Another collaboration from K.K. Null shows us the immense flexibility of the almost pure music he creates from manipulated sound, with Deison providing what sounds like a techno/necrowave framework over which ominous, haunting, and disturbing noise hangs like a funereal curtain.
1 CommentK.K. Null – Fertile (2008)
Musicians in the 1960s thought a lot about getting beyond scales, chords, and key, and making pure music, but the results usually ended in chaos because they were still thinking about music. K.K. Null creates dynamic sonic textures that convey a poetic sense of contrast and evolution, and uses that to create beauty from ugliness.
5 CommentsWiking 1940 – Destruction of Dresden (2017)
Review by Lucius Vorenus.
Wiking 1940 is an act I would generously describe as some genuinely confused crap. Even adjusting for the fact that they have a session member named Lord Himmler, they’re still really effeminate.
19 CommentsTags: 2017, Ambient, black 'n roll, homoeroticism, Italy, national socialist black metal, noise, nsbm, poseurs, review, screamo, War Metal, wiking 1940
BLASPHAMAGOATACHRIST – Tyrannic Empire (2017)
Review contributed to Death Metal Underground by Lucius Vorenus.
BLASPHAMAGOATACHRIST is the kind of music that’s so stupid that it has to have a cult following…
35 CommentsTags: beer metal, blasphamagoatachrist, demo, homosexuality, noise, nuclear war now! productions, nwn, NWN/FMP, poseurs, review, scenesters, trends mosh core fun, War Metal, youtube
This Ends Here / The Conqueror Worm – This Ends Here / The Conqueror Worm (2017)
Review contributed to Death Metal Underground by Jon Browning.
This Ends Here / The Conqueror Worm is a not totally godawful, self-titled punk split from the bands of the same names. You won’t want to shoot half of them after listening to it if you’re that bored you know. This Ends Hear’s a-side consists of atmospheric d-beating crossover similar to Discharge crossed with Celtic Frost to create punk with the same tempo as 1990s post-hardcore and atmospheric sludge with none of the outright guitar wank and junkie idiocy. While listeners have probably heard the standard d-beat rhythms, the influence from the stranger, melodic side of speed metal (Sabbat and the Brazilians) and later post-hardcore gives them strength beyond the robotic machine punk guitar wank of bands like Martyrdod. This Ends Here would do well to get rid of most of their bluesier attempts at atmosphere in future material or better integrated it into flowing compositions similar to the better Celtic Frost influenced death metal like Autopsy and Obituary – Cause of Death you know.
3 CommentsTags: 2017, Crossover, crossover thrash, d-beat, Hardcore, noise, noise rock, post-hardcore, punk, punk rock, review, rock, split, the conqueror worm, this ends here, thrash metal, War Metal
ZOM – Flesh Assimilation (2014)
ZOM is essentially a crust band who starched by a discordant boondock black metal sensibility resulting in parlor tunes to cap off a hard day picking potatoes. Neither being soaked in rye nor smoked out on Dublin can make this release stand out in the fields of barley. The riffs aren’t worth paying attention to and as background music it is simply too assertive so it tends to pinch you if your mood isn’t wearing the right color.
3 CommentsTags: 2014, beer metal, Black Metal, crust, Crust Punk, crustcore, dark descent, dark descent records, flesh assimilation, funderground, Invictus Productions, ireland, noise, zom
Conqueror – War Cult Supremacy (1999)
Conqueror wanted to be a part of the “scene” but did not have musical ideas. The band discovered that the muddied sound of early Beherit and Blasphemy circa Fallen Angel of Doom could be used to obfuscate their dearth of ideas. Furthermore the hostility between the Norwegian scene and the rest of black metal could be amplified under false pretenses while not offering any truly satisfying alternative themselves. Basically, point to candy assed pop drivel like Dark Funeral but go to the other end of the spectrum entirely with a paper thin wall of television white noise with a drunken chipmunk howling nonsense. Conqueror’s “music” is structured which ironically stands contra to the concept of all out war. A little anarchy would at the very least allow the essence of battle to bubble up from the pot. Instead it’s a tame morass of very low effort grindcore riffs and mostly incomprehensible low E-string noodling. The best that can be said about Conqueror is that J. Reed has an identifiable sound.
108 CommentsTags: 1999, canada, conqueror, drone, Grindcore, Hardcore Punk, hipster bullshit, noise, nuclear war now! productions, scenesters, War Cult Supremacy, War Metal
Conqueror – War Cult Supremacy Reissue
Riffless war metal/noise punk trolls Conqueror are having their only album, War Cult Supremacy, repressed on LP and CD by Nuclear War Now! A bonus live DVD is included too.
10 CommentsTags: conqueror, Hardcore Punk, hipster bullshit, idiots, noise, nuclear war now! productions, War Metal
Intolitarian: Of Gas Masks & Gimp Suits
Article by Lance Viggiano
Intolitarian is the work of a singular person who polemically positions himself as an artistic paragon standing on the opposite end of a polarity between retro-rehash, imported heaps of plastic and bad Xeroxes. Amidst such a landscape and armed with powerful rhetorical golden guns, he is able to churn out effort after effort which communicates nothing and everyone knows it. Like war metal, which similarly has nothing to say, criticism is parried through a simple maneuver: those who call this spade a spade simply cannot handle how extreme it is for it is certain that this work stands on the precipice of a new aesthetic era that will make death and black metal look like nursery rhymes. This defensive posture is of course a variation of the oft repeated, “You don’t understand” that is used by insular communities and critics to accomplish little more than convince the user of their own superiority where every induced eye-roll reduces to signals of ones own status as a martyr for good taste.
45 CommentsTags: antichrist kramer, hipster bullshit, intolitarian, noise, stinking shit, War Metal
Destruction Unit – Negative Feedback Resistor (2015)
These sludgy noise rockers from Phoenix show potential, but ruin this release by having too much reverb and weird noises getting in the way of the songs. This album is too ambitious for its own good.
10 CommentsTags: 2015, destruction unit, negative feedback resistor, noise, noise rock, review