No cure for poisoned minds: Empire of Rats

Empire Of Rats - No Peace
2012, Get This Right Records

These guys mix vicious tough guy hardcore (think burly NYHC leaning heavily on heavy chugging mosh parts) with some old school Sick Of It All-like sensibilities as well as huge doses of a slightly darker more metallic side. The opening intro track has a biting satrical message, hinting at a social awareness that I find refreshing. The following five songs are solid and fast paced with lots of ultra heavy breakdowns and some really impressive song writing, with a great raspy midrange vocal delivery that sits perfectley in the middle of everything without being too up front in the mix. There's a definite Slayer presence in some of these tracks, both in the machine-gun style riffs and the way they blend melodies into the guitar parts, as well as in the drumming style. I also get a huge Integrity-vibe off the material, so of course I'm loving the shit out of it. More please.

Queens of the Sludge Age

Mares Of Thrace - The Moulting
2010, Arctodus Records

Stripped down and violent, detuned and hauntingly beautiful, melodic yet chokingly dense and constantly bristling with rythmical intricacies and passionate, raging guitar work, The Moulting is an intriguing album. I found it rather by chance, surfing the shallow depths of these interwebs, and I'm really glad I did. Being a duo, Mares Of Thrace consists of only a drummer and a guitarist, and it blows my mind that two people can create both such an intense, almost frenzied sludgy atmosphere and such sonic complexities and yet manage to bring to it such devastatingly beautiful textures. Their music reminds me alot of other very stripped-down-to-the-bone kind of bands, who also utilize alot of winding, sometimes dissonant or melancholy melodies and rythmical complexities in their writing; bands like fellow Canadians Nomeansno, Jesus Lizard and of course Black Sabbath (Ward's jazzy drumming, the somber, melancholy melodies of both Geezer and Tony Iommi have always had a swampy kind of blues-feel to me).

There is an impressive amount of detail to be found in the music as well, be it the often deceptively technical drumming of Stef MacKichan, the brief but constant melodic colorings thrown into Therese Lanz's often densely heavy riffs or the intermingling flurries of electronics thrown into the mix. There's enough metal here to warrant a 'metal' label on the Mares' music, but there's more to it than that, of course. Having done stints in loads of other musical constellations - Exit Strategy, Kilbourne and KEN Mode among them - these ladies know the ins and outs of the heavier, extreme styles of music like the backs of their hands. This means there are huge doses of other influences than just mere metal at work here. There's an obvious jazzy, winding noiserock (I fucking hate that word) feel to much of their music, but there are also monumental, tribal influences going on here, along the lines of Isis or Neurosis, where dense, melodic riffs, driven by awesome, primal, warlike rythms shatter everything in their path. And ontop of everything else there's also a visceral snarling punk attitude coating everything, adding yet another layer of ferocity to the music. Therese's emotionally charged vocals, sometimes sung in a clean voice, more often screamed in a deep, resonant, growl (how the hell does she do that?) are hugely impressive and tend to work rather as an added layer of instrumentation than a mere conveyor for platitudinal inanities. It's not always easy to decipher the lyrics, and though I'm convinced they're just as well-written as the music, it doesn't really bother me not knowing what she's singing. The music as a whole is so impressive and emotional the lyrical content becomes less of a concern to me. I'm really looking forward to the Mares' upcoming album, The Pilgrimage, where they hopefully have expanded on the musical ideas and themes on The Moulting. Watch the live clips below if you need any further convincing.

Massive Killing Capacity: Black Breath - Sentenced To Life

Black Breath - Sentenced To Life
2012, Southern Lord

Holy shit YES! It's just as good as, if not even better than, I was hoping it would be! These dudes write some amazing crust-influenced hardcore/metal that is at the very top of modern heavy music today. Black Breath should be as big as (insert name of hip, overly and undeservedly lauded inane indie label metal/hardcore act here) and they should be given lots and lots of money so they can tour the shit out the world. Their last effort, Heavy Breathing, was one of my very favourite albums of 2010 and it truly opened my eyes to the effortless genious of their music, and Sentenced To Life cements that impression even further. Black Breath rakes everything down in their path with raging hardcore tempos, double bass drum smatterings, d-beat dis-core, Old School Swedish Death Metal guitars and thrash-injected riffs and solos. Imagine tossing in all that was good about nineties death and thrash metal and modern and metallic japanese hardcore into a tumbler and shaking the shit out of it. Pour it into these five guys and you have an extremely dense, heavy and caustic style of hardcore that blows everybody else into the dust. If you're a fan of such disparate legendary bands as Discharge, Dismember or Disclose, you'll fucking love this. If you don't, you quite simply, need to be killed.

Serving time in the middle of nowhere

Seven Sisters Of Sleep - ST
2011, A389

Everybody were raving about Seven Sisters Of Sleep when this album came out. People everywhere seemed almost taken aback by it and the reviews were glowing. Me, I just couldn't get into it. For some reason it just didn't do it for me. Maybe it was the longish name, maybe the generally slow plodding pace or the sludgy esthetic of their music in general, or perhaps I'm just retarded sometimes. It isn't that the music of SSoS is in any way difficult or overly challenging, I just didn't, for whatever reason, click with the tunes on the album, they just drifted past me without sinking any hooks in. I recently went back and sat through the album again and all of a sudden I got it. How I couldn't before is beyond me. It's almost impossible to describe SSoS's music without using the words Black and Sabbath so I'm not even gonna try. Suffice it to say, this is some amazingly well-crafted, heavy dirty metal with nods to sludge-masters Eyehategod as well as the previously mentioned precursors of all that is heavy in metal. It's not all slow all the time - in fact there are more than a few moments of ferocious hardcore velocity - but the pervading sense is that of desperation and dread and crumbling landscapes frozen in time. The much needed sense of urgency and release in the faster-paced parts serve as a momentum breaker that infuses a definite sense of dynamic into the album. I keep thinking of Eyehategod, circa Dopesick when I hear this but with a punkier attitude and less suicidally inclined. The vocal style on display here would fit perfectly on any d-beat charged hardcore album and this works really well within the context of these songs. Everything reeks of desperation and rage, from the vocals to the constricting, dense atmosphere of the music itself, and while all the songs are short and never even get the chance to be long-winded, they're also never leave you with a sense of being unfinished. In fact, the best song on the album, Swamp, isn't even two minutes long. The band apparently features members from The Arm And Sword Of A Bastard God (whom I have both heard of and heard - got a tape somewhere) and Tafkata (whom I have never heard of). Grade A stuff.

I am the one, Orgasmatron/The outstretched, grasping hand

Lord Mantis - Pervertor
2012, Candlelight

Since I had never heard of the band before (yeah, I know, I'm a moron), I dove into Lord Mantis' latest album with a clean slate and no preconceptions (which is a rare thing these days, when info overload at times tend to remove your ability - and, to some extent, even the need - to make up your own mind what to think and feel about things in general, and music, art and movies in particular). Maybe this fact made it easier in a way to ingest the music and consider it on it's own merits rather than some pre-colored notion of what to expect. After a bit of research I found that the band features some rather illustrious people within the metal community, from bands such as Nachtmystium, Von and Indian. Which, in hindsight, probably explains the truly stellar music we get on Pervertor, I guess. Either way, Pervertor is a beast of immense proportions in all of it's aspects, from writing to production and execution. It is steeped in sludgy riffs, varied but often slow, rumbling tempos and a rather eighties-feeling kind of doom metal that I loved from the very first instance. These songs are catchy as hell, especially considering the style of music presented here. What we get is filthy blackened sludge/metal with lots of tremolo picking, rumbling double bass drums, wicked rocking hooks, earth shatteringly heavy riffs and venom-spitting, snarling vocals almost as ferocious as those of Steve Austin of Today Is The Day. There's actually more than a vague resemblance to TITD in the general progressiveness and tone of Lord Mantis' music, though they're never drawn towards the same kinds of extremes as TITD. A few key aspects that sets the band apart from the brunt of their contemporaries are the brilliant, inventive drumming and the mind blowing, almost Cobalt-esque, winding riffs and melodies, alongside the fact that all of the songs keep evolving, never ever becoming stagnant or repetitive. Songs like Levia and Septichrist has me smiling like an imbecile every time I hear them, because they're that goddamn catchy and good! Oh, and the main riff on closing track The Whip And The Body is the greatest Motörhead-riff Motörhead never wrote. We have some Album-of-the-year-contender shit right here, folks. Dig in.

Pure Rock Fury: Junior Bruce and Aussitôt Mort

Junior Bruce - The Headless King
2012, A389

These days, we as consumers of art and what passes for culture, are constantly being inundated with music and information from every concievable angle; every day, every waking hour, everywhere. Especially online where just about everything is available for free and with almost no effort and close to no expense, it's so easy to get drowned in the sheer number of available musical releases and artistical outlets. This deluge very often has negative side effects, such as numbing the listener to the point of fatigue, shortening the attention span to mere second snippets of songs and creating a general inability to appreciate quality and the effort that goes into the creative process. Every once in a while an artist or a band comes around that somehow has the ability to pierce through that thick, fuzzy, white noise wall of sound, information and imagery and grab ahold of your attention despite everything. Junior Bruce is one of those bands.

Sporting members from such hardcore legends as Bloodlet and Hope & Suicide (another sadly overlooked band) this act has that whole supergroup kind of feel to it (especially in the online blurbs) even though that was probably never the intention. And quite honestly, whenever the word supergroup is being tossed around I usually try not to get my hopes up too high, because the general outcome of those kinds of affairs are, more often than not, both disappointing and less than stellar. Here, however the band seem to do just about everything right. The music on display here is rock solid bare-to-the-bones metal with a huge dose of these-old-fucks-know-what-they're-doing feel going, with tons of AMAZING riffs and grooves. Junior Bruce's sound incorporate the slick yet fuzzy winding, riffage of HEAVY stoner rock, the intensity (and occasionally the speed) of hardcore and the melodies and framework of metal and fuses everything into a beast completely of their own. These songs are instantly accessible and head-nod inducing, while still being complex enough to require repeated spins. The first minute of opening track Defeatist had me immediately convinced I was onto to something great here and I quickly shut down the online stream of the album that was available on one site or another, and contacted A389 to get ahold of a proper digital copy of the album (will most definately be buying the vinyl version as soon as possible). Online streams are great as promotional tools but they only get you, as a fan, so far. I needed to have this available to me everywhere, on my computer, on my iPod, on CD etc etc. Because this is one of those albums that you easily get obsessive about. I had a stint of obssessive compulsive attatchment to Clutch's Blast Tyrant album a few years back, playing it over and over again (for a while, probably a good six months, it was the only thing I listened to) and I have a feeling The Headless King might be the album I relapse with into that whole obssessive state again.

Anyway, Junior Bruce is a band of veterans, and as such they know how to chisel down music to it's core and use brevity rather than endless wankery as a way to hook you. As I've said before, one or two amazing riffs and hooks in a song trumps ten weak ones every time; it's better to keep shit brief and to the point and rock the shit out everything in three minutes flat than to noodle away forever with fifty-fifty material. This is some of the solidest rocking metal I've heard in a looong while. The riffs are immediately recognizable and memorable, the rythm section is solid and to the point, the vocals are done in a gruff singing/shouting voice that works really well along with the material. There are other influences at work here, obviously, other than pure heavy metal, but they're neatly folded into the music to become something unique. I can't really draw any comparisons to other artists, except to say that Junior Bruce makes me think of bands like Only Living Witness, Kylesa, Helmet and Stompbox, even though they're only vaguely similar to either one. Another amazing release, cementing A389, as one of the spearhead labels of modern heavy music.


Aussitôt Mort - Nagykaniza
2012, Destructure Records

These french fellows blew me away clean, first time I heard them. Not having done any research whatsoever into the band or their music (being the lazy bastard that I am) I was honestly expecting something completely different - some sort of shoegaze/black metal fusion or modern take on metallic hardcore, perhaps. What Aussitôt Mort does is nowhere close to any of that. They play a very atmospheric, heavy and dense kind of post-metal/post-hardcore style with lots of slowly expanding songs where melody and aggression gets equal coverage. There's a musicianship on display here that's quite simply amazing. There are tons of grooves, dissonant swirls and lots of almost tribal drumming running alongside amazing guitar work, lush melodies and great rumbling bass flurries, in an almost Isis- or Breach-like musical construct, that's not really easy to pin down. The vocal parts are sparse and rare (although very effective), but that's ok beause the music's what's really important here. This is introspective and meditative music, although often very intense, that requires both attention and time to fully explore and experience, a rare thing these days. I am wholly impressed. If you're in to Neurosis, Jesu, Isis, Cult Of Luna, Breach or any of their likes, you should definately check these dudes out. Some of their earlier work is available for free download at their bandcamp site, here. Buy here.

I'm staring at you through the eyes of the wolf/Tell me who's going to save you now?

Integrity & Rot In Hell - Black Heksen Rise split 2x7'' ep
2012, Holy Terror Records

There seems to be a growing number of Brittish bands embracing the sound and aesthetic of the old school Clevo-style of hardcore. Among them, and possibly one of the better acts today, are Rot In Hell, a band whose earlier releases has garnered them some well-earned recognition by both fans and press, and whose two full length albums remain two of my favourite records of the past decade. Here they've paired up with the progenitors of the Holy Terror Hardcore sound themselves, the mighty Integrity, and released a massive ep, that is, quite simply, astoundingly good. This ep contains six tracks, two by Rot In Hell and four by Dwid and co. (whose two final tracks are on a separate 7''). The Integrity songs are, at least partially, what you'd expect from these guys but much more succinctly written and honed. Waiting For The Sun To Burn Out My Eyes is a raging hardcore number with lots of awesome bass runs rippling underneath a melodic d-beat current. The song has hooks aplenty and is riddled with short solo bursts and great vocals. It bleeds into the slightly slower Black Heksen Rise, which is basically a continuation of the previous song, only more varied in tempos and with even more melodic soloing and some really heavy dirty riffing. These two tracks are, hands down, some of the best material I've heard from the band, ever. The metal influences are way up front here and done really well and the vocal patterns are fucking ace. Next up is a longish power electronics/noise track of crackling distortion and whispered vocals over rumbling industrial soundscapes, titled Where Does The Fire Come From. It's not an overly harsh piece; instead it's rather almost ambient in some ways and it's a nice inclusion to break the pace of the ep. The same goes for the following two tracks, that are acoustic and electronic in nature, respectively, both infusing alot of cool influences that aren't always apparent to the casual Integrity fan. Think Bastard Noise without the raging bull-vocals and less sonically violent. There is a certain Dark Folk feel to a few of these songs that really hooked me.

Erebus is the first of the two Rot In Hell songs. It starts off slowly, after a brief burst of feedback, with an awesome epic, melodic, very metal, intro but quickly explodes into one of the best song the band's ever written. Driven by raging tempos and loads of brief solos and snarled vocals, with a great chorus to anchor everything, Erebus is one of those songs that, even though it's pretty fast, has that really memorable, anthemic feel. This is very close to what Integrity does musically and RIH's coming very close to overshadowing their Holy Terror forefathers here.The song has several layers of action all of which are well written and arranged. These guys just keep getting better and better and I keep being impressed every time I hear something new from them. Life Becomes A Desert Around You is the perfect closer to this amazing ep with it's depressive, almost Today Is The Day-ish monotony and melody. It's an acoustic song where sung vocals are drifting faintly from the background, beneath the stripped down guitars. There is an epic kind of feel to this song, almost stoner rock-like in the atmospehere. I keep thinking of deserts and soaring birds of prey whenever I hear it. Beautiful.

(Note: This review is based on the digital version, from iTunes, where the tracks are in a different order than the vinyl version.)

So, to sum up: This is a great ep that is well worth the pricetag. I only wish there were more RIH material here. And if you're a fan of this particular style of metallic hardcore you should definately grab this and you shouldn't sleep on it too long because this double seven incher is most likely going fast. It's already sold out at Holy Terror Records so get it here or get the digital version from iTunes.