almost punk rock oriented) outlook and expression of their artistic countrymen from the 1980s. If you want to boil it down to Bode Preto being an outlet for Josh S to comment on the world he sees, then you’re pretty much hitting the coffin nail on the head.

His (Josh S) life experiences, having traveled throughout Brazil and Europe working in theater/dance and music of varying styles, are what has spurned this beast of a release which he summarized in a recent conversation with me as being “the perfect way to express my true nature and view of world, and I will take good care of that as someone that works on a garden. Like Quorthon to Bathory or Lemmy to Motörhead.”

GOATPRAYER RECORDSListen to this release and think about how Adelson was originally approached as a session drummer…Having listened to the skeletal ideas, Adelson was apt to project his unique mind’s eye to the arrangements and ultimately became that new member. A quest to create led him to travel thousands of kilometers from home to spend a week with Josh — revealing a level of conviction to which I don’t think Josh was initially expecting. Josh found his “minute man” in Adelson and the resulting nine-track album is worthy of support by every extreme music fan if you’re worth your salt (or brimstone or whatever).

By the way, this is NOT a modern Sarcofago either, as I’ve heard some people mistakenly state, being very far from that indeed, even if Fabio Jhasko did honor the request to record some excellently placed solos on a few of the songs. I hold to my belief that the overall feeling of Inverted Blood in total gives me goose flesh akin to when I first span Cogumelo’s Warfare Noise Volume 1 compilation album in the 1980s — and a vibe akin to that glorious times era — but that’s as far as it goes. If you want cookie cutter moron metal, you’ll not be parting with your money for this album. Money is tight, I know, music is a luxury too — chances are you have a few crappy releases in your collection -– so sell them to some dumb kid and buy this album.

Interestingly enough however and I guess a bit more progressive towards the fans being able to obtain the album (compared to the old days when you had no choice but to get off your ass and physically trade records with anyone from Brazil), the band has licensed Inverted Blood thus far to three companies in three different formats. UK based Goatprayer Records was first to make available a professional cassette tape version in an extremely limited quantity of only 50 hand-numbered pieces, which I assume would be marketed to the hardcore collectors and fans in such limited number (mine is number 18).

The European continent and outlying areas have a handsome jewel case version on offer from the German Ketzer Records who were the next to release the album, and the first to release it on CD. It’s here that one gets the more conventional aesthetic, I say that for those who were too young to appreciate vinyl or just don’t do the cassette thing. This was to be the second purchase for me of the same album…is the message getting through now?

Brazil’s Läjä Records, in conjunction with DeathNoise Productions, were next on the list whom released a superb digipak edition, the final result was a third purchase of the same album. Something I rarely if ever do. In fact I bought two copies of this awesome digipak so I could give one to a friend as a surprise.

Läjä’s Mozine had this to say about the band and the album: “I decided to put out this record, first because after releasing the Skate Aranha 10″ (Josh’s old band) I started friendship with Josh. When I heard Bode Preto I was shocked with the band. For a long time I didn’t listen to something so real, brutal and raw. I feel true in each second I listen to Bode Preto and it’s a kind of band I would like to play. Läjä Records is not really a record label 100% involved with black metal and metal, we are more to brutal and raw hardcore and rawk, but, this record and band is so, but so good that is above a particular style.”

LäJä Rex DeathNoise

Definitely get yourself a decent set of headphones for when you can’t blast this gem out in the open –- adding further layers to the experiences that await. Inverted Blood is the culmination of all those experiences to produce the final product (ie: music, image, packaging, feeling and more). Extreme music needs that kind of intensity if it’s going to hold its head high above the chaff. I expect, and hope, to hear much more from these guys in the coming years.

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