Wolf's Week #2
Ex Everything, Messa, Go to a Museum
People apparently want this in their inboxes. To please the masses (two of you), I might spin the next edition out into its own proper newsletter. Nested newsletters within a single Substack are a nightmare. I have tried and failed to make this a centralized location for my blathering.
And yes, I’m finishing the real newsletter this week. It's…long…and bad.
Music
Deliriant Nerve - Contaminated Conscience (Malokul)
From: Washington, D.C.
Genre: grind / powerviolence
Orthodox grind with a punk edge, or as the DC band expressed in Contaminated Conscience's liner notes, "For the Grindfreaks." When the trio unleashes a blast, it blows your hair back. Seriously, the BPMs give this year's Shitstorm a run for its money. That said, I keep returning to Deliriant Nerve because of the interplay between the guitars and drums. While the music is invade-your-cave brutal, there are a lot of songwriting smarts going on there. When one player goes hard, the other pulls back, creating this neat push/pull within the maelstrom.
Closet Witch - Chiaroscuro (Zegema Beach Records, Moment of Collapse Records, Circus of the Macabre Records)
From: Iowa, USA
Genre: grind / screamo
If we condense the spectrum of fast, grindy music down to the Orchid/Pig Destroyer split and use that as a line of demarcation, Closet Witch's skramziness places it more on the Orchid side.1 That doesn't mean the Iowan quartet won't crush metalheads with its heaviness, though. When Chiaroscuro is at full force, it sounds like a skid mark-inciting thunderstorm. Check the swirling mayhem of "Haunting" as Alex Crist's guitar and Cory Peak's bass form this unholy hum of rumbling amplifier destruction. The other elements are as essential. Royce Kurth's drums cut through the tumult. Mollie Piatetsky screams with a ferocious desperation that makes me want to run through a brick wall. Catharsis incarnate.
Four Tet - Live at Alexandra Palace London, 24th May 2023 (self-released)
From: London, UK
Genre: electronic
Supremely relaxing live set from Kieran Hebden that does double duty as a chill-out record while nestling into a amiable, danceable groove. Clear your day planner: some medleys are long-ass workouts, with "Baby Plastic Salad Angel" bouncily exceeding half an hour. But the material is usually pretty engrossing, especially when Hebden flips a classic. The sped-up version of the spindly "Spirit Fingers" melody in "Lush FM Trance Fingers" was a highlight for me, recasting that glitchy thicket of notes as the lead line for a clubby roller.
Orion - Scandinavian Funk III (Absence of Facts)
From: Helsinki, Finland
Genre: techno
As long-time YLFL readers know, I'm fond of everything that Absence of Facts has released, but the Scandinavian Funk series is extremely my thing. Hard-grooving tracks that prioritize immediacy and simplicity? Yes. I feel like you don't have to mood-match these songs. They'll elevate your energy.
Horsewhip - Consume and Burn (Iodine Recordings)
From: Saint Petersburg, FL
Genre: hardcore / metalcore
With Converge spending the last decade and change making music I don't care about, I needed something to fill the void. Enter Horsewhip, a ripper constructed from ex-members of outfits I remember from when I first started getting into hardcore: Reversal of Man, Combatwoundedvetran, Sutek Conspiracy, The Dream is Dead, and Early Grace, among others. Fittingly, Consume and Burn, the band's second full-length, sounds like the work of a band that would've opened for a touring act destined for Hellfest and blown everyone else off the Unitarian church stage. Just a damn solid album, and if you have any feels for Horsewhip's forebears, this is for you.
Painted Throat - The Clock Shaken From the Wall (Xenoglossy Productions)
From: Massachusetts, USA
Genre: doom? / death metal?
Ehnahre's Ryan McGuire and Josh Carro get even weirder on this fantastic experimental set. As you can imagine, The Clock Shaken From the Wall is all over the map stylistically. "The Variety Of Real And Unreal Things" is like if Impetuous Ritual got into Alice Coltrane. "The Clock A Vast Eye" might as well be a mash-up of old Isis and Khanate. "The Star Goes But the Light Remains" is full-on aural dread in the form of a drone that's gut-churningly heavy despite being comparatively quiet. Neat! Naturally, this was a Rennie recommendation. Follow that Substack if you're not already.
Ex Everything - Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart (Neurot Recordings)
From: Oakland, CA
Genre: math rock / post-hardcore / metalcore
What a year for Neurot, releasing Great Falls' Objects Without Pain and now this banger from members of Kowloon Walled City and Early Graves, among others. Thanks to me cutting my teeth on the mp3 cache that Epitonic offered to all budding music obsessives for the low, low price of free back in the early 2000s, there's a particular math rock/hardcore sound that never fails to pique my interest. It is imprinted upon me. Ex Everything fits that mold to a T, sounding like some long-lost band that would've toured with Shotmaker and Drill of Absentee. The riffs are gloriously knotty, strung together with ribbons of buzzy bass. The drumming, which is powerful and propulsive, is the box in which those gifts sit, keeping all of these elements together. Is...is that Craw I hear somewhere deep down in this ass-kicking equation? Perhaps! But don't get fooled by my old-fogey-isms. When a band makes music this urgent, it's always fresh and evergreen.
Other music stuff:
Max Roach - "Effi"
Max Roach was 44 when he recorded Members, Don't Git Weary with fellow elder stateman Jymie Merritt. The rest of the crew was younger: Charles Tolliver, Gary Bartz, Stanley Cowell, and, on the title track, Andy Bey. As a grey-haired doofus, I find that inspiring. Even though he was a bebop legend and could coast on his status, here Roach is, still crushing it in the post-bop era, making vital music that, in terms of unquenchable fire, still held its own. Of course, Roach was a singular talent, so it's unsurprising that he could acclimate so well to then-contemporary times. In that light, I admire the open-mindedness of recruiting younger players like Tolliver, Bartz, and Cowell and being like, OK, take me where you need to go. That's cool! And sure enough, Cowell's "Effi" and "Equipoise," go places, with Roach and Merritt in particular shining on the former.
Find me on Bandcamp until Ampwall goes live.
Reading
I quite enjoyed this graf regarding reviewing Adele's "Someone Like You" in Tom Breihan's latest installment of The Numbers Ones column on Stereogum.
The first time I heard "Someone Like You," the 21 album wasn't even out yet, and that song fucked me up. I'm glad that I got to experience the song that way. It felt like a personal discovery, not an everybody-sob-now cultural event. I reviewed the track for Pitchfork, and I'm pretty sure I compared it to Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain," which my editor wisely cut. (I've been hyper-exaggerating shit since the moment I first touched a keyboard.) Bringing up a piece of music as primal as "Maggot Brain" was dumb as hell, but I was really struck by how Adele turned a soft, simple backdrop into a grand, operatic personal-pain epic.
As one hyper-exaggerator to another, I get you, dude! Also, "Maggot Brain," as a comparison, makes sense to me, although I'd like Adele way more if she could inject some Eddie Hazel/Michael Hampton guitar solos into her songs. This is also why I was a horrible editor: I would have kept the "Maggot Brain" comp and sent back a note asking for it to be fleshed out.
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This 2020 David Kushner profile on Rick Wakeman was fun, but didn't hint at the utter lunacy of post-Close to the Edge Yes. This is from Wikipedia, and is of note for metalheads:
In July 1973, Yes settled into studio 3 at Morgan for a period of ten weeks. Lane and Anderson proceeded to decorate the studio to resemble a farm; Squire believed Lane did so as a joke on Anderson as his tent idea was shut down. Anderson brought in flowers, pots of greenery, and cutout cows and sheep; white picket fences were placed around Wakeman's keyboards with amplifiers placed on stacks of hay. When Black Sabbath moved into studio 4 to record Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, singer Ozzy Osbourne visited and recalled a model cow with electronic udders and a small barn in the corner, "like a kid's plaything." Offord remembered the cows being covered in graffiti and the plants dying halfway through recording, "that just kind of sums up that whole album". One time during recording, Anderson wanted to replicate the sound he heard while singing in the bathroom and asked lighting engineer Michael Tait to build him a three-sided tiled booth for him to sing in. Despite Tait explaining how the idea would not work, he built one using plywood and glued tiles on the inside. Sound engineer Nigel Luby recalled tiles falling off the box during takes. Wakeman distanced himself from the band as recording went on and spent most of his time drinking and playing darts in the studio bar. Osbourne befriended him and remembered Wakeman was "bored out of his mind", and invited him to play the synthesizer on "Sabbra Cadabra". Wakeman would not accept money for his contribution, so the band paid him in beer. While talking to reporter Chris Welch in August 1973, Anderson dispelled rumours that someone was quitting the band, and that a difference of opinion from an unnamed member had been resolved.
I'm trying to imagine the Black Sabbath band meeting when they decided to pay Rick Wakeman in beer.
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Not much forward momentum on the book front. I started "Mambo No. 5" enthusiast Stephen King's 11/22/63 on top of some other books, so I'll be touching on that soon. I inherited a ton of King's books when my dad died. I've bounced off of a lot of them. We'll see how this one goes.
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Verso Books is giving out free ebooks as part of its Solidarity with Palestine campaign.
Movies
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
Historically significant for setting up the Hammer formula. Also, the film looks aces with a rich color palette and some delightful gore for 1957. But, man, the plot/dialogue is rough. Great if it's on in a bar and the sound is off. 2/5
The Drop (2014)
Dennis Lehane-penned crime flick that feels like 15 minutes of plot stultifyingly supersized into an acting showcase. Everyone is good in it, but do you care? I didn't. 2/5
Meg 2: The Trench (2023)
To marine biology what Fast and the Furious is to car culture. Like that franchise, the Meg movies never seem to go far enough, either. However, placing the camera inside a shark's mouth while it gobbles people is inspired. Give me 90 minutes of that next time. 1.5/5
The Rookie (1990)
Dirty Harry for the Lethal Weapon age. Wretched. Here's a quick fix if you plan to watch it: Given that "pure silver" is an important plot point, assume the baddies are werewolves. That's generally my fix for everything. Bad date? MUST'VE BEEN A WEREWOLF. 1.5/5
Check out my Letterboxd if you're bored.
Show Report
FIGHTING THE PHOENIX / SAINTS OF NEVER AFTER / DNS / ANCIENT ENEMY - 11/6/2023
These old bones were creaking mightily as I made my way down to a Monday night show. Thankfully, I was instantly recharged by the venue. If you're in Anaheim, drop by the Doll Hut. It's a literal hut that's 500sq ft of wall-to-wall stickers and an operational cigarette machine. The bartender doubled as the sound person. Ruled. It's my kind of dive.
In the interest of maintaining my, ahem, music writer integrity, I'll go light on appraising the performance of my buds in Ancient Enemy. They were great, but I would say that. And, if you're curious about the band, there's a whole podcast about it in the archives.
DNS, which stands for Dead Never Sleep and not Domain Name System (shout out to my Cisco sickos), struck me as DRI but kinda gothy and...horny. Like, imagine if Christian Death decided it was Gang Green or something after doing time in the pen with nary a conjugal visit. An unlikely combo, in other words. I hope the members keep evolving it. Of course, critically, the quartet brought it live, especially the drummer, who was putting in work. Like a few other bands on this list, DNS isn't something I'd reach for on record, but I had fun when they were shredding away in front of me.
Saints of Never After was the first of two touring bands from Colorado. It played MTV emocore with some light modern adornments. The easiest way I can explain its style is that it closed with a faithful Bullet for My Valentine cover. While it was not my thing, it's fun that they're still making this kind of band down at the band factory. And I'll give Saints of Never After credit for having energy. I especially enjoyed the bassist, freed up with a wireless setup, doing laps around the bar while still holding down the low-end.
Since it was a Monday and I'm basically the same age as the Cryptkeeper, I had to call it a night before Fighting the Phoenix hit the stage. Sounds like I missed some juds.
MESSA / MAGGOT HEART / SPIRIT IN THE ROOM - 11/8/2023
I'm not sure the crowd still making its way into the venue knew what to do with Spirit in the Room, a band that's like if Goon Moon were more into The Doors. In other words, it had that Desert Sessions-y vibe but definitely filtered through a more LA aesthetic. There's also a component I can't quite put my finger on. Spotlights if later-era NIN? Regardless, singer Dennis Sanders did his damndest to sell it, using the entirety of the stage while whipping around wildly.
It's time for your second round if you're taking part in the drinking game: Maggot Heart is one of those bands I dig live but can't really get down with on record. Linnéa Olsson's riffs come alive when they're loud as hell and all up in your grill. I was also standing near Olivia Airey's bass amp, and it was great hearing that gritty tone moving the air, giving Maggot Heart's gutter rock greater dimension. But yeah, when I dug back into this year's Hunger to see if I might've missed something, that live energy wasn't there. Alas! I guess that's why we go to shows, right?
Messa, on the other hand, sounded just like its albums. I know this isn't news to anyone, but Sara Bianchin can sing. The surprise was guitarist Alberto Piccolo shredding it up, allowing himself to adorn these songs with more dexterous flourishes than I remember on the studio versions. That played well in a live setting, keeping me on my toes as Messa navigated through a setlist heavy on selections from last year's Close. ("Leah," from 2018's Feast for Water, was the lone older cut.)
ALTIN GÜN / PACHYMAN - 11/9/2023
Every concert should open with a dub set. Pachyman ensured endorphins were released with a warm bath of bass and bouncy rhythms. Pachy García's take on the dub plied by King Tubby and his protégés crushed at this home show. It was the kind of instantly euphoric set that gets people grooving, and I hope it brings a few more ears to his latest album, Switched-On.
With everyone in the mood to move, Altin Gün took the stage and delivered. Dutch/Turkish sextet Anatolian rock group got everyone moving with psych-tinged bangers with an active rhythm section. My highlight was a faster, more joyous cover of Erkin Koray's "Cemalim." But the crowd seemed smitten by everything, to the point that singer Merve Daşdemir got a usually fickle, too-cool LA crowd to briefly snap along during the encore.
ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE / DEAD LEAF ECHO - 11/10/2023
Brooklyn's Dead Leaf Echo won me over by combining New Order-esque basslines with sheets of shoegazey, dream poppy guitars. I also appreciate how loud the members cranked up the volume, something that doesn't quite come through on its newest album, The Mercy of Women. When Dead Leaf Echo closed with (what I'm pretty sure was) "It's Starting to Happen," the layers of tones whished through the venue like electrons around an atom.
I've been waiting months to see Acid Mothers Temple. Until I get the chance to travel to Japan (and time the trip right), this is as close as I'm going to get to Mainliner, an all-timer band for me. AMT, the long-running psych crew, pretty much played the same set they recorded for Levitation a couple years ago, peaking with an extended version of "Disco Pink Lady Lemonade" that was one of the best things I've heard this year. However, since this was the last show on the tour, everyone seemed on edge. Higashi Hiroshi channeled his frustrations with his oscillator by giving it a good thwap. And then, during an especially anarchic version of "Cometary Orbital Drive," Makoto nicely asked the front row to stand back before smashing his guitar to bits, throwing the resulting shrapnel into the crowd. As an old noise show vet, I thought it ruled. Others seemed...disturbed. If the possibility of getting a quarter of a guitar neck imbedded into my temple doesn't exist, do I even want to go to your show?
Other Stuff
I took a trip to the Getty Center to scope the William Blake exhibit. Turns out the former member of Ulver made some pretty sick stuff. As a friend said, the best thing that the uber-wealthy have done for us plebs is creating tax shelters so we can look at priceless art for free. And it was surreal seeing Blake's work in the flesh. The thing I love about looking at art in person is the extra dimension, of noticing the individual brush strokes and how the pigments are layered like little topographical maps on the surface. It gives those works a more recognizable humanity that pictures and reproductions in books can't convey.
While the more touristy attendees were drawn to the 19th-century European installations, I had the chance to check out Arthur Tress: Rambles, Dreams, and Shadows, which collected some highlights from Open Space, Appalachia, Dream Collector, and Shadow, among other publications. The other excellent installation was Alfredo Boulton: Looking at Venezuela, 1928–1978, which covered not only Boulton but provided a neat look at Venezuelan art in general, as seen through the artist's commitment to documenting its history.
Anyway, with Precipitation's Glass Horizon in my headphones, it was a good way to burn a weekend afternoon, combining my capabilities of listening to music and walking around aimlessly. So, uh, I'm recommending museums? How original.
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I'm kind of tempted to use this section to regale you with stories from the frontlines of my garbage existence. Maybe in the future.
Upcoming Stuff
The incomparable Madder Mortem is making its comeback in January with Old Eyes, New Heart. I love this part of the Bandcamp pitch: "Lyrically and musically, the album deals with hope, disappointment, and the ambivalence between them. It is music from old hearts and deep roots, with new eyes open to the unlimited possibilities of 12 notes, but always with the desire to write a good, honest song." Sold. And, sure enough, "Tower," the first stream, sounds like classic Madder Mortem, but perhaps a touch more melancholic.
WHEW! I hope you didn't like your face because this new Stress Positions record will rip it off. Harsh Reality is thrashy hardcore played at Charles Bronson speeds while Stephanie Brooks screams with the incensed pissedness of prime John Joseph. Pre-order this immediately.
There's a new Imelda Marcos EP on the way, and as someone whose heart beats in old Hella and Shorty rhythms, the first stream, "diamond.pin.vertigo," sounds like the rest of the set will be a winner.
Show-wise, everything is up in the air this week as my day job is locked into a death spiral. (Would you like to hire me? Considering my employable skills are "writing about metal," I could probably clean your office bathroom.) I might check out Black Sheep Wall (Hexis is headlining) and Caitlin Canty, depending on if I can wiggle out of responsibilities. The conundrum will be Friday: Do I see GracieHorse again or catch Returning, Destroy Judas, and Skyeater? Can you do a Substack poll? Maybe this needs to be a poll. Either way, if any of those shows are in your day planner, cruise by and say hey. I look exactly like you'd think I'd look, only worse.
Follow me on IG for upcoming releases natterings and show dispatches.
Memes And Junk
https://twitter.com/thefiadh/status/1722585214378021330
Hocking My Wares
Guested on the Butt Metal Blast Cast Podcast and administered the speed-runner version of Tic Tac Dio. Who is the fastest Metallum miner in the land? Who is playing on NG+? Will I mention the Sandra Bullock starring vehicle The Net again? Find out now.
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Apologies, powerviolence. Maybe Lack of Interest should've been on there to make it a three-way.