On Earth as it is in Hell

Yeah I know, it's been a while. I won't make excuses, I won't pretend you really give a shit if this blog exists or not and I won't waste anymore of your or my time with this preamble. New shit I've listened to these past few days reviewed below.


Sulaco - Build and Burn
2011, Handshake Inc

Sulaco has been around since 2003 and even though I've seen the name around and heard of them I'd never made an effort to actually track anything of theirs down. It turns out I'm a bit of a fuckhead. Because I should've. Sulaco oozes energy from every available pore and orifice. There is a Converge-meets-Trap-Them sense of unstoppable urgency going on here that's impossible to not get hooked on. There are semi-mathy prog parts, lots of insane almost b-horror movie like melodies and a huge dose of Brutal Truth grindness/weirdness, both rythm-wise and in the riffing. The more I listen to this album the more I get an almost caleidoscopic feeling off of Build and Burn. I mean, shit there's a huge death metal presence here, loads of dirty punk as well as an almost, well, dare I say it...emo-esque sense of melody. There are heavy as fuck sludgy, almost doomy, parts and there are pure blast beat sections that weave in and out of it all, often driven by those mathy odd horror movie melodies. I am so incredibly pleased to have finally gotten my shit togehther to listen to Sulaco because it's most definately worth it.


Young Hunter - Children of a Hungry World
2011,

Young Hunter, hailing from Tucson, Arizona, sounds like they just stepped out of a time warp straight from the late sixties and they spin huge, epic doom yarns mixed with drugged out psychedelic rock and stoner elements in a way that completely blew me away. There are even black metal-ish segments thrown in for good measure, with blast beats and all! Amazing. This is living-in-a-van-smoking-dope-kinda-music, it's I-wanna-move-to-the-desert-and-do-peyote-music, this is Charlie-Manson-is-a-friend-of-mine-and-he's-groovy-kinda-music. With a modern twist that somehow eludes my attempts to pin down. Imagine mixing Jefferson Airplane, Black Sabbath and Kyuss and letting it all pass through the digestive system of both Boyd Rice and Hunter S. Thompson. That's what Young Hunter sounds like. Kinda. Their stuff is available through bandcamp. Go there and listen for yourself.


UFO Gestapo - Grandemmisair
2011, Streaks Records

Grandemissair is the latest offering from vaguely proggy, heavy doom dealers UFO Gestapo. There's a huge Sabbath presence in these songs but there's also a dirty, ADD-kind of punk vibe going on that's a bit Black Flagg-y if you get my drift. This isn't only all-out sludge in the EyeHateGod sense of the word, but there are lots of loose structures here, lots of weird, noisy parts and lots of spaced out jams. But there are also brief, wicked, blasts of unrestrained hardcore fury, that break up the plodding monotony that's inevitable in this kind of music. There is a strong sense of 80's hardcore to some of these songs, reminding me at times of bands like Flipper and early The Melvins. I know next to nothing about the band except that they're apparently from France and that this is their second full length release so far. Really good stuff.