Speaker 1: Hello, everybody, Welcome to That's No Mattal. We are your
weekly rock punk, heavy metal, heavy music podcast, and we
are here once again to fix you up with what
has been going on and also today a pretty fucking
stellar batch of reviews that have come for us over
the last kind of a few weeks of October twenty
twenty four. I know that, you know today as this
episode drops, there's like a few more like big albums
that people are going to be, you know, keen to
chat about. They've got to wait a couple of weeks
for us because we have some serious stuff to dive
all in on. It's going to be a bumper enough
episode as it is, because we are going to be
talking about the new albums from Blood, Incantation, Undeath, Balance
and Composure, hive Z to Share More, a Rancy Pazuzu
and chat Pile, and we also have what is a
pretty insane amount of news to be going through for
a you know, album review week as well, so we
got to get underweight with all that. My name is
Parenhirsh with me as ever, Elliott Paisley, Sam Dignon, how
are we Yeah? Pretty good?
Speaker 2: Saw Biffy Clara playing Finity Land in Fall this week.
That was a very nice time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we again, we've got a lot that
we need to kind of.
Speaker 2: Get said, there's a lot, so I'll just kind of
like Blitzer and just say Biffy Claro like playing their
weirdest album in Fall like men, and then the after
the seller stafter was playing a bunch of like weird
deep cuts from Opposites, which I.
Speaker 3: Was like, yes, please do this more often.
Speaker 1: You've got to counter the most exciting album with the
most boring one, ipsis.
Speaker 2: But then I think the first part is that the
majority of Sellist was there doing their weirdest freak material,
and then the encore of Machines and many of Horror,
and I was like, that just feels like peak Iffy
Claro to kind of do their like sweetish, smallt siest
kind of like ballads for an encore of their weirdest
set possible.
Speaker 3: But yeah, they were fantastic.
Speaker 2: If you're going to twenty of these celebrations of beginning
shows or been twenty of them, you like, it's just
been a real treat to see that band kind of
like celebrate what eclectic, unique band they are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we would have very much enjoyed catching that or
the Black and Sky Show or something. I Instead, I
saw that the great US black metal band Woe this
week for what I believe was their first time in
the UK, and that was very nice. As said, for
what is we already have like some pretty meaty discussion
points when it comes to our album reviews. We have
enough news to power kind of a few weeks of
this show, so we are going to get through again
lots of live stuff in particular, lots of festival announcement,
show announcement stuff to dissect. We do have to start, unfortunately,
this you know news bracket with of course, the news
that we received just a few days ago for us here,
which was that Paul Deano, of course, the you know,
original singer of you know, Iron Maiden on those first
two albums, had had passed away, and that was you know,
it was a real it was a bolt out of
the blue in terms of I think we all know
that he'd you know, had health problems and you remember
just recently they had announced that he was going to
be kind of stepping back from kind of big international
tours with his band and stuff like that, so he
was kind of beginning to take a back seat, but
you certainly don't expect, you know, within just a couple
of weeks of announcement like that, to you know, wake
up and see, oh fuck, Paul Theanna is gone, no
not again touring so recently, like yeah, you saw like
one of his last performances, right, yeah, well actually checked
on setlers to film. I think it was in the
last half a dozen or so that he put together. Sure, yeah,
it's I mean, it's it's not very rational, but like
you say, when the news came through, I just thought,
I can't be I only saw him two months ago,
which which doesn't really make any sense, but kind of
I'm kind of glad I did now, even though I
kind of came on and wasn't as flastering about it.
It's like I'm glad I saw I am glad I
saw him. Yeah, I mean, it's a moment of significance
because you know, pauled the Anno's biggest legacy. It obviously
comes from you know, two albums released in nineteen eighty
and nineteen eighty one, but those songs, and you know,
those albums and the songs on them are more ingrained
in our like everyday cultural being as metal fans than
plenty of artists who leave behind like countless more songs
and albums over decades and decades, Because every person listening
to us right now, I would wager, even if they're
not actually like a big Iron Maiden fan, will no
songs from those records, whether it be Rathchild or Phantom
of the Opera. You know, I put on my Instagram
that day as a very pitiful little form of a tribute.
But like many days, I drink my tea out of
a Killer's mug, and that is a common item you
can find in most hmvs. Probably right, Like the iconography
of that period is that level of like you know
it to everywhere around us.
Speaker 2: Killers in particular, Like that's one that is so like
as iconic as any of the kind of Dickinson sort
of I made and stuff. And again I I'm not
crazy about the Poliano made into material.
Speaker 1: Really that surprises me. I imagine you'd be the kind
of up the punks you know factor about us.
Speaker 2: I feel like I would be. But it's one I like,
I just never. I don't think it's bad, it just
never not necessarily gravitated towards us. If I like I
made no I was kind of like the big like
the middle classic Dickinson I reckon day.
Speaker 1: You're having a weakening with it like that, I probably will.
Speaker 2: I probably will because it's one where again, like I
haven't listened to those albums in four in a while.
I've listened, though there are songs from them that I'll
still you know, slap on and be like what a banger.
Speaker 3: But it was one where again.
Speaker 2: I know obviously Pauliana has had his troubles over the years,
but it's still is like again just come out of
the blue where it felt like he was active again
but sort of taking a step back, and then it
feels like there must have been quite rapid, like yeah,
towards the end.
Speaker 1: I mean talking about those records. It it's not like
Paul Deianna was even incidental to them, do you know
what I mean? Incidental to how good they are, Like
they're two of my absolute favorite Iron Maiden records and
one of the nice I guess side effects of seeing
it live was like on my way home, I just thought,
I'm going to put on the two Iron Maiden records
he's on, and I had the best time and I've
been listening to them like near constantly since, and those
songs are so much better for Paul Diana's performances. Again,
there's sort of the narrative seems to go, oh, they
had this punk sing and then they've got Bruce Dickinson
and that's when they got good. But it's like he's
such a huge part of why those two records are
still enduring and don't feel don't feel dated. There's such
an an energy to his performances. And you know, Bruce
Dickinson might be the big theatrical rockstar who jumps on
stage and has lungs like a steam engine, but Paul
Deanna was like your coolest friend jumping on and bringing
the house down, and that in the Iron main formula
is it just does something to me, I think just
in general, Like you know, if you if you ask
a field of metal heads, who is your like very
favorite band, your number one band, I would wager that
Iron Maiden would probably poll second, just after the Metallica
and Paul Deano's role as the original vocalist you know
on you know, their debut album, their second album. They're
not like the biggest selling Iron Maiden records but we
all know Paul Diano's name because of that, and we
all have relationships with that work. And you know, again
speaking just for kind of you know, my own generation,
you're coming along after people who actually remember Pauliano being
an Iron Maiden. I still have like incredibly formative memories
of hearing those two Iron Maiden records when I was thirteen.
Even though it is, you know, just those two albums
he's a part of on them, it makes him one
of the most formative voices that many of us will
kind of experience and know in heavy metal, you know,
because he fronted Iron Maiden for three years in total,
I think it is and those have to be three
of the most instrumental years of any band ever, and
the history of metal would be tremendously different without those
two performance you know, two albums and his performances on them.
And again, I think there are some kind almost like
the opposite sensation of what you were decribing it to be, like, oh,
you know, you know, the band really came into their
own when Bruce Dickers and You're in the band. I
think there are many punk leaning Metal Maiden fans out
there who kind of like to be contrarian about like, oh,
only the first two Iron Maiden albums are like worth
your time. And you know, while we enlightened folk obviously
recognize how much Bruce Dickinson brought to the band and
what heights they would reach further into the eighties, I
do think like it's a valid choice for someone to
pick one of the first two Im Maiden abs as
their favorite, because, honestly, still there is a certain energy
to those albums that is like very hard to find
anywhere else. I mean, like, I again, I adore big, epic,
fantastical Iron Maiden, But if you're you know, if you're
walking down a dingy city street and you need that
edge what I Am made now a you're gonna put on,
you know it's gonna be one of the first two
because that grit, that danger factor. You know that the
era of the band with Eddie stepping over Margaret Thatcher's
body on artwork. You know, the danger that the band
as a whole kind of had at that time, perfectly
represented in Paul Sanctuary running free Prowler, like that kind
of grab you by the scruff of your neck and
steal your lunch money, like genuine cool of it all
that Iron Maiden only really had in that era the
perfect again kind of like the first thing Postmotorhead that
had that real like meeting of punk with heavy metal
at that time, genuinely like threatening at that time, and
you think about the you know, the new over British
heavy metal being the kind of lightning bolt kick up
the ass that heavy metal you know at the end
of the seventies going into the eighties needed to keep
moving forward and give us basically everything else that's come
since kind of spinning out of that. Iron Maiden with
Paul at the Foe maybe the most instrumental band in
that Yeah, I mean, I mean.
Speaker 4: It's there's one of those eras of a band where
you think you can appreciate it fully and then you
say something like that and think, I've never even thought
about it on that scale before.
Speaker 1: But that's exactly right.
Speaker 4: It's the Poor Deiano era of Iron Maiden that's the
thing that gets Metallica to form. I mean, it's not
necessarily the Bruce stuff. And there's so many bands that
came since it's the Poorliano era because it wasn't just
oh we had this heavy metal band with these melodies
now it's like you did have these melodies, but they
were also brasher and faster. It was on all fronts.
It was a progression and as far as a master
of ceremonies, Pouliana's irreplaceable in that you can't imagine another
singer taking that spot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean we comparing to any other New y
a British heavy metal center, you know, like, you know,
God bless them. I love Biff from Saxon, I love you.
I love the singers from Angel Witch or diamond Head
or whatever, but none of them had that particular thing
that Paulianna had. And I think that's exactly right where
you think about how quickly metal evolved back then, and
you look at like, okay, let's look like the American
thrash bands. How many of them were forming in nineteen eighty,
nineteen eighty one, you know Metallica's nineteen eighty one. How
many of those singers at that point in time, in
their early days must have been like, Paul Deano is
the guy we want to be. You know, that was
their reference point of like the tough street edge kind
of metal vocalist. You know, whether you were in Exodus
or or Anthrax or whatever, and like, you know, you
listen to that guy on running Free, out of money,
out of luck, like there might not be any cooler
voice in heavy metal at that time, like bar A Lemmi.
And when I think about like Pauliano on Maiden songs,
it's so much character, like the little inflections he'd put
on things like often on the kind of more obscure tracks,
but like you know, whether it's Murders in the Rubog
or you know, Purgatory. I think about a song like
twilight Zone, which isn't even on streaming because it's not
on the main version of Killers that they have on there.
Bunch of people probably even haven't heard that song if
they've only come to that album in the you know,
Spotify years. But that kind of oh okay do you
see you mean, it's like genuinely like vocal lines that
will stay in your head forever. What are some of
your favorite I guess like Paulo, you know stand up
performances on Maiden songs.
Speaker 4: Oh Drifter was the first song I went to when
I found out a thing, And it's that sort of rabid,
ironically spitfire, the livery that he has where it's the
words are just flooding out of him and there's just
a snarl in each syllable, and that's quite musically. That
song's quite light footed and lightweight, and him coming on
and just adding that bit of menace to it. Again,
that's the thing where as much as I love everything
I meant, not everything, as much as I love.
Speaker 1: What I'm made and would go one to do afterwards.
Speaker 4: They never really had that again, like again like Wrathchild,
like something like Fansom of the Opera, where in the
hands of Bruce that becomes a fully fledged theatrical heavy
metal song. You go back to the original and it
it has that quality to it, but it still sounds
like it's being sung in a pub and in the
best way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my favorite song of his tenure in the band
is maybe Prowler, like the way that that kicks off
the first Iron Made an album, and that's a horrid,
ugly song lyrically, like it's about fucking creeping through the
bushes and exposing yourself to women, like you can't go
singing that these days, But like the energy that he
gives it again, that grit, that danger factor, like you
know what you were saying, like you could never quite
imagine Bruce singing that, or like Women in Uniform or
Charlotte the Harler in the same way quite as convincingly.
And I you have to say as well, like you know,
you put on the first two Iron Made albums today
and they are kind of colored by contrasting to what
came after and what we normally associate I Made with being.
But I think because of that they will always take
you by surprise in how like actually careful and textured
and detailed they are as well. And that goes for
Paul's performance because songs like Remember Tomorrow, Strange World, Prodigal Sun,
Like he wasn't you know, a belter like Bruce, but
he had a seriously.
Speaker 3: There was not one note vocalist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he had a great voice. And again I think
what you were saying, Elliott is maybe the kind of
like the ideal fantasy of what like someone like Pauliano
could be. But like he wasn't just some like you know,
sid vicious character who's stumbled up there, like he could
properly hold a note. Yeah, Like I mean, it's funny
you just mentioned Women in Uniform, one of my earliest
associates with heavy metal was I had the compilation of
Iron made in music videos, which are not great music videos,
I don't know, but the first one on there is
women in Uniform and there's a bit where when it's
building you and he lets out like his version of
the air Raid Siren.
Speaker 4: And I was vaguely familiar with Iron Maiden at that point,
and I sort of knew the relationship, the difference between
Bruce and Pauliano. And then he did that and I thought,
oh wait, he's not just like you said. He's not
just a Johnny ross and or or Joe Strommer just
funds in this heavy metal band. This guy like he
had pipes, and I again, it's kind of like the
fill in it thing where because he's cool, you think, well,
he can't be that good, but piled in it like
he can sing and is good. And like Paul Deano
had like his in his pomp, he had that sort
of flare to him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, none of this is to comment
on on Paul Deano. You know, personally we didn't know him.
He did have his public ups and downs over the years,
like you were mentioning before. He definitely, you know, he
played up the hard man character quite a bit even
you know, kind of continuing on later to his career.
But this is it's just a really notable moment, you know,
like one of the voices that is so instrumental from
an early stage I imagine for a lot of us
in falling in love with heavy metal, passing on and again.
Today I did what you said earlier. I just queued
up everything, like all the material that I had made
in released with with with Paul Dano, and it is
two hours or so of just like the most magic
music that never ever through all of the years, like
changing trends, changes an attitude towards like Iron Maiden or
Knew a British heavy metal what's cool, what isn't whatever,
never lost its luster or stopped feeling cool. And there
is now, especially after this week, a certain kind of
misdyiedness that comes with that. So yeah, rest in peace
to Paul Theano. As I said before, all that we
have an awful lot of kind of festival based and
live news to really try and power through. One is
I guess we're going to start with something that dropped.
We briefly mentioned it in our episode last week when
we were not doing news stuff, but we have to
mention and a festival is called Sick New World Festival,
which you all know what it is, even if you
know prior to this kind of last week's announcement. It's
one of those huge corporate America festivals that has popped
up in the last couple of years. That's books every
band ever and like, yeah, obviously the line up the
poster looks absolutely insane, like the festival itself with the
one day clashes and everything still seems like something nightmare.
But you look at the poster and undeniably, yeah, like
incredible stuff bands all over it, Like you know, there's
bad bands on it as well, but there's just so
many bands on it that there's still about kind of
like ten to twenty of what I would call like
my all time favorite bands on this poster. You know,
Metallica and Lincoln Park at the top, and then below
them a whole load of other stuff that goes all
the way down. Now, there is an element of this poster,
like let's cut to the chase, that is more the
reason we're discussing this is more bamboozling than the rest
of it. I'm gonna describe to you my process of
seeing this poster. I saw I think it was like
Cannibal Corpse or someone had like, you know, that was
the particular post that showed up in my feed when
this was announced. And I looked the poster and I thought, saw,
ye know, Metallica and Linkin Park at the top. Cool, right,
you know, big band to be expected. I found Cannibal
Corpse's logo on the left hand side, and my eyes
whatever even you know, drifted over to that left hand
side of the poster. I saw Mayhem, I saw three
to eleven. I thought it was funny that Mayhem and
three eleven were on the same half of a poster.
And then my eyes, okay, I've looked at that side,
drifted over to the right hand side, and I was like, okay, right,
Evan Essence, three Days Grace, acid Bath what like? And
did an actual fucking double take whiney coyote googu eyes
like double take of like and acid bath literally on
the poster, sandwiched in between Evan Essence and three days
Grace two times whatever they hell that means in relation
to three days Grace. But that is a logo I
have never seen on a festival poster before, never expected
to see on a festival poster before. And I guess
we have like slightly more information now in terms of
like the members have said, like, yeah, it's real, we're
doing this, We're doing a couple of shows. We kind
of know who's in the band. We know that, for example,
Dak's Riggs is Dax's back ye singing as you would
obviously imagine expect for an Acid bath room you nic
had to be like, who is in the and but
this is like literally unprecedented. This is a band who
have never reunited since breaking up in nineteen ninety seven,
right when I was like probably not even one, when
Elliott was about mind and it didn't exist, and we
have never entertained the idea that Acid Bath would do
what they're doing at the fucking the Spooky Core Festival
of all things.
Speaker 2: I was say, like you said, of all places, I
was like, I was like, it's the perfect place to
come back for them to come back, because it's just
like one of those what the fuck lineups and what's more,
what the fuck than Acid Bath just kind of and
that was it. There was no kind of like all
Acid Bath for teasing something. It was just they were
there on the post like there was no like all
big things coming to from Acid Bath, Like if I
would have made it even like NAFA, if they'd they'd
been like an Acid Bath Instagram account that some shit
like that got the way. Yeah, they just and it
was just gonna everyone. And again they're on there for
anyone knew who was in the band, and it was
just kind of like this, like it just made this
already kind of like head fuck of a poster where
again you can see like massive on and reviews like
next to Tomahawk and Chemical and this all kind of
man's all over the place, and then it is the
Acid Bath above three days Grace is like.
Speaker 3: The fuck is going on in America?
Speaker 1: I mean, fair play to these big corporate festivals because
they seem to the ones that can make this sort
of thing happen, because it's just the blue sky thinking
and I imagine deep pockets that allows this to happen.
Like I imagine people who put this together. Some of
them might not even pay attention to rock and metal.
They just nowadays they're just looking at the nineties and
early naughties and someone with a big wall it might
as go as we get acid Bath, and and more
sensible was that, oh no, that's not really possible because
they've they've talked before and it no, no, just get it done.
And then again it's the same like when Slayer came back.
I thought, who would even ask? Like, who would think
it was possible? Like you're as likely to honestly, seeing
the acid Bath logo on a festival is like seeing
Ramon's original lineup on a festival. It's that level of
what do you mean? And if the acid Bath were
for reform, you can imagine maybe doing an impromptu reunion
somewhere in Louisiana and it never happening again, like four
people filming at That's the sort of thing which would
make sense for Acid Bath. The big corporate Monster energy
festivals going away with acid Bath. So did they come
to you? Did you go to them? Yeah? Again, just
on that. I do hope that, like basically, actual Acid
Bath fans get an opportunity to see this, because yeah,
the majority of people who are going to be buying
tickets to Sick New Well, to see Lincoln Park and
everything else will have no idea who adid Bath are?
Speaker 2: I want those people to stumble int seeing Acid Bath
like the people who stumbled into seeing Swans Yeah this
year just did like level experiences are this because you know,
obviously Acid Bath have not been the things that's night
in ninety seven.
Speaker 1: We are, you know, like falling the demorapheople who are
incredibly psyched about this because you know, we've spoken on
the show before about kind of what tremendous fans we
are of their their work.
Speaker 3: But got me into Acid Bath from that album club.
Speaker 1: Like Yeah, but like acid Bath are a in the
scheme of things, a small deal, and I think it's weird.
You know, there are people who you maybe remember Acid
Bath from the first time around who now find it
slightly surreal that they have become this Like this random
band from ninety seven can a bit of a sort of
refuse type phenomenon. This random band from way back when
who now like have a for the kind of band
they are quite large amount of like Spotify listeners and
that kind of thing, like a cult band who are
now It is one of those things where they are
more legendary and more popular now than they have ever been.
But the flip side of that is because they haven't
been you know, wrote a thing for a long time,
and they're not the biggest band in the world. There
are tons of people who are like, who the fuck
are Acid buff and why why should I care about
this logo on the poster? Why are so many people
freaking out? But it there are lots of people who
have never listened to them. You know, we've had, you know,
in the few days in this aalnament, we've had a
lot of comments and conversations with people online whatever I'm
sure or people been like, yeah, so I'd like the
Acid Bath thing has completely passing by. Who are these guys?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: What should I be listening to? And that kind of
just makes it even more bizarre that they're on, you know,
this Sickney World thing. I I'm so bamboozled by the
initial announcement again, like that literal double take idea. When
I saw the poster, my next stage was like, Okay,
don't get too excited. You live in the United Kingdom.
You probably won't ever seen this, right, simmere down, big
sick New World type money. As we said going into this,
we don't know how many shows they're planning on playing.
It is worth noting that in the time again, since
this announcement. They have just announced a second show which
is at the Sonic Temple Festival, also in the US,
which Elliot you pointed out just the second stage of
that one day where they are playing. But again this
is again another huge commercial rock festival, but that particular
second stage goes two hundred Stab Wounds, Converge, Death, Heaven's
Suicidal Tendencies, Acid Bath, Mastodon, which is mean a day out.
This is my favorite like that. Just so this is
the run of the poster right that they are on
and their logo. So this is the the second band
from the top on the second stage of this festival,
right along Thursday through Sunday. It goes poppy, Acid Bath,
Jimmy World, what you were Done Dead? I'm living in
where Acid of Hollywood Undead on the same level of
it's so weird seeing this. But those two shows, aren't
you know right now or we have? Will they announce
more shows? Probably in the US, I imagine there'd be
a couple more. Will they announce any shows anywhere else?
That is the great unanswered question here. Does anyone in
the UK either have the money or care? Because download
have the money A book, Acid Bath, I imagine do they care?
But it's such a weird Gulf thing. Like I can't
picture Acid Bath playing Download, which would be our equivalent
of what these festivals is. That's so fucking We're like
any band like acid Bath if they play download would
be like in the middle of the fourth stage. It's
so weird. Where is the natural home of an acid
Bath here in the UK? You've got obviously it's Damnation,
Like that's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, That's why I would say, but can Damnation fork out?
It depends. We don't know what this Acid Bath union costs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean my hope is that obviously, like you know,
like Sammy from Acid Bath has been playing any goat
hoor for many years and he's still got a kind
of I don't know, like a diy attitude. Like I
hope that though he'd be maybe open to be like, yeah,
we'll come and play for the fans and you don't
need to pay her play us like ten million pounds,
but like that, I don't know how the US has
managed to, you know, machinate the situation where Acid Bath
have been paid extreme amounts of money to play festivals
like Sick New World, whereas again, here their natural home
are places which are not able to throw exorbitant amounts
of money at weird cult bands like Acid Bath. It's
so bizarre. But if you don't know acid Bath, we
did an album club on their most well remembered album,
When the Kitestring Pops last summer, So we recommend you
go and check that out for the whole kind of
spiel of why we think this band are so special.
But I mean, I hope I see it. You know,
if they play anywhere in the UK, obviously we're fucking there.
But like just in general, it just this is the
most surreal reunion of like certainly this year, Like this
fucking knock Slayer out into the you know, the ice sheets.
Like it's absolutely unheard of that this band who weren't
even on streaming until a couple of years ago are
now Sickly World Festival. Absolutely fucking bizarre. We'll keep you
posted on if there's any more Acid Bath news and
maybe if it comes closer to home. We also had
speaking I guess of you know, big re unions. We
had some Bloodstock news as well. They put out another announcement.
This was a weird thing where like it was a
Blusstock announcement and I looked at the main stage and
I thought, well, that's you know, it's decent, but not
kind of the most crazy announcement I've ever seen, you know,
like they've got Fear Factory playing the manufacturing full again,
which you know, great, but it's been there before, you know,
like Harry's pretty good. Are like war Bringer. I've actually
seen war Bringer so nice. And then I look down
at the second stage and I went, oh, fuck nail
Bomb and also like you know, Undeath and Spirit Adrift
on there as well. But you know, we were discussing
the nail Bomb reunion, that is, if you want to
see it in the UK at on the second not
even headlining in the second stages. I feel like it
surely could do. And it's a kind of annoying slot
now where it's going to be in that like just
before the actual main stage headliner, running in between type slot.
But nail Bomb are at Bloodstock. We moved on to
two thousand Trees, who have like fully you know, pulled
out the stops this time. They have announced their their
you know, their first run of bands for twenty twenty
five's festival, and they went big with it. In terms
of they have announced every single one of their headlining bands,
which is five bands because we have two co headlining situations,
and also I think it's around fifty other bands all
across the poster. There was a lot of kind of
hype building for this, namely because two thousand Trees kind
of suggested obviously we've got a lot of our you know,
a lot of our bill here, we've got all of
our headliners, and they were leading into it with kind
of online cryptic teaser clues and stuff like that, which
we can discuss in a minute. But the headliners are
on the Thursday, So just in case you don't know,
the Trees is a Thursday through Saturday situation, so a
three day event. The Thursday is a cohendal liner between
Kneecap and Paris, Friday is a cohone between Taking Back
Sunday and Cohin and Cambria, and Saturday is going to
be headlined by Alexis on Fire. And as said, there
are many other bands below that as well. I guess
the big story out of the bunch is Million Dead,
which is Frank's old hardcore band who are returning for
the first time in twenty years. Or something like that.
It's also kid Kapechi large dispute. There's a nice little
run of heavy bands if you'd like. Obviously Gel employed
to serve herriot, and a bunch kind of below that
as well. First kind of instinct the game. We'll get
onto some of the teasers and maybe some of the
things that we were slightly led to the in a minute.
But Sam, looking at that big, you know, run of
bands from two thousand Trees, is that a thumbs up
for you?
Speaker 2: I mean I would argue they've probably booked the best
possible headliner a festival like two thousand Trees could book
in Alexis on fire. I think there's only other one
band I would put on that level, which is Afi.
Speaker 3: But you know this is never gonna happen.
Speaker 2: Give up, just give up the dream, Sam, But no,
I think this is pretty fucking excellent.
Speaker 3: I mean, first day like Paris.
Speaker 2: Are they as hot as they once were? I don't know,
but they still feel like a relatively big band. Kneecapa
all the buzz at the moment in kind of like
obviously not our circles, but there is a whole load
of exciting around them, So I think a great get.
Speaker 3: Take Mexicana and Conan Cambria.
Speaker 2: Like, it's great pairing if you're down for your Naughty's
emo's headliner.
Speaker 3: And Alex on Fire.
Speaker 2: I just think I just like, yeah, absolutely smash out
the park like perfect choice for a headlin a festival
the size of two thousand Trees. I think it's a
real like great booking. And again look at the undercard.
There's there's loads of cool stuff even in this sort
of bands that aren't in their own front bad sign back.
I'm really happy to see that, Like, that's a really
cool one. Keran Nashi are on there, Like.
Speaker 1: Kay and Ashy is the one of the non logos
on the poster. K and Ashy is the one I
was like, I'd like to see k and Nashy. That'd
be cool.
Speaker 2: Space of a really sort of solid hark Van Hidden
Mothers are like decent kind of UK metal band.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I think this is a great first showing.
Speaker 2: It's like Trees are those festivals that I've always like
I should go and it lands a really awkward time
and this one will kind of like, yeah no, you
just got to make it happen this year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think certainly if you could just go off
the headliners. First of all, I think that's a very
strong batch and certainly just kind of as it is
for me personally, it's one of the more tempting batches
of headliners.
Speaker 2: They not got any any brit Rock like like is
on there for you?
Speaker 1: Like no, But I mean it's a again, so that's
covered like the third day Kneecap is. I've not really
checked out their music demans. I know they had that
film that came out and because of that they've kind
of become a lot more part of the conversation of like,
so I think that is certainly a very savvy booking
in terms of like grabbing something while it's hot, and
like there are yeah they are hot, yeah, and you
know there are you know, people from way outside of
like you know, our rock scene who you know, know
who Kneecapp are at the moment, So that seems but they.
Speaker 2: Do also cross over, like for like a hip hop act,
they have crossed over. I know a lot of people
who are into rock who are all about Kneecap because
they are really larry and at it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I think that's again grabbing something while it's there.
I think Kneecap is, you know, a very clever little
booking co heading. Like with with Paris, again it's of
the headliners, it's the weak one of the bunch in
my opinion. But again that's not really for me to say.
It's something that crosses over into a different audience and
in terms of where they are as big as they
once were, again I'm sure that they will kind of
crunch some numbers here and gone, like yeah, it's time
to chuck something behind Paris taking back Sunday and Cohen
and Cambria is a very good double certainly Coheed to
me of those two. But again even taking about Sunday,
you know kind of they come and they pump out
the classics and I'm sure, yeah, you're you're having a
really good time. Alexis on Fire is one of the
kind of like three or four like dream headliners. For me,
that would be like seriously tempting to kind of bring
me back there. And as said, you know again going
into the lower bands, there's a lot of bands I
haven't heard of, which again is it is on me.
But there are the odd things jumping out at the
bottom from like a kaya Nashi for example, that again
is kind of like, yeah, assuring me that there's decent
stuff going on down below as well. So I think
in terms of like them putting you know, a lot
of stock into kind of making this out to be
like a big announcement for them, maybe similar to what
like Bloodstock you know, did recently, I think there's a
no here to justify that being kind of the case
and being warranted. It's a really good little bunch, as said,
the clues that they put out beforehand. The it's excellent
height building. The unfortunate side effect of putting out clues
like that is you kind of you hand people something
that when it does not turn out to be true,
it's like, oh, but I thought that was the clue, right,
And people are then getting disappointed about something that you'd
never had booked, but it's kind of been planted in
their head because they've built it up to be something.
I am shocked actually that Ramcid aren't there. I was
certain one of the clues was like a like a
like a you know, a dog or a wolf or
something and like a net and the wolf like jumped
into the net and then jumped out of it, and
it's like, well, it's the thirtieth anniversary of an outcome
the Wolves next year, So if you'd ask me to
put money on one of them, I was dead, sir
that a rancid like thirtieth anniversary out called the Wolve
set would have been on here, and that would also
have been one of the saying that sort of three
or four kind.
Speaker 3: Of yeah, that's another like the top tier like yeah.
Speaker 1: So for a moment, I was like, oh man, if
we've got fucking like Rancier and Extor Fire and AFI
and everything, then that would have been like unbelievable. As
mentioned right, the AFI thing. If James Scarlett is listening,
I like, this isn't on you. I know it's it's
I know, it's not your job title to be like
chief AFI booker, like it will happen when it happens.
I'm not holding to that standard every single year. I
understand that I generally wasn't even thinking about a FI
because there was.
Speaker 3: A high deluded, but I'm deluding myself.
Speaker 2: I delude mysel it's going to be a five because
they have to come back here one day.
Speaker 3: But again, I know it's not right.
Speaker 1: There was there was one clue that was a house, right,
and I thought on modern baseball, sorry, not moder baseball,
American football. I was like, okay, the house American football, easy, right, they've.
Speaker 3: Done it quite recently. Is anything why I didn't go
to them?
Speaker 1: Sure, I didn't record it, but it was like house
American football. I didn't think about AFI. And then someone
pointed out that the house was glowing from the inside,
as if there was a fire inside, and I did.
Speaker 5: Like her, Oh, man, I think you guys are onto something.
So I didn't delude myself into thinking it was AFI
from the jump. Someone else convinced me, and then I again,
we don't know exactly what clues were what I think
those You know again, the two thousand three guys will
explain it, probably pretty shortly after this podcast comes out,
but someone has said that it's probably alluding to Paris
have a song that's about like burning something down, and
they've got another song about a house, and I don't know,
being fooled into thinking it's a fire inside and then
that particular clue turning out to be a Paris song
is the biggest swindle the whole time, where it's like, oh,
you've okay, so the only problem is again not even
their fault, but they supplied us with clues that then
given us more reason to like get ahead of ourselves
than I actually was already.
Speaker 1: But what they have is a really good bunch. Alex
on Fire in particular for me is like I said,
just one of the like three, or for Dream headliners
that would be like, Okay, I've got to really think
about going back to the trees. So for a first
batch which contains Side among the bill, it is looking good. Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I'm one hundred percent in on this one.
Speaker 1: Yes, elsewhere moving on, I guess again, we've got to
try and cover this very very quickly because we do
have lots of album reviews and stuff to do. But
we got the news that Warp Tour was going to
be returning to the US, returning in a kind of
you know, a minimized four where I guess it is
technically a tour in the sense that there is more
than one date. There is a few dates around different
parts of the US, but it's now more of a
destination festival type event and it is a lot more
expensive than it once was. Just very quickly, Sam, can
you kind of gauge what the feeling is on the
return of Warp Tour.
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of people when they saw those
announced were like, oh, it's not gonna be the same,
and then that like, but some people are so excited,
and then it felt like that dissipated so quickly when
everyone was like, it's free dates, it's one hundred and
fifty quid when Walktor used to be quid, and everyone's
kind of like, it's just probably gonna be a lesser
version of when we were young. It's gonna book a
lot of the same bands as that, without the real,
the real big names that on when we were young.
It's gonna just like everyone's kind of just expecting a
We the Kings, Boys, Like Girls, and a bunch of
those metalcore bands that no one cares abouty Moore kind
of being trotted out onto stages.
Speaker 3: But maybe they'll surprise us.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Not even going to comment on the quality of the
bill here, but I do think the idea that it
returns as a destination festival, I said, even if it
is in three different corners of the US, which is
a big fucking country, so they're still like thousands of
miles apart from each other. It's like having oh yeah,
we've got a date in Slovenia and one in Scotland
and one in Moscow. There we go. It's a but
it being a destination festival and a lot more expensive
as a festival would be, does put it in like
direct competition with like When We Were Young and it's
it's the same niche, whereas it being the you know,
cheaper traveling lots of around the country tour is kind
of what part, you know, Whereas now it's like, okay,
we've got two when We're Young's and one is less
expensive and therefore probably gonna have a smaller bill. But
you know, eyes open see what they do. But it
is like, yeah, it's not quite warp. Let's jump into
just a whole bunch of big UK and European tours.
So we've got to announce let's run through them. The
big one perhaps is not Loose. I announced that they
are going to be coming to the UK are as,
you know, touring their their new record and the bill
is Basement, Harm's Way and Pest Control beneath them. They're
playing London and Manchester in the UK. There is a
few other dates scattered across Europe as well that is
a big bill if you like your you know, particularly
hardcore feel kind of bit of alternative rock in there
as well with with Basement, and that is seriously tempting indeed,
and obviously big venues. Big venues are not loose as well.
We then move on to something I'm very excited about.
Partway Drive have been doing in Australia recently. They're kind
of twentieth anniversary as a band tour that if you've
seen the videos of the production and stuff from it
is clearly like the biggest you know, Partway Drive show
that they have done to date, and they've announced that
they are going to be bringing that to Europe and
the UK next year as well. It's quite a while away,
it's you know, October of next year that they're coming
to the UK. But I haven't actually seen Parkway Drive
since twenty sixteen on the first tour for Ayre, so
I've been wanted them for a long time, you know again,
and this certainly seems like the time to do it.
And the bill they are bringing along is a all
Australian bill where you can watch the Vieri's Murder, absolutely
eat up the Anke Affliction. Then limp Biscuits have announced
a UK full headlining arena tour, which I think think
is the first one of those they've done in a
little while. They're doing five dates across the UK and Ireland.
The tickets are also about ninety pounds, which I'm not
surprised by because that's what tickets are these days, but
I think a lot of people like ninety pounds. Olymp Biscuit,
bit of a shock. Baby Metal are also doing a
European big arena tour. They're playing the two in London,
so they're kind of bringing up them kind of up
to that level there, and their special guests coming along
with them are Poppy and Bambi Thug then complete other
ends of the spectrum, but I guess this is the
one that I've kind of had to figure out. Tribulation,
who have got their new album coming out in a
couple of weeks, will be reviewing it on the next
review show. They have anounced a European headline tour. I
am not convinced that Tribulation have ever done a headline
tour in the UK, Like I don't remember whenever happening,
and I've been a fan for a fair or while
and like every cycle they've come through on a support
bill or playing a festival or something. I've never seen
them headline in the UK, and I've been wanting to
for years and years. So I was like, ah, yes,
brilliant finally, but the routing of it is really weird.
This is entirely my problem. I'm not saying that this
is a like, I can't believe you didn't account for this.
The day that they are playing near me, I'm seeing
Hivitz in Liverpool. I understand that that's a me clash.
Mostriblation fans. Aren't we be thinking about that? So I
was like, okay, I don't want to miss high Vis.
Let's see where else I could go in the UK
for this Tribulation thing. I looked at Glasgow. I was like,
maybe I see my good pal Mark and we can
go see Tribulation. The night that Tribulation played Glasgow is
the same night as the Green Lungon unto others show
even Glasgow, and that is a circular ven diagram. That's
the same fucking crowd. Like, I think I'm gonna end
up going to like Birmingham or Leicester or something like,
I think I'm going to try and go to Leicester
to see Tribulation of all places. But if I was
if I lived in Glasgow and I again was a
spooky character and fucking unto others on that Green Lung
tour and Tribulation played the same night in different spots,
I would be livid. I would set myself on fire
in protest. I'd be so angry about it. That's fucking bananas.
I bet like Gaye from unto others is going to
be fucking livid that Tribulation are playing in the same
cities and you can't go. But if you want to
see Tribulation, there are various spots around the UK and
Europe which you can do. Ozzy Osborne was inducted into
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He did not perform,
but there was a little tribute kind of medley performance
where you could see man James Keenham singing Crazy Train,
followed by Jelly Roll, who is I'm not convinced a
real person.
Speaker 2: That is crops from wrestling too much. I know too
much about Jilly Roll because his appearances in wrestling.
Speaker 1: That's a Muppets character. I don't know who that is.
A Billie Idle also as well handful of new songs
just to kind of name drop and let you know
that those are out and exist. Holy Blade in particular,
when I kind of mentioned because this is the band
featuring your members of Twitching Tongues who put out that
really great kind of early AFI style EP a couple
of months ago. If you heard that, like I want
more of this. They released another new song kind of
in conjunction and had the credits song for the new
VHS movie VHS Beyond, which was on shudder best part
of the movie. Yeah, I mean I like that because
there was the other one she had, like the Danzig
drop at the end, and I like that. The VHS
franchise is weirdly starting to kind of embrace like having
like cool rock needle drops and stuff and have like
an original song from a kind of cool underground punk band.
Speaker 3: Is well because they have one of their songs is
used in one of the shorts as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, briefly, but it's now also like on streaming and
everything as well, so if you want a rock it
does as another great track, very much in line with
those ones that you've heard, So go and check out that.
Ecelin Kills also had a song in conjunction with the
horror movie Theirs was with Terrifier three, although again I've
seen Terrifier three and I don't remember it playing in
the end credits. I think they've just kind of made
a music video with it, with Art the Cleon in
it and the big like insane, garish breakdown from this
kind of took over my Twitter timeline for a few
days of people being like what does fuck is this?
This sounds so terrible, and like, yeah, it's it's a
bit annoying. It's kind of at them at their most
most ridiculous. I don't think sane. I don't think that
this song is one of their their great songs. But
I also think a completely out of context, chopped up,
most insane bit of the song is not quite reflective
of what it all is. And Cradler Filth have dropped
a song called Malignant Perfection, which is a Halloween single
for the season. I guess it's about time that they
did that. I don't know if they've ventured in that
direction before, and it's one of their Gothia songs. Of like,
I think a lot of the recent trailer philm songs
have kind of lent more in the kind of you know,
big dual guitar iron made in type direction. But this
is then going full like from the crailer to enslave,
sort of Saffron's Curse style, you know, not quite as
good as those. I don' think it's one of their
best recent singles, but you know it's very decent. And
that is out for the season. And finally we can
close up this news by dropping the quote of the
week which come from Nicky six who said about the
matter of letting Mick Mars go from the band if
one of your guys can't play anymore, they bring in
another guy forgetting that he is in a band fronted
by Vince Neil. Let's move on to the meat of
this episode, which is the album reviews. And we did
a reviews episode from the end of September, myself and Elliott.
We had a couple of really big winners in that batch,
but there were several albums there that we were clocking
in on that were kind of, you know, being positioned
at certain levels within the scene or whatever, having kind
of certain levels of acclaim. We were a little bit
let down and a bit underwhelmed by some of them
these albums we are coming back swinging. This is the
lot from different corners of alternative music as well. We
have some ingenious, massively exciting records from all over, and
it feels really good to be saying that about a
bunch where none of these bands go back earlier than
the two thousands. I think the oldest debut album from
one of these bands today is two thousand and nine.
This is a very current batch of albums, and we
have a whole bunch of what you could describe as
some of the very best bands in the world today
making some of the albums of the year that we
are going to talk about now. And I feel that
is very reflected in that we get to start our
lead review not with some you know, kind of very
established older arena band, but with an album like Absolute
Elsewhere by Blood Incantation. Blood and Cantation have been the
lynchpin band within the death metal explosion of the last
ten years. There are up, you know, several kind of
key and important bands in that story, but I don't
think many people would disagree that Blood and Caantation have
long seemed like the real creative leaders within that scene.
Like if you were going to pin a genuine visionary
band within that generation, and people certainly won't be disagree
with that. After this album. We have, for example, done
an album club on their debut album, Starsborn. You know,
in the time between this album the last one dropping,
wherein we spoke about like what a role it played
in kind of ushering in something of a new era
in underground death metal that we are now still currently in.
And now I think you would have to say that
that is their most rudimentary album somehow. If on Starsborn
they were making waves primarily within the underground death metal scene,
with every subsequent release those waves have started to move
out of just that underground scene. You know, We're twenty
nineteen's Hidden History of the Human Race to the point
that now with absolute elsewhere, there will be no question
that this is our lead review this month. This is
their third studio full length album after the two aforementioned,
but certainly not their third key release, and they have
spent the five years between Hidden History and this one
kind of grease in the wheels by like spending time
on a few more left field experimental releases, most notably
perhaps we had the Time Wave zero mini album, Slash
EP whatever they want to say.
Speaker 3: As I said, does that count an EP?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing that saw them create their full
you know, synth Cosmish release for the first time. And
then following that we had the two track Luminescent Bridge
EP from last year, which I think maybe now is
kind of meant to serve as like a bit of
a bridge into this album, bringing various ideas together into
some surprisingly melodic and spacious epic metal pieces. There is
no question really when you think about it, that this
was the most anticipated metal release of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean you quite in the underground or
not like in the massive.
Speaker 2: Mainstream, but for people who know and who are into
all beyond your most obvious surface of stuff. Yeah, this
has kind of been the album that had all the
bars going into it.
Speaker 4: I think it at least had what's going to happen
quality to it, And there's enough people now who are
interested in extreme music and what can be done with
it and blooding hntation, like you say, Puren being the
benchmark of that for close to a decade now and
going into this record, particularly with Time Wave Zero, which
I know it alienated to some people, but I think
almost everyone could agree it was an impressive thing for
them to do, and the prospect of them folding that
into the death met and going even further. It was
the first time, certainly for me in a while, where
I was curious to see what could be done with
death mel if that makes sense, and I believe that
a band could do something genuinely new with it.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, maybe we all have records that
we were personally like looking forward to or whatever, but
I don't think there is a band who had been
put in the kind of position where the entire I
think the entire metal scene, like from the underground primarily
of course, but at this stage down from the top
as well. Like people who don't even usually listen to
tons of underground death metal, A lot of people were
waiting to see what they would do next, particularly after again,
like hearing A History of Human Race was like boundary
pushing enough and kind of had that kind of effect,
you know, a four track progressive death metal album that
really began to crack open the possibilities of what they
could be doing with different textures, different types of song.
Following that up with releases like Timewave zero and Luminescent Bridge,
which kind of promised like, these are the things we're
going to be playing with. That's introduce you to some
of the tools. Whatever comes next after Hidden History is
like just being again teased with these things. We've had
a sense, I think for a couple of years now
that this Blood Incantation album would be a big one
for them. Album three would be like if it all
came together and they pulled it off, a landmark for them,
And it's not really a spoiler to say that, Like
with absolutely elsewhere, I think we've now entered this like
different era for the band where this is kind of
a capstone. If everything prior to this, the first decade
of the band was then you know, crawling out the
underground the way they have and pulling those different threads together,
this is now like the bold new frontier.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, this album is a monol If this
is like one of those albums that is gonna just
stand any test of time, and it does you like
take the band to an entirely new place.
Speaker 3: Where you can't really go back from.
Speaker 2: I guess because it's so it's so advanced on well,
I mean, you know this has come from the you know,
the not prog person. This album had kind of like
just had my draw on the floor for a lot
of it. This is like an absolute like beast of
Now that is so like trying to process. Like I
loved that two Mode album from last year. What's album
was really kind of like vast and epic and space
like space and all that, and that feels tiny in
comparison to what Blood in Contation have done here.
Speaker 3: This is, like yaid, this is one of those I like,
I don't know, like a ganger drum.
Speaker 2: But it feels like they, like I said, they can't
go back to just being a death metal band anymore.
Speaker 4: Well, the signs were promising beforehand, like that album cover,
the title in that font and everything, the fact it
was two songs just called the Stargate and the Message,
and my favorite thing, the parts not being labeled parts
but tablets, tablets. You just go, this is gonna be
like I mean, whatever it is. I mean, And you know,
we're reviewing this three weeks after it came out, and
I heard it the day of release, and I kind
of feel frustrated that we couldn't have got to it
sooner because I could say, well, I feel like what
we're going to say today, I could have said the
second I finished listening to it for the first time,
this album is a classic already.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, it is.
Speaker 2: And sometimes I first heard this when I was flying
through the sky back from the fan, so it felt
like I was I was up in space with them
in a way.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it is a classic, Karen.
Speaker 4: It's just sometimes, you know, like the first time I
heard Forever, I didn't need to be told. I just
you didn't need to wait. Or I imagine when Levia
Thing came out in two thousand and four and it
was just immediately a classic. It was a classic by
the time I came to know only a few years later.
I can't maybe not since Forever.
Speaker 1: I'm trying.
Speaker 4: I'm struggling to think off the top of my head.
The last time I heard a record where the second ended,
I just thought, well, that's that's one for the history books.
And there's been albums, you know, I've loved the Cross
doing this show and in the year's proceeding, but there
was just something inarguable about this record. Even if it's
not your favorite style of music, it's a monolith. You're just, yeah,
what do you, what do you have to say about it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's a fans dream. In terms of again,
we've been kind of willing blending Hantation to pull everything
together the way they haven't and hit something like this,
but stripping back what it is because of that is
like more daunting than anything that Black Antations have done before.
As you say, you know, two twenty minute songs on streaming,
they are separated into like three labeled segments each, which
is almost kind of annoying to me because you're never
going to listen to them, like you know, without thinking
of them as the stargate and the message clear as day,
Side ay and side B, two flowing pieces of music.
Within those two songs, you have the most essential piece
of progressive death metal since what Opes Heyday? Yeah.
Speaker 3: Probably I'm not in the X one on this bio.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but like I don't think of like progressive death
metal bands like you probably would say Opeth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean there's been records I liked in
that style a great deal. But in terms of as
you say that that classic quality you're talking about, you're
going back to the great Opath records that we all
kind of talk about. In that capacity, and you know,
there are there are times on this album where you
could be fooled into thinking you're not, you know, listening
to a death metal record. Obviously it is still a
death metal album. That is the root foundation. But I
think similarly to again, records like Blackwater Park or Ghost
Reveries or you know again what Mastered On were to
their starting point being sludge on, like Crack the Sky
or Blood Mountain. It is just a like essential progressive
record which uses like metal kind of you know, casing
and aesthetics, but just again to cut straight to the
kind of reception of it, you are seeing so many
people get into this who aren't dedicated death metal heads
in the same way of those bands we're kind of
mentioning in regards to their respective scenes. The umbrella is
larger than that, and I think the fundamental distinction is
that we haven't had a shortage of like progressively minded
death metal of like you know, we have like tons
of bands who are extremely skilled musicians, extremely skilled arrangers.
There has not been another record though, that has like
so wholly sold itself to that progressive ideal of like
going up the River right to that like Heart of
the darkness of classic progressive rock like and again again.
Blount Contation's earlier records are kind of the sort of
bands we're talking about where they inflect their death metal
with prog touches, but this has gone beyond that, inter
being like a truly wholehearted prog record, where the reference
and comparison points for this are as much like Pink
Floyd and Yes and Rush and like obviously the kind
of the.
Speaker 3: Death war of the world like one.
Speaker 2: Like I thought this had just as much in corn
with that as some of the other like death metal things.
Speaker 1: Like Yeah, the crowd rock cosniche bands that will reference
to going further because they pop up, but like, you know,
as much as they are anything death metal and the
tools it uses and the energies that kind of invokes
are often death metal, but the actual kind of structure
of it all, and the bigger picture is like one
prog and I think it's it's a prog album for
people who can stomach the intensity of death metal and
not the you know inverse of that, which is what
most technical death metal records are. And like I say,
that is what brings the similarity to like record like
classic opeth ones and bland contation. Not again, they're traveling
in that other direction of going like what if we
use death metal as a tool to color the concept of.
Speaker 3: Progue rather than interesting, yeah, rather than vice versa.
Speaker 1: I again, I got to send this record in advance
for the couple first weeks I had this record. It
coincided with I mentioned a while ago my album of
the Year submissions for Metal Hammer being due almost as
soon as this record was in my inbox. So I
was frying my head with this, listening to it over
and over again, like stressfully, so like multiple times a day,
trying to like basically speed run it and like get
to grips with it in record time. Now I have
like settled down with it, you know, a bit, and
I can view the bigger picture a little more naturally,
and it is exquisite. Sam, I guess I want to
ask again, you know, as if we're saying this record
does reach out to a lot beyond just death metal,
what was kind of again, your first impression, your experience
with that in terms of like, you know, you've admired
incantation in the past, but how do you feel about this?
Speaker 2: Wellgan, I've got more and more insplooding contation over the
last year or so again since we did the album Club,
and I've just really just enjoyed those things. Like I
didn't like Timeway zero was like, you know, an interesting experiment.
I wasn't crazy about it, but I was like, I
want to see how they fold that into the more
typical sound. And then obviously I'd kind of heard the
inklings of this being like a full on prog record.
I was like, I was like, is this gonna be
one that I'm gonna go, Well, I admire it, I
don't like it because I was like, is the prog
gonna get in the way of like like the progressive
deam Mount stuff. I've really got into it again, Like,
you know, I love that two old record, but were
them going full on you know, flutes.
Speaker 3: And all that nonsense prog? Was that going to be
a distraction to me?
Speaker 2: I think I was just so immediately swept up in
how wholly realized the entire vision is every single detail
is like perfectly placed and executed, and it does go
off into some wild directions, but it never disappears off
off up its own ass and get to like boring
prog wanky as I was that Forray, it's so always moving,
always trying to make corn interesting. And again, if you are,
you know, going in and there's a parriin solo for
however long, they're still going to follow that with just
this insane cinematic like technical death metal guitar soloward just
this sledgehammer riff. And it's again these two across these
two sort of two tracks, like like if we're gonna
like see how it actually is, there's so much to
kind of constantly get bewildered by that. I never had
time to get bored by them being like, oh, it's
a prog bit where they're chanting.
Speaker 3: I don't normally like this.
Speaker 2: I was just kind of like I was just so
locked in as to like fascinated as to where it's going.
Speaker 1: To go next. Yeah, and that is the non prog
fan of us, you know, if you are inclined towards
this kind of you know, long worm progressive music. Yeah,
The Stargate and The Message. The Stargate they released as
like one big long advanced track before the album within
the companying like kind of really long music video and everything,
and people like, WHOA, what's this? Now? You know you
can arguement yourselves which track you prefer, but it might
actually seem like the more kind of introductory piece of
the two somehow, and I guess you know it. It
opens at peak death metal like the first little you
know sprint of the album, the blood incantation that you
know is flying at you at peak velocity. It is
a little bit more sattin than that, like the weird
like this bizarre kind of bubbling sounds of the intro,
but it is a tremendous piece of death metal, like
the way it keeps kind of hitting new inclines over
that first minute or so of like each new embellishment
they had out onto that making like you know, four
piece metal band seemed like a monster, like just the
best you know, morbid angel style death metal riffs of
the year, like coming out of that intro, and then,
just as you are accustomed, basically dead on two minutes
into the track switches into a instrumental prog piece, And
that is where I'm sure everyone a first listen went, oh.
Speaker 3: Like, I didn't think they would go like again.
Speaker 2: I thought there would be you know, like exal bits,
but I didn't think it would go full on seventy
space prog instrumental after.
Speaker 1: Fucking galloping at you like that to be enp with. Yeah,
I couldn't stop smiling when that happened. But I'm very
inclined to this sort of woozy prog cosmic progue anyway,
exactly like you said, with that death metal building, building building,
and you're just waiting for it to explode and then
instead just abandoning it two minutes in and going in
some red and starless Bible black era King Crimson jam
and the thing I think makes it not the thing
that makes us record special. But one of the things
is they don't just play with prog. They don't just
have the boldness to try it and weave it into
their style of music. They're so good at it, and
I know we kind of knew that before, but there
are so many bands active now and all they do
is this kind of prog like they spend careers trying
to catch up to King Crimson and Blood Incantation the
death metal band are better than them.
Speaker 3: All of them does feel really effortless.
Speaker 1: It is, it's just like those big cord organs, like
accenting the riff and like a space move. It's just
again it's not just wild for a death metal band,
that the quality level even by prime prog standards, it's
well for lack of a better so such as it's
it's out of this world, yeah, and that that it's
so offsetting at first, but now it's like the most
natural thing to me that switched into that like sort
of waltz tempo, the graduate or like furthered introduction of
new you know, synth layers and stuff. When the organ
starts swaying, it's like, oh, blissful, and you know that
portion continues on for longer than that opening death metal
kind of bursted, but it brings in just as many
like incredible sound details. I am blown away. I just
want to mention it because I have, like you know,
most reviews I've read of this album, I haven't seen
him his name brought, which is understandable because there's so
much talk about on this album. But production credit for
Arthur Rizzick on this album, and we have spoken a
lot about you know, which producers out there have proven
themselves to be a bit more one trick in terms
of the kind of heavy music they put their hands on,
and which have proven themselves to be more malleable and
can approach different things. Arthur Rizzik is the fucking crossover
thrash like hardcore heavy metal guy, and here he is
working with a band who Yeah, again he's worked with
them before, sure, but the fact that he's like continuing
on with them as they do this, like they've not
gone oh okay with outgrown that now. And his capabilities
and what he can do for us when you consider
the amount of new moving parts and textures that this
has to include a great testament to his abilities in
the studio. I think I just want to give him
his flowers in that regard. Yeah, texturally this thing is scrumptious,
you know, like I'm skipping ahead, but you know, some
of the melotrons and like acoustic guitar passages that come
in in like Stargate Tablet three, like just around really
heavy stuff, but it never feels kind of imbalanced or overwhelmed.
Back to the beginning portion of the record, when that
full Spaceman synth melody like takes over on the four
minute mark, I am like flying. You get your first
but certainly not last, kind of big Gilmore moment in
the guitar solo, which then picks up the baton from that.
Speaker 2: That guitar shallow is incredible, Like that is such a
like cinematic kind of like widescreen epic guitar. So that again,
like that's when I'm final for like the weird Spaceman
simp suff it seamlessly kind of leads into that guitar
so which had like picks up the baton, and it
just sounds the most glorious thing you've ever heard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and at this stage you are five minutes total
into the record and you are thinking, fuck, like I've
had the best death metal and the best like out
and out soulful prog rock that I can imagine already.
Speaker 3: It flies through it. It never spends like way too
long on anything.
Speaker 2: I think. That's again what makes it work for me
is again it's it's not like it's not long album.
It's like forty minutes, like forty two forty three minutes.
It's just two very long piece of music. But they
do so much in that time, and they fly through
their ideas, but everything still feels fleshed out. Nothing feels
kind of like just thrown in there or tacked on.
So you get enough of everything, but you don't get
too much where I would find myself look kind of
like rolling my eyes at how long the prog passages
might drag on for I think there is like an
incredible amount of like kind of like pacing in control
with this record that.
Speaker 3: It just it's such a constantly enjoyable experience.
Speaker 1: And just blending the two things.
Speaker 4: In the first five minutes, it's like the band is
making a promise to you where it goes like, look
at the track times. Already five minutes in, Look what
you've got. There's gonna be a lot more of this
to come. I did wonder when I saw before we
heard the Stargate if there'd be one really death metal
song and one really prog song. I almost suspected that,
and it was a real comfort to know that they'd
be weaving between those two things.
Speaker 1: And again interesting in that yeah, way more interesting.
Speaker 4: And you know, we had a Winter Sun album this year,
and if they were to do a top five Guitar
Solos of the Year, I don't think they'd get in
anymore because there's a chance all of them on this
Blood Cantation and every time anyone comes in, you go,
that's the new best one. Oh, no, No, that's the
new best one, that's the new like this one at
the beginning of Tablet one. It's not the best bit
on the record, the best guitar lead on the record,
But when I first heard, I thought, that's guitar solo
of the year.
Speaker 1: And the flip side of that, the moments that pack
the punch of terror. You know that, you know, a
more straightforward prog rock band might not lean into the
seamless way it builds back into the death metal like
I think that section alone goes some way, I think
to addressing any criticism about kind of like you know
what we sometimes say about band, like, oh, they've just
kind of popped two things together and they've not thought
of how the one interacts with the other. Like listen
to the kind of about the five to seven minute
mark of the Stargate and the transition as it goes
out of that and builds back into the other one
is immaculately done. And when it hits that like, Okay,
we're through that particular tunnel, we're back on the top
of the mountain. And Paul sounds like positively demonic uttering
that all life is ten temporary, what lasts is consciousness
in a like completely inhuman Yeah, also quite decipherable way.
It sounds like it's like, you know, you're having the
tablet handed down to you by some terrible divine being,
and it's given real melodic shape as well. By there's
a synth part in the background, which for me is
like the underrated weapon in this broth. Like obviously it's
it's so self evident when they have like, you know,
they've got a guy from Tangerine Dream like on the
next passage of the album and stuff, the cosme stuff
kind of speaks for itself. But I know that, you know,
Isaac from this band, for example, is a complete Emperor head.
And there are a couple of moments on this album
where they drop in these like massively epic melodic keys
lines that sounds straight off of Anthems to the Welkin
at Dusk, and that stuff, to me is so on
my wavelength, like my soul is singing during that particular passage.
And from there you have, I said, the full fucking
blown Tangerine Dream section. The Timewhay zero EPA is a
funny thing. I love it on its own terms, and
I also immediately understood what it was for them and
what the context of their band was not to say
I'm better than you if you didn't understand that, but
you know, it was obvious, like an opening of the
door to something that they could add to their arsenal
when they next did a full blown no Holes Barred album.
There was no reason to ever be alienated by the
time Waves er ip. There was no fucking chance in
hell that blowing Antation were doing a twenty tens o
Peth for example, and going oh, yeah, we're just a
synth band now, like it was always from the zart.
Clearly a passage to unlock something. And I'm hoping that
anyone who you know commented or any bloing Hantation thing
going oh, go back to death metal feels very very
silly now because the way they've brought it in here,
the atmosphere created, and what these add to the death
metal tracks is astonishing. If you're interested in samples, The
dialogue that you can hear in Tablet II of the
Stargate movie I believe comes from the kind of shitty
Italian B movie Alien Rifle Italian bee movie contamination, which
is frankly hilarious because this is a degree of artistry.
I never expected that film to be to be crazy with,
but there it is. And then again, Tablet two is
like a very essential bridging point between like the beginning
of you know, the stargate hole and the end of it.
You transition through that gate via clean guitars and flute
like genuinely in that passage of the record. But again
it builds back into the death metal and that the
point when like the riff starts crunching on the same
rhythm that they've already set up with the synth part
in Tablet two is so heavy and hypnotic at that point,
and then Tabot three instantaneously fucking wallops you like gorguts
would like, which is again that particularly the exact same
trick that they've been employing since Darsborn. But it's bananas
hearing you arrive at that point the way you did here.
Speaker 2: I think this was the end of Tablet two where
we got into you know, we had all this stuff
and I was like, yeah, because they've got Tangarine dream.
Speaker 3: This is this is the kind of full.
Speaker 2: Realization of the time wave zero ideas cool, great, and
then it went into the sort of full on seventies
prog loving with the flutes and all that, and I
was but I was like, I was.
Speaker 3: Kind of like, this is the one where I was
a little bit weird.
Speaker 2: I was like, Oh, this this where I kind of
tap out, and then they hit you with that riff
and it is one of the most disgustingly heavy moments
in I was like, oh, no, that riff is disgustingly
heavy because we had flutes just beforehand, and again I
reassed how much everything compliments each other. And then again, yeah,
you get this kind of like crushing doomy riff with
like simp all that, and then Tabithy just mangles it
even more so seamlessly, and it just kind of devastates you.
Speaker 3: When Tablet three hits, if.
Speaker 4: You want to talk about repurposing slightly crude things. When
Tablet three came in, I went, it's the exposure rift by.
Speaker 1: And then I forgot so then I went three minutes ago.
I was listening to the Clangers, like that sort of
nineteen sixties space ambience, which they just recreate perfectly, and
like you say, within three minutes, they managed to bridge
the gap between those two things in a way that
sounds totally befitting. You can't imagine the songs coming together
any other way. And then when the death.
Speaker 4: Metal takes off this part, like you say, Sam, it
is so much more frightening and so much harder because
the shock tactics are It's like there's no part of
your brain that's prepared for that. We've had progressive death
metal before, but not like this, not in like I
can't think of many progressive death metal bands where it's
actually frightening when they switch back in.
Speaker 1: I mean, the cacophony of that whole you know, particular
section erupting again again, that's sort of like cosmically ordained
vocal beaming down at you again with a siphon my
flesh through the stargate and it feels like you're, you know,
fucking through the event horizon. And then in the middle
they chuck Isaac's bongos and he just goes fucking metal
onto like rapid fire. But again, the first time, I
you know, watched that the you know, the video for
the time they put out, and it's just suddenly this
is like hysterical laughing, But like, how is that moment
not I don't know, ridiculous, Like it doesn't actually pierce
the mystical soul searching atmosphere of the death metal at all.
It like only intensifies it. It has that sort of
like charm and quality where you feel you're like, oh,
I'm in a like the drum circle in a holy
mountain or something. It's like it's it doesn't sound it
might sound psychedelic and it might sound strange, but it
doesn't sound daft. And I think it's with all the
setup and all the stars to change you've had so
far by that point in the song, you're just surrendered
to it. Yeah, and Tabot three is fucking exhausting, Like
it puts you through the ring so much. And then
you know SIDEB of the album, the Message and if
the Stargate is like pushing you through that that metal
forcle Gait, the Message is kind of like what awaits
you on the other side. This song is extraordinary. It
opens straight away again, you know, like hitting you so
much melody and the guitar is pretty much.
Speaker 2: The one of the best melodic riffs of the year.
That opening riff on the Message.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like the brightest like full on prog metal
guitar chords that they've ever employed the absolute brutality that
they've then transitioned in, you know, the kind of death
met all that fucking like ties you to its back
and just drives off, pulling you behind it the way
that like morbid age or immolation would like. They are
such a tier riffers in that realm all the while
the detours into melody are like Shoulderner tier. And if
you thought the first two tablets of the Stargate had
you prepared in terms of left terns of where you
can go from that tablet two of the Message is
such a fully developed piece of music in itself that again,
to quote you, Elliot in a conversation that we had,
you know, off air, it's like having Prime pingk Floyd back.
Speaker 4: I this might sound a little dramatic, but when this
bit came in and quoting you quoting me, and I
realized it was like having prime Pink.
Speaker 1: Floyd back, it was weird.
Speaker 4: I found myself getting emotional because Pink Floyd are like
one of the most important bands in my life, and
they're so good at the thing they do, and no
one else has been quite able to match it. That
sort of progressive music that still connects on a huge stage.
I mean Rush obviously super popular band, yes, very popular band,
but there's something about Pink Floyd where they sold one
hundred million records for a reason and they've not really
been a going concern for decades. And then it's getting
to hear what feels like a Pink Floyd song from
between Wish you Were Here in Animals that you'd never
heard before. I my whole, all my critical faculties just
shut off. It was like it was being beamed into
my like like some sort of cosmic soul I didn't
know I had.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think you're almost like you can almost
expect some of those Gilmoury type moments on guitar, like
we having very spoiled when it comes to great soulful
guitar players in metal, but as a whole, like you know,
encompassing song here like this is something else because I
mean again, the way it starts does make me laugh
because it's just in a brilliant way because the little
synth melody starts and very suddenly we're in the John
Harrison score for Day of the Dead. Like it's just
immediately place that takes me when it hits my ears.
But moving from that kind of that's sort of like
quite quite cookie, quite quirky sound.
Speaker 3: Those were like loose jazz kind of on the drums like.
Speaker 1: Widens, then into a like full blown prog rock ballad
for a few minutes, and you have that kind of
dusty kind of trailing behind drum beat, the Organs creating
that text or backdrop, the singing like I don't know
if that's Paul singing or another member of the band,
but that voice, you know, reverberating in with the kind
of can you hear them calling your name? Like it?
It made like I'm not as big a p Deployd
fan as you are, Elliott, but it made me feel
like when I first heard Breathe, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this will be this could just be off
any kind of like dusty old prog record from the
seventies with the Organs and those exact vocal melodies, and I.
Speaker 1: Was about prog this whole time.
Speaker 3: Do I actually quite like prog?
Speaker 2: Because again, and again I don't know if it's beause
I'm just so locked in on the zone on this,
but it just it sounded so like authentic and of
the time that I was like this This is this
is a track they've lifted from the sim like Bloody Condition,
I have traveled back in time and like they've traveled
through the stargate. They they are onlike their cosmic journey
back to the seventies, where they've kind of just done
the most authentic, like legitimate, genuine and again like I
don't like this sort of stuff, but even though I'm
just kind of like, I can't deny the impressment. And again,
this is another one where this Tablet to doing what
it does leads to my favorite part of the entire record,
which is the staff of Tablet free on this coming
out of the back of it. Because that riff that
comes out of like the end of this and to
that I was gonna like, holy fucking shit, this is
actually as good as like Metal gets when that riff hit.
But and again, it's all that more brilliant because of
the mental, full on frog extravaganza that you get on
Tablet two.
Speaker 4: I love that they save that Pink Floyd style prog
for the second song because the prog they referenced before
I mentioned King Crimson, there's bits on it that sound
like tales from topographications by yes, it's that kind of wackier,
maybe a bit dorkier end of prog which speaks to me,
but it almost feels like some kind of test maybe.
And then when you get this song where you don't
have to like prog to like that, you just have
to be sort of oufa with emotionally driven music in
the same way where Pick Foyd have loads of songs
where people who wouldn't know a second prog band, you
know what I mean, like they can still connect with
it and that it almost feels like a reward. And
then you get punished again because you get the Tablet three,
which is just.
Speaker 3: That riff is just yeah, it just blows my mind
every time it comes in.
Speaker 1: I just had the absolutely cursed thought that David Cameron,
who famously once They're the Dartside the moment his favorite
abb of all time, would probably like the middle song.
But yeah, it's a memorizing moment there, and then you
have to remember again it's at the heart of what
is kind of an extreme metal epic that they just
plopped that song in the middle of. And Tablet three
is my favorite passage of the record as well, not
necessarily the beginning of it, but that all out kind
of you know, death kind of circle human through symbolic
kind of charge that bursts out of that mid section
is exciting enough. Again if you like metal, that should
just be enough to kind of send the blood coursing
around your body. You've got another again, sort of like
Tangerine Dream or like pop ul Ver, kind of like
voyage through the jungle section that's snuck in there, because like,
of course that would be in there at this stage.
It's just absurd how high quality all sounds that the
end destination though of like the last you know, five
six minutes of this record, magnificent, they arrive on this
melodic idea that they just see through right to the end,
after everything they've done, everything they've touched on, coming together
to create this fucking like surge of sound that genuinely
makes my heart swell, like the way they cress that melody,
like that tremolo riff riding that blast beat, and the
keys move in and you have that anthem style Emperor
ish synth lead surface again. But now it's like triumphant
and victorious. It's like anthems to the welcon at Dusk
as imagined by populver played through the threat boards of
Blood Incantation like it's absolutely glorious, and Blood Contation have been,
you know, superb and very evocative as well for a
while now, but they've never made me feel quite like that.
And you know, music that is this fucking dense and
complex and touches as many things. You might ask, you know,
what's the point of it, But it's it's how it
makes you feel, and it's the path was in the
brain that it kind of pulls you down and unlocks
and and this is just so fully and successfully a
prog record in that regard. That's sort of that second
half of Tablet three from when that lead riff first
comes in and there's been I've said a lot of
superlatives so far, but that came out. That's the best
riff I've heard in ages and the anticipational dreddone are
they going to just throw that away like they've thrown
away so much on this record so far, and then
the realization that it's going to be bowing out on it.
So for the last four minutes, I'm just waiting for
its win so that I can applaud because it's the
curtain cool riff Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: And said that that tremolo bit is just stunning.
Speaker 1: And the way the record bows out after that triumphant
crescendo and you just drift into some void of synths
and they just let you sit there for a couple
of minutes before the it just disappears. I can't think
of many extreme metal records ever that are as transportative
as that. I mean, I'm saying them Incineration Festival next year,
where they're builders performing this whole album, and I don't
know how they're going to do it, Like how just
that moment alone, how quickly is eyes going to have
to turn around to those bongos like they're going to
spin them in record time. That's just one moment on
this baffling, baffling album. And the rotor Tom's like the
drums all over this thing. Just yeah. Yeah. Like we've
been talking, I think, as a scene collectively, you know,
for a long time now about Blo Incantation and again
that prospect of them hitting on something really special and exciting,
and this is essentially like you know, what we were
imagining and kind of salivating over. This is the you know,
it's the coming of age of a band who are
like already doing things beyond all of their peers on
their prior records. But again, like you know, I'm not
necessarily saying it's my very favorite. We've got the December
shows for them, but it's hard not to feel like
this is the landmark metal release of twenty twenty four,
like the last couple of years in general. Again, as
you maybe saying, Elliott, you don't often feel like you've
heard again. I try to avoid those words of like
instant classic or whatever, but records that don't just color
within the lines of what we know, but genuinely feel
like this is a big moment for metal as a
genre and nail it the way that this does. Even
the way that you know, extreme metal bands, I think
often get overlooked and they don't get credit for being
forward thinkers because there are a lot of people out
there who are comfortable kind of filing them in the
way in their little you know, underground corner and pretending
that there's nothing going on there, which again you know,
don't chew away from that. We've got more of that
to come later on. But I think even for that
kind of mindset, this record is going to prove very
hard to ignore. Yeah, I mean, I've you know, I've
been doing this show for two years and there's been
albums I've adored across that, but I think this might
be and if it's almost annoying that's coming this late
in the year, because like you say, there are the
album of the year lists to be done in a
matter of weeks, but there are very few albums so
I've come in that time where I think I'm happy
to call that a ten probably around now, like in
the process of reviewing it, there are albums where I
might give that score looking back, but I can't think
of many off the top of my head where in
this now, just three weeks after hearing it for the
first time, giving an album any less feels unfair. Yeah,
I mean, Elliott you might remember, you know, when I
heard this record, I was like, Elliott's going to lose
to this shit. It's just may It's it's so made
for me anyway, Like like there's a chance i'd be
I'd love this record if the quality wasn't as high,
But it's the fact that it's it's like it's geared
for me, and it always happens to be like you
say the landmark record, landmark metal record of the year,
it's it's just well fhissingally stars a ligne moment, do
you know what I mean? Yes, Something that warms my
heart is that in terms of our lead reviews, we
can actually have a double death mettal dose because on
the same day, even October the fourth, we got two
albums from the world of death metal that really have
you know, they've proven to be the breakout records from
the world of metal at large in the last sort
of you know, month to six weeks, if you weren't
having your minds blown by by Blooding Tantation, you were
probably listening to More Insane by Undeath, And uh, I mean,
you know, part of me just to get my only
doing down of this out of the way. It's hard
for any record coming out the same day as absolutely
elsewhere to measure up when that is everything we've just
said about it, and More Insane by comparison is merely
a very good death metal album. But you know, fuck that.
Let things exist on their own terms. Undeath have even
less years than Blooding Cantation actually risen to also be
kind of kings of the contemporary death metal scene. This
is also album number three, but Undeath first one only
came out in twenty twenty. They have been a more
insurgent present, shall we say. We've spoken about Undeath a lot,
and it's within the realm of kind of contemporary, you know,
underground subculture death metal. About the closest thing to we
have to meteoric, you know, like it's in here, in
one of our top two release slots here, and it
feels like they deserve it already. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think if if Blood and Cantation are the say
Morbid Angel or Death of the modern day un Death,
or maybe like the obituary, like big populist catchy, maybe
not a lot of thrills, but just jams of the
highest order. And they've been very prolific in those three years.
A third record since twenty twenty one. I think like
there aren't many there aren't any metal bands that are
any good who can claim that, and each record has
been of a pretty consistent standard.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because this record certainly felt like I had a
level of expectation around it. People that you know, they've
come to expect that Undeath are gonna hook you up
with the most fun, riffy death metal that you can
expect in any given year. So this that in particular
had that air of them sort of you know, trying
to take a kind of step up, like you know,
Lesions of a different kind. I thought was a very
fine death metal album. It's Time to Ride from the
Grave was then a great death metal album. With that foundation,
it seemed like Undeath were, you know, kind of going
for the big leagues a little bit again, about as
much as a band called Undeath who you know writes
songs about human shandi as you know, could but you
know what I mean, I think the most obvious difference
you're hit with straight off the bat of this record
is sonically, But uh, what do you guys hear in
terms of kind of advancement or growth from what we've
already received from from Undeath.
Speaker 2: Well, for me, I mean, this feels like a death
metal album I could quite easily put in front of
people who like, you know, heavy music, but aren't into deafinitels. Sorry,
because this is to me it is like as immediately
accessible as I think the genre gets in terms of
just like the sound of it, the songs, the sort
of there are hooks on here. It is funny, it's catchy,
it's still disgusting.
Speaker 3: Heaviert points, but it's gotta like it's gonna.
Speaker 2: I just think there's like there is just an accessibility
to it that I think even the previous two Death
albums didn't have, And that for me is why this
has kind of been like again, I'm not saying it's
the most impressive of the two Death Matton albums released
that day, but I have completely just been like caning
this even more than the than the Blooding Is Now
points because it's so tuned to me being a stinky
little mosher who just wants to shout and stomp about
at times. Because the A'm just hits on that while sounding.
Speaker 1: Huge, Well, I think that's that kind of captures it.
Because there is something of a lineage of.
Speaker 4: Death metal bands who cross over into other forms of metal,
which you know they're not going to cross over to
fans of you know, maybe like Lords of the Lost
or something like that. But in the way that the
Black Dahlia Murder could play to Lamma God fans, Machine
Heead fans, and there was something there look listen to,
something like the Bleeding by Cannibal Courts, which has some
really fucking nasty material on it, but fundamentally is a
really riffy, well produced, meaty sounding death metal record. This
feels like Undeath maybe having more of a crack at that,
but the previous records were muscular sound, a little bit stinkier,
a little bit more cryptic. This feels more like swinging
for the fences, like we've written some fucking great rifts
here and we would like for you to hear them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I concur I think they we already know Undeath
kind of. I think the the characteristic that we all
associate with them if you had, like you know, your
your word association is fun, you know, and it's joy.
It's they are the bands who in death metal have
big cheesy grins on stage as they're playing, because, yeah,
because they're enjoying themselves so much, and they are, you know,
even such brutality, they are figures of joy. There's no
kind of evil posturing or anything like that. And there's
something very wholesome but also infectious about them as a result.
And again you know that this band is an overt
influence in their music. But I'm talking spiritually as much
as that that reas to me is kind of making them,
you know, from the current death metal wave what someone
like the Black Dahlia Murder were to the previous generation.
They're the cool, fun guys who you want to hang
out with, whose enjoyment of like scary macarb shit really
shines through in the records. And the first two albums
had that fun quality, but they were you know, a
little bit more cripty. They were more gooey and gross,
and they have more of that old school death netal
flavor to how they sound. I love that, and that's,
you know, probably is all how I will always prefer
my death metal to sound. But I think it's also
fair to say that the kind of thing and Death
are doing, like a Black Dahlia Murder, it maybe shines
through even more having that kind of brightness to the
sound that reflects that like fun and infectiousness that they're having.
And this really is that record, you know, And again
it was kind of not obviously the Black Dahia Murder
we spoke about on the last Reviews episode, but those
records actually only came about a week apart, you know,
they were just separated by that September October divide here
for the reviews, but like, you know, sticking this record
on the week after the Dahli one had come out,
you know, it's like having two records scratching that kind
of itch, so you know, freshly. But this record really
feels to me, like I mean, personally, I think I
enjoyed this record maybe a little bit more, but fairly
comparable amount to how much I liked It's Time to
Rise from the Grave. I think both those records are
just excellent, but this one has that sense of it
could be a more defining record for them in terms
of appealing to more people and having the confidence to really,
you know, assure that as well. That thing that we
spoke about when Brandish the Blades dropped as a single
and you and I Sam were both like fucking hell,
like this on death track is really like meaning business.
This record as a whole has got a lot of
that and is characterized by that feeling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I think there is again there is like
a clarity to the vocals. The riffs are like crunchy
and brutal, but like tightight and sound like not polished,
but they sound like just big metal riffs as well
as just sounding like nasty death moo. They just get
this exact right balance of dinky, nasty death metal and
again just like kind of big like rockin groove metal
kind of thing like like you. Again, you can put
this as like in a sort of league of your
Lamb of Gods and bands like that, whilst it still
just has all the DNA and the influence of bands
like Death and Obituary and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think I guess like you parent, I
generally prefer my death metal to be of the stinky, rotten,
cryptic end of things. But I also think it's a
case by case thing, and I think it really suits
on Death to Salies, and it particularly suits this batch
of songs because there's stuff on here, maybe for the
first time in there. It's not a huge leap this record,
but there's stuff on here where if Undeath theoretically got
booked to open the second stage the main stage at
Download or something like that, there's stuff they would that
would be communicable to the people in the crowd who
like things like machine Head or Lamb of Gold or
Parkway Drive. And that's not to say that they've really softened,
it's just this record has maybe more instantly catchy moments
than the previous two. Yeah, the run of first four
tracks on those record particularly, I think he's brilliant. Like
it comes out swinging with so much power and intent.
That first main riff in Dead from Beyond fucking slays
more Insane, then goes appropriately more insane, and the ride
stump on that short like curt little first riff. I
am such a sucker for that. It's a very cannibal
trick that Undeath have kind of emerged as like the
inheritors of like the Ordained Band to do that thing.
Just the way they pound on a groove if you
listen to Undeaths like verses in a something like that,
and how Alex kind of pops along on top of
what the rhythm section is doing is just absolutely superb.
And it's how they switch it out too, like the
chorus on More Insane and where the drums decide to
speed up and then drop out on what is still
essentially the same tempo riff and aligned with that kind
of like insane you know, vocal hook from Alex, it
gives it this like wonderfully dexterous elastic quality that again
is straight out of the you know, Wretched Spawn or
whatever type textbook.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, Cannibal Corpse I think is a very
clear influence as much as it was before. I think
the way Cannibal Corps cross over to those people we
were talking about, that definitely feels like a deliberate thing here,
like Dead from Beyond that opens with the same swing
on like Through the Eyes of the Dead, the way
where it's it's almost a bounce swing, do you know
what I mean, Where it's got this almost pirate quality
to the way it rattles along and that spidery lead flourish.
If they'd have had the production of the previous two records,
that sort of thing might have been buried or might
not have been so clear. But the record's more intense
for having those moments of light and like you say,
makes it sound more fun. And then something like Cramped
Caskets where they settle into a world demise era, a
bituary groove. Again, it's to a death metal fan that's
just like your favorite shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think Undeath success has been so
well earned in terms of they are clearly just such
adept natural songwriters using those core like death metal ingredients.
It's it's a rare talent to hear bands, you know,
using that core tenets of that that they all know,
but using it to make such catchy, satisfying songs, and
particularly like the first four songs here the cup on
the back end that properly like do it as well,
absolutely nail it, and it really allows Alex the space
as a vocalist as well. I think you can hear
on this how much he is really inhabiting the role
as frontman, which sometimes you're like, you know, more like
one note guttural death metal singers might not actually do
to the same degree, but he is like the commander
of the battalion, like in in Brandish the Blade, the
way he pulls himself up through kind of several layers
of intensity on that like right now, right now, right now,
like really you know, serving the song by giving it
a kind of focal point. He makes a fucking sensational
sound at the start of Cramped Caskets, which you've missed
Elliott brackets necrology.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but like that disgusting, like yeah, just.
Speaker 1: Not death metal. Flemmer, Brandish the Blade is fucking ridiculous.
That I do think is a standout tune for them
in their career so far, Like those rifts are so
unbelievably sharp, the intro is so hype, and that intro
riff then also basically being the chorus rift. But when
it comes back, you're hearing it with like full speed
double bass and the band working together again like excellent
arranging instincts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I've been branched the blade like again,
like you've got that amazing call and response chorus that
that is legitimately huge as Vocus. When we say he's
got that clarent and that come on, it's like sort
of a peak Winston Mccaorn like Parker and they were
really emerging, and he was like a pure screamer, but
he was delivering hooks and and like being sort of
like identifiable Vocus that could kind of like control everything
whilst not having to sing at all.
Speaker 3: And and again it all builds again.
Speaker 2: Just one of the best beatdowns of the year, and
that I'm brandishing the fun like yes, please give me again,
That's what a beat down should sound like.
Speaker 1: And yeah, when we next get to see un Death
live over here, that is going to go off.
Speaker 3: Like my fist will be flying at that point, get
get these.
Speaker 2: Guys like because like I was there, they're on the
deafmands that have kind of taken that a little touch
of you know, the hardcore influence in there, but it's
it's it's just a way to kind of like just
make the death metal punch me. And there's songs like
when you see like the sort of the metal bangers
of like Bounty Hunter has like a new metal bounce
to it at the start of it, where like the
bend on that riff and the.
Speaker 3: Whole I Will claim your bounty.
Speaker 2: This is like again just a legit banger in a
death metal template that kind of again George a little
bit from outside but just kind of goes. But let's
just make it like fucked up scusy death metal. And
it's so good that there's so many songs like that.
I mean, this attachment of a prophylactic in the brain
has like the sort of.
Speaker 1: Like spooky Scooby do in the brain. Make that beginning
part flirt like you can barely read it as a sentence,
and yet he does. It's like, oh yeah, great, that's
what the catch.
Speaker 2: Like the guitar melodies that kind of like sell like
spooky scooby Doo core at times, but it's just like
got again, these heavy metal kind of like lead working
there and all these elements just kind of come together
for a really like unique, catchy death metal song.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, just to go back to Bounty Hunter a second,
that's one of the rap songs that again I rehope
makes it to live sets and stuff, because it just,
you know, it's the perfect fucking kind of doofy death
metal dudes riding a mammoth wading a club around like dudes,
rock shit I want in this music. Yeah, New Metals
and what came to mind for me. I just thought
this is like a sort of shitty slam death metal song,
but with a great band writing a great song around.
Speaker 4: It, because you know, I've seen well that's it. I've
seen slam bands who aren't particularly good. But these did
did did, and everyone does that slow sort of circle
pit march that you always see at the slam shows.
And that's a great sensation. I'm not complaining about that.
But when you decorate it with these big hooks and
like loads of personality that I will claim your bounty
like as the rallying cry boundy it's just tremendous and
that disattachment of a prophylactic in the brain. Is it
just me or does that chorus sound of it system
of a down?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the kind of like weird rhythmic shit that
they could sell to you in that kind of way.
It doesn't sound like it to me, but I understand
the connection you're making. Well, it's just it's a lot
of reference I was expecting to make, and I mean,
going back to stuff like Brandish the Blades Sutured for War.
It kind of it reminded me what a great idea
melodic death metal is, because mellow death generally is something
I'm not all that kid on outside of classic in
Flames at the Gates, the odd band here or there.
It's to me, it just it never really delivers on
the promise of melodic death metal. But these are just
brilliant death metal songs with slightly more melodic riffs, and
it just adds another dimension to what they're doing. And
as much as I I might have accidentally painted on
death there's a somewhat one dimensional band, and I don't
necessarily think that's true because there's stuff on this record
that I don't think their peers are doing Oh, I mean,
they're so fucking skilled. Like again that that beat down
riff in Branch the Blade moves into a slightly less highlighted,
like galloping heavy metal solo section, and I listened to
that transition, I go, you know, obviously they're not a
prog band in the same with that bloying contations are.
But I don't get any sense that like Undeath can't
do something on this red you know, it's like whatever
they try and include, they're very, very good at it.
And I remember hearing like when when Right from the
Grave came out from the last record, I was being like, well,
like when did Carcass show up? You know, now it's
almost second nature that they have these like incredible melod
death passages, but without ever you know, getting so kind
of cleaned up or soft that you would think of
them as a melo death band. But it's in there,
like Suture for War you mentioned, is full of it. Yeah,
really sick lyrics in that track as well, like stitching
all these body parts together into a suit of armor
to wear on the battle of field. Hell yeah, but
again there's a whisper it maybe a death core breakdown
in there, but the overall song is so dexterous that
they totally get away with it. There's a fucking like
full on like eat type slam part in Whaling Cadavers,
which is brilliant.
Speaker 2: No, those things again, there is there is sort oft
of that like that that that final beat down in
Wedding Cadavers. That's sort of like the sort of thing
Dying Fetus would like be proud of when sort of
like just sitting the shit knuckle dragon brutality within your
death metal. But again that's just you know, one element
of it. It never you know, dumbs itself down too
much before they they throw in an impressive kind of
guitar shut or technical kind of lead. It's all just
elements they they poured together and have fun kind of
just throwing out there when it when it works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that kind of rift dexterity. Again, they do
this thing that to my mind, only Cannibal Corps really
have done, which is at least in the same way
which they do these like ultra precise grooves that somehow
sound disorientating through how precise they're able to shift them.
The rift that opens disputatious milign Andy brought me so
much glee when I first heard it, because it's that
absolutely like ternolo dime tempo drops and bursts, which makes
an overall rift that is somehow catchy despite how like
mangled it is, and it's very reflective again it's and
the chorus in the kind in my head, in my
head like sounding like he's in the grips of madness
is perfectly captured in the rift that he's he's singing
that on and they they, I mean, I have a
bit of a weird sensation with this where I think
we spoken before about how a record might transport you
somewhere in your head. This ultra crisp production sound we're
talking about it. It's Mark Lewis who does this, but
I think it was a really inspired choice in terms
of not as obvious a like, you know, name a
death metal producer, you might not immediately say Mark Lewis,
but he's done really brilliant sounding records in this style
that are the clear reference points for this, like you know,
Ritual by the Black Dahli Murder, particularly a skeletal domain
from Cannibal Corps, which is the only one they've done
in the last you know, twenty years that wasn't done
by by Rutan, and this this record is obviously you know,
it's super modern. It's obviously a record that I think
you could look at it in the current crop and
say that's leading the way in terms of like what
does advanced production on a twenty twenty four death metal
record sound like? But also in an odd sort of way,
I almost feel like it's vindication for something from ten
years ago, because a Skeletal Domain is not a record
that people name drop so much from Cannibal Corpse, but
I always thought it had a really cool sound to
you know, it really suited Cannibal Corpse, but was also
you know, it sounded distinct from again all the routine
ones that were around it. And hearing such similar tones
on this record from a band who already had Cannibal
Corpse as their number one influence point for riffs and
doing those kind of tricks, I'm highlighting something, you know,
things I very much associate with Cannibal Corps and not
really any other bands doing. There are grooves on this
record where I close my eyes and it's like I'm
listening to a Skeletal Domain in twenty fourteen, and it's
it's so weird because I know this is undeath, but
it's also like it's like a hole and that hearing
a whole second record that never happened of Cannibal Corpse,
like continuing if they kept working with Mark Lewis. It
kind of tripped me out a bit.
Speaker 4: That's so funny. I hadn't thought of that, but I
totally a skeletal domain, just a quick sidestep. I think
it's a massively overlooked cannibal record. So I'm gonna have
to go back to this with that in mind, because
I've always listened to that record and I thought the
sound of this is so good. And like I said,
mark Lewis has cropped up other places, but he isn't
one of those go to names as a producer. But
if you've got that and ritual under your belt, you
can produce my death Belt record if you like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. And again most of the time vocally,
because Alex has so much personality, is when I go like, oh, yeah,
this is clearly you know this is undeath. But there's
a bridge bit on Bounty Hunter where Alex kind of
fades in with like a repeating gutter or vocal a
bit like Corpse Grinder does on I think it's Bloodbine
from the Newest Cannibal, And the first time I heard it,
I actually fought for about two seconds that they've got
corps Grinders as a gain spot, you know, which isn't
out of the question. It has that kind of impression
where it comes in. I think I'm getting over that
particular wind sensation. But it does sound an awful lot
like I'm listening to a secret second, you know, skeletal
domain record. They mix it up as well, like there's
a nice kind of suffocation drop in, uh, this attachment
of a prophylactic in the brain that also has the
shine and melodic flare of a heart work somehow. Yeah,
this record is most excellent, more insane. They are increasingly
excellent songwriters. I think you just tell it. They've got
the juice in that particular department. But they're also increasingly
confident here in exhibiting it. You know, every song has
at least one normally more than that great riff in it,
and it's it's kind of encouraging to have, like you know,
it's it's it's old school spirit, but it's not afraid
to be you know, cutting edge as well. It's kind
of fine in the middle ground between those two things
and and how it sounds as a record. I think
obviously maybe with the new Gate Creeper album as well,
earlier in the year, we're almost getting to a stage
with these, you know, this generation of bands where they're
starting to have their kind of like, hey, look like
we can write fucking anthems. Yeah, yeah, we can write
commanding songs and not just kind of kick up this
old school death metal stink moment of you know, death
metal that is there to grab just plain old metal fonts.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think if Blood and Cantation represent like the brave
new world of death metal, the outer limits of what
could be done with it, if you have undeath Gate Creeper,
and I guess we have to include two hundred stab
Wounds representing the maybe more straightforward but just anthemic, catchy,
hard hitting and of death metal. I think that sort
of thing is in very good hands right now.
Speaker 1: Yes, Okay, our next string of albums come from the
worlds of now punk and an alternative rock. It might
not have had, you know, quite as high profile a
month or recent couple months, as you know, death Metal
has but are clearly but you know, I would say
in that world, we do have a few of the
years like geft event releases that have all kind of
come along at once here and we're going to start
by welcoming a band back, and that band is Balance
and Composure, who released their fourth album and their third
since reuniting last year, which is called With You in Spirit.
This is a territory that we have often found ourselves
turning to on album Club because the Emo revival and
you know, more generally, without assigning bands to one thing
or another, the alternative rock scene that kind of exploded
around it in the late two thousands and early twenty tens.
We often describe as like, you know, one of the
kind of last real boom times of the scene. You know,
like what death Metal, for example, has been experiencing the
last few years. Emo and alternative rock had its moment
about ten years ago and produced a whole string of
like modern classic records that as said, we often find
ourselves profiling over on that segment. Balancing Composure come from
that time and much like their peers of you know,
whether it be the hotelier or basement or turnover or
citizen or whoever you might want to say. They developed
a real cult following. Some of those bands have stuck around,
many of them have broken up. Its Balance of Composer's
Turn right now to come back from hiatus and as
one of those, like you know, very beloved by some
bands from that period, that feels like a moment worse
spotlighting because there many people will have been waiting for
it and now will be praying that, you know, modern
baseball kind of following their footsteps, or you know, will
be next?
Speaker 2: Says No, not Sin's title Fighters when everyone's next, isn't
it sure?
Speaker 1: But Balanced Composure released you know, two very very warmly
received records in the early twenty ten Separation and the
Things we think are Missing. The last we heard from
them is Late we made in twenty sixteen back to
during the early days of this podcast, Sam. We touched
base a little on them when they returned to the
UK at Outbreak this summer, but remind us were Balanced
Composure one of the bands who you know you were
keen to see kind of come back from that time
because we've spoken about you are you know, theoretically the
are the big emo amongst us. But that period of
bands maybe actually wasn't your Your biggest moment.
Speaker 2: Was It was again when I was going to be
on the outside because I was all in on hardcore
and stuff like that. And again Balance Composed one of
those bands that I didn't like. I would never say
I never disliked Balanced Composure. I just didn't particularly care
for them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Elliott, you have spoken very fondly of again some
of the bands they're kind of like kind of contemporaries,
and how much you loved them at the time where
you were tall into you know, Bouts Composu during their
kind of initial run of activity.
Speaker 4: Not really, because I think I was too late for that.
There's a twenty thirteen record I'm blanking on the name now,
which is.
Speaker 1: That's the Things we think We're missing. Yes, Yeah, that one,
which I think is broadly seen as the.
Speaker 3: Classic kind of regarded as the classic year.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I sort of got to the emo wing of
things slightly too late for that. I was more twenty
fifteen was when I really got interested in things like
Title Fight. Sort of unfortunate timing for them, but turnover
modern baseball soon after Joyce manor. I've been into it
for a couple of years, but that's when I've really
the solidified themselves as one of my favorites in that scene.
But then by the time twenty eighteen rolled around, I
sort of for most of the bands I like either
split up or put out less than stellar records, or
you know, had to apologize or with an iPhone notes
thing or something happened, and I kind of just pushed
myself away from all that, and just in the mix
of twenty sixteen, you know, modern Baseball release in that
record that year, there were amazing records that came out
sort of before and after it, just it never quite
grabbed my attention in any way that matched them. So
once they split up, there wasn't too much of an
incentive for me to then go back.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I mean, I you know, I'm the most
removed from this particular scene at the time we're talking
about and back composure. You know, they weren't one of
the three or four bands, So I then really got
into slightly kind of down the line. So I guess,
you know, we're not coming at this with the perspective of,
you know, having the big fan in the bunch, I
must stressed. I've never had any problem with Bats composure,
and I do find them to be one of the
most listenable bands from that scene. Like they never really
grabbed me, maybe because they are melodically probably the drearia
more downcast at basically all times bands, and I never
really found the catchiest you know that they're not a
band who screen bangers, but I respect that they do,
and I never found them to be you know, kind
of you know, distasteful to my ears. I do happen
to live with a balance of composure obsessive. They're one
of my girlfriend's like five favorite bands, so if I
say anything naked is she'll be very upset with me.
But I also have some of her like fans, I
assurance of well of like when it comes to their
catalog and kind of the relations between albums. That kind
of thing like we made was that, you know, the
shoegaze pivot that all of these bands seem to be doing.
Circled twenty sixteen, Yes, you know, with the kind of
looks a bit like the Mister blobby smeared face album cover.
I think that is probably amongst them more respectable and
creatively you know involved kind of versions of all those
bands doing that, but I do understand it to be
the least revered of their catalog. This album, Even from
a layman's point of view, I could tell from like
the combat singles we've got that it has more in
common with the kind of classic balance of composure sound
of perhaps around the kind of things we think we're
missing era, and for many people, I'm sure that's exactly
what they've been. One thing to hear for myself also,
that probably means it's about the sort of the you know,
the peak level of pleasurable that I will have sitting
with a balance of composure album. What do you think
of the return of this again, very very respected band, Insie.
Speaker 2: I've found I've kind of just wound up in the
same place with this record, where again I think this
is a very accomplished and melodically pleasant and listenable record,
but I got no emotional connection from it, and that
was I think the problem with this music is it
lives on that emotional connection and I never got that,
and I just found it to be quite because it
is quite downcast and drea at all times, and that
left it feeling a little one note for me, and
I was like again, I was kind of like, I
feel like a background started balanced composed right because after
seeing him live, I was I was like, Okay, maybe
this will be you know, I might command to balance composure,
and I feel like with this album, we're kind of
back to square one.
Speaker 4: I thought, I think this is quite good, and I
think it's you know, part of it is the concepts
of me not really knowing much outbalance and composure. The
time of year of it coming out is great, and
maybe the fact that this wing of emo isn't in
a great spot right now means that a good record
goes a bit further with me. But going into this
with very little expectation, I think this record is pretty good.
Like that, there's things about it that I do really like.
I mean, fundamentally, it really reminds me of maybe my
favorite of all the emo bands. But it's the one
where not encouraged to speak about so much anymore, even
though it's so painfully obviously I did have some similar thoughts, yes, yeah,
and it was it was really hard to make any
sort of notes or come with any views to this
that didn't reference that band.
Speaker 2: It reminds me of my least favorite stuff of that band, though,
I think that's a thing the albums I'm less into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I can see that, Like, I mean, I
think that is my preferred win of that cut. This
feels fucking ridiculous, like if someone's listening, going, what are
they talking about? But I think like there's a lot
about this record that maybe it's more of an diamond
on the scene that they come from, but there were
things about this record that I found refreshing in for
stuff in a similar field. Yeah, I mean again, fundamentally,
it's sort of in the middle ground of like you know,
Separation is a bit more raggedy, and it's kind of
slightly closer to the pop punk of that time, like
we made went full dreamy. I think, you know, the
perfect you know balance haha, they had in between these
albums is kind of what this album returns to. And
it's very definitive of balanced composure in that sense, and
I think that's often what you want from a comeback album,
you know. And I think again, in their scene, they
were often seen as one of the more sort of
grown up sounding bands, like during that era, I think
they were kind of a band who were you know
very much admired in sort of leading the way for
some others, and I think, obviously now we have like
an even more like you know, firmly grown up of
balance and composure return into that. Well, I don't think,
you know, I don't find balanced composure too overbearing, And
this is to their favor when it comes to like
fucking her like sit down chat kind of adolescentism, you
know what I mean. Like they're very I wasn't sure
about the kind of auto tune harmonies in the intro track,
but I did like quite like some of the kind
of touches of electronics on the album, like the little
intro and Ain't It Sweet? Before the guitar cords takeover,
it sounds great. This appum like those big high bass grooves.
The usage of acoustics like locked in with those or
something like any means it's textured but also doesn't lack punch.
I think this definitely, you know, it still feels like
a rock band, for how wistful as it largely is
pretty archetypal like will Yip in that regard, but I
think it's also maybe one of his his better you know,
production works or as of you know, recent years.
Speaker 2: I mean, I can't argue with any of that because
I do agree. I do you think the album sounds
really good?
Speaker 3: It is really texted. I don't know if i'd say
it has punch.
Speaker 2: I think there are some songs I think like some
of like believe the Hype has a little bit more
punched into it that.
Speaker 1: I'll change my wording. I'll say it sounds very full,
you know, and wain I'm thinking about that big bass
lines and stuff like that that you know, they sound
really good in your head.
Speaker 3: It doesn't sound sparse and empty and a bit weedy.
Speaker 2: It does sound like a full band with a lot
of like really in ideas. And there's things like and
this is why I like, I don't want to, you know,
come down too hard on this album because it just
I just didn't necessarily connect with it, like and that's
the thing is that there's so much I'm like, you know,
that is good, that that sounds really political and accomplished.
Speaker 3: But I just I.
Speaker 2: Found like there maybe some songs that kind of like
blurred into one another and didn't stand out. Like I
believe the Hype is the one track if it really
sounds out and I think sweet right at the start
that that's a really that's like a good start off.
Speaker 3: Of that weird kind of intro track.
Speaker 2: There are moments where I kind of ah, there's there's
glimmers of band's closure doing stuff that that does kind
of catch my attention. And then a lot of it
is very just kind of monochrome, and but that's by design.
It feels like a very nighttime album.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think certainly when you're saying, you know, a
lot of tracks blur together, I completely agree. But I
think as a whole that kind of works as a
sort of you know, it kind of it's a mood album.
I think their mood piece, you know. And again I
think a track like any means is you know, it's
well textured. I quite like the different sort of counter
melodies that exist in that song. I think for something
that you know, it's a slow song, but it does
fill quite a lot of space, you know, and you know,
like Cross the Bear has that you know when he says,
you know, the sky is falling down, and it has
that bassline at start, it does capture some of that
sort of you know, taking a moment to kind of
take in the darkness, kind of momentous and like it's
it's almost gothy like. Balance Composure aren't a goth band
at all, but they probably like Disintegration at least. Yeah,
you'd imagine, you know, and I kind of you know,
it's slowly suspended in space. It's you know, quite pretty. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think when I was saying earlier about things that
I find refreshing about this record, the main thing is
just the sound of it, because it's a great example
of how to make your emo records sound big, full clear,
and there's no need to John Feldman it anymore like
will Yip, it's still probably the best guy working in
this field. Like, even if you don't like the music
they're in, you see his name on the credits and
you kind of rest assured that it's going to sound good.
And so many emo bands, to be fair, the problem
is sort of going away, but not that long ago.
They all seem to sound really anemic and flimsy. But
Balanced Composure of managed to get a really warm, rich
production job here where every moving part could be heard.
And there's again I'll sort of agree on what the
standout songs are. I believe the hype any means cross
to Bear. I do think those are the best songs,
and I think they are quite substantially helped by how
nice they sound, because it's an aspect of this record.
Speaker 1: That I like.
Speaker 4: I like that it's kind of austere and distant. I
like that it isn't tuguing on its shirt and jumping
in your face like a lot of emo does.
Speaker 1: But do more of that to cuff.
Speaker 4: But I do also think that over the course of
the record, maybe if there are a couple more moments
where the band let themselves pop a bit more, yeah,
it might not be a sleepy yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, lead foot to a bit like fade to
Black for Emos, which I quite like. There's there's no
point really where this like puts its foot on the
pedal at all, Like you have to be in for slow,
hushed vibes, and I think, you know, meeting it on
its terms, it does have, you know, enough that is
clearly again well done in terms of the instrumentation and
the production to work in that sense, and I admire
that quality about the record. I think the thing holding
me back from really liking balance and composure is, like
I say, I just don't think they write catchy songs
at all like their ear of melody is very, very subdued.
I would say weak compared to again, the kind of
let's say, the panthon of alternative rock bands that they're
deriving from. It's probably more it's just not for me.
But like, while I find myself admiring the textures on
this album, every melody this dude sings just sounds like
the same monotonous, apathetic this is what I'm going at
this is yeah, yeah, he's done on every song. He's
using the same two notes that he's summoned up from
sleep time, you know, a little more of myself. Towards
the end, I found myself actually surprised that he'd move
the notes slightly higher at that point, but my ears
perked up, like, oh, he's like he's lifted his gaze
off his shoes by an angle of about twenty degrees. Yeah.
I mean, the thing I found with the melodies on
this record was I like the tone of his voice,
and when the melodies come in, I go, that sounds nice.
I like the melancholic, like you say, sort of subdued
quality to it. But on each re listen I had
the same thought because I didn't remember it from last time.
It wasn't like the one You're Dead, you know. Yeah,
It's like a song would come in and I go, oh,
that sounds good, and I go, I've heard this record
four times, I should know when the next song is
going to sound good or not, because.
Speaker 4: Wipes the memory each time. It's like the first time.
Speaker 1: I think. That's That's how I feel about, you know,
Bounced Composia. They're a fine man of musicians, you know,
playing a genre of music that, for all of its delicacies,
is verse chorus based, and they've neversen to the occasion
when it comes to hooks and melody and adding magic
into that, like you know, supposedly central element of what
they're doing, and they never escalate. So it is just
kind of bloody. It's nice bloody, but you know, good
luck ever remembering a hook. But you know, because I
guess I've never felt that way about balanced composure. I
can't imagine that would be very different here, you know,
for people who do love you know, these first few records,
it's you know, it's not changed my feelings about them,
so imagine it wouldn't change yours either.
Speaker 2: That That's what I say when I send back to it.
I feel like if you're a fan of this band,
I think the sound probably does give you the kind
of grown up returning after a long time away kind
of warm feeling, even though it's like quite starkromnochromanal stair
and all that.
Speaker 3: But you'll get what you want from it.
Speaker 2: And for me, who didn't have the massive attachment, even
though I was coming round to them live, it's kind
of like okay, yeah, Like again, I can't say it's
bad or like doesn't sound good.
Speaker 3: But it just it just yeah, didn't connect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they do moody very well, you know, like that
those atmospheres on any means or closer to god, they're
they're very rich, even when I don't think the songs
at their core like jump out at you that much.
I think you know obviously again you mentioned it earli earlier.
It's just in time for autumn. If if you don't
personally lean so much in like the unto others direction
from last time, this could well be your kind of
you know album for the fall and leaves season. The
next album we are crossing back over to this side
of the Atlantic for high vis and guided tour. This
is an album number three from I guess you know,
of these three bands here in our sort of more
punk adjacent section we have here more so I would
say the band of the moment, like High Vis are
definitely on a high in terms of ground swell of
like the last couple of years turning into something more
like you know, public appeal. Sam, where would you gauge
High Vis being at in terms of, you know, kind
of an ascension.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think the last twelve months have been
where their kind of rise has really started to class
from that outbreaks up from last year and the sort
of the twelve months since it's just kind of been
like the buzz around High Vis has started to go
and again creep beyond title because they were like an
alt rock band that hardcore kids love because they all
came from a hardcore background, all the guys, and now
it's just kind of gone like, oh now everyone else
who doesn't just you know, know them through their background,
they've risen, and everyone who's into rock and punk all
that is kind of like catching on. And Yeah, like
I say, the excitement is there and it's all kind
of crescendoing with this album.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think when we talk about bands who have
you know, come out of the world of hardcore and
definitely started to become you know, our kind of our
very crucial central bands at the moment, certainly in the UK.
I would say they're pretty much the one at the moment,
Like I, you know, I guess they came out that
sort of ven record still at the end of the
last decade, which again I have to say, totally passed
me by. I was not plugged into the scene at
that stage. But by the time again the last like
eighteen months that has started to explode twenty twenty two's
Blending album again, like I sort of missed that album,
but then seeing them at Outbreak twenty twenty three, with
only the strength of like a few cursory listeners to
tracks on playlist, They're like, oh, they may sound cool,
I'll check them out. It's the most youre a conversion
from just seeing a band live I have had in
like recent memory. It was the most like visible, holy fuck,
what's happening here?
Speaker 2: Like loads of people because I just to the point
I always thought they were pretty good and I was
kind of like, you know, they're they were all kind
of like a rock punk bands, like I was like,
I'll catch them live at some point because they and
they just always seem to be around, like they supported
a lot of bands and just kind of existed a
lot in the scene. So I was like, I'll catch them,
and I still actually haven't for some reason. But then
that that outbreaks happened, and now it's kind of like, oh,
all their shows are selling out and everyone is just
like they're one of the hottest tickets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and and and Blending, which you have. Many of
the standout songs in that set came from I've I've
fallen in love with it, like easily, far, far, and
away one of the very best albums to do with
anything like punk or alternative rock released in this decade.
I actually can't believe it's not bigger because like, again,
maybe what I might have tuned out of before actually
like hearing or seeing hy Viz. But the idea of like, oh,
you know, they're a punk band, but they've gone oasis
or whatever, like the the press or pop byword for
whatever would be that doesn't actually sound all that like
new or novel, like there's been tons of that. But
then you like, yeah, but then you hear songs like
talk for Hours or zero one five to one or
Trauma Bonds, and you go like, oh, this is like
the kind of the mercurial ideal, like the spark of
like actual identity and having their own stamp of creativity
that lesser bands are missing. High Vis feel like, you know,
so classic yet so contemporary at the same time, and
you know there's inspiration from the past, but it's not
a throwback. I love that record and I'm very happy
to be aboard the High Vis train. Album three, Guided Tour,
I guess, feels like the first album where they're you know,
established and have some expectations now and in a way
it's a bit of a test their metal because I mean,
even the fact that it's called Guided Talk maybe you know,
this album sounds a long way from a band like
you know, buckling under a certain pressure to do one
thing or another. You know, it sounds very very assured.
Elliott I have to like that there is a strange
about in how they sound. To ask if you are
you know, interested in.
Speaker 4: Hi Viz well in the past, no, because every band
that people would name checking in relation to them was
a band that I basically hate, sure Stone Roses or Oasis,
or I've ever sort of said the Happy Mondays, and
I thought we are in the Year of Our Lord
twenty twenty two. Whenever Blended came. It's like we're praising
a band for evoking the work of Bez.
Speaker 1: This is wrong, though, So that is some of the
worst music that this quaint little isle I've not produced either.
It's just for me.
Speaker 4: That just translates into my head as going, oh, it's
going to sound like slaves or shame or something like that.
Speaker 1: And I couldn't get my head around how do these
terrible ingredients get mixed into sort of hardcore adjacent alt
rock and come out sounding even halfway decent. And so
I was so disturbed by the idea that I didn't
even bother to find forty minutes to find out if
it was if it was a good one. And what's
mad is going into this record? I thought it can't surely,
because I've seen some really positive years. I said, it
can't possibly sound like Black Grape. There's no way an
album that sounds like Black Grape is getting any praise
from anyone in twenty twenty four. And what's weird is
all those things that people were saying.
Speaker 4: But it sounded like the Stone Roses and Oasis and
Happy Mondays or baggy music, all of that stuff. They
are true and yet it's not shite.
Speaker 1: I'll take it. You know, I'm not a britpop fan
by the time of you know, like I know, fucking
Cast or whatever or like the Vogue, I don't know whatever,
but I do like, you know, you're obviously going like well,
pre britpop, but I do like I really like that
kind of late eighties early nineties UK. I like the
Stone Rose Has being the prime example, like the first
time Rose Arm I think it's fucking great. Like I
really like that sound in that material and hearing that
again in this kind of lens, Like if you loved
Hivi's on Blending, I don't think you'd exactly say it's
more of the same, but it takes the kind of
starting point and kind of you know, like Peppers, it
with more color and I think more than ever on
this album. It's hard to say whether you would call
Hi VI's a hardcore band, like even more than a
band like Turnstile. I think High VI's have kind of
inflected what they do to the point that so often
the central focus is not hardcore, and yet hardcore is
always somewhere kind of around the periphery. This album like
it does you know, it does like Madchester, it does
post punk, this album does indie, It even does a
little bit of dance music at one point, and yet
all through it they feel like a diy punk band.
Like that is a hard balance to pull off, I.
Speaker 2: Think again, because again, I wouldn't say this album is
a hard crab by any means, but you can tell
that they have all that they've all come through a
background of hardcore, whether they like or whether they've played
in bands of it. That DNA is there, It's undeniable,
and it basically what it just is exists. There is
to rough up stuff I don't like in a way
that will make me like it. And I think there
is a confidence to how Hives execute every single second
of this album that makes it like again, mispressure ingredients
that on paper should not work and should sound like
one of the worst things to come out of the UK.
It should sound like slaves and the worst of idols
and all of that kind of shite, and they've just
gonna gone now, We're gonna make it fucking spectacular.
Speaker 1: And they have. This record is great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like this album is just top notch.
Speaker 4: It's like if you're had a master Chef challenge and
we've given you some hydrochloric acid an atom bond, Now,
can you make a crimebule? You think, well, no, I can't.
And there are things in this record. I'm listening to
it and my brain's going, oh, that sounds a bit
like this thing you hate. That sounds like that other
thing you hate, and yet I'm enjoying it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is the crew.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously you're coming out with the perspective of
like you get a very old intensation of like not
liking a lot of the things and yet liking it.
I come from, you know, I'm not a fucking a
mad for it devotee of happy Mondays or whatever. But
I again, I like some of the reference points. I'm
not adverse to some of the other ones. But I
do think they have just a special kind of character
to them, and they have a particularly magic quality where
they are able to get beyond like they evoke the
things you obviously gore, Like, yeah, that sounds like that,
but that's not really the defining element about it. You know,
they are able to kind of whip up something again
kind of magic beyond that, like you know, the opening
title track for me. As soon as that twinkling guitar
line comes in, you know, I felt the late eighties. Yeah,
Manchester kind of jangle melody. I'm in their hands like
it's it's effer vescent. It sounds fucking excellent, but isn't.
There's a guitar part in the bridge that sounds like
the fucking nineteen seventy five in that song who I
don't like, you know, but that's there with with grit,
you know, it's weird. And then drop me Out hits
and it's like, oh fuck yeah, like hardcore. I remember that,
like guided to all that.
Speaker 2: The whole track it is there is like arena rock
and kind of like big kind of polishing there, but
it's got a kind of slightly gloomy post punk thing.
There's like twinkling guitars is there is just like great
balance between pre elements and a kind of dark thing,
that real regional kind of vocal like thing where there's
so much character to it. And then they're like, if
you need a like I'll be your guide hook absolutely massive,
and I was like, this is really nice.
Speaker 3: And then when drop Me Out comes in and you
just kind of.
Speaker 2: It gets rowdy as fuck and the guitars like they
have that driven guess he gets that little bit of
snarling these vocal and again like there's only enough character there.
They kind of put that character into overdrive on drop
Me Out, and I think, like, this is just you know,
the most assured band knowing they are fucking knowing they're
the fucking business and they are the coolest guys around,
just kind of strating their stuff in the way that
you those kind of grippop bands did in the nineties,
how they thought they were the fucking business. And I'm like,
you know, I believe it with high viz on a
song like drop Me.
Speaker 1: Out and those guys in the britpop bands in the nineties,
one of the things that makes them so infuriating and
unpleasant is that they think they're the hardest, best guys around.
It's like, have you heard that you're in Blur? You
don't get to strut about like that, I'm afraid And
it's like again, this this vocalist, he evokes people like
Damon albarn and Liam Gallagher and the guy from the
Happy Mondays, which should be poison to my enjoyment of it,
but that sort of cold lip energy that he brings
to it and with that sort of hardcore in his DNA,
just adding that bit of like big flakes of salt
in the mix where something like the way this record
opens with that jangly Madchester sound, I mean the stuff
sort of adjacent to that's like I love the Smiths,
I like Billy Bragg. You know there is things that
in the mix where I can recall that, and you know,
I'd actually mind the nineteen seventy five, but just having
that bit of edge to it, which I think bleeds
into the rest of the record, it makes all the difference. Yeah,
I mean it's it's a super grassroots kind of sound,
like they're evoking things, but they never sound like they're
kind of i don't know, like get above their station
or wherever you want to put it. Like it's super
that the there is a it's just very authentic. You know,
it feels very very kind of as I say, kind
of grassroots, and you know those having that as you
put it, that kind of extra bite with as elements
like when you get to like mob DLA later that's
a fucking wrecking ball. And like the production is really
cool in this album, where it has this almost like
acid inflected, kind of washed out kind of feel at times,
like the guitar tone on a lot of those big
distorted choruses. They're drawing more on some of those kind
of like again like kind of tripped out psychedelic type
styles at points that sound like you're, like, you know,
in like in a big wind tunnel, turning on your head,
like listen to how I know, like feeling blessed, Like
the weird and psychedelic the chorused kind of guitar is there,
but while still being like again something that you could
mosh to it. It's like hard still and driving, and
they have this great quality that just seems kind of inextricable,
where like, even if hardcore punk is actually like a
minority in terms of the style being brought forward on
this album, these other styles like indie or whatever that
they're kind of bringing in, they just feel like they
are playing them like a hardcore band, like that bit
of extra crack that like, you know, a pure kind
of modern indie band might not have. And and mob
DLA kind of like you know, benefits in reverse, I suppose,
where like it's it's a punk song, but then it
also has this wonderful textural kind of vastness to it.
So they're right, they're able to again that magic thing.
We're saying, Elliet that there are many examples out that
you can find of bands trying to put these two
things together and each one poisons the other. Right, this
is like the ah the synthesis. We are truly you know,
in the in the kind of middle of the sphere
where it kind of works just.
Speaker 2: A look urban grip to this album that makes all
these sort of things come together. Where again where it
is you know, a bit pretty in Indian times, it
always still feels a little rough, a little like stark
when you get like you know, the sort of Farringdon
interluge where it's kind of this like kind of gloomy
urban sounding thing that goes into mob Dla, which is
like the most abrasive and mean they get kind of
lurches around, but again has those pretty moments to it.
So it always know, it's how to sound vast and
kind of like interesting and intricate without losing touch and
kind of I said, having ideas about your station. It
just kind of can ground things and hit you in
the face when it has to. And even again on
that that comes over to tow songs like Mind's a Liar,
where they go into kind of like nineties pop hooking
dance loops and they still keep that feeling a little
little rougher and a little kind of like in your face,
and all these sort of things just kind of constantly
combine in a way that's always really nice to listen to.
Speaker 3: An interesting but never feels like too pretty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I listened to this album for the
first time, you know, getting on a bus just to
kind of head into central Liverpool and like you know,
going past all the buildings and everything, and it's it's
very urban, it's very communal. It is kind of dark,
but also you know, has has hope within it.
Speaker 4: I mean, no one's referenced this band yet, but the
bit in mob d La where that lead line comes
in and it sort of pretties up sounds like Coldplay and.
Speaker 1: I actually made that connection. But sure, well, I mean
some people listening might be horrified. And I want to
say this after.
Speaker 2: Arena rock stuff earlier, it's kind of like that's the
sort of thing I kind of get at, Like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't mind coldplaying small doses and a
splash of it. Here again for a band that I
went in expecting really not to like a talk and
then halfway through, I'm going, yeah, coldplay, why not? Like
that happens across the record and with things I like
a lot more like there's You Take the Vocals off,
Deserve It and the Canva. If it weren't played with
such grit, it could sound like something off Strange Ways
Here We Come, or Worth the Way Off Three Imaginary
Boys and There Were Minds. A Lie comes in.
Speaker 4: And it's like British eighties into nineties pop, and I
think it might be my favorite song on the record.
And it strays further from anything I'd been told to
associate with High Viz before. It's just for a record
that feels so grassroots and kind of humble might not
even be the word, but like unpretentious in its ambitions.
They managed to be really out there with the influences
they drag in.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, I think there's definitely a very again, a
kind of an open minded approach that you can just
detect in these musicians. Again like you know, Graham's voice,
He's been able to adopt kind of actual singing more,
which is proving very good at and guided tour. The
melody throughout that track a brilliant and very distinct to him.
But he also adds this again, this kind of punk
swing on the kind of if you need a line
of and it just like knocks that out of the park.
I love when he's able to again sprinkle in more melody,
just throw his kind of like shouty bark anyway, like
in Drop Me Out or or mob Dla. Like it's
music that feels just very infectious, kind of be in
a in a crowd like gone forever, get that.
Speaker 2: Out right, closing the set and everyone going when you're gone,
You're gone forever.
Speaker 3: You won't be fucking missed. But that is what I
want to see.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it goes full post punk in terms
of like you know, killing even like grave pleasures kind
of forward like you know, regimented vitriolic motion on that
like angry angry hook. The rhythm section really get it
as well. Like again, those those kind of the same
kind of grooves that to me make like classic Stone
Roses songs feel very like effortless then kind of they're
formally missing a little bit in music recently, like stuff
like Feeling Blasts and that bassline very much has it.
But then again the same minds a Lie, which we
spoke about as a single taking whatever that like chopped
up vocal sample and beat. It is much more like
you with expecting some kind of like UK dance or
house music, but bouncing that off like one of the
more desperate hardcore performances from Graham. It works like shockingly well,
and it just sounds really really cool as hell, and
it just the album the blend as this sort of
quality that just kind of, you know, it seems to
just bounce with life, even though it is engaging with
a lot of troubled stuff. And it's so much more
musically literate than just the britpop thing, like you know,
the Oasis thing isn't even like ten percent of this album.
It's I mean, for me, it's it's kind of novel
to have this in terms of like, you know, every
release week of the year, I have some like death
or black metal record to check out, but the day
High Vis release this album, it's like the one thing
on my calendar that will do this this way. And
I know there are other bands who you know, can
dabble with these sounds, but getting that blend right where
it's gonna appeal to it people like me and Elliott,
you know, very different sounding bands. But this and the
Temple of Angels album last year, I like the only
band who reaching knee at the moment who would give
me this kind of fix of again sort of eighties
alternative inflected I guess modern you know, alternative rock or
punk thing, and it's not derivative or diam a dozen
or some bizarre impersonation. It actually seems to have a
kind of a magic of its own.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, for me the most recently, this My Moment
is like the Military Gun album. I think is that
this is quite a close companion to that of being
a band who are like from hardcore doing a kind
of like bringing in all other kind of influence. Obviously
this is a very kind of US inflected one, but
again you can still feel that that owaysis britpop. Anyone's
on Military Gun and I really liked that album, but
I think as a whole there's more going on with
high Vs on this album where they're they're they're they're
putting in more interesting ideas and taking more creative swings.
Speaker 3: That does make it stand out more.
Speaker 2: And I think beyond a couple of the big bangers
on that Military Gun album, there's more that I'm going
to sort of remember and it's going to stick with
me this time round.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I really agree. I think of bands, you know,
coming from hardcore doing more of that old thing, I
think they're the best right now by a mile. And
again it's very unavoidably English, but you know, they've not
been limited to the UK and their success. They are
getting places in you know, in America and I'm.
Speaker 2: Pretty sure is it pretty of a sound whatever? That
like men, that's when Europe is. They're on that lineup
alongside like, you know, the only other bands marking they
are kind of there are like Turnstile and Chappar maybe
a few hours, but that's the company they're finding themselves in.
Speaker 3: You know, the real cool kids of our world High
Vis are in there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's really deserved. I think it's
this album has not quite got a trauma bonds, which like, honestly,
if we're talking about the songs from the past five years,
that are in that category of like absolutely perfect rock
songs that again I feel they should like be even
bigger than the band who wrote them that's on the list,
but super cool band and they really feel they've hit
their form now and kind of what they're offering, so
you should definitely check out if you haven't already, High
Vis and their album Guided Tour. Then we move again
in this little segment to a band called Touche Moray
who released an album called Spiral in a straight Line
and like I said in quite a young leaning, your
contemporary leaning episode, Touche are, like I guess, are veterans
from the punk world in this episode six albums deep
now and they are a band who I think at
this stage, you know, they've earned their dues in terms
of like the scene from which they grew out of
sam when they put them on at like an Outbreak
for example, they've kind of started to cross over into
something approaching legend status.
Speaker 2: Yeah now right, No, they are outbreak royalty, like you
put on any kind of ulk. They were sound of
and they were like the secret band on that or
like the US versions of this, and it was kind
of like one of the raid about sets that touche
more rocked up to just play this raucous like hardcore
festival that they they are, you know of this the
the that wave of melodic hardcore bands that I hold
so dearly that came in the sort twenty tens that
that was the sort of the side of email things
I really got into, you know, that dispute to cha
Mora Defeata on that kind of wayver bands that was
more my like Emai sound because I was.
Speaker 3: So into hardcore.
Speaker 2: Two Shamura the ones who have kind of like whether
that really gone on to just be the kind of
like respected legends, sort of status band of that scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think they've definitely they've carved out a
space themselves where you know, plenty of people would tell
you that they are one of, if not the best,
to grace that scene in like the last twenty years.
Would probably still be described as one of the more
consistent bands in that plane. Like, I think it's probably
about right to say that they've never had a poorly
received album, you know, you know, like Black Darley Murder
for people with flower tattoos, you know, like those kind
of models on their consistency. And again, Sam, you're very
much one of those voices who would have to share
more as like one of the leaders in their kind
of scene for the past fifteen to twenty years. So
for someone like you, you know, I mean, this album
is a bit like throwing you a treat compared to
some of the other shit we have in this episode, Elliott,
I don't think we've discussed it, but I wouldn't be
surprised if you also like a bit of a soft
spot forty JM. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think of all their peers, the absolute best records
are by two share More, and I don't know if
there is dependently I don't know if it was consistent
as some people make out. I do think they are
a bit more up and down than that, in that
Passing the Sea is one of the best melodic hardcore
records they've.
Speaker 3: Got like two tens, and then everything else has gone
like eights and nines.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think that's fair, like is Survived by
I don't really listen to almost ever go.
Speaker 3: Back to it really good. Actually, I insured by massively overlooked.
Speaker 4: All right deal, and I think Stage four is not
just their best work, but it's one of the best,
like hardcore hardcore adjacent records, certainly of the twenty tens
likely ever. Yeah, it's just absolutely one of.
Speaker 3: My favorite albums of all time. Stage four.
Speaker 2: I think it is like one of the most important
albums to me. Listen to my top twenty albums being
from a while back, like it's all there.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, and when I was doing my top albums
of the twenty tens, it was right high up in
the conversation, and that was that wasn't just rock and
metal that was across seen. Stage four was at the
business end of it. Lament I really liked at the.
Speaker 1: Time, and I still think that's great moments, but I
haven't really gone back to it, so they might be
a bit more up and down for me than they
are for other people. But I would agree that the
best stuff by them is the best stuff full stop. Yeah.
I mean I can largely defer to the both of
you then, because I don't like two scha Moury because
the kind of post hardcore that Sam the wave of
Bandgy describing that you know, leans far wobblers like the
Yelp emo poets. You know, that's my least favorite kind
of hardcore. I do observe, though, when you know a
TUO say Murray feels like a landmark, and when it
just kind of feels like another two Share Moray album.
Stage four and twenty sixteen very obviously the landmark Twochee
album at least of the TNM era, but arguably of
everything they've done. That is clearly the point when their
wings had spread in to you being, as you say,
one of the most acclaimed bands in all of heavy
music at that point, not just in their kind of small,
dedicated scene. The follow up twenty twenty is lament a
well liked record amongst fans, probably but very noticeably not
garnering the same level of crossover conversation and splash that
Stage four had made. And again, even now, looking at
some of the writing around this new album, the Kerrang
review of this album, for example, I'm going to get.
Speaker 2: Into this because this is this is one of my
sort of things with two Share more at the moment
where I kind of get a bit like that.
Speaker 1: Okay. I mean, i'd say Stage four is positioned as
the masterpiece that now everything else has to kind of
follow up, And I would ask if that's fair, and
obviously sadly you probably disagree, but I would say, it's
pretty observable fact in terms of how vocal and animated
the response to an album is. Stage four was the moment.
We are now in a sort of post Stage four
period where you know, I guess, you know, throw it
out there, how like you know, big an event or
like hard hitting? Does a two share more album have
to be he kind of you know, for you to
really make it, you know of note and not just
as I say, I.
Speaker 2: Know they're too shame more out so like again, like
because my argument the whole Stage four thing now is
like you, they can never replicate Stage four.
Speaker 3: It can't be done.
Speaker 2: You can't ask Jeremy to perform that trauma again because
if she's Stage four is now Matt was written in
the immediate aftermath of his mother dying. It is him
letting all of those feelings out there in the rawest,
most unrestrained way possible, and it comes together with them
just kind of finding magic in a way. I don't
think you can expect bands to necessarily be able to
replicate that again.
Speaker 3: Now, Like that's not say that like.
Speaker 2: Lament and this are as good as Stage four, even
if you remove that aspect from it. But I do
kind of I'm geting to a point on like stop
asking every two show more I abum to be stage
four because it can't be done.
Speaker 1: It is like, yeah, I think that that's very very
that's that's very very reasonable, you know, request stop asking that,
let's just put it onto again. So basically, how you know,
high up in terms of like, you know, great records,
are we talking the kind of you know, the post
stage for era being well?
Speaker 2: I still think they. I think both Lament and this
are still both fantastic. I think they are again there's
not anything that if you I think the thing with
this album is there's nothing you're gonna hear on this
like I've never heard two Shame where I do that before. Wow,
It's it's they've kind of just they found what they've
really defined their sound as in the kind of the
sort of prettiest version of like what hardcore punk can
be with that fraw, emotional core, and they just kind
of go like, we're just gonna keep doing that.
Speaker 3: In ways that sounds to me fucking amazing.
Speaker 2: But whether people are kind of like happy for them
to kind of do that and not reinvent themselves or
not you know, create a new kind of like deep
level of trauma that they have to perform for you,
like if that's gonna be enough. Like some people might
see this as you know, kind of like maybe diminishing
returns or maybe them we just kind of settling in.
But if this is two Shamuri settling in, then they're
still better than all their peers by such a long.
Speaker 4: I think to compare it to another hardcore band, I've
I wasn't around or certainly not conscious of when this happened.
I feel people say that when You Fail Me came out,
there were continued converged fans who thought, this isn't this
isn't Jane Doe, this isn't as monumental as that record is.
And I think that's even more true for something like
No Heroes, where it's you listen to it and you
don't think, oh, I mean it's don't get me wrong.
All those records are incredibly good, but Jane Doe represents something,
and then the two that followed it maybe aren't as
archetypal in the same way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd throw out for more, you know, again, within
our time people say that about like all we lovely behind,
or like one of Us as the Killer from Dillinger,
which I think are both you know, very very fucking
great records. Yeah, and in the case of both those bands,
they would do the thing for me. And two shim
or when we'll get into this record a second, but
with partner with Lament, I think these records are very good.
But I don't need another Stage four. But I can't
help but hope for something that makes me that excited again,
in the way that when The Dusk in Us came out,
I just went mad and acts to fall earlier dissociation
in twenty sixteen. You don't need the same thing that
happened before, the same kind of emotional response, but something
to excite you. And this record, like Clement, I think
it's it's another very good two show record for me,
but it's in like you say, it's in the less
remarkable camp than the two they have, which just dominate
the conversation. Yeah, obviously, because I'm not trying to you know,
beat them with her Why can't you make a Stage
four again, because that's fucking insane. But I think I
am just trying to guess cut through to the idea
of like when is a tuche Ami album, a properly
special event record, and when is it's kind of like, yeah,
you know, if you're a fan, you'll probably like this
one as well, you know, and that does feel a
little bit like where we've been with Touch Mori in
you know, in this decade so far, I mean, like.
Speaker 3: My favorite one of my favorite bands.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fair enough, Yeah, for sure. My association with Lament
is you know, it's the one that went to you
do with Ross Robinson and maybe as a buffer from
something like Stage Four, which is just so nakedly unfiltered.
It had some of those kind of you know, noisier
left field texts maybe that you'd expect, which, despite my
lack of interest in them, I would also be like, oh,
that's cool, they've gone and you know, kind of done
something like that. I was quite struck actually to see
that this album was also recorded with Ross Robinson, because
Ross feels like, I don't know, in the modern day,
a lot of bands go with him make one kind
of ugly, strange album when they get out of their
systems a bit and then move on. Touche have actually
like struck up a creative partnership with you, which is
a kind of novel for you know any band today
as the big you know two sha kind of fans.
Following they continued to work like is that what you'd want?
Speaker 2: Well, again, I saw who I really like them and
and I was kind of like one of the sort
bigger championship when that came out. And again I think
there are songs from that that when you saw Matt
Outbreak have kind of sit alongside the classics. Well yeah, no,
I think I actually feel communicating and that the best
of Lament has stood the test and kind of feels
like it is earned its place in the set that
maybe again some of that is survived by hasn't quite
so I'm happy for them to continue down that kind
of direction. And this does feel like again just kind
of a firm explanation of the sort of sounds are
playing with a bit more on Lament. There's a bit
more of the sort of post punk shimmeriness on there
at times.
Speaker 3: It's not as always at it.
Speaker 2: They slow down a little more and they kind of
experiment around with like tempos and textures in ways that
they didn't necessarily do prior.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when I heard they were going back to Ross Robinson,
I can't like part of me. As much as I
love Ross Robinson, part of me did go off a
fuck because Lament by smothering it just that little bit
too much. It was like a very very mild case
of what happened on Golden Gray, where with that record
you just got I don't know if this is a
good record or not, because I can only pay attention
for the first dozen listens, or you can pay attention
is to to is the production. Lament had a slight
bit of that. For what it's just about this record
is maybe Ross.
Speaker 4: Robinson was hazing them that time, because on this album
they've kind of gone back to something moreck in to
what they were doing before Lament. I think there's a
much more shimmery, clean, well produced record, and to the
point where I could imagine listening to this and not
even knowing that Ross Robinson is working with him again.
Speaker 1: That was my thought. I thought it was was not
as kind of antagonistic as I might have expected in
that regard. I think, you know, it was like nobody's
at the start, nice upbeat guitar and they're very locked
in band rhythmically, and you know, the drum sounds and everything.
They're actually very neat and kind of like all them
all in their correct but.
Speaker 2: Then when you get disasters immediately after and that that
does kind of get a bit more like at ya sure.
Speaker 1: But I mean I think it is one of Ross's
more you know, tasteful, restrained production jobs of his like
latter career, the albums are still short. You know that
this is just over minutes, but you know, I think
you throw your mind back to you know, their first
couple of records or whatever, which you could often twenty minutes. Yeah,
I think I think you can see how on something
like this Touche are you know, in their kind of
slightly later years, a much more measured and atmospherically focused
band than they were early on, when it was a
lot more about that kind of sort of like rabid
mood from one thing to another. And they can even
you know, for it's still a fairly diy you strip
back punk band, they can touch on some sense of scale,
like you know, something like you know, very a propectly
titled altitude. You know that chorus does feel like it
has to do real kind of verticality to it in
the sound.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I think that the sort of the ashishy
nicely between Like again, Nobody Amos feels like the kind
of like perfect middle ground of like slightly biggest sanding
touche with a little bit of punk energy, but it's
not as kind of fully out and then Disasters kind
of like rips at you and goes full on punk attack,
and then you know, you get how Ashby it kind
of sets back into a very nice, monodically pleasant thing
with a little bit of that punk pace, but they
just run their scope and and this a'm just sits nicer,
where like there's a nice back and forth between the
sort of broader sounding stuff that is like bigger in
scope and the stuff that makes me want to, you know,
add outbreak festival jump off the stage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean haw Ashby actually has a slight sort
of jangle pop quality that like you know, you might
not be surprised to see on the high Viz record,
like it's you know it's it's it's more melodically challenged obviously,
but it has that genuine kind of major key pop
saysilly to how it sounds, but that you know it's
coming after Disasters and you like that and that and
Mezzanine are you know when they add some of that
kind of old scream oh thrashing intensity into something with
you know, turn up the distortion on that a lot
more and sort the vocals out, and that you know,
disasters could be like old oath Breaker or something, or
at least like you know, Defeata, like something that has
a little bit more kind of crust pace in it.
And those are the kind of moments where I can,
you know, I can go with it a little bit more.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think this record is a really good understanding
of push and pull, which Touche I've always heard and
it's nice to see that present and correct.
Speaker 1: Like nobody's a really strong open how Ashby I think
is for a more mid pace tune.
Speaker 4: It feels like in a way as intense as a
lot of the other stuff on the record, because that
repeating mantra at the end, it feels like, as much
as the song is a bit of a slower one
that's perfectly tuned for something like outbreak. And then Mezzanine,
which has maybe the fastest, most at it stuff on
the record, also in the second half blends into something
a bit more mellow, a bit more subdued, and being
able to weave between those two things, I think there's
always been a really impressive trick of theirs. One thing
about the last couple of records that I kind of
wish they would go back on is somewhere along the
way they lost the art of like the short, sharp
shock of a song like that sort of minute long,
ninety second thing. Almost all the songs in Earth three
to four minutes and I understund like six records in.
It's gonna be hard to think of new minute long songs.
But personally, those moments where you you get a flash
of intensity like that bit on hal Ashbiel Mezzanine or
disasters as you mentioned, or there's a few on it,
I think those are the standout moments.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean like the Finalists weirdly sounds like Tom
DeLong Is on guitar. But then there is a couple
of tracks with guest vocalists as well, and particularly as
the closing track with with Julian Baker, which.
Speaker 3: On every two Share Moray album, like she's been on
that last great.
Speaker 1: Sure, but you could see that and go, you know,
maybe this is me speaking as the non you know,
not as familiar then, but I could be imagine the
mellow closer. I liked it started with blast beats. It
sounds like they picked up tricks from their tour makes
Death even when that starts.
Speaker 2: I genuine that that that kind of like post black
metal blast bit. I was like, that does feel like,
you know, something they've just got from being closing with
Death Eavan. But I mean, I think there are like
fun kind of like little surprises like that through this album.
For a band who, again six albums in, who have
kind of they've quite clearly defined their sound.
Speaker 3: Now, it's nice that you get a little moment like
that that will kind of catch up.
Speaker 2: God that isn't just you know, a guest vocal spot
as a different voice for Jeremied sort of play off
of I think that those whole moments are really funny,
and I think that's not the only one. Those occasional
little things that do just kind of make this album
feel a little more interesting than just another two Shape album.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think both guest vocalists do a good job.
Speaker 4: Lou Barlow I particularly like his contributions there, which they're
not as front and center as Julian Baker's, but I
really like hearing his voice on the two Shae Canvas,
I got to say.
Speaker 1: From a band I'm not jr. Yeah, oh right, okay, Yeah.
The Julian Baker tune I Goodbye for Now, I think
is my least favorite song on the record, one of my.
Speaker 2: Favorites on the album. I love that part, that really
sorrowful kind of climax. I think it's really nice.
Speaker 1: Even I think that's decent. That's almost more frustrating because
one of the things I thought when I was listening
to is you know those videos where it says this
is what English sounds to a non native speaker and
you got that is funny. That was like, this is
what Jeremy Bom sounds to perrn Haish. Like suddenly I
was like, oh, the sort of spoken word poets has
come out in full force. And yeah, without because I
was focusing more on the you know, Julian in the
background kind of acting as that climactic counter. Yeah. I mean, she,
like you know, her contribution is is really great. I
think the song itself is slightly underwhelming, and maybe that's
why some of the publication I've seen haven't reviewed this
as positive.
Speaker 4: I mean, you guys seem to love it, so maybe
I'm in the minority, but I don't think the alm ends.
With all the Two Slums preceding this, they always end
on highlight moments, and I think this might be the
first one where I'm not that bothered about the closer,
But I think the standard is still upheld by the
previous songs, which I think are there. Maybe isn't a
song on here which I think is an all time
classic two schae song, But I think.
Speaker 3: There's not a Flowers in You yet fair enough, but
you know, yeah.
Speaker 4: Or even on the on the lasting, and I thought
something like Reminders was like a really moment. Yeah, this
one maybe doesn't have any of those, but just sort
of consistently maintains a high standard for the thing that
they do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my central barrier with this album. I won't belabor
it because you all know it's not interesting to hear
me say it. I think Jeremy sucks and you hate
his throat roar from scream crying tuneless to me, sounds
like there's no room for nuance, applying himself differently to
what attract might demand delivery like nobody's I'm like, oh okay,
and it's ruined. The moment he starts singing on it
a song like force of habit, whereas it's like downtrodden
from the get go, and then the primary focus is
on him squawking about his seat belt like rubbish, get
it out of my ears. And because they are a
fairly straightforward two and a half minute type band, I
don't think they're that adventurous instrumentally. You know, they're pretty
to the point they have they got the odd moment,
like you know, there's a cool bridge in mezzanine which
has almost like sort of space rock guitar, but the
focus at most of the time is very on Jeremy
and it pushes his words to the foe. It's kind
of the opposite problem to bounce and composure, where BAA's composure.
You know, the lyricism has a lot of like heart
put into it. I'm sure I just barely register it
because the vocals like don't draw attention to themselves and
they can they fall into the background. This guy won't
fucking step back. So like, I find no enjoyment in
this album, and I won't listen to another two show
where I have until the next time we inevitably have
to review them. Put in my you know diplomatic critics
hat on, I can recognize how comfortable in their skin
they are musically like they're pros at this stage. They
are doing things that you know, some other bands probably
aspire to do, who haven't developed their skills as much
as Touche have done. But also, you know, I could
kind of feel that, like, you know, this isn't really
musically one of the most ear catching or particularly energetic
or explosive either two Share records, but just heavy records,
and we've heard of like I think even again, how
kind of put together and neat it is rhythmically. Oddly,
it rarely feels all that like hard or vital to me.
For all of their obnoxious bluster, there's also something about
two Sche on record that's like a little bit meat.
I think if you were to tell me that this
is another of those slightly on the down low two
Sche records, I think I can tell.
Speaker 3: I think that's fair.
Speaker 2: I mean, I still think as well, like there are
hooks in the album that have still stuck for me,
I think, of course, and nobody's just really good. I
think that the whole misguided how I speak atashed with
hooked like and again that's what I mean. Again, the
band's composed from didn't have anything that really felt like
catchy or sort of sticky with and again there's an
emotional resonance.
Speaker 3: You can you can hate Jeremy's vocals, fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it also didn't make me want to turn
it off.
Speaker 5: Like so.
Speaker 2: That's because you're just you know you're not you can't
feel it like I need that, like tug on your
shirt collar, like just pour out the emotions and like, yeah,
this isn't as kind of like rawing at it as
some of the two Shoms are, but it's still it still.
Speaker 3: Hits all the right spots.
Speaker 1: Me.
Speaker 3: I think they are still comfortably of these sort of
bands the best at it.
Speaker 2: I think that again, I think they write better hooks
than a lot of the bands who try and actually
write melodic, catchy punk songs that they're not writing the
things that that I find as catches what Tuche do,
even if we can't sing them for ship and he
just kind of like, but it's real, give me a
real vocal performance like what Jeremy balmb does on this.
Then they're fucking like like, oh, I'm a very nice singer.
The boring thing like all of that give me. Jeremy
Boum just kind of like wailing his heart out and
giving everything he's got.
Speaker 4: But I think the reason why Jeremy gets over with
me and I normally don't have that much for tolerance
of this sort of thing is because he's he's so
far past the point of like being able to control
himself that you know, if someone was like that in
your life, just go ahead, let them, let them get
out of their system. They're going through something at the
moment where someone like I mean, you're catching some strasier
Sam but like the guy in Spanish Love Songs, just
use me as an example, because he's kind of blothering.
Speaker 1: I just feel myself. Don't don't cry, mate, No, So
I spend the whole record sort of bracing for someone
about to break down in tears. Jeremy Long from the
first second is just sort of screeching at you, so
you're sort of just go, okay, Well.
Speaker 2: You know, he speaks like that as well as the thing,
just in a very more like meek version of that.
That's how he speaks. That's just his voice.
Speaker 1: Like imagine, we're gonna come on to another record which
has a you know, an unchained you know, the guy
with his life not together vocal performance. I just think
this one sounds like shit. But then we go to
Share Moury Spiral in a straight line. We shift over
to Ranti Pazuzu and their album Muntautuya have been practicing
that one, which translates quite evocatively as shape shifter. And
now normally the structure of what we do here when
we have an album where we kind of know an
advance some of us here on the team are going
to like it, someone in particular is going to hate it.
Like in the case of that two Share Moray album,
for example, we lay out all the strength and the
selling point of the album first, and then we let
the person who doesn't like it have the counterpoint. That way,
you know, every voice is heard, but we also we
let the record get off on the right foot and
it gets its you know, fair shot and moment in
the sun. This time, I think it would just be
funny to go straight to who I would like to
point out has not actually reviewed an I Rancy Perzuzu
album on this show before their last is before you
joined us. We've never had them on Album Club or
anything else. There is no instance of T and M
forcing you to listen to an anti Pezuzi album prior
to this one, and yet you have still managed to
make your distaste incredibly clear. It's very amusing.
Speaker 2: I'm having to listen. I don't know it was someone
made me listen to the last of anti Persusi albums, so.
Speaker 3: So mental it so I was I was like, why
do you know I don't like over this?
Speaker 2: And so this is why I was gonna like bracing
myself for this album and I'm gonna dissolve disappoint you.
Speaker 3: I found this album shockingly boring.
Speaker 1: This is the thing that many many things you can
say about this boring, It's not one of them.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing, right, you know, I don't like
horrible avant garde black metal experimental shite like why not,
but at the very least, Imperial Triumphant scare the shit
out of me and make me feel uncomfortable and bad
about myself. This album was just kind of just like, Okay,
I'm sure that there is wild experimentation like and it
is like unlike anything.
Speaker 3: So maybe I'm wrong, but yes, like.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe probing is not the right one until you
get to sort the second half of the album where
I started to get bored, because again, the first half
of the album is like spooky and weird.
Speaker 3: I don't know, this album didn't like.
Speaker 2: Terrify me and make me feel horrible and bad about
myself in the way imp trumpety or kind of like
scare me and thinking it's kind of genius in the
way in Tarama did like, those are the kind of
like bands I'm going to compare this to, because they're
they're the avant garde black metal bands I've been subjected to.
This is the kind of the one in the bunch
of because it just washed over me a little bit
in the end and didn't actually make much of a
lasting impact. And I feel like I'm letting the side
down by not.
Speaker 3: Being like, oh, I hate it, it's terrible, it's terrifying.
Speaker 1: Well, clearly the hardest of us like that you're not
even phased.
Speaker 2: Maybe I've just been so trauatized by fucking Imperial Triumphant
that Auranti Fazuzu is just kind of like, yeah, it's
creepy and spooky, but it's not like it is unsettling.
Speaker 3: Fine, but it.
Speaker 2: Didn't I don't know, it didn't get under my skin
in the way Imperial Triumphant and the light did.
Speaker 1: Should we move on? No fun?
Speaker 3: I'm yeah, I'm really sorry to kind of be boring here.
Speaker 2: And yeah again, there are things where, you know, we
go through track by truck and like, oh you know
that that like the opening track with this high kind
of stabbing simp or strum wherever it is is so
immediately hostile that I was, and the Volks are so
like destroyed that you know, young are like theirst singing
another language, but even then they could have been singing
I want to have a fucking clue what's going on.
So like the first track was was kind of like
a little bit like creepy and spooky and oppressive, and
then I don't know if it kind of peaked too
early with that song for me and kind of like
spooking me, and then everything else was kind of just like, okay,
it's a bit more of.
Speaker 1: That, very much giving off. The film wasn't scary, It
had no jump scares in it, vibes here.
Speaker 2: Like that maybe I am just desensitized to this shit
now you Interrama was the one that, you know, it's
kind of unlocked it and this is I'm just too
hard for it now.
Speaker 1: Well I have been like around it. Persis is like
number one cheerleader. I think they should start sending me
free stuff at this stage. That is a joke. If
they ever happen to hear this, unless, of.
Speaker 3: Course you want to, you're boring.
Speaker 1: Ignore them. They're wrong. I think they are an absolutely
mind blowing band, and I plainly put one of the
best things to happen to Mettle for the past like
fifteen years. Because if there's one thing about this month's particular,
particularly like the you know, the Cream of the Crop
album review says to me, you know, we got this
and the Bloody Pcantation album on consecutive weeks, you hear
it said a lot, how there are no new things
you can do with now, how it's a played out
genre that doesn't contain actual innovation anymore. And you know,
in kinder terms, maybe the greatest leaps of the genre
all happened like thirty years ago, and any creative that's
left is kind of moving the building blocks around arena
and shit the kinder. You know, sentiments along those lines
often true, you know, like that that often is true
I'm not deluded, but there are exceptions. And if you
want to point our band in heavy music, who do
break that rule? And we do still have visionaries and
some of them, you know, some of the biggest ones
of them put out records this month. I think you
know that the Blankcantation album, astounding as it is, maybe
is more along those lines of like remixing elements a Rantiperzuzu.
I would bestow the title of being the most genuinely
original metal band in the world right now. Fair. There
are precedents for what they do. They have influences, obviously,
but there has never been something that sounds like a
ranci Perzuzu. Like what they do is genuinely new, and
they are the band in terms of relation to metal.
I mean, you could argue maybe they're not even purely
a metal band, but at least in having clear, you know,
links to it that make me go like, man, yeah,
there are still new kinds of heaviness to mine, like
the well has not been exhausted. Yeah, we're not just
like chasing what people did in nineteen ninety two. And
they've been getting better too, Like they were a startling,
novel original thing when Their first album came out in
two thousand and nine. But they haven't just clung to like, Okay,
we've invented a new thing. There is there much more
we can really do with it. They've kept shifting it.
I discovered them on the twenty thirteen record of our
own that's what you say? The next one, Veryitellia was
way crazier than that.
Speaker 3: That's the one I just don't like at all. Horrible
nasty thing. If you're yeah doing that, I'd be like,
I hate it. It scares the crap out of me.
Speaker 1: That really put me on, Like the oh, this is
actually like one of the most vital bands in the world.
Train and twenty twenties mester in Kincy. I think to
date is their masterpiece, like an absolutely freakishly brilliant album.
Elliott more of a mediator to myself and Sam here
can you speak to what I'm saying?
Speaker 4: Yeah, like they I got in on the twenty sixteen
record which I can't pronounce, and that one.
Speaker 1: That's the one that translates to the Vibrator, which is
quite brilliant. I'll just call it that.
Speaker 4: Then when the Vibrator came out, I thought, this is
one of the best extreme metal records of recent memory
twenty similar feeling again you go, are you gonna tell
me what that means?
Speaker 1: Or I don't remember that one now?
Speaker 2: Sorry?
Speaker 1: And just the way like that one mixing crowd rock
into it, which is a genre of music you don't
hear referenced in metal often enough, I would argue, and
those two this week apparently loads, but both of those
records four years apart. I've never really hankered for a
Rancy Bazuzu record because I never feel like I'm finished
with the last one. It's like trying to catch upon
homework or something, because there's so much to mine. And
this record came out it's another title I can't pronounce,
so it's just the Vibrator was a good name. Guys
just have names like that, and I'm not gonna discriminate
against them for being finished. Fine, and you're allowed to
be finished. Listening to this record as much like with
each record previously, I thought, okay, that's sort of the
outer limits of what they can do, like, who knows,
maybe do something else. This is the first time I
listening to it and just going, what is black metal?
What is it that makes something black? Metal, because as
much as it's the genre where oh you can't change
anything about, it has to sound like this. And if
you want to make fun of closed mind and metal
fans like you just evoke the stereotypes of a black
metal fan.
Speaker 4: And yet there's so much variety within that. And then
a record like this comes along and you think, outside
of the vocals and just how fucking evil it sounds,
what is it about it that makes it relatable to
black metal's past.
Speaker 3: It's crazy.
Speaker 1: And when I say I think, you know, you could
argue they're not even a metal band. I think it's
because they clearly you know, think about and approach their
their craft. They are much more, if not you know,
as much, if not more so, a kind of full
blown psychedelic act who you know, incorporate metal, specifically Scandinavian
black metal as one of the building bocks that sound.
But the way are they conceptualize and visualize what they
can do is sound. It does not come from a
metal source. It's again the way they use production to
truly create the kind of three D psychedelic sounds. You know,
I love these bands, but people metal fans say that
about like Tool or whatever, and you put it next
to this, it's like, no that that's normally shit, Like
this is like genuinely experimental psychedelic music, and we are
so blessed as metal fans that they have chosen to,
you know, associate with us and kind of utilize extreme
metal sounds as part of that. The result is they
have like one of the scariest, most upsetting sounds in
the world today. Scandinavian black metal is such an extreme
evil sound anyway, but turning that into like a head
swimming psychedelic acid trip, but also as I say, continually
changing that and moving the goalposts of like when you
get your head around like psychedelic black metal, they'll fucking
flip it upside down and they never let you get
cozy with it. The thrill that this album gives me
like if their sixth full length album, it's actually their
shortest full length album, and to me that seems very
necessary and intentional to it, because you know, if there
are albums of theirs, like Veritellia for example, that let
you sit in and inhabit a space more, this one
is so like cruel and intense that it's almost like
it couldn't go on longer, you know, like, amazingly, this
is a Rancy Perzuzu out there like harshest and noisiest,
and it almost like kind of caps how long they
could actually expose you to it, you know, Like I
was just from the singles. I was so excited that
they'd actually surprise me again, because like, you know, I
listened to a Rancy Perzuzu a lot. I should be
familiar with them, but there are sounds on this that
made me just like cackle with demonic glee that they'd
found new ways to upset the state of Quo yet again.
Well yeah, I mean we kind of broadly, I guess
should broadly call them a black metal band. And normally
the benefit of having a genre tag is that you
can go, this is a black metal band. Sounds a
bit like Dark Throne, sounds a bit like Mayhem, and
if they stretch the definition a little bit, it's still
mainly relatable to that thing. Listening to this, I just
started writing down stuff that sounds like it, And I
didn't write down one black metal band because outside of
the vocals and like I said, just how blasphemous doesn't
even capture It's not a blasphemous record. It's like a
possessed album. Yeah. The genius of Antipasezi is how they
still somehow emotionally feel black metal to me even when
it doesn't actually play black metal.
Speaker 3: Would you say this is their least metal records?
Speaker 2: And I've listened to, like, I mean, the Last Humanity
records once and I've never gone back to them because
why would i?
Speaker 3: And this is what I mean. I was like they
felt that there.
Speaker 2: Was there was less metal in its traditional sense on
this record, and I do agree. It is then way
more experimental and kind of putting in like other different sounds.
Like when I said I was I found this quite boring.
I'm not gonna say this wasn't adventurous and weird and
out there, because I think that that is dismissive of it.
Speaker 3: It just didn't.
Speaker 2: I just didn't find a kind of like connection with it.
But yeah, like, how how does this kind of rank
in terms of like how much.
Speaker 1: Here's the weird thing about that, here's the way thing
about I was thinking about this. It might well be
one of their less like the components of heavy metal
that exists within this. It might be in that objective
sense one of their less metal records, but because it
is like maybe their harshest and cruelest and like one
of their most evil and demonic, it somehow circles around
to feeling spiritually their most metal despite sounding the least metals.
Speaker 2: This is everyone talking about, you know, what is heavy
what like when we were talking about Dragon, So that
is like this because there doesn't actually like feel like
like typically kind of like traditionally sonic heavy, but it's
heavy and sort of evil in different ways.
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah, I mean as a move. This reminds
me of when Cult of Lunar did Vertical, and they'd
got like inspired by like German expressionist films like Metropolis,
and they made a record that was like a more monochromatic, harsh, angular,
sort of semi industrialized version of themselves. This record kind
of does something similar to mine, where it's cut out
all light and it's it's sharpened the edges into like
sounds that feel like they could cut you. And I
was reading about how when they were touring Mester and Kinsey,
like after you know, finally COVID opened up, they would
really lean into like producing the noise elements of like
when they were performing these like you know, harsh, crazy
versions of songs, and like, you know, as someone who
saw them touring that album, I can attest to that,
and that approach kind of bled into the making of
this record. The other thing I did not expect, though,
is leaning in those kind of industrial impulses. There's a
shocking amount of like trip hop material on this record,
and like, if you ever wanted to hear what a
cyborg black metal trip hop record might sound like.
Speaker 2: Here is.
Speaker 1: Yeah and how God how to truly fine? Yeah, let's agreed,
like that sounds like a jazz rap song, these liquid,
ghostly grooves. But then instead of I know, someone like
Car or a tribe called Quest coming in over it,
they get the KLi Mar guy from Temple of Doom
to join.
Speaker 5: And it is so.
Speaker 1: Unsettling because you're in this uncanny valley of not knowing
what the music is gonna do. It's not like, you know,
you put on you know us, another black Man band,
you put on like a Mayhem record and you go,
I know that, yeah, yeah, they're tremlo picking blahdah blah
fast drums with But when something like that happens, it's
a combination your brain's not used to. You can almost
feel it, the htting around your skull, going like what
what what's going on? Yeah, and the record is so
fucking gnarly, like that first track like Bio like Helnessty
is so like rhythmically, that song just makes me lose
my mind. Like it's just it's the most insistent, unrelenting
material that you know, like kroud rock by way of
industrial metal, smashing percussion, sounds like mister construct.
Speaker 3: There's so much going.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kicks like a fucking mule. I love it.
And the guitars are like really tortured, but it is
like it is riffing in that song in a really
fucked up manner, but it's there again. You know, the
song's comparatively short on this four to five minutes, normally
there's only one that breaches nine. They feel more like
contained explosions of songs, where again, if you look like
look at like Veritellia or or Mester and Kinsey, things
have a tendency to kind of sprawl out more. This
record it has a very uh, you know, it's very caustic,
but they give it a defined kind of shape that
might otherwise lose and the identity that they imbue each
one of those songs with the title track, which comes
second on the record, Like, how do you want to
describe that song craft work? If they were way less
enthusiastic about the future, that's a good one here. One
of the things I let out of that song for
me the drum beat, and this is like an unlikely
referenced point, and unlike some of the other ones that
we're mentioning, I'd be surprised if this one is actually
what they had in mind. But the way we took
about Abe cunning him in death tones being such a
master of like beats, and how much character they will
give to a death and song and how much incredible
texture that he can bring this drummer is in that
kind of mold, and that title track, the drum part
is like something that he could lay down on like
white Pony or around the fur like RX Queen or something,
and the way it kind of lose you in the
same way that does and a raanzy Pezuzu have taken
that drum track and turned it not into some kind
of like art rock texture like they would, but the
satanic whispers of a Finnish cyborg and the ideas around
those beats. You continuing on, well, like I say, you know,
the trip hop influence and exactly what you're saying. Really
glad you've picked up on the same things as me,
like how to Tuley. I started to think about full
blown experimental hip hop, like that beat and that bass part,
which again, the first time that Baseline came in, I
just did this like almost groan of pleasure because it
somehow picked all the wrong notes that I wasn't expecting
it to do, but it was perfect. But it's it's
much more like you'd expect someone to come in and
wrap on, like on some like cool off kilter, you know,
underground hip hop record. If you wanted to tell me
that that is what the vocal actually does on this
that weird whisper, and maybe I can't argue against it,
you know, but we are again spiritually in the realms
of black metal here and later on Ikea Kami also
had this feel of like a warping death grips beat
from the money Store, or like a dialect or a
clipping beat or something, except you know, it's shrouded in
kind of horror score keys and smashing glass and a
vocalist who, like you say, sort of cooling on those
shamanic chants rather than you know, rhyming. And then again
I read in the press release that Death Grips is
one of the bands they were like name dropping as like,
you know, an inspiration for this particular record, And it's
testament to how genuine that is that we've actually picked
that out without knowing it. You know. I think the
way they use in dis thoughts sound they are in
the conversation with you know, Death Grips, Aphex Twin, you know, Radiohead,
even it could calm me.
Speaker 4: The word I kept coming back to was impressive, Like
everything about it just feels like a masterclass, like like
you know, use Death Grips, Aphex Twin, Radiohead, some of
those bands, whether they're to your tastes or not, there's
just something, you know, there's something almost like academic about
them where you just got I'd admire that even if
I don't like it, and for me listening to that,
it doesn't really want you to like it. It's fucking
terrifying ten minutes long, and considering it's one of the
more sparsely arranged songs on the record, they never let
you settle in because there's just these bleats of seasick trumpets,
strings that sound like a grain, and these basements that
come in that you know, it feels like your skull
is shaking, and there's just that all the way through.
And I feel like one of the records that I
think maybe now gets over referenced. When I look around,
I see people referencing it for things. I don't think
there's only fit but the drift by Scott Walker, the
sensation of that, of that one in a million record.
There aren't many records that there are a lot of
res are inspired by, there aren't many that capture that
same feeling.
Speaker 2: There is a thing that somewhere, like you say that
it's and none of it seems to actually fit together,
which I don't know if that is again by design,
where it's like the rifts with the kind of like
simp sounds and they're like they're like almost off keying
off time with each other to just kind of make
it as like I mean again, that's where again, like
I can see why this can be like unsetting and creepy,
where they're blending in these things that shouldn't work and
don't but they kind of keep at it where then
kind of becomes part.
Speaker 3: Of this like weird a hole.
Speaker 2: But none of this is starting together in a way
that I can like sit in and let it creep
me out because I can't.
Speaker 3: I can't figure it out. I guess yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean that would be very down to the visual
because I again, for me, this record it sounds very
kind of condensed, and for me it does like it
very locked in, like it the way it kind of
congeals these varying elements down to a base kind of
uh for me, Like I g the songs totally work
in terms of the direction they're moving in, what grooves
they're kind of trying to create. And I am again elliot,
you're saying that kind of academic quality too, which I
can feel that way sometimes that's some of the things
that we're we're talking about. But I am just obsessed
with the like you know, mummy my tummy feels funny
kind of atmosphere, that of darkness and like genuinely demonic
qualities that are antibud to kind of evoke. And I
mean it's hard as a reviewer sometimes because half the
time you don't actually know what what is actually making
each fucking sound. But like the four minute mark of
bioa Kellnessty when the metallic rifts drop away and it's
replaced by that like repellent bass and that haunted synth tone,
and your stomach just goes out, like with the rift,
it's absolutely queasy. I love it, the base slide that
starts like driving the title track more into the second
half of it, like genuinely desarentining type of sound. But
to me, they make these things like fucking just sing
like they're humongous sounding, even again rhythmically really locked in
Voi tail you has this kind of again very a
trademark antipazuzu thing of like a very oscillating, buzzing kind
of baseline, very hypnotic, but there is so much like
harsh ugliness on top of that of what you would
already expect from iranti pazuzu, where even when the piano
like comes in on that feels like it's being like
you know, the videotape in John Carpet's Print of Darkness
or something like it's being beamed in and it's kind
of battling through static. And then there's Valutus, which I
had to just throw up my hands in disbelief that
how they managed to be this much gnahilia and more
upsetting than usual, particularly the use of rhythm there. If
you listen with a close ear, the drum part is
not actually playing the same amount of notes each time.
Like I haven't worked out what times the tree is exactly.
It's like a Levin or something, but like it has
this absolutely manic, thrashing, mayhem kind of quality playing on
this like uneven pattern. They messed with that a bit
on like the closing track of the last abb and
did it with a blast beat but kind offset you
and it's so like, you know, picking you up and
shaking you like a rag doll. And then in hindsight,
after hearing what comes next, that somehow reads as like
the foot off the gas pedal part of the song,
because the ending of that song is so fucking uncalled for.
It's just it's it's it's not okay, it's not it's
it's not allowed.
Speaker 4: It's it's so cool to be surprised on that level
where you just it's good it comes when it does
on the record, you're just one of the three hands.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know what to say, I mean,
you're panicking, like I just full blown bodily responses when
you hear that song, it's so extra. The first couple
of times I, you know, Listener's album, I forgot it
was there somehow, and it caught me by surprise all
over again. Now I've listened to it enough that for
the whole song, I'm bracing myself, like physically scared of
what is coming around the corner. It is, like, you know,
it's the full harsh noise drop in the Ranci Perzuzi discography.
Like if you've got this album turned up loud and
you don't know what's coming, I implore you, like do
your ear as a favorite, take the necessary precautions. It's like,
without a doubt, the most extreme upsetting moment on a
metal album, if you want to call us that this year.
Speaker 3: I mean yeah, so like that one probably is, you know,
just when we kind of go like the fuck am
I hearing? Because it did, like it did.
Speaker 2: Catch me off guard on that part and again like
maybe because I was going to being lulled into sort
of like waiting for something to happen, and then that
that's what got me. I'll give them that because that
was and I guess I was kind of expecting more
of that from this album. I mean, that's so maybe
I kind of primed myself to like be prepared for
the peak of kind of stuff that was going to
make me really upset and it and it just there
are individual moments in this record that are like ear catching,
all kind of like just like you know, what the
fuck did I just hear? But as a whole, it
just I didn't get this sustained dread I normally get
from these kind of albums, I guess, And that's maybe
where it just didn't land as much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that is that's very unusual. I certainly
thing to you know, to enjoy it, you have to
be very in tune with their particular you know, this
kind of just very rhythmically focused, you know, psychedelic kinds
of music. But at that moment, like the whole mix
gets completely it's like wild, It's like they've ripped a
hole in the base. The drums just start slurring and warping.
You start feeling like you've lost your hearing at the end,
like you to a grenade. That just unbelievable, It's fucking outlandish.
And then the closing track. You know, it's quite rare
for them to do sort of essentially a full blown
synth outro song, but it's longer than several other songs.
And knowing their approach to how sort of like you know,
creating studio sounds and how layered it is, I think,
you know, Stranger Things is such a lazy shorthand, but
that genuinely sounds to me like the theme for that show.
If he pulled out any of that like comforting synth
wave retroness and just int ensconced it in genuinely like eerie,
scary sounds like it's just this horrendous sense of kind
of like abyss beneath you, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And again it's it's using tools that ordinarily like
that sound now just denotes nostalgia. That's why it's used,
like people in bands use an eighty synth to make
people feel nostalgic, even if they weren't.
Speaker 1: Alive at that time. It's just it's shorthand for that.
And raz Bazuzu took that thing and went, how do
we make this sound like something no one's ever heard before?
And something from an alien planet? And it is completely unknowable,
and you know they manage it, and what should be
the respite of the record, which sort of brings you
back down to earth, still doesn't really let you off
the hook. Yeah, Sam, Sam, some weird anomaly on this one,
but like one of this is one of the most
extreme extreme metal records of the year. But I also
think that everyone should hear it because it's not just
tickling those extreme metal receptors in the brain, like if
you don't like black metal and normal black metal sounds,
don't you know entice you in any way? This is
far more so again experimenting with sound type record in
the way like you know a radio head or a
Trent Reznor or someone if you're interested in those kinds
of music. I think they are extreme music's most essential
current band in that regard. Six albums into again what
was kind of a new approach, like what if we
played psychedelic music as a black metal band, and it's
still getting more experimental. It's not even the only one
they've done this year, Like some of them. They did
a card under the name Haunted Plasma that came out
this summer, which is then going full blown like crowd
rock cosmes type stuff, and it's got Matt McNerney from
Grave Pleasures guesting on vocals. They're absolute mavericks. Like I think,
you know, the Blood Incantation album, as we would describe
it earlier, I think is more the like the kind
of game changer for the moment in terms of like
something really being unlocked and you know, reaching a new
kind of plateau of rounding something around. To Pazuzu, this
is just like another step in their crazy, crazy journey,
moving off with no one to catch them. You should
definitely give it a listen. Lastly, I guess we're talking
the band that link the like sort of ugly left
field extremity and the you know, sort of outbreak punk
type worlds that we've mainly spoken about today. It's Chat
Pile and the album is called Cool World Album two
from a band too. It still feels like we've only
just started talking about really, but Chat Child Chat Pil
have very quickly become you know, arguably the name in
like contemporary heavy sludgy noise rock quite startling. Actually, Like
you know, I can't remember in my time of being
plugged into that particular world. At least a band rising
to the top quite as dramatically as Chappile have since
the release of their their debut album God's Country in
summer twenty twenty two, and then you know, continuing with
the anticipation around the release of this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it feels like chappar like they could. It
felt like it was no kind of like even buzz
going into that debut album. It felt like they was
just here with the debut album, and then they've kind
of just gone, oh shit, everyone's kind of talking about
chatpar kind of just shot up and got bigger and
bigger and bigger, and in Alio just under two years later,
here's the next album.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't remember that being build up to that record.
It just that record came out, and I think with
good reason, it was kind of unignorable, Like it was
just sort of a normally where they took noise rock
out of the hands of art school kids who had
sort of adopted it for a while and put it
in the hands of some backwards weirdos who also had
loads of charisma and star power. It was this strange
combination of things and having a bit having a bit
of that new metal swagger in it, but a totally weird,
paradox will ill fiting concept, managing to wrangle, like you said,
the words of extreme and the alt rock outbreak thing.
Speaker 1: And just being so fully formed from the off. Yeah, well,
Elliott God's Country was in like your top five albums
or whatever it was of that year. What is it
about the kind of character of this band that you
find so kind of you know and has clicked with
you know, so many people like yourself. It's very similar.
I think it is that there's something about them that
really feels like they're off the beaten path and noise
rock like in its things like Big Black and you know,
the Jesus Lizard, that sort of thing. Part of the
appeal of it is I don't know if I trust
the people making this record, Like, I don't know if
I want to be their friend. There's a danger factor
to it.
Speaker 4: And noise rock went somewhere else, and I don't even
know if you'd call Chappeyle strictly a noise rock band
where that definitely feels like the dominant thread going through it,
and that style of music for a long time became
sort of an arty art school nerd arena of things
that things like Lightning Bolts, Boredoms that sort, and again
great records made by those bands like classics, but they
did sacrifice some of the the weirdo element of their music,
and then Chappa brought that back.
Speaker 1: But they weren't.
Speaker 4: It's hard to explain. There wasn't anything awkward about them.
They were this sort of unflinching, outwardly aggressive noise metal
band who also had black hoop black humor woven into
their art. It's so much of the appeal of it
was just how identifiable it was, how strange it was,
but also the fact they wrote great songs. It wasn't
just oh, this is super artistic and really experimental. There
was quite an immediate connection for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's that's touched onto it, because you know,
they're unavoidably rancid, Like it is just so unapologetic in
the kind of darker mental avenues. It pulls you down.
Like even go out to their you know, their EPs,
which I hadn't heard prior to to God's Country, but
then you you know, there's some like Garbage Man or
one of those EPs, and it's got as much in
common with like a horror grindcore band like Cretin as
it does Big Black, It's total nightmare fuel and on
God's Country, I think they really nailed into making that,
you know, very overtly about certain social themes in a
way that you know, kept that quality so you have
somengs like like why do you people have to live outside?
Deliver with that kind of rancidness of inflection, but I
think it just chilled people. Like they write songs that
just kind of make you stop and take stock of
where you are in the world, like are you on
the up on the down? What is around you and
your surroundings, and that will bring us very neatly the
cool world because they also, as you're saying, they hammer
at home. I think sometimes noise rock and the stuff
that you know, I often like the atmosphere of noise rock,
but some bands just kind of, you know, they desiccate
and they fall apart. Yeah, and there's no real hammering
like you know, force at the center of it. Chappile
deliver it with so much sonic power as a band
that is taking cues from metal as much as it
is you know, stuff you call noise rock, and I
think that gives them an X factor compared to maybe
the more purely one thing or another type bands. And
my first thought when giving Cool World, my first spin
was Jesus, when did this band get so many riffs?
Speaker 4: Again, a lot of the stuff I've seen talking about
this record is how it's emotional, more vulnerable. It's talking
about macro world issues. That's all true, and we can
get to that.
Speaker 1: It fucking rocks. It's thugged out as hell.
Speaker 3: This the thing like this is the album that scared
me this month.
Speaker 2: This is the album that gave me this horrible feeling,
that pit in my stomach of just like God, everything
is awful.
Speaker 3: I don't want to be here anymore.
Speaker 2: And it's all because it fucking goes so unbelievably hard,
alongside a vocal per formance that is genuinely one of
the most upsetting things I've heard this year. And again,
like I found the Last Shop, I'm quite upsetting and challenging.
And I did like it first, and then it clicked
me and I was going, like, God, this band are something,
and on Cool World, I think they've become just one
of the most exciting individualistic and like I say, genuinely
scary and I'm saying but kind of cool and interesting
bands around. I think this album is like just an
astonishing piece of nightmare fuel.
Speaker 1: I mean you know that they are. They're the horrible
noise rock band who make everyone have a bad time. Yes,
but that wouldn't work as well if they didn't also
somehow have grooves that get the public, get people.
Speaker 3: Like again, I saw them do this at Outbreak when
I was watching an Idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I couldn't quite profes with what I was seeing
us on Outbreak because it's horrible music, but the riffs
and rus are so designed to stump across the stage
two and it and it bizarrely worked while still making me.
Speaker 1: And I think God's Country is maybe a little more
you know that decomposed, more of a slop, Yeah, like
upsetting raw meat dinner, you know, like here they've cooked
the meat a little bit better. And I think it's
you know, it's more consistently catchy and perhaps more conventional ways,
but just Jesus, those grooves. I think it's it's why
as well as well as strictly how it sounds, but
also just in principle, it's why they seem so spiritually
connected to a band like corn Where and one of
my one of the best readiscoveries I've had this year
is remembering what a fucking unbelievable band Corn were in
their hated So this has come on at a perfect
time and someone like Corner. They are both one of
metal's premiere party bands and almost singularly responsible for bringing
in that shadowy, uncomfortable, naked and afraid quality into the
public eye of metal and chatpile.
Speaker 4: Like I said, as much as they are the horrible band,
and a song like why kind of instills panicing you.
Even on that song the riff is fat and listening
to this record when those grooves come in, I can't
know what they feel so good?
Speaker 1: Yeah, to a big degree, this is like the album
that kind of gives you hope for like the reviving
of new metal, because you know, like it's the side
of new metal where you're like, oh yeah, like that's
the thing which we can you know, draw in to
kind of keep it, you know, uncompromising spirit intact. Because
I don't know if you saw someone on Twitter alerted
the band to the fact that the eleventh of October
twenty twenty four was release. You know, when this is
released years to the day that the debut Corn was released,
and they were like, we swear we didn't plan that,
but it does seem like cosmically aligned somehow, And it's
just wonderful because it's like this really has the thing
that Korn did on their earliest albums that are sepulturey
did on Roots, which again, you know, chap Pile of
covered roots belly Roots is not a surprising influence. But
and then you know, bands like Helmet and so on
before then kind of laying the groundwork those riffs, you know,
when they weren't a knuckleheaded commercial thing, but they were
sparking some kind of like meaner, crueler, more antagonistic musical
revolution in kind of you know, heavy riffing. All of
those characteristics about like the debut Corn that make it
as much a part of the extreme music pantheon as
it is the commercial metal pantheon. Those are the things
showing up here not.
Speaker 2: Giving a kick it as much as you did last month,
but like Vended aren't gonna sound as genuinely unhinged and
scaring heavy as Chap I'll here do, because you know,
it is that neumel of a thing, But this is
doing it in a way that is that captures that
spirit of like when it was actually kind of scary
and new and different and you didn't know it for
and not you know, just kind of like, oh, we're
the spooky, scary kids like Chappell actually sound menacing in
a way that any band who want us who try
and sound menacing actually can't.
Speaker 4: And like you look at Vended or just pick any
of the new metal revival bands, and one things some
of those bands seems to either misunderstand or just ignore
is why stuff like the early Corner records or Sepultur
or any of those bands is so affecting. And on
a surface level, it's easy to go, oh, quite loud,
quite loud, big seven string.
Speaker 1: Rift that just goes dough dough dough do. But going
back to that original first Corner record, there's an imperfection.
There's a push and paul, there's there's weird noises, there's
a ramshackle quality to it, and that's what makes people
go feral when it's played. It's not some pro tool, boring,
lifeless just eight.
Speaker 4: String rift over and over again. And because Chappile aren't
interested in, oh, what's going to sound good on the
main stage at download, they end up writing riffs that
would sound brilliant on the main stage at download in
the process of writing songs that would only sound good
in a wet cellar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they've adopted that kind of brilliant ability to turn
a like a limited amount of notes into actually highly malleable. Yeah,
riffs like I Am Dog Now it's got, you know,
brilliantly instantly memeable title the way that Chappile are very
quickly proven, very skilled at. But him like hollering that
is unforgettable in that like reduction to bestial animal state
that the whole album kind of sounds like, and the
production like that is it's more honed and together than
God's Country was. But they really know how and when
to just turn all like the amps just all the
fucking way up, and the drums are still about as
god flesh jackhammer as a real human drummer could be.
The bass tone is fucking ridiculous on this album. Yeah,
And I think in a way, you know it, maybe
this has kind of tidied up what was going on
on God's Country, And I can see why someone might,
you know, if there's someone out there who really prefers
that particular flavor of the debut album, I can understand that,
but for a band I thought were incredible at making
you feel bad more than I thought they did have
some but more than I thought they were the most
incredible songwriters. Yet I couldn't believe the stream of bangers
that this albums you with, Like coming out of the gate,
it's like hit after it hit, all the way through
into like the second half of the track list, just
riff after riff.
Speaker 4: I would I don't agree that they weren't great songwriters,
but I would conceide that a large part of the
appeal of God's Country wasn't necessarily in the individual songs themselves.
It was, you know, the horrible industrial, bleak landscape. It
drags you into this record much more than the previous one.
I could just put on individual tunes and rock out
and songs which are in many ways no less intense
or no less depraved that like I Am Dog Now
that's just an absolute jam shame, which sounds almost more
like them trying to do a joy division kind of
got a jangly, spangly riff like near spoken word delivery,
but yet super catchy in its course, and big old
death metal beat Down, which quite pleased about, but something
like Frownland, I refuse to believe that if you like
really heavy music or death tones or anything that group.
Speaker 1: I mean that Center's Apprentice, isn't it that groove?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: But fine, that works for me, And like me and
my mate, we sort of we're both super excited at
this record. We decided like we'd listened to it at
the same time in a remote listening session, and when
that groove first comes in, especially in the verse, our
little chat just lit up because.
Speaker 3: It was like, oh, oh, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 4: Because the propulsive sensation of it is just like it
gets you in your gut in the way that great
low end metal should.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think, you know, maybe it says something about
you know, the listener, But basically, if you fall in
that cross section of the diagram where you want something
that's this gnarly and twisted and again like the bass
strings are tuned so low they're barely attached to the
net anymore. But you will also hear a riff like
that and go, oh, banger, get down to this. You know,
his record is just fucking full of them, like funny Man.
So again, in that kind of Corn Realm, which again
of like you know, I don't listen to Corn as
much as I did when I was a teenager, but
that first record is just like, you know, one of
the greatest eva and it's really wonderful to hear something
capturing that kind of energy in the uncompromising, underground kind
of context, not just you know, vying for popular attention
by doing kind of what they did. And the verse
is a funny man with that ridiculous like carnivalistic beer
like sneaking guitar loid. It's so odd and such an
earworm and yet doesn't really let you off the you know,
the the hook the riff on tape is fucking insane. Yeah,
it's got this sort of like death and there's this
light footedness that you think would be kind of played
for speed and energy, but somehow they've mixed it so
brutally heavy that it just bypasses that and goes right
back to crushing again. And another one of the bands
I was thinking about in terms of the rif strutching
every thing and someone like Shallac who had that, like
you know, rock music boiled down to its like most
basible components. But I think Shallack kind of played that
in a very like, you know, quite stripped back purity
kind of way more than it was like overwhelming you
with the power of that fucking thing. Chappile have like
cranked it just sort of disgusting levels and they've crossed
bread that you know, that Shallack approach with that like
you know, nineties fucking low end on roots metal distortion,
and it just it it's just so primal.
Speaker 4: I mean, the way this band understand tension and release
the New World, which the first time I heard this
record wasn't one of the songs that it merely stood
out to me.
Speaker 1: But when they build that, most are dragged, Most are dragged, most.
Speaker 4: To drag, kicking and screaming out over and over again,
building and building, and the release of into the New
World just wretched out. It's like it's again, it's the
same feeling as there's kerosene around something to do that
building to set me on fire. It just you know,
on paper, it might not sound like the most complicated
or exciting thing in the world, and it's not like
it's not complicated, but something simple performed expertly is as
effective as anything. And I can't think of many bands
who are as good at that, certainly to emerge in
the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean The New World is one of my
Favorit drafts in the records well because that chorus it's
just like ah, and I can't stress how good the
vocalist is in terms of, you know, getting through to you,
because you know that mid section of Iron Dog now
where he's just sort of wordlessly reverberating. It doesn't sound
exactly the same, but one of the only things I
could compare it to that gets a similar sort of
effect are like some of the vocals and the black
metal band voices when they veer a more conventional black
girl screams and just kind of go oh, kind of
put daggers in you. It's like that, And so much
of what he's doing feels like he's just you know,
tormented by things that he's he's witnessed and he doesn't
know how to kind of shake it out of himself,
which you know, obviously certainly, you know, in the kind
of time since God's Country came out, you know, seeing
stuff come out of like Palestine every day for a year,
which seems to kind of a lot. It seems to
you know, elude to. I'm sure a lot of people
will feel that kind of way in terms of, you know,
seeing things and feeling like how do I, you know,
what do I do with this? And similar kind of
feeling of something like I seen footage by death Grips
and that sense of like witnessing atrocities online in the
Internet age that are kind of disconnected from us, yet
somehow feel like they are, you know, all around us,
and it kind of sends us all a bit demented,
you know, when on tape he's yelling that it was
the worst I ever saw, alternating with you know they
made tapes and if I could I kill them all
without any like elaborationally specifics. Really it's you know, it's
like the musical equival of the videotape scene and kill
List or something, where like what has he seen? Like
how is he this fucked up by it? It's it's
vague in the best kind of way that Hammer's home,
like the just the elemental terror and feeling of it.
Speaker 2: I think this is just the thing with this album,
is it Like there were so many points I like
it does just kind of bring this start where I
was like, it is so easy now to see these atrostees,
like you don't even have to go looking for them anymore,
that they are just passed in you. And that is
kind of like a real world horror that like, again
I've kind of seen it and there shook me.
Speaker 3: And again, like how convincing they portray this.
Speaker 2: It like, of course so many songs that that again
our bangers, but they still feel scary because of that
vocal delivery and that like unflinching realness. It's it's such
a like amazing kind of like balancing that they put
off with this that one of the best vocal ons
of the year, just in how like one of a kind.
Speaker 3: And again, like it's not as.
Speaker 2: Constant horror as maybe the debut was, because there is
you know a bit of a Titan musical canvas, but
the fact they can still convey that horror so convincedly,
and then you know, you can get a song like Camcorder,
which is full on just kind of low rumbling doom.
Speaker 3: We're like it's some musms.
Speaker 2: It feels like he's taking on a character and not
kind of like just expressing horror real world stuff, and
it's still just as scary and the tension never lets up.
Even that you get these moments of complete release where
it's like, here's the sickest fuck rift.
Speaker 3: To bounce to, you still kind of almost feel dirty
doing that.
Speaker 1: I mean, camcorder is almost like the kind of the
Yin and yang, the prelude to tape. So there's a
thought I had about well, just about just the thought
I had in general in lighter listening to this record.
And one of the things that's cool about cool One
of the things that's unique about chap Pard and fascinating
about them is, like you say, painting the idea that
they've been driven mad by something, and it's not necessarily
clear what there is at any given point. But the
songs on this record and the themes on the first
one of like capitalism and living in one of these
forgotten parts of the country where it feels like no
one cares about you.
Speaker 4: It's like, if you run an experiment where you've got
someone to live that life of going and working in
a failing factory every day, coming home, having no money,
going on the internet and watching atrocities across the world,
if that was a test subject, that would be considered cruel.
And that's life for so and the sound of this
record is someone who's been driven mad by that, and
it's something that's not a fiction, and yeah, managed to
craft songs and art from it.
Speaker 1: Absolutely and so like you know, last month, Elliott, we
reviewed the new album from The Jesus Lizards, and you know,
that was a good record, good comeback record, and that's
a legendary band, but that felt more like an elder
band kind of returning to something they've you know, they
well worn. This just feels like a band who are
currently going through it, you know, like it's this is
overflowing with all of the viscerally disgusting feelings that they
can then turn into this, which you know, for how
much more polished this is than God's Country, It's My
God Is. It's still a raw nerve and I just
love how every guitar they add on to this manages
to do the exact right thing to make a song
simultaneously more involving and grimy and weird, like the guitar
leve for the final five odd seconds of Iron Dog.
Now it's almost I fucking threaderc from a Sugar has
turned up just tho it's bananas and that's just I
you want to go back to as well. Earlier, Elliott,
you mentioned that they're building on like the alternative rock
side of what they do as well, which you know,
go back to God's Country. There's songs like Pamela and
stuff that kind of have that. But but Shame is
like actually melodic and almost pretty if it wasn't for
how desiccated the delivery sounds like. That's I guess the
closest thing that Chat Pyle have to a radio single,
and it's brilliantly them and obviously not at all that
and it's you know, obviously Trap two is a very
immediately got a new flavor and the full death metal
vocals in the middle like got rules or not? That
scared me.
Speaker 3: Aggressive that again, that scared me. That is what was like,
fucking hell, what's going on now? All of a sudden,
Like yeah, but.
Speaker 1: That's like again more like fucking you know, spectral voice
death doom type vocals or something. Just loved hearing that,
not just that it's on a chap Pile record, but
it's on like one of their most melodic songs, and
that just appears and like Milk of Human Kindness is
the you know, similar kind of death grunge stuff that
Code Orange were drawing on on like dreams in Inertia,
but the way he slips into that like you know,
sleeping pilled kind of moan for that chorus of I
screamed about it all night and then opening up on
that nightmare howl of I'd heard nothing about the way
they burn just properly, just that it's not just that
noise of thing of like, oh, you don't know what
they're talking about. It's unsettling, they're kind of crazy whatever.
It's like I can visual he's talking about. I think
on this is the problem, Like yeah, I mean I
can visualize not just what he's alluding to, but also
what states that guy is in, and he's on these
massive fucking like head not a groove. It's just shocking
how well honed into like sharp direct hits. This has
managed to like make chat Pile sound, but it's also
still so capturing of the kind of existential misery and
that kind of you know, the oppressive structures beating you
down to the dirt of the of the first album. Yeah,
I've heard some people, as a criticism of this say, oh,
it's not that much of a leap forward. It's it.
Speaker 4: It feels more like a sequel to God's Country than
it does its own distinct thing. And to me, like
if you come up with a new sound, you should
be allowed to explore that for a little bit before
being expected to move on. But also it does almost
everything you'd want a follow up album to do. It
hones a lot of the stuff that makes the first
record special. It sounds bigger and bolder, it's more varied
than the first record. I think this is just a
triumph on all fronts.
Speaker 1: In amazing how many times we said that in this
particular reviews Brackett an awful lot of albums. Wow, what
a show that was in terms of delivering those records
that really I mean not not for us to take
too much of the credit, of course, but like wow,
some bands really.
Speaker 3: Credit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you know, as said, putting those records on
our plates from the you know, from these bands in question.
Absolutely Uh, some of the the the standout music of
you know, the the year and recent months certainly come
in there. What a band of albums that was. Let
us know which ones are your favorites, please do each
and every one of them is worth is worth checking
out and and gaining something from So cheers everybody for
listening as we guide you through that selection. We will
be back next week with a considerably shorter show. There
should be enough to like you feast on for a
little while because, as said, a lot going on there.
Thank you very much for being here with us. Do
check out. You know, last week we had the Damnation
Festival album club pack doubled up as a preview. But
even if you're not going to Damnation, first of all,
it's just an album club pack on some absolutely stellar
records coming from that kind of realm. I mean, hear nothing,
see nothing, Saying nothing by Discharge was a fucking first
draft album clubic for a long long time, and we
just finally got around to doing it because of this,
but so much involved their hatred from Han Kaine by
Dragon the Sunlight. Speaking of that, you know, obviously next
weekend that's where we will be, where plenty of us
will be, and we will be reporting on that in
the aftermath. But there will be a lot more to
come on the Patreon feed and stuff like that following
that as well, so we'll see you there for all
of that. Cheers everybody, into the stargate