Why I Bought It #2
Trhä, Innesti, Cold Gawd, and more
Why I Bought It is a series where I, a heavy metal idiot and occasional music writer, try to explain my Friday music purchases to people at my high school reunion.
Hey! Wow, it's crazy to see you again! It's...uh...you! You know, weird icebreaker, but I have the funniest driver's license photo. I'm thinking about making a coffee table book of them. Can I see yours? Oh, wow, this is a really good one, *holds license up to my face* Tom! So good to see you again, Tom! No, you can't see my driver's license, you weirdo, but lemme show you this playlist on my phone.
Adzes / Putrescine - Adzes/Putrescine Split
Adzes is a sludge project from Seattle helmed by Forest Bohrer. The 2020 full-length debut was titled No One Wants to Speak About It. The titular song speaks about it:
A fire explodes, consuming half of Redding
A hurricane leaves Puerto Rico reeling
The dying grows, from New Orleans to Haiti
Our leaders know, but they're too busy looting
No one wants to speak about it
Hey, a familiar subject that I am interested in.
Musically, Adzes's three tracks on its new split with San Diego death metallers Putrescine are a lurching sort of sludge that reminds me of the Breach-/Acme-indebted Euro set. For instance, Bohrer's roars have that acidic bite to them. And, similar to bands like Unfold and Transmission0, the guitars sound like they're as much Neurosis as they are Unbroken. I used to live for this kind of thing, so it's nice to hear a nowadays band plying the trade well. When Adzes's reaches beyond conventions with synths, such as on "The Impulse," it adds a nifty extra dimension. Think if Cult of Luna didn't lose the thread after The Beyond, which is high praise coming from me, a Cult of Luna curmudgeon.
OK. Putrescine. Confession: I panned Putrescine's debut EP, The One Reborn, in a review and felt so bad about it that I pretty much stopped writing reviews for a year. Like, it was a debut. I should've chilled on that one. And Putrescine's two tracks closing out this split are the reason why. My, how this band has grown. Marie McAuliffe (drum programming, vox), Trevor Van Hook (guitars, vox), and Zachary Sanders (bass, guitars) are one heck of a force. As soon as you're hit with that rich dissonance on "Cursed by Birth," like if Arnold Schoenberg was called upon to write death metal leads, you know this band has evolved. I love how the song is structured, too, always keeping me on my toes. But, at its base, "Birth" retains that primal spudly chug.
If splits are a gladiatorial event, then "In a Growing Sun" is the last blood-splattered track standing. The opening is on that Ingurgitating Oblivion tip, drinking deep from that stream that runs between classical and death metal. The section at the three-minute mark, a nasty slashing riff that sounds like Mare trying to navigate a black metal platformer, rules. And, damn, that section at 4:20 with those jazzy chords? As if the ghost of Allan Holdsworth stopped by to treat everyone to the kind of notes only god can comprehend? Love it. Best thing this band has done. Can't wait to hear what's next.
Black Yama - Black Yama
Black Yama came to my attention via From Corners Unknown, the podcast/zine that trawls the underground for music curios. Good Bandcamp follow, in other words. And Black Yama is why I follow. This is my kind of noise. Distortion. Clangs. Distorted clangs. Underneath the speaker destruction are other samples: monk chants, etc. But, really, this is all about the noise. Sometimes it rolls in like a wave. Sometimes it's like someone throwing a bucket of water at your face. Sometimes it's like waking up to find that your apartment is underwater. No matter how the noise makes noise, the noise is there.
"The harsh noise of Black Yama is a sonic demonstration that annihilates all mental obscurations," Black Yama's Bandcamp bio states, with the liner notes adding that "all sonic material was processed through the Bunny Berserker digital/analog meat machine." Bunny Berserker meat machine! Love it. Reminds me a bit of Old Horn Tooth's "griefcase," unless this particular digital/analog noisemaker is actually being operated by an aggrieved Flemish Giant.
But let's rewind to that first part: "annihilates all mental obscurations." That helps answer the question, "Why listen to noise?" I've never been able to adequately explain my interest in eliminating what's left of my hearing with harsh stuff like Black Yama. Noise? It simply feels right to me. It's like...why do you like the wind? Why do you like a hot cup of coffee in the morning? Why do you like to clip clothes pins on your fingers until the pain becomes unbearable? Couldn't really tell you. Feels good.
Here's the key: obscuration annihilation. Black Yama's "meditations" are far more meditative to me than most new-agey stuff. The 10-minute disintegrating buzz of "MEDITATION 5" deadens one of my senses, making the others feel more alive. And within that cocoon of noise, I finally feel like I can concentrate. I can read. I can work. I fall into that vaunted flow state. Better living through distorted clangs. There's no other way I want to live.
Bon Ha Gu - Afterimage (잔상; 殘像): From Bach to Brouwer
If you think about music purchases as paying by the quantity and quality of the note, there are few better bargains in this blog than Bon Ha Gu's Afterimage (잔상; 殘像): From Bach to Brouwer. The NYC-based guitarist shreds across these 18 tracks, perhaps peaking with the three movements of French composer Roland Dyens's Libra Sonatine. However, the most evocative selection is Leo Brouwer's Sonata No. 1, a hell of a closer that challenges both as a technical marvel and listening experience.
"I seek to rearticulate my first impressions that gave impetus to my foray into the vast aesthetic landscape of the classical guitar and its core repertoire, and to express those initial reactions to the listener," Bon Ha Gu wrote in the Bandcamp liner notes. "I attempt to recapture musical emotions spanning from the mathematical precision endemic to the Baroque (J.S. Bach) to the emancipating spirit that characterizes the contemporary (Leo Brouwer)."
And that's what makes this set great. You can tell that Bon Ha Gu is all in performing this material, enraptured by what his guitar can produce. When he's playing the harmonics in that Brouwer piece, I imagine him grinning from ear to ear, reveling in the excitement. Joy is an underrated part of true virtuosity. I think you can tell when people really love what they're playing.
Cold Gawd - God Get Me the Fuck Out of Here
This has felt like the summer of Cold Gawd, and God Get Me the Fuck Out of Here didn't drop until fall. Such was the power of the lead singles like "Sweet Jesus Wept Shit," a killer opener that also kicked off the Runout Grooves mixtape. (Plea: Please listen to my podcasts so I can quit my job. Thank you.) Truly, an honor. Could the album live up to such loftily set expectations?
Yeah. C'mon. Of course it did. God Get Me the Fuck Out of Here rules, a powered-up shoegaze banger that is so rich with hooks that it should open a tackle shop. Matt Wainwright and co. have created what I used to call a "stuck in the tape deck" album, a record that, if it got jammed in your car's tape deck and never came out, you wouldn't mind it one bit. These seven songs and one interlude create a cohesive experience but are also diverse enough that each track feels like an experience unto itself.
"I'm trying to move the needle in whatever way I can," Wainwright said to CVLT Nation. "Whether that's changing the tone of the genre, people starting to give a shit about having a consistent theme from shirts to videos to website layouts, or bands becoming better performers and not just standing there when they play. When you enter an artistic field your goal should always be to elevate the medium and if you ain't doing that you gotta recalibrate because there's people like me who are gonna speed past you. Also I'm tryna be on that Mount Rushmore. You got MBV, Slowdive, Nothing, Whirr — but eventually, when people have the conversation about shoegaze, you aren't going to be able to talk about it without also having to mention Cold Gawd."
I love that approach. And that drive comes through on the one-two of "Gin" and "You the Well," one of my favorite back-to-backs of the year. These two songs add a touch of delicate jangle to molten metal guitars. If you have the means, find the biggest speakers and crank 'em. It'll literally move the needle in the Richter scale sense, and existing within that earth-moving crush feels so good. Better still, once those leads come in, it's like Cold Gawd is reading the invisible ink of my soul.
Oh, uh, high school memories! That’s what we're supposed to be doing here, right? Do you want to talk about that? Remember when Jason threw that fry covered in ketchup at Matt's white shirt? No? Well, I still think about that all of the time. Yeeep. This is not awkward at all. I'm sorry, who are you again? Oh. Uh, were you class of 2002? Oh. OH. You work here? I'm...I'm so sorry. Do...do you want to hear about some death metal? Please, don't walk away. Please. *whispers* I'm so lonely.
Continuum of Xul - Falling into Damnation
Lavadome freaking Productions. The Czechia label elevated itself to the blind-buy zone ages ago thanks to unearthing gems from Brutally Deceased, Eskhaton, Heaving Earth, and Somniate, among many, many others. I don't know if Lavadome simply has a nose for sick death metal bands or if sick death metal bands feel compelled to work with them. It's probably both. Whatever the case, the Lavadome discography continues to get deeper and sicker. This year, it added selections from Altars Ablaze, Beyond Mortal Dreams, and Heaving Earth, the latter of which is the death metal album of 2022. Consider that note Chekhov's gun, if Chekhov's gun was loaded with sick death metal records.
So, no surprise that Continuum of Xul is another Lavadome-quality banger. This Italian quartet is a sneaky supergroup, bringing together Ad Nauseam and Feed Them Death members. But, in my opinion, the star of the show is drummer Giulio Galati, who has burnished his rep with turns in Hideous Divinity and Nero di Marte. In these corners, he's known as the wiz behind the kit on Mass Infection's underappreciated Morbid Angel workout, Shadows Became Flesh. And, hey, would you look at that: Galati is the session skinsman on Heaving Earth's Darkness of God.
Anyway, whatever, I don't want to eat up your time talking about the roster. More importantly, the songs rip. The EP Falling into Damnation, Continuum of Xul's first non-demo/split release, is that classic kind of post-Legion death metal, like if Hate Eternal covered Close to a World Below. There are some exceptional moments of death metal lurch on this five-song set, with leads that sound like meathooks pulling someone apart in the Hellraiser universe. However, my favorite track of the bunch is "Blasphemous Redemption (Praise the Flame)." That one dials up the BPMs and provides bassist Void a vector to shred, adding a delightful dose of rattle to the breakneck guitars.
Crosshairs - Demo 2022 / Trenchraid - Demo 2022
Slow Death Records is another type of label I love, dedicated to documenting punk in the British Columbia area. While some bands, such as Bootlicker, have made it out to wider acclaim, there's no way I'd hear many of these groups otherwise. Like, even with me spending most of my day logged into Bandcamp, it seems unlikely that I'd independently stumble across these two demos. So, Slow Death Records is providing a cool service, ensuring that (a) these bands have a platform, (b) the music is preserved in a scene known to be purposefully ephemeral, and (c) I can keep finding dope music, making this newsletter possible.
OK. Let's talk about the dope music. If you need to differentiate the two quartets quickly, Crosshairs is the hardcore one and Trenchraid is the d-beat one. On leads-laden tracks like "Lechon," Crosshairs has the on-the-streets snarl of early DOA. The leads catch you, the riffs slash through you. Trenchraid, on the other hand, feels like it's built from the shrapnel of Anti Cimex's bomb raid. Its pace, as if the band is in the music equivalence of a hurry-up offense, gives you that slightly nervous thrill of a taxi driver darting in and out of traffic.
Oh, how cute. You brought your pup to the reunion! I have a sweet doggo named Big Lady Bear, and-oh…this is your kid. You couldn't find a babysitter. Yikes. Well, I mean…I do have a card for my kennel if you want to-hey, you know what? I get it. This drink you threw on me tastes great. I'm not mad at all, *tries really hard to remember* STEVEN! OH, IT'S TOM? I DON'T CARE, TOM. GUESS WHAT, TOM, YOU'RE NEVER GOING TO LEARN ABOUT DOOM BEACH.
Doom Beach - Copperhead
Imagine an entire album made up of the slow song on a Phoenix Bodies or Capsule album but filtered through Cursed. That's Doom Beach, a nastily noisy duo from Connecticut. These two are unrelenting in their pursuit of volume. I've grown to think of Copperhead's 10 songs as less a noise rock-tinged hardcore album, a la KEN mode or Crux of Aux, than a harsh noise wall. And, considering this is a band in the Jucifer mold of a drummer and guitarist/vocalist, it's similarly incredible how much noise it can cook up. You can't tell me that an amp didn't burn to the ground during the two-and-a-half-minute "Hand." But, even at its nosiest, Doom Beach always feels like it's in control. At least until they give over to the chaos of closer "Every Building a Prison," when the feedback whips around like a demon-summoning Namanax song. Rad.
Infernal Pyre - Walls of Iron
Infernal Pyre is one of the many projects of Michele Labratti, a busy Italian metal musician. I know Labratti for Sunken Temple, an austere, Winter-y death/doom band. You might know him from any of his other 11 active bands. Again: busy. Me? I barely have time to write this. Labratti juggles 13 different sonic universes. Some of us are just built differently, I guess.
Speaking of construction, Walls of Iron, Infernal Pyre's debut full-length, is a fun one. Sonically, think if Brodequin became Mortician. Thematically, you know those apocryphal cinematic battle scenes when two military formations crash into each other? This be that. Crucially, it's not just that. There are other sounds within the din of weapons clatter and wet meat noises. For instance, the groove on the opener, "Public Disembowelment," reminds me of a BDM Unsane for reasons I'll have to unpack with any therapist willing to accept metal recommendations in lieu of payment. ("Wall of Spears" also has a twanginess in the leads, so it's not just that one.) But, yeah, basically, you're signing up for nearly 27-minutes of blasts, blerghs, and brutality. Infernal Pyre checks those three boxes. If you prefer, like, precise musicianship, I'd scroll back up to Continuum of Xul. However, if it's Saturday morning and you want to hear what it felt like to get chopped in half by a halberd, here you go.
Innesti - Folding, a Study
Innesti's album notes contain two recurring phrases: "field recordings" and "organic synthesis." Not quite synonyms, but Innesti's usage suggests definite parallels. From there, the note changes from album to album. Folding, a Study, the Illinois ambient artist's newest, is described like this:
Hazy, ethereal ambience created with field recordings, organic synthesis, distant whispers, and the delicate folding of sounds.
Yeah. Pretty much. "An Ordinary Pause" is heavier on the distant whispers, "The Sacred and the Profane" favors the Roachian delicate folding of sounds. (For nerds, that one also reminds me of Alio Die's A+ Deconsecrated and Pure, but it might just be the song title.) Folding, a Study never tries to annex your attention, but it's there if you want to give it a close listen. And it holds up if you do. Something about it is intriguing from a flow perspective, like someone took an eraser to a Cocteau Twins song. That is to say, it's not just a drift. There's a current. And it gets from point A to point B in a way that a lot of ambient doesn't.
Iōhannēs - The Ocean EP
Syrup Moose is a new metal label out of British Columbia. "One-person operated, anti-fascist, anti-sketch label with communist overtones. All funds are split between the artist and the label," per the Bandcamp bio. Hard to ask for more from a "please don't be sketchy" perspective. Also, the owner has a rad dog and cat. I don't know why that's a factor, but it is.
Anyway, I used to run a label. I still have nightmares about running a label. Suffice to say, it wasn't...the best time. As I said to a bud the other day, running a label is like spending every day cutting yourself with a knife, bleeding upon dollar bills, and then throwing that money into a pit. Once or twice a year, the pit barfs up something so indescribably cool that you sharpen the knife. Label ownership is not a career because "career" suggest a rate of monetary return that you can live off of. So it's a calling. It's an obsession. You do it because you have to do it. The good ones also make a difference, giving bands opportunities to reach broader audiences.
Iōhannēs deserves an opportunity. The North Carolina-based "ocean-themed black metal" band plays a progressive-minded strain that has the sweep of Cascadian black metal with keen songwriting flow. The Ocean features four tracks from the vaults, and if these were leftovers, I'm guessing there's a Prince-ly haul of goodness swimming around this band's brain. The two-parter "The Ocean" is the rightful centerpiece, building a moody sandcastle made of dungeon synth on part one that's obliterated by the crashing wave of part two. I'm guessing this is just me, because I am an old and can only hear things as variations on other old things, but there's a metalcore-y approach to melancholy melody present that makes me recall Skycamefalling or even Underoath when that band was briefly black metal. Cool stuff.
Marigold King / Swampworm - Pillars to Unrelenting Suffering / Nahab
Total Dissonance Worship could coast on its reputation at this point. Plenty of other labels do. Stake out some territory and release records in that vein for the rest of time. But, so far, TDW has continued to push the limits of what "total dissonance worship" means. Take Marigold King, a band from Georgia, the state, that uses...distorted brass to get its swirling symphonic sound. The highlight for me is "Operation Enduring Interference," which sounds like someone playing "The Imperial March" after piecing together a version of the transcription that went through a shredder. What a racket. But don't sleep on the A+ solo on "Litigious Bastards." I'd love to hear more of that Thordendal shred.
On the other side, Swampworm is a new project from Germany that's helmed by H.W., the musician responsible for the supremely sick Pari'sya. SOG, the latter's 2020 debut, was a neat entry into the wind-tunnel metal canon because it was short and grindy. Swampworm takes that type of noise and applies it to avant-garde, "disso" black metal. That descending phrase on "Zeitlaich" actually gives me the jitters.
Jeez, do you remember Tom? What a donkus! Entire reason I smell like I bathe in banana daiquiris. Karma, am I right? Anyway, what's this tip jar for? Ah. This is to help out with Tom's medical bills. Cool. Who are you? His partner. Dope. Yeah. You can throw the drink on me. It doesn't matter. Do you want to hear about this cool band before you do? Guess that was a nope.
Phantasia - Ghost Stories
While the album art looks like it should adorn some forgotten LA speed metal band, Phantasia's Ghost Stories is actually absurdly catchy post-punk. The near-jangle guitars, one-note synth lines, melodic bass lines; all of it is pitch-perfect. It sounds classic without ripping off the classics, nailing that depressive jauntiness like the classics only can. "Out of Spite," with that earworm synth hook in the verse and awesomely outré "baritone Siouxsie vocal," as one Bandcamp commenter put it, is...like...it. Ghost Stories is it. And while the vocals may take some time to dial in, they make thematic sense eventually, a too-weird-for-this-world goth trying to exist within the punishing environs of the everyday. I mean, "Residue"! How do you deny that exhausted vocal, which is like Chrissie Hynde tumbling out of a K hole, against, like, that Heartbreakers strut? The Television lead of the bridge! So cool. Cvlt Nation compared this band to Bruce Springsteen...and...you know? Not wrong. If Bruce took that Suicide influence and turned in an Xmal Deutschland record, this would be it. Again, it! This is it!
Putrescine / Kosmogyr - Desolate Tides
I think I've blown enough smoke up Putrescine's heinie this blog. If I need to log a take for the record books, that humongous bad-takes tome some poor angel will have to search through before pulling the lever that sends me to hell, it's that "Secrets Beckon Sweetly" is another banger. Good stuff. That's the take. Let's talk Kosmogyr.
Kosmogyr is a duo split between Shanghai and Prague. Xander Cheng: guitars and bass. Ivan Belcic: vox and drum programming. (The drum programming is good, by the way. On the Mare Cognitium side of the divide when it comes to sounding natural.) So, what does Kosmogyr play? Well, let's talk about that.
Like a lot of omincore, Kosmogyr sits at the intersection between genres, taking the key components that help fulfill its vision while discarding the rest. Kosmogyr has nipped off bits of black metal, death metal, prog, post-rock, atmo, and little tendrils of "who's to say Envy isn't black metal, actually" skramz. And Kosmogyr use this collection of bits and bobs to build songs. What sets it apart is that, instead of layering these ideas in the sampledelia tradition, it extracts the feeling of those aforementioned elements. Right, these vibrant works are the result of feelings weavers. The tracks sound familiar because the active ingredients are elemental, but Kosmogyr is subtly working outside outmoded genre conventions without going full avant-garde. It does this by fitting these feelings to its own voice. It's neat. It's also...a "you gotta listen to it" type of band, something I wouldn't feel comfortable describing via comparison.
Instead, when I recommend Kosmogyr to people, I end up talking about two things. The first is the push and pull of the compositions, the drama that Kosmogyr creates by maximizing the attraction and repulsion of contrasts. "You need dynamic contrast in order to highlight the various aspects of your music," Belcic said to Astral Noize. "The brutal heavy bits won't feel as intense if they're surrounded by music that's equally pulverizing. For me, black metal is at its strongest when it enables you to unleash that pent-up, purgative sigh of relief, and you need to manipulate tension, pacing, and dynamics in order to set up those climactic zeniths."
The second thing I talk about is this idea I've been stuck on lately: Music is primarily experiential. Like, I don't listen to music in a vacuum. Thus, I don't think I can leave those external influences out of the appraisal. In Kosmogyr's case, I like these songs because I first listened to them while I watched a lightning storm. Cheng's climatic leads matched the arcing lightning perfectly, lighting up the compositions in the same way zaps of electricity briefly highlight the dimensions of storm clouds. Belcic's screams cut through like gusts of wind. So, yeah. The storm and "Ring," two things now inseparable in my mind. Synchronicity. Everything locked into place. When I relisten to these tracks, I remember that night, like cracking open a time capsule.
Salute - Ultra Pool
It's 2010. My life has fallen into a routine that I can easily autopilot through. I drive an hour to the train station. I evade station police with the grace of an arthritic hippo who thinks it's doing a Manu-level Eurostep. I "covertly" smoke an irresponsible amount of hash. I take the train to work. The commute lasts just long enough for me to listen to The Field's From Here We Go Sublime and Gold Panda's Lucky Shiner, swallowing me up with the repetitions and allowing me to relax within the micro-samples, all of it a blissed-out, bizzaro analog for my day-to-day, my idealized existence in miniature. By the time I get to my destination, I look like I've lost a 12-round bout to sleep deprivation. I have the visage of a living corpse that would get its rotten head meat splattered across a wall in a zombie flick. The exterior: not great. But internally, an ember of something approximating THC-assisted euphoria crackles in the deeper recesses of my brain. I feel…OK. Maybe even good. I steel myself by flipping to Kool G Rap and DJ Polo. I walk to work and get ready to spend the next 10 to 12 hours pretending to be a professional.
Salute's Ultra Pool feels good, fresh off the train good. These four club-ready bangers are like The Field and Gold Panda undergoing a supercharged Four Tet remix back when Kieran Hebden was deep in a UK garage jag. The Austrian/UK DJ makes songs with that effortless buoyancy. There's also just a touch of that melancholic nostalgic feel-good that you get from listening to, like, Modjo's "Lady (Hear Me Tonight)" for the 1,000th time. "Remember when life was this good," you think. It never was, but the feeling tells you otherwise.
"Over the last few years, I've been revisiting a lot of the French house records I used to listen to as a teenager," Salute wrote in the Bandcamp liner notes. "I wanted to let that influence shine through as I'm a huge fan of that sound. I wanted a body of work that was both very high energy and harmony-heavy, and I think Ultra Pool is the perfect way to summarise where my head is at right now."
"Pleasures," with its "A Paw In My Face"-esque chopped guitar sample, is exactly where I want my head to be at right now. Very then, but also very now; two timelines crashing together and leaving behind a smoldering crater of euphoria.
Trhä - Vat Gëlénva!!!
When is it fair to be frustrated with a band? On the one hand, if a band is trying to slavishly appease a fanbase, that band probably sucks. On the other hand, I like listening to music I like. A conundrum!
For me, Trhä has been a tricky nut to crack. It burst onto the scene in 2020 with Nvenlanëg, a fun, if overly long, lofi atmo black metal record. Nvenlanëg also set the template for how I interact with these albums. There's usually one song that I deem to be an absolute banger and then a bunch of stuff I don't care to listen to again.
The banger jewel in the banging crown thus far is "Endlhëtonëg," the 24-minute title track to a 2021 release that is so damn detailed and ambitious, it's wild that it comes from a musician this prolific. (We all know who that musician is now, but I'm going to choose to respect the pseudonym.) Can't say I remember much of the rest of the album.
And, I mean, maybe that's the point. Releasing this many ambitious-ass, detailed-ass, long-ass songs in such a short timeframe, accounting for hours and hours of music, challenges the notion of metal being an "album format." Maybe Thét Älëf [rest of name cut for time]'s plan is that you just grab what you like and make your own album. I don't know. But I haven't felt this level of frustration and FOMO since Nadja was releasing everything it taped.
So, stop me if you've heard this one before. Until Vat gëlénva!!!, I found Trhä's 2022 output frustrating. Two releases. Two longform monster songs exceeding 40 minutes. Do I own them? I do. Have I listened to them? You know what? I don't remember. Both have left the same impression as me sleeping through an episode of Grey's Anatomy.
So, yeah. Frustrating! I know Trhä is capable of great things, but Trhä's work rarely lands with me. Admittedly, that might be because I...uh...don't like a lot of atmo black. Keep in mind I compile a monthly column that's pretty much the foremost atmo black depot on the internet. It's like becoming a prominent cheesesteak critic and admitting that you don't like cheesesteaks. Like, why am I here? What am I doing? Well, "Ljúshtaeshrhendlhë jecan glézma" is the answer.
This song rips. It rips like old-ass, authentically necro, second-wave BM. It might be my favorite thing in the Trhä catalog. It is definitely being added to my personal Trhä album, tentatively titled Bängërs. And, for 12 minutes, I'm like, "Holy shit, this is it. This is the Trhä album I want." Except, of course it isn't. Swerve: "Ödënthändelä vòn la gönmëtwa" opens with a goofball synth part that sounds like a secret cut-scene featuring Persona's Lavenza day-tripping it to the circus. Not my shit. Spell broken.
But here's the thing: I kind of love that Trhä is capable of these s-s-s-spell-breakers because I'm pretty sure I don't get a "Ljúshtaeshrhendlhë jecan glézma" without them. Such are the mysterious ways of inspiration. And if my frustration is the cost, so be it. I'll see you at the next release.
<<<30s - Noises from 2017-2021
Singapore's <<<30s is a band that has been languishing in my Bandcamp wishlist for longer than I care to admit. It hasn't been there as long as Ariadne, but let's just say that the two are close enough that they could go get lunch. So, shoutout to Tokyo grind label Esagoya Records for solving my problem by releasing a discography. Noises from 2017-2021 is precisely that, packaging 40 tracks from the grindy fastcore trio. And, as discographies often do in the Aaron Effect sense, it's nice to hear how the band has evolved over time. Drummer Irshah gets faster, guitarist Lee gets riffier, and vocalist Auji gets more pissed. As soon as you make it to 4 Unreleased Tracks 2021, <<<30s is finely tuned. It also solves one of the prime fastcore dilemmas: The riffs are actual riffs. And, yeah, you already figured out the band name, but for the people in the back: "PLAYING AS FAST AS WE CAN UNDER THE RADAR OF 30SECONDS!!!BUT SOMETIMES MORE..."
And isn't that why we're back at this reunion? Because we want something more? I mean, the reunion that I was at before I took this bus home. Yes, I know I smell like banana daiquiris. No, I can't wring my shirt out into your water bottle. Thanks for talking to me, by the way. Do you want to hear about Björk?
Check out Wolf's other garbage: https://linktr.ee/wrambatz
Want to help me buy more music? Drop us a donation on Ko-fi