Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome to That's Not Metal. This is
your weekly rock and heavy metal news show. We are
here with you.
Speaker 2: Every Friday, and today it is.
Speaker 1: It feels like it's quite soon, I guess, since we
did the last little one with with Deathtones and Song.
But we are back again with a big old reviews
bag for another very big month. We are here in September,
and today we are going to be discussing in depth
the new album releases from Lorna Shore, Flesh, Water, Scorpion, Milk, Lad, Dispute,
Modern Life is War to veg Isner, Fry, Height and Disputes.
My name is Perry and Haish with me across from
me ready to tackle every one of those titles and
more is Sam Dignon.
Speaker 3: How are we doing all good?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: We had a big old week, didn't we in regard
to some of the stuff that we've been building to.
I suppose with the show because I actually realized, along
with a turnover doing Peripheral Vision, who I spoke about
on last week's show, I saw three bands playing albums
in the course of about thirty four You've you've been
like super busy with these big anniversary shows. I've only
been at one of the many anniversary shows going on
right now, but you've been at a whole bunch of Yeah. So,
like I said, I spoke about Peripheral Vision last week,
which was which was very good. The kind of the
most last minute affair of these I supposed for me
was go and see Cavin playing Jupiter, which we did
an album club back at the start of the year
at a point where I didn't actually know I was
going to be seeing it because that UK shows what announced. Yeah,
we just did it because you know, their roadburn was
coming up and they were like, that's a cool album,
let's do that. But pretty soon after that they announced
a UK leg of playing their you know, seminal kind
of progressive space rock from the realms of metallic hardcore
record Jupiter. Brought that round around the UK, along with
obviously two very different sounding albums that.
Speaker 2: I saw on consecutive days here.
Speaker 4: But I was about to say good weekend, I say
the millennial metal core weekend of.
Speaker 1: Ye, it was a big weekend for forty year old
dudes with Jane Doe tattoos but.
Speaker 4: Fannel shirts and like all yeah, yeah, obviously two.
Speaker 1: Like even though you know, both like y two k
as we say, East coast metallic hardcore bands. Two wildly
different sounding records, and the Jupiter show was very very cool.
I was a bit annoyed so in at the London
show it was cave in with Torch doing their like
you know, comeback show for it. But elsewhere in the
UK they were split and talk were playing here like
two days afterwards and just put them put them on
the same thing again. But Jupiter was was really cool.
It's you know, not an album I would say, necessarily,
you know, unlike the opposite of December. It's not necessarily
like a you know, big live, go crazy all the
way through the type album. And it's really like, you know,
when they're doing those lengthy tracks like Requiem and stuff,
you can really kind of just get lost in it.
But it's a wonderful record and you know, hearing you know,
Nate Newton obviously is the basis now in Caven, having
come over from Converge recently and seeing him and Brodsky
there together, which just like these are some fucking icons,
you know, and all the Jupiter stuff sounded fantastic. They
also sort of towards the end of the album before
new Moon the closing track on it, they inserted something
that I think they used to do live around the
time of Jupiter, which is why they brought it back.
But they did a cover of Dazed and Confused by
led Zeppelin and hearing Nate Newton's base tone on that,
Wow we we was and you know, Brodsky doing the
whole fucking you know the confew so long like that
was sensational. And then you know that last little energy
boost with New Moon at the end, and then they
came out and did one of the long songs from
the latest record, Blinded by a Blaze as an encore,
but seeing so they led more.
Speaker 4: Into sort of the proguia side of their sound to
sort of match up with JUPITERI.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it wasn't a Moshi Caban show at all.
They had like some original pressings of Jupiter that they'd
like dug out of a box or something like on
the on the March with them. But yeah, I mean
it's the kind of show that I imagine at like the
at the thirteen Papodium where Roadburn happens in that venue,
I imagine it would have been absolute magic. It was
still like pretty damn cool in Manchester's Club Academy and
the very following day a few days later for you
and I know, just to complete the trinity because he
did the special with us, Mark went to the Glasgow
date as well. Poison the Well come around for their
first proper UK tour in Forever because you saw them
outbreak a couple of years ago, but a proper UK
tour celebrating twenty five years of the Opposite of December,
which is also a very short album, so we knew
there'll be more than enough for lots of other material
as well. If you're not aware, we did a full,
deep dive, full discography analysis type special over that's what
our Patreon earlier this year about Poison Well and what
a phenomenal seminal. Also varied often at times band they've
been and it's very rare actually that we do a
special and then the opportunity to like actually see them
in the flesh comes around so soon. You know that
there have been lots of cases where we've done one
and I've been like itching to see them, but then
we don't actually get the shot for like a few
years or something, or it still hasn't happened. Whereas you know,
get doing that special and then within a few months
having actual poison Well I hear and it's all still
fresh in the memory, you know, like this was for
that reason. This was one of the shows that I
was you know, looking forward to more than most things
this year.
Speaker 3: So, I mean it's funny.
Speaker 4: I've had a few people come up to us and
say they've got tickets to this show off the back
of us doing that special and them kind of going,
I need to find out why I'm missing out on,
which I'm that's great.
Speaker 3: I like, that's why we do these specials sometimes.
Speaker 4: And it is like for about like Poison role who
like we fucking love and like so sort of cult
sector medical fans. They are gods, but they are you know,
relatively cult.
Speaker 3: Band, you know London.
Speaker 4: They were playing Electric Ballroom, which is the same when
you like Botch played, so they're in that kind of
like legendary but slightly remember but like people come hound
and sort of being like, yeah, no, I've gone to
Poison off the back up special when I had to
go see this show, So it was about like that's
what it's all about. But yeah, this was for me,
you know, Round two of Poison role in just over
a year. But I mean after waiting so long, I
wasn't gonna, you know, pass up like another opportunity to
see him again, especially playing Opposite of December and then
some extra stuff in Fall.
Speaker 3: So I was so geared up for this gig.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was my first time seeing Poison in the world.
But because I spent so much time earlier this year
watching live sets of theirs online, I almost felt like
I was watching something I knew, you know, because it's
like I I portrayed my brain to be so familiar
with Poison wel and like their movements on stage, It's like, yeah,
there's Ryan, you know, standing and going crazy playing guitar
the way that he does.
Speaker 2: There's Jeff.
Speaker 1: So it was basically, you know, it was a fulfillment
of everything I'd kind of already ingrained into my head
from beforehand. Butts, god, what what an incredible band. I mean,
Opposite December as a record, you know, they they did
like they broke it up over the set, but a
number of the tracks from other records spliced in as well,
and the Opposite December stuff from you know, the opening
salvo of twelve twenty three ninety three, which just immediately
clicking to that really like hyped up way of opening
the show, even though its.
Speaker 4: Crowd went mental right away like zero to sixty.
Speaker 1: But then you know, a couple of tracks in after
that and a wish for Wings at work. They're dive
in sideways into ghost Chant and then Bochela, which obviously
you go off back onto a couple of ob December songs.
Halfway through you're getting into the likes of Slice Paper Wrists,
which I was just going so big for because you
know that I remember.
Speaker 2: The day is big.
Speaker 1: But that was like the first, maybe after the Boxular,
the first like absolutely insane moment of the set. I
want to mention as well. Trembling level the new song
which they released like was it earlier this year or
last year or something, but it was.
Speaker 3: Late last year. Yeah, Yeah, sounded great lively.
Speaker 1: I really liked that song on record, but live it
sort of slotted in so seamlessly without the difference in
production and everything, and you go like, oh, yeah, that's
just like that's a Poisono Well song like we all
know them to be. So that was really promising. They
did announce as well. I'm sure they did at most
dates that the new poison Well album is basically finished
and they're looking to get it out the beginning of
next year. So hopefully, you know, this time, within six
months or something, we'll have a new poison Well album
to be discussing and talking about. When we got to
the latter end of the show and obviously artists rendering
of me huge moment. That's the moment where everyone just in,
I will not swallow your false ideals, that whole moment.
If you again, if you're not familiar with the poison
the world, that is like the massive gang Chann't everyone
in the room bellowing that moment.
Speaker 2: But straight after that where they can believe it, where
they hit let a thing, which, if again, if you've
not heard, are Poisoned Well Special the fourth poison Wel
album versions We knew you know very much so because
they are the trinity that even advertised it as such
on some of the tours recently.
Speaker 1: The first three poison Well albums are the like universally
agreed upon staple classic ones and so I knew you know,
We're They're poison an opposite December set, but author with
lots of time, we'd be getting songs from at the
very least Tear from the Red and You Come Before You.
In my head, I was almost geary up to be like,
if only they'd thrown in something from Versions, then it
would have been been perfect. When you're talking about the
feedback we've gotten on the Poison Well Special, this is
one of the most affirming things we've done lately. Is
everyone who's gone into our Poison Well Special sort of
blind not knowing the band too much, has come out
being like that Version's album is fucking incredible. Why don't
people tell us to listen to that one the way
they do You Come Before You in an opposite December,
because it's the secret masterpiece of the Poison Weld Cadin.
When that sweet Air whole thing started going, I like
was just like looking around me being like, oh my god,
I can't believe they're doing this, looking for anyone else
who would like be as enthusiastic.
Speaker 3: There was a cup of us down the front go
for it his own down lefting.
Speaker 4: He's got like the slide guitar ring out and he's
playing sort of like slide guitar, and he's sort of
like thinking. I was like other medical bands aren't doing
this like this is like the invention of poison Well
on versions as an album, and they're kind of like
we're going to try new things in metalcore. Like it's
so to appreciated and I'm so glad at least at
least that song, which is no just this such a
sick way to open that album and kind of like
being this like rageer, but that is like.
Speaker 3: Experimentally different seeing it.
Speaker 4: And again, like I said, like he's got slide guitar
while he's playing these metal chor riffs.
Speaker 3: It's so cool.
Speaker 4: And that of the back of Vice finding me was
just like, ah, sets peaked. I can't believe I'm this
because again I didn't know they were breaking up the
album when I went in. I didn't know the set list,
so I was like, I thought it would be you know,
they do obviously, but then they probably come out kicking
with Bocheler and then you know, do a couple of
you come for You traps or something like that. That's kind
of what I had him in my head mission going on.
So when they broke up, I was like, oh, this
is cool. It's keeping on my toes. And then like
when they played my favorite song into maybe their most
underrated song. I was like, Jesus, fuck, this is like
the best gig right now.
Speaker 3: I'm having the best time.
Speaker 4: And there was there was a select few at the front, like,
wasn't everyone going mad for let fing because yeah, versions
of that, but there was enough.
Speaker 3: I was kind of like things in the air for it.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 3: It was sick.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then from there straight into from a Bandaged Iris,
which is my favorite song on you Come Before You
just huge sing a long moments there all the way
through to obviously you know they're going to end on
on on Nerdy.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: It was fantastic for me. Like I said, my first
time seeing Poisoned, well, I've been a fan for at
least a decade, you know, and but this year in
particular because of our special has been the most I've
ever been in a poison the World zone, getting it
so kind of freshly, well I'm in that, and then
just playing so many fantastic tracks, you know, one of
the most iconic metal crabs ever in full, even throwing
in some deep cuts for you know, the people who
have spent the time in those trenches with versions and whatnot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, seminal fantastic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just all around great night.
Speaker 1: Yes, So that was that's the positive parts of our week. Unfortunately,
a couple of days after for me the poison, the
Well show and that high, we got some more fucking
crushing news and Sam, here we are yet again again.
Speaker 4: Like when you said the other week, you're tired of
doing this, I've read this news is like, not only
do we have to do to do this again, We're
gonna do it again for fucking Thomas Limberg.
Speaker 3: And obviously we knew he was in.
Speaker 4: It was no secret that he had cancer and that
he's like was tracking the album, so you were won
in was he in recovery all that, but it still
felt sudden.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feared.
Speaker 1: I did fear this was coming because the appligate statement
they put out last month where they said that Thomas's
part of it had been written much earlier in the year,
maybe March or something, and it sounded rough. You know,
I obviously you never want to you know, you never
want to dream of this stuff happening. But I did
fear maybe that this news was on its way, but
I wasn't prepared for it. Like a month after that statement,
learning that he was ill, and us being here again.
After I'm talking about Ozzie, I'm talking about Brent Hines
and all the other people that we spoken about in
the last few months as well, And some of those
people are such giants who have been so integral to
you know, our growth and our journeys as metal fan,
whether it be you know, obviously Black Sabbath being the
reason we're all here, mated on being a band that
many of us have kind of grown up alongside. Here
we are talking about someone whose music means just as
much to me as as any of those and I
I try not to use this term too often because
you know, musicians are just people at the end of
the day, and you don't want to lionize people too much.
But Thomas Limberg was one of my heroes, like one
of my actual if like, if you're going to idolize anyone,
it might as well be someone like Thomas Limberg.
Speaker 3: I can under agree with live that.
Speaker 4: I mean, I came to at the Gates later would
have been mid to early's, mid twenty tens when I
really got into them, But it was kind of the
realization of like, oh, all of these bands, I like,
this sort of melogic death metal band that I kind
of thought was a different thing, kind of just like
laid the ground up for those bands and then kind
of through that discovering what a sort of legends Thomas
Limberg was and like the stuff he didn't how he
just seemed like the coolest guy who was like ride
or die for all kinds of like heavy music and
just did it for the like again, you know, the
love of the game, Thomas Limberg was one of those
guys who did like everything.
Speaker 3: And seeing the tributes.
Speaker 4: From so many again it like metallic, hardcore, medical bands,
like like different bands, all comments are like, yeah, Thomas
Limberg did this for us, Like he helped us through this,
he got us linked up here, and it feels like,
again we've lost one of these like not just like
great vocalists, great musicians, but someone who was a figurehead
for the music that they that they were part of,
that they were like an actual like iconic figure who
lifted everyone around him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I I really hope that he was celebrated
enough while he was alive, because I he generally he's
one of my favorite people to ever meet music like
in terms of people who I just when I when
I hear their when I hear their art, when I
hear their voice or just one I hear you know,
about them and what they were doing and what they
like you're saying, what they did for people. He's to me,
Thomas Limberg is everything it means to be cool in
heavy music. And I mean that both in a again
as an artist and just as a person because he
for years he was renowned for being one of the
just like the most good people in this scene in
terms of being one of the most intelligent and considered,
you know, raising the bar for kind of intellectual thoughtful
lyricism and whatnot within the kind of the realm of
death metal. But one of those people whose you know,
fingerprints is in the scene everywhere, just like you know
you're talking about some of those the tributes. Go and read,
for example, the tribute that Darkest Hour posted where they
just tell the story of like how they went and
recorded one of their albums in Sweden and it was
Thomas Limberg who basically like set you know, got them
completely on that path and set everything up for them.
Go and watch Matt Haythee's tribute video where he you know,
spoke for about three minutes in a little video recording
of being like this is all the stuff that At
the Gates you know, sort of laid down for us.
But then you can also go to you know, go
and read someone like Matt mcnerney's tribute to to Thomas Limberg,
who is coming out from a totally different angle. And
it's not just the you know, at the Gates set
the standard for what became metlicor in the two thousands
and so on, but like a whole other side of
what Thomas Limberg's met work meant to, you know, underground,
the kind of grassroots of heavy music. I mean, he
designed the Dark Throne logo, like a top ten metal
logo of all time, that one of the most easily
like parodiable recognizable logos evert logos. Y yeah, came from
his pen because everyone who particularly if he reads you
know what the guy is in the Gothenburg bands, whether
it be obviously band members about the Gates or people
from Dark Tranquility, Arch Enemy or whatever like ever on,
kind of points to him as being like the the
heart of that scene, like the most important both in
terms of being an inspiration because Thomas had you know,
bands like Grotesque before at the Gates, who were kind
of the the standard setter for a lot those bands
when they were forming. But then as we're saying the
you know, the the personal kind of lifting up and
the linking everyone together, it is Thomas Limberg, I think
is one of the people who, you know, every mainstream
metal publication will run their story about how Slaughter of
the Soul changed things, But I think his touch goes
as far and in an abstract sense, just in terms
of handed down inspiration right up to the most direct,
you know, hands that he had in things. It goes
as far as any metal musician of his generation. Like
it's it's unfathomable what our world would be like without
Thomas Limberg, and he did that while being one of
the most lovable people in that world.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I always got the vibe that he just seemed
like a really good dude, Like like you never saw
anyone like I never got to sort of interview me
and everything, but anyone I know people have interviewed him
and they've all just said, like, just one of the
nicest interviews you can do. He was just like always
very approachable, really interesting to chat to. I think he's
again you've seen, like the bands have just sort of
said anytime we've cross pass with Thomas, he was like
such a great guy and he just seemed like, again,
everything you would want as of extreme metal vocalists or
of a band figurehead to be that, Like, he just
kind of embodied it all.
Speaker 1: That's it, everything that you would everything that you would
hope your heroes to be. Thomas Linberg felt like he
was that. And At the Gates are one of the
most important bands in my life. And I, you know,
I got Slot of the Soul when I was fourteen,
and it's immediately became like this is like one of
my new favorite albums, Like this is one of the
best things I've ever heard, and still to this day
it is, and I don't think that will ever change.
And from that point on, I was a you know,
a diehard At the Gates van. When they announced the
you know, the return album at War Reality, one of
the most excited I've ever been about an album coming out.
You know, I couldn't believe that we were going to
get another At the Gates album. I got to see
them for the first time at Damnation twenty fifteen. Off
the back of that album coming out, and I just
remained fifteen when I sell them. Yeah, yeah, that old
lead Student Union Hall just being torn apart for like
definitely Labyrinth, for Blinded by Fear or whatever, all the
way through to like every album they released in the
Reunion era, I have. I have memories attached to it,
going to see them the Netherlands and the Netherlands Death
Vest but around the time they were releasing through It
from the Night itself. The last show I went to
before COVID shut everything down within a matter of weeks
really or days even was Dysphere in London last the
only time I got see Dysphere, and it was just
one of the most high energy everything a cross punk
show should be. Kept me kind of going for weeks
into the COVID period and then I guess the last
time I will have seen Thomas Limberg now is that
Damnation show a few years ago when Out the Gates
played thought of the song and then on on the
last album, The Nightmare of Being, I interviewed Thomas for
the first time. He also he awkwardly shook my hand
at this Spear show once because I was standing off
to the side waiting to buy merch and like I
think his wife or someone was there and she was
talking to someone and him just sort of like standing
on the side awkwardly locked eyes and just shook it
to the hands. He had no idea who I was,
but I did. I interviewed him on the Nightmare of
Being album, and it is one of my favorite conversations
I've had in that kind of context with a musician,
because he was so thoughtful and so considered in what
he was saying and the content of the album, which
at the Gates albums particularly as I guess you know,
as he got older and more wisened, but even in
the very early days at the Gates album were all
that album in particular. Yeah, but you think about the
lyrics on Slaughter of the Soul and how many you know,
only the dead are smiling under a certent son we
all live as one, you know, all of that stuff.
It is so it felt so real in a way
that you know, much death metal is quite cartoony, at
the Gates always felt like there was real, you know,
emotional purpose to it. And when I spoke to Hi
about the Nightmare of Being album, he was he was
wonderful to talk to and I always hoped that I
would get to, you know, do another one on another
album cycle or something, and it's it's it's a heartbreaker.
That's not going to happen. And I mean that, you
know the at the Gates tour for a War Reality
where it was trip to con Morbus, Cron and Code Orange, right, Like,
that's a Thomas Lindberg bill. That's him bringing bands who
would not go together normally, but because he was a
fan of all of them, particularly those two openers. They
are newer bands that he wanted to you know, put forward.
That's that tour bell right. There is evidence of who
Thomas Limberg was and what he would do for bands.
Speaker 4: I mean, like I can think back to like Small Man,
like Counting Days, you know they really like they used
one album and the sting of that had a Thomas
Limberg guest spot on it, like he was always he
was on those figures. It was like down with new
bands kind of like lift them up and see what
he could do. I think like he helped record their
album and he did that guess well, which is like
again one of the hardest guest spots on a sort
of a UK hargre song Thomas fucking Limberg, like he
was just that guy. Like I say, I saw at
the Gates twice over a couple of days when it
was they played the main stage at Download, which again
maybe not like the most evil sense in but seeing
them storm that Download main stage and be one of
the best bands of that weekend even that saw the
soul go and getting the circle going from that was
fucking amazing. And then I saw him again the following
night at like those out of the Melhammer Golden Gods,
which was that was when it was like just losing
that absolute shit, just like a mini at the Gates set,
and I was just like, he's just the corners guar
up there. The one for me now is never getting
to see dis fear is the is like one of
the ones. I'm just like that that that that fucking
hurts because, like I go into this obviously, when Alec
did his tot on the Alms of All Time and
then like this song I heard that, I was like,
why why.
Speaker 3: Does this have not been in my life?
Speaker 4: Like yeah until now and and knowing that you like
again that there was that Discar show just before the
world shut down, and I was something that was like
maybe one day, you know, they they will just dust
off this for again and do another show and like that.
Like that's when I was like, ah that that that
just really fucking sucks against the disscause would have killed
to see those songs live. But again, like that's how
many projects did he have where everyone would kind of
be like, that's what I would have killed to see live.
He was such a like prolific and again none of
his projects felt like duds. Everything, Like every product he did,
everyone's like, no, that's the one for me. Actually, that's
that's the one, you know at the Gates's call w
It's this big one but grotesque or like yeah, that's
the one that they'll kind.
Speaker 3: Of like that's on me.
Speaker 1: I would argue that Thomas Lindberg was in three legendary bands,
like not just three good bands. Lots of people have
their their main band and then they've got their really
cool side project that people who are you know, they
know they know Thomas Limberg has those. You know, his
main bands are so good that somehow the likes of
lock Up, you know, the grindcore supergroup he was in
with Shane Embury, you know, Skit System is of a
crosspunk band, the Lurking Fear, the Great Deceiver, which is
a more experimental band he was in like the two thousands.
Somehow those are all like the you know, the down
the kind of line after thoughts, the niche one.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But his three legendary bands. Obviously, there is At the Gates,
who for me, like I said, are a top ten
metal band of all time in my opinion. There is Grotesque,
which I mentioned is his you know, his death metal
vanpri At the Gates, who uh you know, only released
a small amount of material but was so inspirational and
so founding for that Swedish death metal scene. If you've
never heard like you know, you can go and get
the compilation album that has like their you know, EPs
and demos on it, and it's just unreal. And I
think they did like a one off reunion in like
the late two thousands or something, and you can just
see Tompa there covered in like grave dust doing this
really gnarly odd school death net was shit.
Speaker 2: It's fantastic.
Speaker 1: And then this Fear, who not only you know are
at the Great Gates the greatest melodic death not that
of all time, dis Fear in my opinion, the greatest
like crust d beat band of all time, and the
two records that he's on Your Misunpropit Generation and then
Live the Storm are masterpieces of that kind kind of music.
Like I put Live the Storm on the other day
when when this news dropped and I literally I accidentally
punched myself in the nose at one point.
Speaker 4: It's too hard like as an opener, like as E said,
I put on like, ah, it's still just gaming that
fix with like that's a power that he had, was
I Get It Off where they like in the sounds
where I was like, ah, man, he's still he's still
got that way, like he will get you.
Speaker 3: So fired up, and yeah, like what an album.
Speaker 1: I mean, he might be the best extreme metal vocalist
at shouting commands ever. Fucking on disphere, the stand up
and be counted. Towards the end of Get It Off
is unreal and obviously, without exaggeration, one of the greatest
moments in recorded sound. Go one word, if you've ever
seen Out the Gates live, and it's you know, it's obviously.
I know a lot of people haven't seen That the
Gates live, and now they won't get the chance and
I saw Out the Gates I think maybe about five
times over the sort of decade or so. After all
reality and it doesn't feel real. I'm never going to
see that moment again. But that moment is it's like
it unlocks a part of your brain, you know, it's
just staggering. And I think At the Gates are I
think they're a special band, you know, as in like
our things that we do, like you know, let us
know if that's something that you'd be interested in us doing,
and we'll do it next year or something. Because I
think the breadth of their influence and importance across their
whole you know, seven albums, not a dud amongst them
and they're all different, is so so huge. And that's
the thing with Thomas Lindberg and even At the Gates
is they were so many different things to so many people.
They are, you know, these constantly name checked inspirations to
the mainstream and what metal became in the two thousands.
But at the same time, if you are a crust
punk you probably worship Thomas Limberg and the bands he
was in in that scene. If you like strange, progressive, experimental,
heavy music, Thomas Limberg was right in there, not only
making it, but you know, championing so much of that
kind of music obviously to the real death metal underground,
the early At the Gates records like the Rednsky Is
Ours and with Fearchis, the Bennydartness and the grow Tesque
material of course as well, like they meant so much
to so many different people in so many different ways
that the king of trucker hats.
Speaker 2: No one ever wore.
Speaker 1: Trucker hats the way that Thomas Limberg wore Trucker hats.
If you've never seen the photo shoots of early Grotesque, right,
go and google you know Grotesque in the nineties there
the graveyard photo shoots are still what every single death
metal band aspires to be. You know, they all want
to be Thomas Limberg in that graveyard in nineteen ninety
with with Grotesque, and I mean even you know we're
talking about some of this less discussed stuff. We've been
getting messages from people who haven't even heard Slought the Soul, right,
and it's it's like if you've not heard, if you're
getting to hear Slought the Soul, now, that is like
a whole like a canonical masterpiece, one of probably like
the best ten metal records ever made that you're just
finding and getting to enjoy.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: It's like you've left rain and blood or something in
the corner up until this moment, and now you have
this whole new thing to love and appreciate, and it's
just incredible that the amount that he gave us, and like,
you know, if you like metal in the two thousands,
everything is in that one album, but his career as
a whole and what he gave to I mean fucking
Converge Wolverine Blues cover with Thomas Limberg on vocals. You
know that one of the coolest fucking like I said,
he one of my heroes, like one of my genuine
favorite people in metal of all time. And to have
lost him so relatively early is is ungodly sad.
Speaker 4: It is is crushing on the UK like what a
beast for like his last act, like his tracking vocals
for one final album apparently so we'll have it like
like I hope that alm like I say it is,
and then and like it stands as like the sort
of fitting final tribute to Tom because he is worthy
of it. But it is just eive way like this
one was like a really sad one because he just
he seemed like the best guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, rest in peace, Tompa the fucking king see you
in the red in the sky. Elsewhere in news, we've
got a Coachella announcements. Nine inch Nails are going to
be their turnstile obviously for that turnstyle and they're basically
every year now suicide tendencies, iggy pop, joins, Man, a
lot of stuff. It feels like a good time for
nineich Nails to do it, like they've been off the
back of both how raved about their touring production for
this has been, but also them doing the Tron soundtrack
feels like nine Nails Night Nails are always cool, but
it feels like in twenty twenty five they're particularly cool.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, isn't it they're doing it like the nine
inch noise thing, isn't it? So they're doing like particularly
the the dance in the cube in the center that
than that as like a full set that would be
really cool to see, you know. I think it thinks
that a good coachure like Drain are kind of like
the proper hardcore band who've kind of been ordained on
their dispits are like I see them on there after
this sort of like putting their album in.
Speaker 3: But yeah, like you're seeing that.
Speaker 4: I think more and more each year now all terms
of stuff actually kind of like start to find a
presence in coach and actually know nice, see those kids
in black Flag, get get a slot like this.
Speaker 2: Get a head up. That's good. Yeah. Interesting.
Speaker 1: The band announcement, The mock Ups is a band consisting
of Gerard Way and uh am I saying basically all
of the interrupters.
Speaker 3: I think three out four of the interrupters are in there.
Speaker 1: Okay, but Gerard Way and a lot of the Interrupters
have at you band called the mock Ups when they
were eased a song earlier this year as well earlier
this week, which is called I Want to Know Your Name.
I mean this has in terms of the people involved,
this has you written all over it.
Speaker 2: How are you? How are you? You know?
Speaker 1: Reacting to Gerard Way and the Interrupters getting together, I mean.
Speaker 3: I was so confused.
Speaker 4: I saw I was like, hey, what like what Gerard
Way and the Interrupters?
Speaker 3: How does that come about? But also when I.
Speaker 4: Saw those kind of things, I was like, I but
I know exactly what this sounds like and it sounds
like this single they've put up. It's that kind of
like punk rock but with that kind of like classic
It's not very kind of like Blondie. It's not Scarphone,
but it is that kind of like like it makes
it like Blondie and that sort of side of things
and like, but it's like very just sort of upbea
fun punk rock but without kind of like I guess,
like fifties rock and roll sort of like flavored at times.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I think this is really fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it sounds to me almost like an old Misfits
chord progression, which, considering the fifties thing you're mentioning, is
a common you know ground there. But yeah, curiously, if
we get a record or something from from the mock ups.
Limp Biscuit also released a song. They played this live
and then it surfaced officially later in the week. The
song is called making Love to Morgan Wollen. I have
listened to the song. I still don't know.
Speaker 2: Why it is.
Speaker 4: There are times when I'm like, Olimp Biscuit just like
parodying themselves at this point.
Speaker 2: The first line of the song is like I miss
you Chester Bennington it's like why are the song called making.
Speaker 3: That Hot felt?
Speaker 4: And then of course like hey ladies, hey.
Speaker 3: Fellas, it's like it's just a weird tonally all over
the place.
Speaker 4: Song with a massive fucking riff. To be fair, it's
an odd one can't figure out the biscuits. Sometimes yeah,
it's not a riff.
Speaker 1: Like straight out the gate, but eventually when it goes
hey ladies, it does get there.
Speaker 2: This is interesting.
Speaker 1: Announced for later this year in November, taking place in
South Paolo in Brazil, Massive Attack and Max and Igor
Cavalira are going to be doing a collaborative show called
The Answer is Us. So that is the you know,
the obviously the the the trip hop legends of you know,
early nineties UK music scene and obviously the brothers of Sepultura,
and the kind of the description of the event is
it's very much sort of engaging with, uh, the you know,
indigenous peoples in Brazil and the Amazon rainforest and preservation
of those things and so on, which is something that
you know, Sepultura have a long long history of engaging with,
going back to the you know, the roots and the
KOs A d days.
Speaker 2: Massive Attack.
Speaker 1: If you follow what Massive Attack are just generally like
and how they kind of make themselves known. They just
seem like one of the coolest bands around of their
kind of stature. Yeah, this sounds I can't retine what
it will sound like, but that it sounds like the
kind of awesome creative crossover shit that like Prime Sepulteura
when we're doing our special you know, could have been
doing this sounds awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Like so like if you can add mix something, but
then when you kind of like dig in some of
the other elements of you can go.
Speaker 3: I guess it does make sense.
Speaker 4: And I mean giving you know, like I say, like
that problem, we're like quite eager to try different things. Yeah,
I guess it doesn't make sense that these kind of
two acts of land it's going to be like, let's
do this kind of big show for like an actual
like important cause that we want to like raise awareness
for and just kind of offer something totally unique.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it sounds like right now, but
I'm very keen to here what it ends up being.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 1: Mike Patten is back with another new band. He is
joining Force with the Avett Brothers for a project that
I believe I guess would be we be said as
a vet slash pattern. They have got a self titled
album that's coming out on November fourteenth. So if you're
interested in all the myriad works of make Patten and
there is something new on the horizon, there's also a
new Lamp of Murmur on the Horizon, their fourth fullixth album.
They follow up to Saturnian Bloodstorm, which we reviewed a
couple of years ago, one of the best contemporary blackmount
of bands in the world. Their new album is also
coming out that day, November the fourteenth. It's called The
Dreaming Prints in Ecstasy, and they released like a nine
minute single from this, and I would just say it
sounds kind of different.
Speaker 2: Again.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like the early Lamp of Murmur stuff.
It doesn't sound like the pure immortal worship of the
last album. It still kind of sounds a little bit more.
It's more accessible, maybe like the last album was to
people who aren't fully in the dingy stuff. But there's
like synths and symphonic stuff and shit going on with this.
So you know, of course I'm excited but interested to
hear what the New Lamp of Murma ends up being like.
Very fresh news is that Iron Maiden have announced that
their Run for Your Lives tour is going to be
continuing and coming back to Europe in twenty twenty six.
So they're doing a number of dates across the European continent,
including one at the Paris Arena, which is gonna have
like a no phones policy because I think they're sort
of implying that they're maybe going to film that particular show,
but also the eleventh of July, currently, the last date
of this tour is a mystery UK show. They have
said that on the eleventh of July they will be
playing in the UK, but the actual details of when
and where have not been unveiled yet. And this is
interesting for a number of reason. I mean, for one thing,
people were wondering on maybe I made and will come
around to do download next year for the Run Your
Lives tour. Obviously, if they're doing one UK show on
the eleventh of July, that is not download times. But yeah,
I considering they've already done like a big stadium show
with the London date, I am very curious as to
what I made and have cooking up for a special
mystery event in the UK.
Speaker 3: I'm not just sure on this.
Speaker 4: I wonder if it will be London, if they'll do
something big up north for some because obviously they did
the massive London stadium shows, so maybe they'll do a
big stadium show in Manchester or something that I know.
Obviously the tal they did like if you have a
dates on the tour in the UK the earlier this
year did there wasn't just or was it was this
from just London?
Speaker 1: No, it was That's why I'm in Manchester and London
and I know they played at least like Glasgow as well, so.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so yeah, I wonder what else they've got planned
to mean, it's another thing at the start of like
early July, which is.
Speaker 1: Just yeah, System of It added another stadium day at
the top of the hospital that July. For some reason,
every band is deciding to do their big UK There.
Speaker 4: Two Metallica shows, two My Chemical Romance shows, two System
of Down shows and now an I'm Maiden show to
fit in somewhere like too.
Speaker 1: Much good Luck Picking and Bloodstock have announced they had
already said that for this you know, big anniversary event,
they for the first time ever, we're going to be
opening the Thursday open air main stage on you know,
the Thursday nights, and so they have announced a few
bands for that lineup and on the main stage we
already had on the Sophie Anka stage on the Thursday,
the likes of Kryptopsy playing which is good, and the
hell Are playing on Thursday, and Black Spiders as well,
But the main stage event currently has been announced as
being Saxon, Evil Scarecrow and the already announced band Heavy Saurus,
which is the like Dinosaur Puppets, Sam looks like you
can't stay away.
Speaker 4: Good for Saxon, they seem like a no brainer picked
to headline the Thursday of Bloodstock, But as a sort
of a day of those three bands is hell, my
dear hell, I wish nothing but misery for everyone. Heck,
I mean like like Evil Scarecrow, We've chatted them for
years now, whatever, Heavy shorts for me like fine as
a thing for kids, you know, I'm fine with that.
Speaker 3: But if we're gonna actually start.
Speaker 4: Putting that on festival main stages, we've got to start
having a serious conversation about like what mel fans are
letting happen, Like me, now, please be serious.
Speaker 1: The funny thing about this is it's Basically, if you
remove Saxon from this, this looks like every Thursday Bloodstock lineup.
You know, there's a couple good bands in there, like Cryptopsy,
some nonsense novelty bands in terms of like this basically
looks like they've opened the mainstage on this day specifically
because they had the opportunity to book Saxon for it,
which Saxon are good.
Speaker 4: Saxon are a I don't like Saxon, but I get
this booking Saxon?
Speaker 1: Are you a Bloodstock original type band? Seeing Saxon at
Bloodstock is always fantastic. It's always the perfect environment to
do so Saxon is a third and that headliner is
a genuine you know, at least for me, that'd be
you know, it's a good that's a good time. But
the rest of it does look.
Speaker 3: Like not the worst headliner this year.
Speaker 1: No, no, far from it. But the rest of it
does look like a normal Thursday bloods lit lineup. But
they just happened to open the main stage because they've
got the opportunity to get Saxon. So yeah, that's that's
the Thursday deal at Bloodstock this year. We over the
weekend as well as seeing poison the Well, et cetera.
We also put out on them pictureon a T and
M does horror episode closing off the summer with maybe
the two big winners at least, you know, box office
numbers and everything wise of the summer for the horror world,
which was Zach Kreiger's Weapons, and we had a very
long discussion about all of the myriad things that you know,
could be doing and could be about because it is
a very enigmatic, multifacted kind of film. And then we
just had a daft time talking about Patrick Wilson and
Via farm Eager like punching mirror demons or whatever the
shit's going on there with the conjuring last rights. Good time,
good a nice double to end off the summer in
horror with with our horror podcast.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I mean Weapons is the is the big one.
It's the move that has stuck with me the most
of all the summer horror fics. I've had just the
best time of it. And it was also going to
like dig into and kind of like get beneath the
surface and the movie that some people have kind of
been a bit confused about all kind of had very
surfs of readings on and kind of go into the
do things and then as like you said, Conjuring last
Rides stupid popcorn horror, Patrick Wilson via Farmiga are great,
and it was just kind of like, yeah, this is
you know, just kind of like looking back on that
that whole franchise and also how like this movie the
surprise like blockbuster like hit of the summer I guess
for horror.
Speaker 1: Yeah, looking forward to what we got, you know going
for the rest of the year on that show. I
am thinking that when that new Predator movie comes out,
we've done an alien episode, we could probably do a
Creditor episode that'll be fun, So you can expect that
over the year. Also, of course, we will be moving
on to our next Metal specials very very soon, so
patroon dot com slash that's that Metal is the place
to go to get all of the best stuff that
we make. And also if you would like to contribute
and help keep the show alive in its tenth year.
Now that we've past our tenth anniversary birthday show from
a couple of weeks back, so thanks everybody. Let's get
on to the meat of today's episode, which is the reviews,
and we're going to start with our two leading albums
are both you know, big events in their scenes. For me,
just to kind of maybe gauge this, we're gonna be
leading with some yes.
Speaker 2: Spots, help and reviews.
Speaker 1: First, obviously Lorna Shaw I feel the ever blackfestering within me.
This is Lorna Shaw's second album as a thoroughly big band.
I think that's fair to say, because obviously they had it.
They've had a number of albums throughout the twenty tens,
but it's the turn of the decade into the twenty
twenties when Lorna Shaw have skyrocketed into I mean in
terms of what is currently you know, reflective of what
is popular and what defined what bands are kind of
you know, in and out right now, I'd probably say
they're one of the ten most significant metal bands in
the world right now, which is why obviously this is
one of metals big deal albums this year. This album
cycle is about sustaining the momentum that first the and
I Return to Nothingness EP and then twenty twenty two
is Pain Remains album built for them, and it's that
momentum that sees them now gearing up to be like
actually one of the biggest metal bands in our world.
They're about to tackle an arena show of sorts here
in the UK Alexandra Palace, and for a death core band,
that is pretty much, you know, unprecedented territory of firsts
that we are seeing Lorna Shaw go into. What is
happening with Lorna Shaw here is new and I think
it's definitely novel and in some ways encouraging as someone
following metal and what it adds up to creatively is
a different and you know, in some ways as interesting
question Sam, the thing that Lorna Shaw do, I think
in theory we both like because certainly, you know, if
the two massive breakout death gore bands at the moment
are Lorna Shore and Slaughter Prevail, then Lorna Shaws like
sweep it sweeping, you know, epic symphonic bombas thing over
Slaughter Pvail's belligerent meat heead music much so my preference,
and rather than a dumbing down of this type of
music to cross over, Lorna Shore are really trying to
like at it and they're really trying to like take
it to your different untapped heights.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no'm they clearly are like committed to the epic,
sweeping in front of thing. And I agree if if
like of the two sakes, death got bands who are
doing big numbers, I would much rather see a band
like Lawn go for this kind of like sweeping, epic, stirring,
occasionally progressive sort tinged thing that's like being quite emotional
and all that. Like that's all things I find much
more palatable than what Sword fella doing.
Speaker 3: It's fascinating.
Speaker 4: How again, this has been the one to really catch
on because when you look at everything I surround it,
since when have the crowds that have latched on and
kind of like Champion Launch for the most.
Speaker 3: When have they ever cared about symphonic metal?
Speaker 2: Is like, it's very unusual.
Speaker 4: I'm not the first death core band to add spok elements.
You have fucking like betraying the Martyrs in the twenty
ten's doing it, and no one like outside of like
like can't yeah exactly, you had bands doing this sort
of thing, and outside the people who were like in
on the death Cord trenches going to every Never Say
Die tour like myself, at that point, no one else
really cared. So it was kind of like no it's
not a new thing Lorna Shaw have done. And again
they would Lorna Show were doing it in the twenty
tens and to kind of like be second on those
never Say Die bills they like. So it's not something
new that, but they just something about how Lorna Shop
have now presented it since the turner, like say, since
this another decad in the twenty twenties has just completely
captured a crowd who could not give a toss about
symphonic music and now it's the biggest of its kind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I will say that now Lorna Shaw are big,
and they are continually kind of building on this momentum.
They are able to take it to places I think
you'd probably say it hasn't been done before. You know,
this record, I don't think is one that has exactly
been you know, it doesn't exist yet, you know, and
since I think, you know, pain remains. Really we all
had our interest kind of peaked by this like sudden
jump in virality that they had with to the hell Fire,
and then we were appreciating again even if you know,
their fan base maybe has not necessarily fully you know,
gone kind of into this this realm the way they
were bringing these you know, textures of bands like Winter
Sun and dimu Borgia and so on to like a
massive mainstream out of place. I love that as an idea,
you know, like that excites me when when I hear it,
but it also comes with a certain sanitization and a
homogeneity where I was hoping Lorna Shore to really be
able to kind of embrace the dynamics and the depth
that that kind of.
Speaker 2: Music has to offer.
Speaker 1: Where what kind of has happened Is I like that
Lorna Shaw are doing that thing. But the world that
we've got in the you know, the general realm of
death corps, we've gone from a you know, however, many
years ago lots of bland death core bands all trying
to be you know, job for a cowboy or whatever,
to a b of bland death core bands all doing
their kind of glossy synth orchestra soup, and lorn A
Share as you know, the head of that kind of
battering ram. They are very intent on pushing their records
to be more and more epic and grandiose. This one
is now sixty six minutes long. I think this record
is really good in parts, but I also know that
after our review of it is done, I am not
likely to ever sit down and listen to it and
fall again.
Speaker 3: I mean that is exactly how I feel as well.
Speaker 4: I think, like you're right, this is like the biggest, glossiest,
most epic of all of these kind of again, the
current crop of symphonic death core bands like they were,
like you know, well that's brand of Sackfires or any
of those bands, Lornas will clearly have the most sort
of cinematic scope for it, and I can really respect that.
Like I don't want to kind of like come down
hard on this album because I want to get behind
what this album is pushing.
Speaker 3: And I think there are songs of this album that
are like really great. I mean they are like as
one will kind of get for it. But my problem
with this album is a lot of bluster and bombast.
Speaker 4: But as you said, the sort of the nuance, the
texture and the kind of like intricacies of some of
the best sort of symphonic music a if you want
to say, like Winter Sun is the kind of like
gold standard like with those well, like the Time Records
is kind of like the fully expung the intricacies and
like all of the different elements that play with symphonically
and again when Sun can be overblown and bombask as hell,
but they can also be yeah, no no, but they
have they do have moments of subtlety like weaved in
there as well.
Speaker 3: One of my problems with this album is it's kind of.
Speaker 4: Always dialed up to the max at all times, whether
that is like the guitars, the vocals, the symphonic stuff.
I think like the symphonic motifs they use get very samey.
There's not a lot of like kind of like texture
in the sort of the digital orchestras. I'm kind of
like coined out and like that that's me becomes a
problem when you get to like sort of say track
six or seven on this where like it starts off
like really cool and there's a sex of songs in
the middle, which I think is like really great, but
when it's kind of like always hitting those same kind
of like choral sections or digital orchestra like strings, you're
kind of like hitting the same thing as the breakdowns,
it all kind of does eventually blur her into one
and as you say, it's doing that.
Speaker 3: For sixty six minutes, which is it's a big ask.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, I think you know, Pain Remains I
thought was a pretty good album.
Speaker 2: I thought it had.
Speaker 1: Soaring highs and moments where they were again pushing the
ambition of it. But since we reviewed it in twenty
twenty two, I haven't listened that album once because they
are excessive without really having the depth or the songwriting
chops to warrant that. And this is even more bombastic again.
You know, it's probably the most bombastic symphonic death core
album that has ever been made up to this point.
And I like the flavor, and you know, I think
that the opening song, Prison of Flesh, that kind of
blows my skirt up, you know, when the album hits.
One big critique I have of Lorna Shore is I
don't think they really have many rifts the way that
Death Court, I believe, does still need rifts. They have
weirdly lead bits that flurry around while the blasts are going,
and they have one fret breakdowns, but they don't have riffs.
Prison of Flesh does have a pretty good riff in
it when it goes into the you know, drawn from
the kind of black metal tradition, there's this really like
fiery tremolo part that's a kind of a rare treat
within the album, and it's very intense, you know, and
it's got the keys like one of those kind of
demo clone bounds from the late nineties and Wills going
crazy over it. And that black metal riff that comes
in around sort of the two minute mark, only to
then smash into a really big, you know, triumphant Bradley
Cooper waving his conducting arms around, you know, orchestra part.
That is the thrill that Lorda Shure I meant to
give and I love that part. That might be my
you know favorite Lorna sharettrac today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's it's you.
Speaker 4: Know, it sets out what the album does really well,
and that that black metal bit is kind of like,
oh that that's that's that's the nextra flavor. That kind
of like more like you say about the riffs, I
do that and the other thing I think that Laurna
Saw quite seem like is And again I'm not saying
they need to start throwing in octane core radio metal
choruses hooks in general, whether that be in the rifts
or vocally.
Speaker 3: I do think that like again, they're enough and the like.
Speaker 4: And the comparison I made was I went back and
listened to the White Chapel album earlier this year, which
I think is like the closest comparison because again that
album is you know, quite epic in scope. Actually again
I said that Alam has got riffs on it, that
album has got hooks on it. They've got the hooks,
aren't just you know, the one thing to shout before
the beat down that they are like, they're like you
had that sort of stuff on that whites Albu where
it was catching memorable while sounding like disgustingly heavy and
still pretty like large scale and cinematic. The White doesn't
go as sweeping and epic as this does, but it
kind of did that whilst writing more memorable songs that
stock for me. I think for a lot of this album,
I kind of just let like the symphonic bluster and
like of all just kind of washes over me. And
again Will Ramos, what he is doing vocally is is impressive.
There's no denying that. Like the noises he cann't come
out with are really impressive. But the most most thing
he's done me as a vocalist this year is seeing
that chorus on the Employee to serve record, because again
that's something a bit different that I'm not used to
hearing him do.
Speaker 3: And so like I've heard, you know, to the health
Fire at this point, so.
Speaker 4: When he is making those like disgusting gargling, noisems like
you're doing the to the health Fire thing again. Cool,
it is, you know, discussing, and that's gonna gonna get
the reactions, but it's not. It doesn't excite me as
much as when I first heard to the Health Fire
and you hit that final sex of that song where
it just complete that they completely controyed and made the
most disgusting modern.
Speaker 3: Death or breaking imagine.
Speaker 4: And they do that a lot of cross the sound,
which kind of like you're doing that thing you're very
good at, but it's repeating again, and I think that
becomes a point when the album is as as it is,
they do just find themselves repeating the same tricks they are.
Speaker 3: They're clearly very good.
Speaker 4: I don't want to gain downplay a lot like the
talent's going to this record, but it is it is
very same at times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are a couple of moments like Unbreakable has
that we are Unbreakable.
Speaker 4: That's the exception of this album for me, which is
my favorite song, I'm Breakable.
Speaker 3: I think that is one we'll go like.
Speaker 4: Ah, this is where everything I want Lorna Shaw to
be is kind of nailed into that track.
Speaker 1: Okay, I mean that really made me laugh because that
hook is europower metal that people listening to this would
usually act like that doesn't even have artistic merit as
a genre.
Speaker 2: And I applaud Lord of Shore for managing to get a.
Speaker 1: Power metal bit in and the way the strings and
it works, like that's basically a within Temptation song with
a guy bree breathing over.
Speaker 3: It, Like like I like that, I love it. You know,
I really like Epica and that song is that sort
of thing.
Speaker 4: So when they're doing that with an hook and it
really sounds stones and you've got that that kind of
like that string hook that's in it, which kind of
like goes that sort of stuff like it. Actually that's
why I'm like, this is what I'm kind of wanting
from you. You're you're you're you're combining the animals you're
really good at to Actually you know how the closer
you can get to a radio here and that's cool,
and it's kind of annoying that it's kind of like
isolated to that song and they don't explore that more
and kind of like weave that into these longer form
songs as they're as they do and said, the longer
form songs just kind of become a bit of like
a drawn out process.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know what Lorna Shaw deliver is this
like massively you know, maximalist experience. You know, fully one
ten epic all the time. And you know, certainly if
I am going to compare that to power and symphonic
metal bands, obviously it is heavier than those things and
more kind of sonically overwhelming. Track two on the Apple
I was that first song which I mentioned Prison of
Flyers as a breakdown bit at the end. The first
time I heard this, I was ill recently and I
happened to just start coughing at the exact moment that
came in, And I think the combination nearly killed me,
mainly because it's so loud. But then you know, going
to the second track, Oblivion, which was the single, wasn't
it I think is you know, one of the better songs. Again,
I think that was the single wasn't it, And we
were like, you know, eight minute single, Does it, you know,
have the breadth to demand an eight minute single? I'm
not sure, but it does have the kind of the
melody and the core progression with the synth part I
think works and has this very melancholic, kind of mournful
quality that kind of reminds me of the thing that
funeral doom bands like Shape of Despair do with their synths.
But instead of a big, cavendous funeral doom track, it's
like atop the propelling you know, blast of Lorna Shore
and the big what have We done will vocal bit
is you know, one of the more effective again sort
of call and drop points. But as much as I
like the song, right your track twill on the album
at that point first track was seven minutes long, this
is now eight minutes long. Most of these songs end
up being six to seven minutes long up to you know,
nine minutes long, and in the case of most of them,
it's almost like there is a good four to five
minute radio edit inside a song that just keeps going
and that's coming from me, right Like, you guys know,
I'm not the guy asking for their radio edit version.
The best metal album of last year was two twenty
minute songs stuck Together. I just name dropped Shape of Despair,
who their best album is seventy five minutes long and
is literally called Monotony Fields. But it's about sustaining that
this is my course of an album, and I think
this really struggles and as you go through each song
and like, okay, this one, it's massively pompous. The orchestration
and the choirs are just very overblown as they come in.
Sounds thrilling, but where are they gonna take that? And
the problem with Lorna Show is that they are impressive
for a death core band, And I don't mean that
to you know, snobbily talk down on death core and
put it on a lower pederstore because I've been listening
to that genre for fifteen years. Many people out there
have been listening to it for longer than that. It's
some that I love at its best, and there's produced
records that I think are fantastic and are close to
my heart. But in terms of what Lorna Sure are
bringing to the genre, with the stamp being huge bombast
and long form song structures that here they're really trying
to kind of display an ambition for progressive instincts, right
like they want to be a long form prog death
core band. If you go outside of their bubble, you
start to see, you know, the stuff that the masters
of what they're aiming for are able to do that
they're not fully reaching yet. The guitarist extremely short on riffs.
He does display an affinity for big, sweeping guitar solos,
you know, stuff like in Darkness or whatever on this
good I think their breakdowns are really boring, Like for
all of the flowery stuff that they have going on
in the orchestra and the guitar leads, when it comes
to those like you're saying stop dead to drop the
anvil on your head, the breakdowns are completely interchangeable. Like
for me, they only function to just clob a you
for a couple of minutes or something really basic, to
break up the homogeney of all the symphonic parts. And
if they have that ambition then for the more progressive ideas,
but there's never actually the breathing room in the album
to get it. If you're gonna start paddling in the
opeth or the Winter sunpool or you know, bads like
Epacha even who you know, we raise for albums like
Omega from them that do the long, epic, prog symphonic
thing really well, you're gonna start to be judged a
bit more seriously. And as a sixty six minute record,
this does not have that that that breadth or depth
to kind of you know, live on to play on
that same level.
Speaker 4: That is, it is like they want to, you know,
be seen in that class above your empirical death cold bands,
all that sort of stuff, and I think that's great.
I applaud their ambition to do it, but it means
that similar I think I said some of the things
like when not looseort Of made their kind of like
plays be seen as that above the sort of copper
hardcore bands they came from.
Speaker 3: Like, are you're gonna do that? Then you've got to
be judged to that standard.
Speaker 4: And I think like on this album in particular, I
do think Lorna sure up a little shop because you're right,
they don't have.
Speaker 3: The full grasp to.
Speaker 4: Capture what makes you know, a winter Sun or whatever,
opere Blood Incantation, like all these sort of again these
progressive death metal bands that Laura kind of like want
to be kind of like playing alongside at this point
and also don't have the nuance the full kind of
skill set yet, and maybe maybe they will kind of
like build on what they've got here and find ways
to make these songs way more progressively interesting, because right
now I listen to some of like they're long, but
they're not actually particularly progressive. It feels go again, like
you're kind of drawing things out, and the breakdowns they
feel almost like stop things they have to put in
to still be seen to still keep that death or
crowd on side, unless they may be seen as too flowering.
And I think they're the things that really hamper a
lot of these songs where it kind of just has
to just say stop dead master over the head of
the break down, and it's kind of like and some
of the some of these breakdowns go on weirdly long
as well, and it all just continues to pad out
the experience, and some of them feel totally out of
character the rest of the song where this has been
you know, this quite EXPANSI from that, and now's like
and now it's in the dirgy sort of death course slop,
and it's like did the song actually need a breakdown
or are you putting it in there because you're a
death or bad you've got to have the breakdown.
Speaker 3: There are things like that.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't know if I would mind it
so much if the breakdowns were more vastly. But every
single they they they can't write a rhythmically interesting breakdown,
Like it's like the the pay grade of the music
does just dip substantially whenever they go and do it.
Because I'm not I'm not inherently anti breakdown, right again,
I like death neither. Yeah, but they are, you know that,
like said, they're drawn out as well. Like you're saying,
there are two songs where they push at the like
epic death core ballad thing that they have been doing
before that I think also do stand out within the album.
One is glen Wood in the Middle, which has these
like harmony, clean guitar aren't a million miles away from
like maybe a big sort of jeff Ling you know,
modern day parkway drive lead.
Speaker 2: When it kicks in and I.
Speaker 1: Can see, you know the way I know about like
Dodds read or something, for me, I just go, oh
my god. Every single league guitar just makes my heart
saying I can see where Lorn the Show could be
that bad for people, and then forevermore. As the closer,
nearly ten minutes long, it does undeniably it sounds like
a million dollars when the orchestra hits like it does
sweep you off your feet, and it's full of those
dancing little again like Yai Winter Sun guitar leaves that
sounds straight off of like the two thousand and four
self titled Win the Sun record. But those two songs again,
they almost feel like the tracks to close their their
vinyl sides right there the track you know, five or
ten or whatever it is around them. It doesn't create
much of an arc of an album because the songs
are so same. Me and I agree, aside from odd moments,
actual chorus hooks are in as short a supply as
actual riffs are compounded by the completely brickwalled production where
I had a better time listening to this on my
speakers than I did in my headphones because it's just
so like loudness.
Speaker 4: Everything's matched out like there's no such nuance.
Speaker 1: And the result is there are multiple songs that I
would just cut because they're redundant to the album. You know,
like like Lion Heart and Death Can Take Me. They're
not bad, but does the album need them at that point?
I don't think so. A nameless Him has some of
the biggest kind of evil, you know, Demon bor Gear,
death Star vibe, so I like that, but you've had
a lot of it at that point, and then you
get your sort of eighth like you know, nonsense Machine
Gun for breakdown.
Speaker 2: At that point.
Speaker 1: War Machine Deep in the second half does feel a
bit different. It has more of like an electro groove.
Speaker 4: I'm a suck for a guncock into the rift. I'm sorry,
I can't help it.
Speaker 1: Like yeah, but when they particularly when the drumming opens
up as the riff kicks in, it's very nice to
hear them doing a different kind of rhythm at that
point because they've had so few riffs that switch things
up like that. But I'm just imagine if we drop
the previous two tracks on the album prior to that,
and it goes right from Glenwood into that like different
sort of feel, it make a world of difference. And
at that point, when Warmshing is coming in, I can't
believe that I've still got like fifteen minutes of the
album left, and I just think, take a look at
the way the best bands in their class structure their albums,
because you can learn from it, right, Like, we're just
a year off now from Time to having come out
the most fucking epic band in the world when it
comes to this stuff and the way the Time albums,
both of them are structured, with each track having something
different to offer despite being so overblown. The whole way
are master classes in making this kind of overblown ear
fatigue thing still dynamic and compelling for something that's way
more brutal and relatable. Even look at like a cattle decapitation.
Look at how their last two albums work, and like
the Last Cattle I even criticized a little bit for
being a bit samey by their standards, But guess what,
I still listen to that album because the song craft
is really high and the album package is compelling. And
if it sounds like I'm being really negative, I would
still give this album an overall positive score because of
all of the parts where they get it right and
the general, you know, sensation of listening to it. I
like more songs than I don't. There's good stuff here
there's more highlights for the Life set that are really gonna,
you know, go off in that tour. But I have
got another album here that I have a little taste
of and I quite like, But like Pain Remains, I'm
never inclined to actually spin it again because their ambition
outstrips their instincts and their taste.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's one.
Speaker 4: I think act you know, like the two Time Records,
they're you know, five songs essentially that they are like
all every song is is distinct, it's its own character
this album that they could benefit from just cutting some
of the like say the two songs in between glen
Wood and Warmish and other two art I agree are
just like Lonhart was, I was like, ah, this is
where it is.
Speaker 3: All just starting to blur together.
Speaker 4: Like those songs don't save a purpose beyond almost like
stapadding the whole album. So if you if you could
like pick the best six or so six or seven
songs from this and kind of like just happen together,
I think this would be a much stronger record that
I would go back to as a whole. I still
will probably spin you know, Unbreakable glen Wood, the opener
War Machine like those are songs. The closer again that
that is too much. I really like parts of that
closing track. That's when I was like, you could.
Speaker 3: Trim this out.
Speaker 4: I have all the respect for you going for like
full of maximum epic closer and again I like the
moment where they do, you know, trying to need something
a bit more emotionally stirring. I think that's a nice
texture to play with, but it is just because this
alum is so like Maximus at all times, like there.
Speaker 3: Is a lot a less is more thing.
Speaker 4: I wish that like Lorna Shaw would kind of cotton
into that a lot of the some of the best.
And it's funny saying that about you know, symphonic epic
power men, because Meltic sort of say less is more
of a lot of these bands, but they do understand
it sometimes where they can go, we don't need every
song to be on ten the entire time. We can
you know, allow space between these songs to let things breathe.
And I think that's just that's the trick Lorna Shaw
are missing.
Speaker 3: Yes, next, yes.
Speaker 1: But album Fleshwater two thousand in Search of the Endless Sky.
If that title doesn't give it away. These guys like
the year two thousand quite a bit in an era
of so much you know, y two k fetishization in
hardcore and alternative rock. In a way, it's nice that
someone just went as far as to like slap it
into their record title, because at least you can argue
that there's some sort of conceptual anchor as to why
that is the case. Fleshwater are one of the biggest
deal bands to have emerged in the last sort of four.
Speaker 2: To five years.
Speaker 1: Like that's true, isn't it sound like the way Fleshwater
seemed to blow up after the release of their first
album really felt like something was happening.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, in their seeing in the sort of the rock
shoe Gays, particularly the sort of the hardcore Jason thing,
they've been like one of the bands that like has
been on everyone's tongue.
Speaker 3: I think a back to like outbreak in London the summer.
Speaker 4: A lot of this saw the shoegaz bands, most of
them will kind of put inside the little tent. Fleshwater
were put on the main stage like they fill out
the band who are like capturing imagination and are onto something.
Speaker 3: So the buzz is there undeniably.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: From my perspective, there are obviously links to other bands
that we've championed, with basically the entire lineup of this band,
aside from their front woman Marissa being members of Vein.
So I was I was sort of aware of flesh
Water through that, but then I noticed, I think kind
of a few months after the release of their debut album,
We're Not Here to be Loved, just how big it
was actually getting, where it went from like a side
project to oh shit, this band are like actually really
popping off in that scene and arguably one of the
most hyped, you know, new bands in the world to
be coming from that kind.
Speaker 2: Of intersection of hardcore and alternative rock, which is what
you know Fleshwater is.
Speaker 1: We're Not Here to be Loved, which is the name
of that first album released at the Veil very tail
end of twenty twenty two, kind of a sleeper hit.
Like I was saying, I think you might not realize
that there are songs from that album with upwards of
like twenty to thirty million streams, Like it's kind of
an insane rooting off that album had, and I think
that album.
Speaker 2: Is cool as fuck.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that I'm really good as well. It
just it hits a spot of that kind of like shoegaze.
Speaker 3: Or rot stuff.
Speaker 4: I was having enough its own personality and just a
bit of a like a bit more griped to it,
I find, like, and again maybe that's you know, they've
come from a hardcore band, but iron album is wicked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, songs like kiss the Ladder and Closet and actually
pulling off a York color on it, Like I thought
they were kind of a breath of fresh air, honestly,
because this thing, right, this ven diagram of hardcore and
shoegaze and bits of new metal so on. You know,
you've got the term new gaze floating around whatever. This
stuff it's fucking diamerd dozen right, like it's it's so boring.
There are so many bands. I can't tell you how
little I need to hear another band doing shoegazey deftones
alt rock with some breathing like it's all Wasteland flesh
Water are fucking good. And that album has hits on it,
you know, and I particularly love you could still very
much hear the vein in it that that album, you know,
it's very shadowy, still kind of sounds like it's been
recorded inside the sare bathroom or somewhere like Vein does.
And it's almost like the kind of feminine melodic sister
record to what Vain We're doing. And they have this
dual vocal dynamic between Anthony from Vain favoring kind of
mostally his clean register, and then Marissa, who was very
striking as the kind of counterpart to that that album
Big Fan, So this kind of thing. Fleshwater's second album
was basically the only album that I was anticipating. You know,
They're like, you're the chosen one for this kind of scene.
If it's going to produce something, it's going to be
from you. And so you're thinking, you know, are they
gonna go bigger? Are they gonna, you know, tighten up
the sound for something a little bit more kind of
palatable appeal?
Speaker 2: What would it be?
Speaker 1: And I think they've definitely gone a bit more ambitious.
And if We're not Here to be Loved is like
the shadowy basement version that still has these killer melodies.
In Search of the Endless Sky is the like wider
area you follow through, And I think if you're into
this sort of alternative rock you should definitely listen to
this album because they do have a fingerprint of their own.
Whether that comes from that you know, slightly more tetanous
ridden touch that Vain has or the the vocal trade off,
there is certainly more flesh water to enjoy here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So for me, I think this album is it kind
of just gives me more of what I want from Flesh.
What it does sound, you know, bigger. I think it
sounds a little brighter. There's you know, a bit more
of the sort of poppul moments in there. But it's
still just to me this this still sounds like one
of the more interesting and attic bands. And as you say,
this sort of landfill of Deftones, the Shoe Gaze bands,
which I agree like I like quite a lot of those.
Speaker 1: Bands and the New Gays. Landfill is a real thing. Yeah,
more people need to start pointing out it really is.
Speaker 4: This to me still feels like the kind of like
the band who just avoid that.
Speaker 3: I think they're writing better songs.
Speaker 4: I think this is catchier, it sounds better, there's more
character to this. When you were saying about the Es,
but I was like, I don't know, I kind of
got no butts on this other then I kind of
miss Vain, like that's my only.
Speaker 3: Like, but I have the shold.
Speaker 4: I'm just I'm so down with exactly what flesh water off.
There's a bit in the second track where anti screams coming.
I was like, ah, there's that Vain scream there.
Speaker 3: I was like, come on, like I do and do
miss that.
Speaker 4: But for the most part, I think the sound just
the two vocals, they play off each other brilliantly. The
songs all stand out like they know when to mix
things up. They know once, you know, go a bit faster.
It's not all kind of just languishing in that kind
of like deftonesy like White Penny wash Over you sound
that they can be a bit punch your they can
so down that.
Speaker 3: It's just more dynamic than a lot of the sort
of like chances of the New Gay's thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll get to my butts in a moment, because
I do like this record and I have been, you know,
enjoying listening to it. And Drowning Song is basically an intro.
But Marissa sounds great on it. I think her voice
just really you know it, it sits in my ear
in a very nice natural way, and I think he
might be a little bit more divisive because he is
quite a you know, droney, almost off key sort of singer.
But I really liked when Anthony sang in Vain, and
I still like it here as well, and I like
the two of them together. And then you get into
Green Street, which has this really cool, widdly post hardcore riff.
It kind of sounds like Futures by Jubiete World or
something like that, and it's just really like again hits
the ear in a really nice way, and that song
sort of bustling back and forth with like you know,
Anthony doing the screams. It sounds really really really cool.
And you know, if you've never heard Fleshwater again, these
like y two K hallmarks are very much part of it,
but they're sort of mixed into this like slightly more
sinister sound. I think I would say, like there's a
song called Be Your Best, which has these like electronic
beats that's this very like day dreamy kind of drone
that's quite you know, spooky, And they do have much
more edge when they play harder than most of these bands,
because again, you've got like most of vane in their right,
so they are really going at it, and again Anthony
will throw in screams, and I like that kind of
war of sounds going on in my ears.
Speaker 2: When they're going at that.
Speaker 1: My hold back with this album is kind of put
a finger on I think as an album it just
comes across a lot more labor than the first one,
where the debut has kind of this quality that maybe
defeats words a little bit, but it's got a real
spontaneity about it that feels like they are just kind
of when I hear that album, it feels like they
have picked up their instruments right there, you know, I
know what you mean. Yeah, and it and it's even
when it's dark and a bit creepy, it still kind
of bounces with this insane energy. The song Kissed the
Ladder is the ultimate example. If you just press play
on that song, it's like positively skipping up off the
floor at you. This kind of has the air of
a follow up where they've really worked on it and
at the end don't quite have the songs or the
energy to to show for it. Like everything sounds really cool,
but it's got the winds taken out of its sales
a little bit, and it has songs that are a
bit more overstuffed where you know Jetpack as a single, right,
We're like, this is quite cool, but it's also a
little perplexing because it's a whole it's a whole bunch
of stuff, and I like having the keys jingled in
my face with all of that stuff as it does it.
You know, it's got deftnes grooves, it's got big guitar tone,
you know, Marissa and Antony kind of handing over to
each other in the vocals, but it doesn't really have
that central hook to kind of bring it all together.
It kind of feels like it's building for a pre
chorus the whole song.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, like just because I think I would
get back to the intent sing because I think it's
one of the like there's something more stock songs on
the record with me where this is one where it
does feel it's kind of built on that deftones e
kind of like big sort of fi guitarists and space
between those grists because like when you go through that,
but then you follow that with like last escape, which
is that's when like that picks up the pace and
that does like snap and kind of like has that
drum bait preparing it forward big pop melodies, and then
it can get like.
Speaker 3: Crunch on the chorus.
Speaker 4: I think like there are I think the song the
A'm kind of like flits between songs that are a
bit more I guess labored, and it can still but
it can still have most where it does like snap
back into might have that spontaneity of the debut. I
think the labored thing is a deliberate choice. Like I
think like they clearly want these songs. I don't Labe's worry,
but I think they want these songs to sound more
kind of like ambitious in their scope, like whereas I
think that like the sum is deliberate, less.
Speaker 3: Plug in and play than the debut was.
Speaker 4: That's why that's why I say about the laby him
being a delimitrius, where like the songs have more sounds
being played. If there is you know, more ambient stuff
you get you know, it's like Jerome how much is
like spiky rift, but then it kind of like drones
on so that they're they're, they're, they're, they're, they're they're
the clue playing with more and kind of pouring over
and working over more these songs more than just kind
of like have that sponstanity, which is why it doesn't
bother me to it feels like that's what they've gone
for on this record.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally think that's what they're going for. I
think it does have a trade off that I think
some of these songs, think like Jetpack for example, think
they're anthemic and don't quite get there, and it's it's
a frustrating issue because I'm really into the vibe so
much like Fleshwater sound great to me, and you know,
this has kind of got that Crisp Blin's got a
higher production value. But I think catching hold of the
melodies in comparison to the first album is quite fleeting.
And I mentioned that song be Your Best early, which
is the electronic song, and that's sort of the for
the mix of sounds.
Speaker 2: Shu.
Speaker 1: You think that song is quite urgent, like it's quite bloated.
It feels like it's got tummy ache. It doesn't really
work for them. My favorite track on this is Jerometown,
which hits right after that and has this hard crunching,
like post hardcore yef that really puts it right back
on the spiky riff. Yeah, really heavy, juttering sound, and
that riff honestly is the catchest thing on the record
to make like it's great, really violent distorted emo a
quite like Last Escape, which you mentioned, which has like,
you know, we never have to let go quite nice
for chorus, maybe prettier more than it is anthemic, but
still one of the better ones. Sundown, later on in
the record, does the kind of downcast, rainy day emo
song quite well. I think like when it picks up
the guitar leads, it does sound lovely. There's also like
one instance of a wood block or a cowbell or
something in there, which is like really super cozy. I
really like Sundown.
Speaker 4: It's just kind of like a very nice, like you say,
it's that quite rainy aman, but it has that kind
of like a cozy warmth.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, you just starting up a blanket.
Speaker 4: I think that songs like a really nice acoustic ballad
that again just has a little bit more substance, and
then it goes into Raging Storm, which again the riff
on that one goes I like when they can kind
of like switch to these songs that are super tranquil
and pretty into a song that like there's a rift
there that is like popping off, and.
Speaker 3: It's like that's where you're giving.
Speaker 4: You feel the hardcore DNA in them, and I think
that makes them more interesting, and again, so many other
bands that surround them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the closing track, Endless Sky sounds uncannily like
a song that Tom Linton would sing on one of
the early jimmyt World albums, And that's a fun flavor
that you don't hear quite as often, you know. But
I think I think the album needs more of the
pacy stuff as well, because it feels more subdued, it
feels more labored, it feels like they're trying to force
this stuff a little bit out more. And there's quite
a few of the songs just kind of meander. And
I'm trying not to sound like a broken record with this.
And I'm sorry to bring up this subject again when
the world has decided that we are wrong and they
don't want it. But I remain immensely disappointed in this
scene that they heard the above and decided to lambast
it only to go back to all of this stuff instead,
Like we already had one of these albums that had
insane production, insane level of ambition that threaded it together
as an album, had that same sort of sky searching
sort of feel that this does, but had hooks everywhere
you looked on it. We've already had our band absolutely
fucking shooting for the star of or something like this,
and this scene decided to take the piss out of
them instead. And what we're now looking for is whoever
can get vaguely close to that level without upsetting the
cart as much like you're telling me that the album
with Mirror and that ended with but a Dream into
the Above is embarrassing. But anyway, a few tracks on
this I really like can stick around in this grand
old world of hardcore bands, you know, ribbing off alternative
rock bands from the late nineties. They're definitely still more
distinctive than most, and I like them still more than most.
But after how great the debut was, I hope that
Flesh Water could do better and not weigh themselves down
with a load of dodge, which I think is kind
of halfway what's happened it.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's fair. I think I mean, I'm so
with you on that Codeine. I didn't want to mention
it just put in a box. It's it's not worth
digging up.
Speaker 2: And I just can't without thinking about it. It makes me
so sad.
Speaker 4: You are right, and it's just it's the darkness of
this fan base. But like, I do see what you mean,
where like that they have kind of like done more
and it's kind of maybe lost some of that spark
that was on the debut album. For me, I'm with
them on the more so, I'm kind of more willing
to go of it. But I can see, I can
I can totally see where you've come from, where like
they've added so much in that it's actually kind of
taken something away from what made Flesh Water really stick
out to you in the first place. I just think
they're still just writing better songs and being more interesting.
Speaker 3: Then again, if we're talking.
Speaker 4: Purely the rockshew gayzy world that surrounds them of the
modern side, I think they're still you know, comfortably so.
Speaker 3: And again, like you know, we talked about when the.
Speaker 4: Deaftones album came out and said, like all the bands
that sound like Deaftones, the gap between them and Deathtnones
is so huge. I don't necessarily feel that as much
with Sels Flesh. I don't feel like you are chances
competitive Deftones. I think there's like you also not on
that level, but you are less kind of like shown
up as.
Speaker 1: Like they sound like themselves more, which is what I
really like him at them. I just want them to
put a bit more energy in that sound. Both of
those two albums we've just reviewed bands. I want to
get behind the bands. I like both of them, maybe
seven out of tense. I can shake off any of
that praise with hints of disappointment though, because next album
is Scorpion Milk and Slime of the Times. I'm gonna
say three words straight away just to grab the ears
of anyone who might not know what this is. Grave
Pleasures Beast Milk. This is the new album from Matt McNerney,
who has fronted both of those bands. He's had many projects.
Of course, he's a busy bee.
Speaker 2: He is so busy.
Speaker 1: We review the new Hex Essel album just a few
months ago. But much like twenty twenty three, when we've
got a Grave Pleasures album and a Hex Vessel album,
we're getting two from him this year. Scorpion Milk is
described as a solo project when Grave Pleasures released Plague
Boys in twenty twenty three, which if you have listened
to the show for any length of time, you'll know
that we as a show and in particular I am
mad for that band. That was my album of the
Year in twenty twenty three. They didn't really tore off
the back of it. They didn't come to the UK
at all, sadly, and the band has since gone down
into a state of like it's never been officially said,
but maybe a state of hiatus, with a lot of
the members focusing on other projects. Matt has had Hex Vessel,
you has been very busy with the Rancy Pazuzu, and
the other guitarist, Alexi, is gearing up for a Solar
project as well, so they're all kind of splitting off
in their separate ways, and I am praying that that
band has not gone totally defunct and may rise again
in future. But a little bit musingly at first, we
got news a couple of months ago, around the time
that we were reviewing the Hex Essel album that Matt
was going to be launching another band in that particular
post punk realm that Beast Milk and then Grave Pleasures
had played in but in particular it was going to
go back to some of the heavier, nastier, apocalyptic post
punk influences that maybe Beet Milk was playing with, like
right in the very early days Grave Pleasures in recent
years on album like Plague Boys had maybe gone down
a slightly more pop, you know, new wavy kind of line,
with lots of usage of keyboards and so on. Scorpion
Milk was supposed to be more brutal. It's quite hard
to get my head head around at first, because, you know,
conceptualizing we've got Grave Pleasures, how is this gonna, you know,
be its own thing? Until I got the album Sam
Aside from the fact that this is a solo project,
so obviously it's not had the input from those other
members of Grave Pleasures, thus making it a different thing.
Now that you've heard the album, how much does this
to you feel like its own thing?
Speaker 4: There are inescapable comparisons to Bee s Milk and Grave
Pleasures that Matt McNerney doing a sort of a gothic
post punk sort of record is gonna summon up. But
I do like I was instally a little bit confusen, like,
so is this just a siber because you wants to
carry on doing this thing and the other members of
Grave Pleasures are busy.
Speaker 3: But I'm like, ohn, is it gonna be?
Speaker 4: Like no, I can I can see where like there
is a just a little flavor to this album that
does make sense. And maybe this is, you know, because
this is a Matt McNerney solofon where he can just
really like delve into certain sounds he wants to play with.
Speaker 3: But either way, I think just another Matt.
Speaker 4: McNerney post punk record is something that I was kind
of just gonna be like, I just need more of that.
I like, I need it because that Great Pleasures album,
the last few Girl plays Alarm of Excellent didn't get
to the last one, so that's annoying. But him doing
this sort of sound is one of those sort of
guaranteed fixes And guess what I can plow on this
like we got that's what we need. End of the
world apocalyptic goth dance. Why this is just this is
that bit harsher though, this is that bit nastier and
like rough around the edges. It still sounds fucking amazing,
first of all, but it is it is scary, it's mean,
and it's all those other things, and it just was
like me and you are just gonna be like completely
away with reviewing this away. I can't imagine any of
us have anything even remotely negative to say about this,
or I'll be shocked if you have anything so that
isn't just like, oh my god, I love everything about this.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you've been a fan of you know,
Grave Pleasures or Beeft Milk when we've spoken about them before,
you should absolutely be excited to listen to this album
because basically, regardless of name, you know, it's the next
album in that lineage. It's you know, it completes a trifecta,
if you will, of those projects, all revolving around a
similar sort of bass. And it's funny because, just to
use the example of Creeper, because Will appears on this album,
I would say this album has more in common with
Grave Pleasures and Beecet Milk than Sanguavore does A Turn
in Your Arms or the EPs right, because different bands
do have different levels of variation in how far they're
going to go from their original kind of bass sound.
Maybe you could view this more as like the Salem
to Grave Pleasures. Creeper, I don't know, but I heard
this album and it did click as to like, ah, okay.
This is why it's been differentiated like that, because it
is way nastier. It's way noisier. This album also has
I think maybe the most Killing Joke song as a
band who aren't Killing Joker's made like honestly, we will
get to them. But it's also essentially, you know, pressed
most of the same buttons. I want maps music in
this lane to be pushing. And how about this for
a lineup on this album, we have Nate Newton from
Converge on bass tour from Viagra Boys is the drummer
apart from I think the first song when we have
Paul ferguson the actual drummer of Killing Joke. This is
like all star shit for this kind of punk. And
as you're saying, it's no surprise that I fucking love
this album a whole lot. I've had this album about
two months. Normally, when I get promos, I'm fairly content
to kind of listen to what I need to for work,
but otherwise let them, you know, sit until their time
in the sun really arrives and they end of the rotation.
This I've been actively looking forward to when it's released
so that I can listen to it when I'm out
and about.
Speaker 2: On streaming, you know.
Speaker 1: But the amount of times I've just been going about
my business somewhere and a song from this has gone
in my head and I've gone, I want to this
that particular scorping of song.
Speaker 2: Oh no, it's not not you know.
Speaker 1: Actually they I don't think anyone in the world right
now has the touch for this kind of classic post
punk music that Matt has. Like Killing Joke likely aren't
a band anymore. Matt is the best in the world
that and it's not close. And when this stuff is
done right, it becomes like the most addicting music in
the world. This is nine songs. I think that's something
like thirty five minutes. And it's the rare album this
year that I will let play to the end and
then immediately loop it around for a second go it rules.
Speaker 3: I did that the other day. I just let this album.
Speaker 4: Lou Malks was like, fuck me, this needs to be
I can play about album NX. This album needs to
be longer. I need more of this. I'm so with you.
Speaker 3: Matt McNerney just has an ear for this thing he is.
He just gets it.
Speaker 4: He knows how to just make these dark, brooding, end
of the world dance bangers. Like it is such like
specific combination of things that he just pulls together. Every
there is not a bad song on this. Every song
this is brilliant. Every song has a chorus. Every almost
of his.
Speaker 3: Has the ability to scare you.
Speaker 4: I say almost because there's one song which I'm not
gonna say it's scary, but also might be the perfect song.
Speaker 3: Like there is just so much to love about this album.
Speaker 4: The guitars when they want to like shimmer and have
that sheen amazing. The bass tone, as we've said, like
being a bass hon fuck me, is it powerful.
Speaker 3: He's kind of like those mantras, the chorus ooks.
Speaker 4: Everything about it is just so just gonna like unders
understood the assignment and it feels like this being you
know Matt mcanonely doing his sovo It means he can
just like tap into everyone, get all his mates in,
call anyone who's had similar to say do you want
to come and join in and get involved in this?
And it's just like say that the world is ending,
let's just have this like crazed, violent, dance party and
it's fucking amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's relatable to great pleasures if you like them,
because obviously the way Matt approaches you know, melody is unmistakable,
but it's much more violent than anything with her from
Grave Pleasures or even beef s Milk, And there's a
lot less sex and grave pleasures, like they have all
of those songs about falling for an aut and bam
and She's the end of the world and the form
of girl all that stuff. There are very few references
to like wanting to explode yourself because a girl is
too hot this time. Instead, this is bleak. It's much
more like, you know, the rot and decay of the
modern world captured through this, like dark even like a
narco punk, rudimentary penie sort of stuff. It's like a nasty, scummy,
little firecracker of a record. But it's also still very catchy.
All the fear, very scary, you know, like this barked
vocal rather than the usual singing at first, and then
the unnerving, ghostly little hook with the oh the fear
that money you can by thee like little backing vocal
as it pans from ear to ear it's like perfectly
arranged pop site songwriting that also happens to be like
really horrible this time, and that carries into the songs
that just made me go, oh my god, I love
this kind of music so much. Will to Live that,
and then later Wall to Wall, Like I said, maybe
the most I've ever heard a band tap into that
like debut killing joke album feel that aren't them. It's
like they've discovered lost killing joke songs from nineteen eighty
and recorded them. It's crazy because that jamming a mantra
down your throat kind of hook the way that they
would on like War Dance or The Weight or something.
First time I heard Will to Live, I couldn't believe it.
That kind of semi melodic shout approach of the hook
with the water Earth the will to Serve vibe, and
then water Wall War too well Baronoya, like it's so
jazz Coleman and I just want to be, you know,
bouncing around bellowing that the same way as I would
those songs.
Speaker 4: I can believe how menacing Wall to Wall gets like
that song is just leering and just kind of like
towering over you. It's like the guitars are like suffocatingly
like oppressive, and you know the way that comes to
ends in these like ghastly whales these songs. Is that
contrast to being like legitimately like menacing and threatening, but
having these just like nuggets of pop like sort of melody,
vocal hook gold in all of them, like the wild
of the Wall to Survive and then the will to
Die on the end as well.
Speaker 3: It's like that has not left my head. It's fun
to seeing.
Speaker 4: Sonically it works in the kind of like the Harsher
sort postling. There's that kind of like a narco punk
kind of energy at times where the drums on the
bridge of the Will to Live go so hard, like
they like really violent volatile blasts all over that song,
where like, again, this is a fun record, but it
is a dark scale record, and it's just the best
kind of like balance of the two.
Speaker 1: It's also got hints of Matt's black metal vocal at times,
like almost like recorded through a really horrid crackerly mic,
but that element again of Mats music kind of peaks
its way into the post punk thing at points like
his you know, his code or his death rip voice
or something is coming through screaming through the bridge of
all to fear water Wall is just wretched when it
does it All Snakes No Ladders later on, which has
a really strong kind of melodic grave pleasure the sort
of chorus, but then the ending of it, Matt just
starts like wretching and sneering like an urchin.
Speaker 4: Is that him doing this or like the shouting because again,
like I'm just imagining he's like like like droney like golfways.
Speaker 3: When he's done that, it was like, is that I
guess what is that?
Speaker 1: Match?
Speaker 4: Just can of really laying into this kind of like
violent shouting. I think that's such a cool shift.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And then the title track later on was another
of those moments of like, oh, this is why is
its own band?
Speaker 2: Because suddenly this wrecking ball of a rift just.
Speaker 1: Like slud Rift almost like yeah, it's like the kind
of the stuff of this kind of music that ends
up then informing like Godflesh and this really like harsh
industrial kind of music. It's so heavy and unforgiving. I
love the groove that hits in Silver Pigs that's like
really dissonant and wrong, but also really makes you want
to move. And that chorus with the bee Happy we want. Yeah,
it's like, you know, so catchy but so perverse. It's
the classic sort of they live glasses thing of like
some sneering mocking but without feeling like obey, we hope
you have a lovely day. I mentioned that Will Gould
of Creeper Fame is on this album, which I was
over the moon when I saw that in the press release,
because I was like, yes, finally, like the crossover between
these two guys that I've I've always wanted and it's
on I guess the only song on this album that
is about a lady.
Speaker 2: But she's a bestial lady. You know, she's a she Wolf.
Speaker 1: Of London creeping around Victorian London bodies in the Thames.
Speaker 2: Jacquealie Ripper's Got Nothing on You.
Speaker 3: When I saw.
Speaker 4: When I saw it was on a song called she
Wolf of London, I was like, perfect, no notes, I'm.
Speaker 2: Wolf of London.
Speaker 4: Like this song has like two choruses again that the
House of Her down, the oh to dismiss, and then
and then the she Wolf of London like oh, it's
so hard not to get swept up in this that
Jackally Ripper's Want Nothing on You is the coolest line
in a song, right, But having that vocal interplay between
the two is like these two golf masters just right
a Again, to me, this is a perfect or like
goth pop song that again still.
Speaker 3: Benages just to feel them.
Speaker 4: Because we've said all these things about it being quite dark,
there is you know, there's just.
Speaker 3: A little bit of wink in some of these songs
all the time as well.
Speaker 4: It's just what a song is called slim of the times,
there is a slight there's there's a tiny playful touch
to some of these songs, and I think some of
them have become like the most maximalist version of it,
but I think that character, that playful edge is always
present and it is one of those things that does
make this album fun amongst all of the impressive heaviness
of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and get in my head around that track was
crazy at first because I have spent god knows how
many hours listening to these two men's music individually, and
they do sound very different, but somehow they so go
together so well on that track that at times they
almost become the same person, like they're so tuned into
the same thing on that it's wild, Like Will on
the intro sounds insanely cool. But then when they went
to the verses and they both start doing that kind
of low goth register, they really like sink into one another,
and the guitar introrith just gets me pumped in the
same way that like, yeah, joy through Death or be
my Hiroshima. Does you know the song is a total banger.
Then You've got another day another abyss, which was the
first thing with they release from this, and I had
to say to a friend who heard it, I was like,
trust me, the rest of it is a lot heavier,
because that is like the immaculate little post punk dance
pop song in the middle of it more on the
kind of you know, interpole, end of the spectrum of
the sound or whatever. But it's like the perfect little
hit you need in the albu at that point, and
the bassline with Nate Newton again just hit in that
kind of pep with that tone in that perfect way
on this song about the you know, the mind melting
overexposure of like you know, doom scrolling and bad news
that is the twenty first century digital reality, Like it's
cramming all that down into the little earworm of like
you gotta get through it. Get through it just hits
like the right the point to kind of just make
you pop along. It's not like a huge chorus because
every single bit of the song is a hook, you know.
Just everything that is catchy is just like crammed into
this little.
Speaker 4: What the guitars in that song, there's a kind of
like eighties sort of two tone scarfing going on some
of the guitars and that song and the sort of
the skipped it like it's not scarf song, but like
bands were on like the dance craze sort of movie
like having guitar parts and songs that sound a bit
like that.
Speaker 3: It's just the sort of the darker undersides of that thing.
Speaker 4: But I was like, yeah, there is like so much
of that eighties punk thing is just kind of like
a different bit. It's such a sick like like I say,
you can skank to that song, I probably you can.
The chorus that it's so straightforward and almost nursing a
ham and at sisty worm their way in and they
just none of them miss is kind of like, yeah,
that's what mac McNerney can just do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's not as many.
Speaker 1: Of like the really wonderful melodic choruses that Great Pleasures
did because he is kind of he's ranting and raving
a lot more on this album, but that song, I
guess is closest. And then Children Are Dust. It's kind
of like the last Gave Pleasures album did. It ends
on this point of really just like you know, dust
in the wind, everything's being ground into like fine powered
at that point, this tone of just kind of existential
anxiety and paranoia. You know, Grave Pleasures weren't short of that,
but it's concentrated here to really feel like, you know
what bands like Killing Joke or Rudimentary p and I
or whoever we're getting at in that like desolation of
our reality in the nineteen eighties translated to you know,
be relevant to our present day. And if you like
Grave Pleasures or Bee's Milk already, this is a must
because it's more from that same well, if you like
you know, some of the bands that we've mentioned, it's
the record you've.
Speaker 2: Got to hear this year.
Speaker 1: I do truly hope that Grave Pleasures aren't done, or
at the very least we get some kind of continuation
of it in the live environment, like Beece Milk was
kind of carried forward because I can't go not seeing
Society aspectors live ever and never seeing Infatuation Overkill or Yeah,
Joy through Death again. But as an album in the
next step of that lineage, this absolutely delivers as the
next step Scorpion Milk Slime of the Times. This has
got a be one of the most friendly to Sam
reviews bags ever because Sam's managed to avoid listening to
a seventy one minute between the Buried of Me album,
But I've got to listen to sixty four minutes of
Large Disputes No One Was driving the Car, the first
Large Dispute album in six years. I guess I didn't
realize how long that had been because you've spoken about
them so often seeing them live in like the last
few years. But a band who I guess at some
point in the last decade they kind of graduated from
being you know, one of the poster children of that
kind of oncoming wave of like Yelpie college poetry, emo hardcore,
to then becoming a you know, a very pretty seminal,
widely respected bastion of creibility and consistency. See, I can
say nice things about them. Last album was twenty nineteen's Panorama,
which I remember sending me into an excruciating meltdown, Sam,
this is one of your favorite bands in the world.
Where does that album rank in their catalog? My memory
is that it was maybe a little bit on the
lower end in terms of how people responded to it.
Speaker 4: I really liked that album, but yes, it in terms
of like the wider fan base, it's probably near near
the bottom of the pile because it's a sound where
like because abtually they take quite a long time between albums. Now,
even before Panamama, there was like a four or five
year gap, so like because they do all these like
soundsk pps and soundtracks sort of stuff in between, And
that was then when they tried to sort of incorporate
a lot of that sort of like electronic stuff. They'd
been playing with that dispute sound, and I thought it
was like a cool decision. Didn't exactly go down swimmingly
with a lot of the fans, So it kind of
like following that, they they kind of said it into
the sort of nostalgia circle a little bit. They did
anniversary shows for Wildlife and Rooms of the House, and
that's where they kind of just like well, Active Live,
but that album got kind of brushed aside, and it's
kind of like pretty long. There's like that particular era
that they've moved on from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, with There's being such a long form album. I
remember that last album being quite sparse with and heavy
on the sort of atmospherics, you know, more than ever,
you know, more than the hardcore side of what they do.
Speaker 2: Would it be.
Speaker 1: Accurate to say that Largest Vite in their kind of
you know, as they've graduated to more sort of like
elder statesmen of their scene, evolved into a less frantic,
perhaps more considered enveloping kind of beast or because this
album is a bit more, to my memory, a bit
more rock than the last one. Is this in maybe
some way drawing back some of the things that Largest
bet Founds you know, really loved about them.
Speaker 4: Also, I would have said they did become a bit
more measured and the hardcore pushed to side. Rooms of
the House was sort of the first one that started
to be less on the hard side of things, and
they took that to kind of its extent on Panorama.
This album does seem to be tapping back into the
earliest side of things.
Speaker 3: This is you know, a very analog album.
Speaker 4: There's almost no electronics on it, which I think conceptually
is actually kind of tied into the loose kind of
narrative and conceptual theme of the record.
Speaker 1: But this is kind of getting there's a lot of
stuff about Tesla's are going to kill us.
Speaker 4: Yes, we've talked to you know, you know, we've talked
about like being lost in the Digital World. This is
loudest mutes Lost in the Digital World album. This is
them kind of going like, sure, we're having an extential
crisis is where we are in the world because of technology.
So they've decided to make an album that is, you know,
a sixty five minute somewhat conceptual album. That is them
kind of plugging in and playing again, and it is
tapping back into sort of the more post hardcore roots,
which is why don't call her a comeback. But this
album has got people who I thought were like seemed
to be tuned up with that dispute are kind of
back on board and of a sudden, this is the most
kind of praise and sort of high pe I've seen
around the Ladys View album in like quite some time.
Speaker 1: Okay, interesting, yeah, I mean, with you know, six years
from the last one, I imagine you will have been
really looking forward to it. What's your kind of take
on you know, how their shapes up in the cannon.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is the most laddist Viete. It's like
there are a few bands. There are a few bands.
Speaker 4: I am so going to be willing to take sixty
five minutes of I was, I mean really I was,
but I was like, is this going to be too much?
Actually dispute sixty five minutes of it? And maybe it's
just my softwak for this band, but I'm in on
this album the entire time. I am so, like, just
completely enveloped in the storytelling, even if some of it is,
you know, a bit nonsense, but it just does everything
I want to be On the long form songs, I mean, interestantly,
they released almost this entire album before the SOLM came out,
because like the album is kind of like split into
acts either like some of there like several songs, some
of them are just like one long eight minute song,
but the album seems to be kind of like divided
into acts that they did release as like EPs. I
listened to the very first one, which is like the
first three tracks on the album. I was like, cool,
that's fine, I'll wait for the album and then I
and then I realized they were releasing all of it.
I was like, yeah, no, I don't need to sort
of like listen to the sound for it comes out.
But it is like divided into quite sort of like
segmented chunks. But as a whole, I'm so on board
of this because it is just like we kind of
tap back into what I loved about Wildlife in particular,
was gonna like not feeling totally regret. It doesn't feel
like total regression of an album. It is more in
line with the early stuff, but it's not you know,
going back to it. I think I saw you in
my sleep, Darling, kind of that level of like emo
shirt tugging, like oh look at us, where we're looking
back to the past. I think it's a really interesting,
still quite experimental points album from Ladispute. That is, I
sympathize with anyone who doesn't like Ladispute who has to
listen to this because they are a particular band. You know,
there are there are things about Latspute that are if
you're not in on it, if it's the vocals if
it's the kind of like meandering music, the sort of
the lack of structured to the songs, things like the
very sort of linear aature of kind of like meander long.
Speaker 3: I get it.
Speaker 4: But for someone who loves this band, this album is
just a constant kind of like supplot them doing the
things I love, but in ways that still sound interesting
and not and like I say, not a regression.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I'm all in on this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's amazing that this kind of thing they've now
taken it to a point where they have like regular
eight minute songs, you know, like lard Dispute, Are they
are epic. Wayner's right that they've really taken that to
an extreme of the art form, and I do I
greatly respect the level of writing that goes into kind
of crafting these long form conceptual you know, storytelling, arcs,
everything that we're talking about there with again the the
technology involvement. There's a lot of like religious stuff on
this album as well, a lot of references to that,
you know, churches being built and you know, those kind
of communities and so on. From the second he yells
I shaved my head in the sink in the opening seconds,
I was out, but you know there's a there's a
build that occurs with the bass tone at the start
of that that is pretty like the bass is pretty
thick on this album.
Speaker 2: I like that, and I do.
Speaker 1: I really like the drum tone and this has this
you know, almost Steve Albinish kind of rusty, big open,
you know, room sounding kind of snare drum and everything.
The recording on this, I think sounds really good, like
it's a really natural, clear twenty five translation of like
a late nineties emo pot ark or organic kind of sound,
you know where again very very analogue. Sounds like hoardings
from like the Midwest emo boom of of the mid
nineties or something like that, and I really like that.
You'll be shocked to know that I haven't gone back
to Panorama in six years. But I do remember on
this the actual like grooves and the band on this
much more present than I remember them being, you know,
like a man with hands and ankles bound stepping up
some of the kind of the pep in the groove
with the Rhythmaceline yeah yeah, and then like kind of
the really squawlling, like screeching noisy guitar that keeps kind
of coming in almost build this kind of like emo
violence feel that kind of parts of that, So that's cool,
and then you know it is kind of there's a
couple of moments where it goes elsewhere where auto fiction
detail kind of saunters along almost like a laid back,
casual sort of rock groove with an almost like rock
and roll guitar solo in it. It just happened to have
this mad vocalist over the top of it and thirty
seconds of him spoken word mumbling about dogs at the
end of it. But you know, that kind of groove
is fun. There's even one bit at the end of
the field where you have an almost like doom post
metal type rift.
Speaker 2: Just I'm big on that.
Speaker 1: Bit, and it's got tone, it's got heft, and combined
with the sort of Americana vibes already in the album.
For that little moment, we almost could be listening to
like a less heavy inter Armor or something for just
a moment.
Speaker 2: And that's cool.
Speaker 3: I'm glad.
Speaker 4: I was hoping you could at least, you know, find
time to be like that's a riff, because I couldn't
believe it when I was like the field is you know,
it's one of the kind of like more ten songs
on the album.
Speaker 3: There is a tension building of this, like the sort
of this kid kind of like trying.
Speaker 4: To impress his dad by and like going on hunter
trips and then being traumatized by a pit full of
deer carcasses, and so like the tensions there and that
song in the narrative went away and it kind of
musically builds, and when they slam into that riff, I
was like, oh my, that's that's something that us people
have never done before. I was like, their fuss because again,
I agree, like the band are so much more present
on this album.
Speaker 3: I think those first three.
Speaker 4: Songs in particular, like that first sort sweet of track
that is more rocking. I do have to laugh at
the amount of sink trauma that like post hard cornemo
bands are going through this year that they're they're having
a hard time with sinks.
Speaker 1: But like like the concept lots of people having a
heart type it's just as an epidemic where like someone
has been manically screaming about like being upset by something
in the scene, like it's there, like I'm just saying,
but yeah, no, I think musically this album is so
much more involved even in the song you know, like
environmentally environmental casting film, which is really delicate.
Speaker 3: That is like a nine minute song.
Speaker 2: That's the first like epic song.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that does again I've come on long songs
for this me is what a long song because it
does you know, it's it's moving, and you know, about
three and a half listening, it bursts and joining us
starting to like scream about frustration and sort of the
inevitable thing of like only being able to grow older
and not being able to stop the passion of time.
And it doesn't feel long to me because I hang
off these words and the music is kind of constantly building,
and I think like the band are really in sync
with Jordan's.
Speaker 3: And voters where they they they they.
Speaker 4: Are so like the cameras they sort of paint him
to sort of like yelp over always sort of matches,
where like when he is, you know, mumbling, it is
super minimal and it is you can pick up all
the elements and when he does kind of build his
Manu scream, it's not just him kind of like shouting
weirdly over kind of like very nothing electronic stuff, which
is what I think some of the problems people had
with panor Arma. It does you know, the music does
can of like build in panic intention around that. And
I think these songs, it just keeps these songs really
interesting for me anyway, as someone who is not put
off by his vocals.
Speaker 1: There's one point in that song when he's going on
about the journey of a bit of wood turning into
a chair and then turning into like the banister or
your house or whatever, and it's it's it's a hilariously
large dispute thing to do. I don't know, yeah, him
like slam poetry ing over all of it. The fundamental
thing with lud dispute is he and his writing is
the entire repeal. So if you don't like it, it
doesn't work, you know. And when he's not yelping, he's mumbling,
which I might actually like dress like stuff like self
stuff like self portrait backwards. When he's like, it's like,
speak clearly, man, fucking fix your posture, stand up straight,
come on, you sound like an idiot. But and for
this duration time he's tiresome more than anything else. And
I think people are expecting me to kind of rant
and rave about this and overreact to it. I don't
think it's worth that. It's musically quite considered in what
it's doing, if not revolutionary for the genre.
Speaker 2: Wow it's long, Yeah, like fourteen tracks.
Speaker 1: I was checking the time, like, Wow, I don't think
there even though there are some cool grooves here and
there and stuff like that, because it is so sort
of stripped back. I don't think there's enough variety for
this to have. You know, they've got songs that are
eight minute you know, long builds, and then they're more
sort of groove in mid ten post songs that are
like five minutes long or whatever, and that's basically all
of the color you're getting spread out over fourteen tracks.
But against all popular belief, I don't actually have a
principal problem with laud dispute. They are leaders in what
they do. They clearly take their art immensely seriously. I
just don't want to listen to it anymore. But this
seems like it's maybe again sort of a you know, back.
Speaker 2: On the up for them. Maybe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it feels like that me. I think that a
lot of you said there is fair because I can
really can understand anyone who does take issue with Jordan
as a vocalist, because he is such an acquiet taste,
like even more so than some of the other like
wobblers and sheeps that you kind of like mock me
for kind of like Jordan, he's so out there by
those vocals when he is, like the way I think
his lyricism, the sort of the poets of it, combined
with his vocalivy is it's such an acquiet taste. But
for Fanders Ope, this this feels like the most kind
of like and was like, oh, I mean I think
they've always been good, but I can welcome back everyone
who's kind of like decided this sound was like it
is seen as kind of like a if not a
return to form, a kind of like an interesting new
direction that everyone can kind of get on board with
again like top sellers Banquet, the other longest song thing.
I think that's really interesting conceptually, the narrative stuff about
you know, lost in this way is growing up in
a Christian community and how like and there's things you
know about like in like the real word stuff. Their
hometown there was a massive like self driving car factory
built there that then kind of like came and went
and promised other people jobs and then took a load
of job So there's kind of.
Speaker 2: Like a real education.
Speaker 4: I think, like genuinely there is a very similar sort
of thing to that, like that kind of like the
real world being lost to technology and small town America
in Michigan that these are some of the victims of it,
where these township promised a big thing and get kind
of sodip river. And so it all comes from a
very real place for otherspeople, which is again why I
can buy into this because like, whilst it is you know,
kind of quite flowery conceptual takes on the subjects, where
like top Sells Banquet is the early is the rapture
basically nearly getting left behind, it's still coming from a real,
like genuine place for them, and I think that's really
interesting to me. So yeah, I'm so on board of this.
I can respect it's not for everyone. But if you've
ever had a sort of passing instant atspute, I think
if you may be tuned out of them, come back
around for this one.
Speaker 3: It's long, but I do think it's rewarding.
Speaker 1: Cool, more long awaited even than New Low dispute. There
was a crazy day for fans of people crying over
hardcore a couple of weeks ago, because on the same
day we got the first Modern Life Is War album
in twelve years, Life on the Moon, at the follow
up to twenty thirteen's Fever Hunting. Had they broke it
up in that time and this is like a reunion album,
or had they just been very slow to make an
album like Tool.
Speaker 4: They became kind of like a part time occasionally playing shows,
and I saw them in the time between though, like
Fever Hunting, like not on the Fever Hunting cycle, but
on a kind of like random We're going to come
back and play a few shows a few years later.
Speaker 3: That that's where they kind of existed at that point.
Speaker 1: Okay, my only knowledge musically of Modern Life Is War
really is the album Witness, which some years ago we
did an episode on the Patreon where we all swapped
albums for each other to listen to, and Sam, you
gave me that album Witness because you were aiming to
find one of these emotional hardcore bands who wouldn't put
me off to quite the same extent as a Largetpute
or a Twoche Morey, who I famously do not like
either of his bands, and you were right. Modern life
is war do toe that line, but there are there
are links into much harder forms of hardcore, almost links
into the power violence world. Even at times it's much
more intense, it's much more angry, and they are a
formative influence on a lot of those bands who have
come since as well. But that is their twenty you know,
two and five album, so I don't really know much
of what they've kind of gotten up to since then.
How high were the expectations for this album after you know,
such time away and whatever? Again, the albums they've done
kind of prior to Going Away have been well.
Speaker 4: I think people who like Monerol Life is what hold
everything they've done in high regard. They're one of those
bands where like, if they're coming back to an album,
it feels like it's going to be something significant. I
will say with each album sort of from Witness they drifted,
they've drifted slightly further and further away from hardcore, where
Fever Hunting has a couple of like hard jugs in
but it is it is more experimental. It is out
there even for that, so id to sort show some
of the really experiment stuff they're going to do, So
it's kind of felt like they've always like still kept
one fit in there, but drifted further away. So everyone's
gonna like, well, if they're coming back after you know,
a like twelve years from that, how much forever they're
going to have just a weigh what are they sort
of having to say about it? But it still feels
like one of us more fans they know if they're
doing an album, there's a significant reason for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, we're back down to thirty five
minutes in this kind of music again. So I was
expecting some some zip, but I wasn't sure how you know,
violent or raggedness might be in relation to Witness, which
again I think this album might be very strange for
me because I've only heard two of their albums twenty
years apart.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you've not seen the stuff.
Speaker 2: This is weird. What's going on here?
Speaker 3: This is the weirdest thing they've done.
Speaker 4: Like, this is the most out there, least hard on
modern life as War have been. I don't know, you know,
still songs we can kind of like be like, you know,
there's a Baud who did Dead Ramones and stuff like that,
where it's got that zip and pep to it. But
it's got you know, weird jazz breaks and like spooky
saxophone vaudeville elements thrown in. It's it's a for a
thirty five minute and by a hardcore band. It's super experimental.
Speaker 1: It's very strange, and I was quite Yes, the intro
is this weird sort of almost like indie dream pop
thing with like chirpy little synthesizers, but also like a
kind of spooky, intimidating drone kind of rising up in
the background of it, and it really catches the ear.
And then the guitar tone that comes in on the
first song on the Moon and that rhythm I was
not expecting. And again I put this in because twelve
years Away really respected band in their scene. If they
just came back and delivered a good album of this,
you know, kind of hardcore, it'd be like cool, you know,
good for them. But I was, I was, you know,
really the act of that getting this for a review
was made a lot more kind of spicy by being like,
what the hell is going on here? Because I mean
that first song alone, it's like a kind of jigging
swing punk song. It's like we're getting down at the
family wedding while the man is shouting over it.
Speaker 2: It's really strange.
Speaker 3: There's that kind of like folk elements blended in their life.
Speaker 4: I think like First on the Moon it is, you know,
recognizable to me as a modern life, is what fan
because it's kind of just got that panicked vocal delivery
with a slightly sort of stabbing riff, but it's just
kind of rattling and rollicking and has that kind of
like dusty Americana thing in this hardcore punk setting weirdo
experimental sprinkles and.
Speaker 3: Flavors over it.
Speaker 4: I think so like that they're they're really pushing sort
of the sonic textures they're playing with fervor, and I
think like that goes into like there's a telephone that
never stops ringing, pushing that even more further that that
song is like really panicked and stressed out, goes into
this jazz and on the Bridge and just completely freaks out,
and I was like that was when I was like,
oh that anything goes on this album. This is one
of Lever's walk kind of like really letting their freak
flag out a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, it also has a quite analogue
recording style, but it's even more sort of like Dead
and Echoe, where it's like it's not as crisp as
the largest Pute one. It's kind of more difficult to
get a handle on. And then you have, you know,
like stuff like Johnny Gonne is like a runaway kind
of rock and roll song. You mentioned there's a telephone
that never stops ringing, which has a kind of like really,
you know, he's yelping this hook, but in a less
you know, I am so sad and more kind of deranged,
I'm going to go crazy? What am I going to do?
So it does emotionally to me registered kind of different.
And the bit in that song, which again I wasn't
prepared to write these words down when I would going
into it, I sort of John Zorn esque sacks twisting
and tormenting. And then there's a track off that called
Empty Shoes, which is like really fully tripped out like
psych you know, psychedelic track where you're in not the
fucking red room in Twin Peaks or something really bizarre.
And I was doing a little snooping around again read
it in places like that, and I think this is
a direction that some of the more longtime fans aren't
jiving with, you know, this sort of slurring psychedelic rock
feel that this album has, like the stuff like Jackie No, which,
like I say, really slurred, kind of lumbers around without
much sort of direction maybe until the last minute of it.
Speaker 2: It's really oddome.
Speaker 4: I mean, I can understand that if you are purely
into sort of the hard thing, maybe not doing that. But
I really kind of dig this dark American or almost
like Nick Caves kind of like approach that they've gotten
some of these songs like Empty Shoes and Jackie Ono,
which again it has like it has you know, like why,
but it's got this like just shuffling drum beat and
it kind of like builds on that and it does,
you know, build to a bit more of an aggressive
climates work, and you can feel this this is this
is still a punk band playing with these songs where
that I think the aggression and the energy isn't completely
gone where I think if they completely sat out, I
would understand if fans were like, what is this, this
is nothing like that. I just think it's like to me,
this is still recognizable as modern life is more and
I think the signs were there on the albums prior
that they would eventually get like this. It just feels
that we've kind of, like in the twelve year absence,
skipped about two albums out that would have like kind
of further bridged the gap to get to this point
from Fever Hunting, where you can I can see the
through line from Fever Hunting to this, but I feel
like we've lost the middle act and we've kind of
gone straight to the most like freaked out version.
Speaker 3: Of it, which I really like. But I can understand
if that's.
Speaker 1: It's like if Out the Gates had come back after
Slaught the Soul and gone straight to the nightmare of
being Yeah, without having the kind of build back into
that all reality and stuff, and you've got it. You
look at the Morning Sun, which is like a really
like a tiny, fast, old school hardcore punk song straight
into in the Shadow of Ingredient, which is one of
my favorite tracks on n CADAS, is like big grooving,
kind of rock and roll kind of feel to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: He even goes whoo at one point at the end
of it, which is kind of you don't expect that,
and then it goes into it as the title says
a literal dub track after that, it's this is way
more eclectic and off the wall that I was expecting,
maybe more than people who, again following this kind of
music are really used to. And I don't know how
fully this got it toucked into me as an album.
I think it certainly keeps you more at arm's length
than maybe some of their older, more viscerally angry stuff did.
Sometimes it is quite off putting, but I was consistently,
you know, intrigued and curious as what they'd have around
every corner. Again compared to the Lardestpute one, which is
twice as long and much more kind of stuff explanatory one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was amazed at how much they fit like
fins faate form. It's worse that someone was like thirty
five minutes song. I was like, I'm guessing it, you know,
kind of just.
Speaker 3: Gonna be maybe a bit more like.
Speaker 4: Weathered and worn down, like hardcore punk, because you know,
theres on veteran hardcore band who've been away for tweys.
I was of expecting like something a little bit more
worn down. I wasn't expecting this much experimentation to be
crammed into if I'm an album that still has time
to thur in, you know, a forty second hardcore tracker
and kind of like some rock and roll stuff and Colismonic,
which is like the most like stirring and like define
in its melody sort of song.
Speaker 3: Now it's the longest track. It's the one that takes
the most time to build.
Speaker 4: It like the five or five minutes of this album,
which again not a long album, is just this one
track which builds, so they they do kind of like
make the most of a very concise package.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought that the closing track was more more
climactic as well. Yeah, this one, I think everyone listening
maybe there's like a fifty to fifty chance of if
you like this or go oh I don't like that,
I'll turn it off. But it's it's certainly, you know,
it's an interesting listening from a band coming back after
this length of time and doing something like this. So
modern life is war. What is the name of that album,
Life on the Moon? Let us move on to let's
pivot away from hardcore boys with emotions and into black
metal boys with emotions. To veg iron Frey height Inen
is the name of this album was actually Sam's idea
to review this one. I wasn't gonna put it forward.
And then Sam went, this is a rare black metal band.
I have only positive things to say about. You should
take this opportunity. And I was like, you know what,
fair enough.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so they're gonna find out they're a band I
feel like I take for Gride or the rais like,
I forgure how brilliant they are until they come back
for a new album, and then I'm kind of like, oh, yeah,
this band of fucking amazing. I love everything this band
have done. Basically finished there you told me to listen
to when that came out in twenty seventeen, I want
to say, and I was like, this is amazing. I
should listen to more black metal again. Those I was like,
kind of people do. And I'm sure somebody are going
to tell me you know this or it's a posed by
metal band. It's all That's what I was thinking, which
is maybe why this is a bit more palatable to me.
But I've like, you know, liked everything this band have
done pretty much. So when I saw the new Mamma,
I was like, fuck, yeah, I want to, you know,
to about how great.
Speaker 3: This band are.
Speaker 1: Yeah soh Devegona f Height. We have reviewed them before,
but if you've joined us in the last four years
since the last one and you don't know him, here's
another nice introduction.
Speaker 2: This band are German Shoka.
Speaker 1: They've gradually kind of clawed their way up to being
one of the key kind of most respected contemporary black
metal bands around. I got into them in twenty fifteen
with their album Stella, and then their twenty seventeen album
Finished There absolutely bowled me over, Like that is one
of the best black metal albums of the last ten
years in my opinion. It's so sweeping and epic but
also still like freezing cold and blistering. It's one of
their A plus examples of being like really extra in
black metal, but without veering into like, you know, symphonic
black metal cheese.
Speaker 2: It's just really gripping.
Speaker 1: And we then reviewed them on their twenty twenty one
follow up album, Nocturn, and the album's also excellent. They
are a highly melodic but not like when you think
of the sort of the subgenre of like melodic black metal,
I you mean sort of Swedish a section watte and
type stuff. This if you lean more towards say post
black metal in your black metal tastes. I don't know
if they're going to fry height strictly are that, although
on this album I think they maybe lean more towards
at times than they have before. But I think they
would appeal to you if you like that kind of thing,
because they have that level of, you know, kind of
class of delicate composition that the best bands in that
world have, and this very you know, introspective, really solemn
feel even when they are like blasting and screaming their
heads off. Sam has said, you like this band, and
I'm guessing as you mentioned them that this album is
no exception.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, this album, it just it further kind of
cementss like, yeah, this is These are one of my
favorite black male bands actor right now, Like every someone
here like really stands out. It's forty five minutes or
something like that come of these that one, but it's
does a lot in that time. I feel like Marta
begins with this like gradual build, you know, it sets
the tone really nicely, and then it's off when they
when this band are doing that black metal like scorching
kind of like blasts with the full on tremlone all
that I'm like, this is the sopting. We're go like,
oh yeah, this is what black metal does. That makes
it special when you get these moments that just can
like carry you and they are sweeping and epic, really intense,
the vocals are super fiery. It's just it's all going
off at that moment, and I'm like, this is really cool.
When it's shifts into that more kind of like galloping riff,
the melodis that player are still really stirring and intricate,
and again, like you know, this is a nine minute
black metal song that I am locked in the entire time,
and I never feel that there's a wasted sort moment
on it. It's always moving forward, it's always doing something
that's catching my ears, and it's kind of like that
across this whole record.
Speaker 3: Really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, you've got six traps here, one of
which is an interlude, so you've got some meaty compositions,
nine and a half minute opener, and then a ten
minute second track. You know, so we are we're testing
some limits again. But again here's another example of how
to really well structure an album so that songs like
this you know, really maintain that because I think one
of the things that deveg Guynda fry Hike do as
well as like almost any other black metal band around
today is momentum and there's just like power surge of
when they launch into it, and they don't, you know,
fully just they don't abuse that because Marta has this
sort of dark, burgeoning, post metal ish introduction with this low,
you know, cult of lunary kind of drone kind.
Speaker 4: Of like a grind of industrial sort of thing in
the background of it, kind of like yeah, murmuring.
Speaker 1: Away kind of their trademark icy guitar sort of wall
that's going on there as well, but really like you know,
oppressive way for an anilytist to start. But by the
time it's like ready to let rip, it's created such
an atmosphere and scale to it, and then it just
keeps climbing. And there are even some sort of you know,
kind of semi melodic choruses that just like power atop
the rest of this that they still manage to feel
really dark and almost kind of like gurgled out, but
they are really you know, blistering in the way they
go forward, and it's you know it's not a like
forul like thing, because this, I think is more measured sounding.
I would say it's not like fully Ott the whole time,
but just because it's in the same episode and they
came out on the same day. If you are into
the lawna Shore record for its grand scope and you're
maybe interested in a black metal recommendation to you know,
something to guide you towards that stuff, I would check
this out because the way songs submerge and then build
out of these droney type of passages. At the same time,
if you're into cot of Luna and bands of that ilk,
I think you could connect to.
Speaker 2: That as well.
Speaker 1: And the way, you know, choirs and stuff are used
in it. They're they're kind of in a more supporting role,
like they're behind the black metal. Yeah, but you can
always they make a difference because you can always like
detect that they're there, you know. So the second track, Zibulba,
starts with a quite fuzzed out black metal riff that
does kind of remind you, oh yeah, like there is
some of that old Norwegian influence, like they've almost taken
an old Gorgoroth riff or something and decided to epic
the fuck out of it for ten minutes, but where
they take it becomes so wide and so stirring, like
taking that core progression and layering the fuck out of it.
The bit when the drums go halftime halfway through feel
so cathartic, yes, because you've just been like inflating a
balloon for like four minutes up to that point.
Speaker 4: That switchin rhythm just adds so much songs to it,
just like you have been like saying, like you sa
it inflating and you've been blistering along and then it's
suddenly like snap into this change, and it's like lifting
you up a step further, super relating and like again
from there, you know, it goes quiet shortly after that,
and you get these like minimist simps, but it they
pull so much emotion out of you with those kind
of like synth touches and the lead guitar coming in,
and it like first thing is like these songs sound
vast and epic, but that this word we're talking about,
that nuance, like you can pick out the different elements
and it's not kind of like a production that's everything
on ten the entire time, where it comes like just
an overwhelming cophony of sound, like you can really listen
to the intricacies and again, like you know when it
just hits that sort of big burst at the end
and just rides it out, like you can really like
immerse off in it. And I think that it's not
like EOS, which is like almost like melodic rock guitars,
like for this sort of the intro where they're quite
sort of like, yeah, clear, it sounds like the Pretender,
like the guitar intro.
Speaker 2: But then that I was thinking of the kind of
rustic feel of the last cut of Lunar album again,
but I can see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I could take it to that.
Speaker 4: That's what thing, that's my mirac But when that song
goes off properly, it's the most evil this album sounds
where I'm like, that's all like that kind of like
cinematic satanist behemoth sort of level of like just like.
Speaker 2: It sounds like a behemoth thrift this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that bit is amazing. I think I was like, yeah,
that that that is like evil and menacing, and it
kind of again just swarms from darkness. Even that's where
you get the clean vocals coming in a bit more.
There's a desperation to them, which kind of fits in
with the sort of the nastier, darker tone of that song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that has almost some sort of throat
singing in the back somewhere. I'm sure there is something
like that, And there is this depth in the mix
that you know it's got is it's very intense, but
it's also it's got as you know, there's space where
there are things at sort of the back, at the
edges where you're going like, what's that mysterious kind of
sound that's out of playing view, but I'm detecting it,
you know, it's adding into something. The production is still
very crisp in terms of I think this one's actually
like a lot basier than they can be, which is
kind of unusual. But the drum patterns and how technical
they are, it's still very you know, preserved. I love
the keys that come in towards the end of tracks
like zib Alba that just feel like stars, you know.
And then yeah, the build at the end of that
song with the strings is like a really great arrangement.
Fragment is kind of sort of goffy, with like a
fully melodic vocal that takes over and it just fits
into their sound really well and really naturally, where it's
not unusual to just have a cleanly sung kind of
slow song like that. And in the beginning of the
song Forlorn goes almost full Alcest but like the kind
of gloomy reflection rather than the sun kisss you know
at Alcest thing, lots of like trippy reverb on the
guitar and this kind of big rock beat almost.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I feel like the second half of the AMI in
particular is where they do kind of avenge minds as
all like the post black metal, black gay sort of thing,
where again, like you're right, Fragment is you know, more gothic,
but like you have the finished air interlude and then
fall On, which is like purely buying those piano melodies
and it is like really lush and pretty but very
somber at the same time. And this is where I'm like, oh, yeah,
like this is more spacious and experiment on this second
half the album.
Speaker 3: But if you like the.
Speaker 4: Kind of like shoegazy reverb guitar lines that you can
find on Death Evan, you've get similar things on like
full On, kind of like channeled through black metal, and
I think it's a really like nice way to close,
like the atmosphere when you get like the interplay of
the sort of the droning cleans with the screens but
still manages to sound huge. I think like it, just
like from such finished Alum always sort of knows exactly
when to mix things up. Again, each song does feel
really distinct. While I'm not like saying any of these
are interchangeable and another so I'm I'm just kind of
hanging off them the entire time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I liked the nock Turn album a bit less
than Finished Here, which is just exceptional, and I like
this one a bit less than that, So I wouldn't
say that this is one of my like top top
black metal albums this year, but they are still incredibly identifiable,
incredibly skilled. Give it a listen and listen to Finisteria
as well if you want your head blown clean off
last album. It's another one from Sam when you look
at that dishpetz. So how I'm going to say that
big you know double for Germans here Something to Consume
is the name of this album. This band are actually
not from Germany, or I'm going to guess from some
of their surnames. They might be some some heritage or something.
They're from Austin, Texas and this is a debut album
but produced by will Yip Sam.
Speaker 2: You recommended this band? What's their game?
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is the name that I've just kind of
seen floating about a lot the last few months. My
assister saw them at two thousand Trees and said they
were great, and I was like, okay, cool, I'll put a.
Speaker 3: Pin in that.
Speaker 4: Their names are sort of popped up here and there.
As I mentioned, they're on the Coachella line, so I
was like keeping an eye. Was like, when the album comes,
let's keep any on that. This could either be another
all rock band that I'm like, that's pretty cool, or.
Speaker 3: What I really into.
Speaker 4: When I hit plan on this, I was kind of like, yeah,
I'm gonna put a pin in this and mention this
is one that if you are into alt rock, check
this out, because I was surprised that this is one
of this one of the times, one of these all
rock bands, which a lot of time I feel like
I kind of know what to expect when I'm going
into them. They actually hit me with a couple of
surprises this band, and I was like Okay, I don't know,
there's stuff too this. This is there's more going on
here than all rock band, which I'm kind of happy
to go along with a lot of these bands anyway.
But I found this a way more interesting and kind
of like curious record to talk about this. That's why
I was gonna like, let's throw this in.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw the words you know, alt rock and so
on attached to this, and ye know, I didn't know
this at first. But also when you consider the fact
that there is will yet production, you are trained to
consider a sort of kind of certain sort of thing
right after. You know, we did the Pool Kids album
last month, which no shore than anyone who liked it.
I hope that some people did like it, but that's
why we brought it on. But I personally thought he
was very boring and shapeless. I couldn't believe when I
checked this out, and the first song I checked out,
throw Yourself to the Sword, has a fucking metal riff
and that heavy metal gallop like oh my god, and
like you know when we say, oh the Dirty Ill,
I've got a metal riff. It's because you know, it's
kind of their usual sound but with a bit of
like Thrash or Iron made an.
Speaker 2: Influence or something.
Speaker 1: This sounds like sludge metal. It sounds like very early
Baroness or Black Tusk or something like with tone, and
then in the verses the kind of do do do
do the sort of swing that is really purely out
of that doom world in a way that like you
can't fake a kind of passing interest in that just
by turning the tone up or whatever. It's got the
swing that those bands have, And I went, what why
is this? This is not what I thought this was
going to be at all? And you have my attention
when this is like a will Yip grunge kind of
oat rock album, but you've got red album rifts on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I've not heard.
Speaker 4: That's something I listened to sound kind of in order,
And when I got to that, which is track three,
I was kind of like, I really hope Paring gets
something from this, at least having the audacity to like
again a kind of heavy meld gallop but without you
write sludgy, nastier tone, and like vocally you know she's
got more grit to it. She's snarling and grunting through
that song, and I think like having to me, that's
one of the coolest things one of these bands can
do is have a song that easy, you know, a
heavy metal track like I love it when the When
the Dirty and Heel do it. But that's what that's
kind of been part there stick for a while now
and they can let it more on the new album.
But not knowing it's coming at all on this album
was such a kind of like revelation. I was like,
this is fucking cool and it's still again I think
actually quite a catchy, fun song along that it's got
a really good solo. There's more substance to this band
because again, like you can look at the two songs
that come before on the record, they're more interesting.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: The album opens with pop punk anthem, which is it's
not a problem and you know it's big on Shue
gay Zy Vibe, but then it does kind of like
shift and hit that changes something that pace was like
on track one that they're still kind of like throwing
into interesting tempo changes. So I was like, I'm really
into what this band are about. That there's clearly a
bit more thought going into this than just being another
or rock band.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, the pop punk anthem song. You know,
it starts kind of what you would expect with sort
of new wave, you know, grunge type stuff, and you
know it does sound good obviously, well yep, you know,
the base tone in particular is really really good, got
a nice, satisfying kind of clack on the snare drum.
But then it gets more guttural to the point that
when when the singer kicks in can talt into a
full like howl where there are moments of her delivery
that would not be a myss on an extreme metal record.
And the chorus is like genuinely good. It's like a
nineties kind of radio song chorus, but with this like
howl in the delivery that sounds like she's drank a
load of milk before recording it, and it's just kind
of being like, ah, and I love it and throw
yourself to the sword. Riff sounds more like a riff
you would hear at desert Fest or Damnation than riot Fest,
you know, and this record it has diversity where after
so many fucking, you know, nice punk album where my
main criticism is, don't be afraid to have a bit
of volume and a bit of heft, or you know,
stuff that goes down the kind of Lambrini girls, shouty
modern post punk thing that's less kind of our collective thing.
It's so nice to hear a band from this alternative
world who aren't afraid to be like ugly and feral.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: They kind of remind me of The Distillers a bit
in that way, even though sonically they're different because they're
not coming from that kind of Gilman street punk thing,
but just the roar on it just.
Speaker 2: Kind of like ah has a lot of that kind of.
Speaker 1: Brodie Darl sort of attitude in it. I think they've
got a few different singers, because there's the one who
sings songs like Voir Dire, which are a little bit
more kind of serpentine and a little bit more shadowy,
and then others who are as said full thrall eating
three bars of chocolate and then going arah bellowing.
Speaker 4: Riding with My Girls is like another one like that way.
It's like that is all I think The Distillers is.
Speaker 2: A real motorhead.
Speaker 4: That song that's like like like fuzzed up, chunky kind
of like sound to that song where it is a
rollicking motorcycle anthem I'm like, again, that's that's really cool,
and like they know when to like mix it out
because you get like bubbly punk or like Red forty,
which is like really like playful, but you still get
that kind of styling thing.
Speaker 2: Red forty is like a kind of heavy surf rock song.
Speaker 4: Yeah, go Get Dressed, is you know, minimalist kind of
like dreamy shoegames with the vocalists are like barely picking
up over a whisper, but it is nicely placed in
the record where it feels like a nice kind of
like break from the.
Speaker 3: Sort of lot of other things.
Speaker 4: I think like the album is really well paced, and
it shows a kind of like aclecticism in tones and flavors,
which doesn't feel jarring at any point.
Speaker 3: It just kind of feels like they're a.
Speaker 4: Band of like they have a wide range of interest
where they kind of want to chane it all through
more of an rock sort of flavor, but don't just
want to do the same kind of like alt rock, shoegazy,
deaf tones, all the things we've sort of mentioned all
the bands are the same things. Dicepit Stone or Dispits whatever.
Don't want to be like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, American porn had the kind of brightness and the
guitars of that you know, contemporary alt rock, the stuff
that people who are listening to bands like Fleshwater are into,
you know, but it is also kind of yowling with
that attitude and has an extended bridge of like noise
sludge rock kind of it's.
Speaker 4: Pissed off that song, Yeah, when they Shut your Mouth
kind of sort of hooks on.
Speaker 1: It, like sort of beat down part sound to no
One has like one of those really like tuned low,
slightly liquid Jerry Cantrell Circarrania Fog or like his like
a solo album kind of kind of riffs. And then,
like I said, writing My Girls is like is a
Motorhead song, And just think remembering, you know, everyone remembers
Nirvana obviously, but remembering that Nirvana and all of their
grunge piers they were influenced by Black Sabbath, they were
influenced by the Melvins and all this heavy, doomed out
kind of stuff and going you know, not just going hey,
let's do that again, but also doing its own kind
of thing with it. Like it's it is quite a
grab bag of a debut, Like My ears were drawn
to more tracks than some tracks, more than others. But
it's so much more unique than the kind of vast
majority of like grunge revivalist stuff that that's come out
in fuck years, you know. And it also rocks a
lot harder and a lot heavier when it really wants
to really cool. Debut Dispits that spelled like die Spits.
I'm trying to sound remotely German, but Dispits something to consume.
And that is our last album for this reviews bag.
Thank you very much for being with us. We will
be back next week with probably a hypoblastma with some
let you know everything that's been going on. But right
now there are seven albums there. Let us know if
you agree on our opinions on the likes of Lorna Shore, Fleshwater,
Lour Dispute, so on. Please check out the Scorpion Milk album,
check out the likes of Dispits into their kind of
fry heights as well, these bands that you maybe haven't
heard of, so immediately let us know what your thoughts are.
We will be back once again and Thomas Limberg for
fucking ever go