Chattanooga, TN has produced one of the more interesting punk bands that has floated across my radar recently. 40oz. is very much inspired by old-school punk but is not shackled by its cliches. Biting riffs give way to well thought out, almost Sonic Youthlike solos backed by a ballsy rhythm section, which sports an awesome bass tone. ErikkA’s has more growl and venom than a crackhead with throat cancer. Stark verses and catchy choruses make me want to sing along and pump my fist. This is a solid musical entity that will continue to develop a unique sound.
Morbo Y Mambo-Das Papier
Geezer Butler Bass lines, Melt Banana vocals, and echo drenched trumpet. You aren’t high, you are listening to Morbo & Mambo. Argentina’s weirdest sons & daughters can groove as well as they can screech. The tight-as-fuck rhythm section is the perfect foil for the possessed rantings of Noelia Pollini and the noir trumpet riffing of Fermín Echeveste. Synth bubbles highlight beautiful atmospheres and hard rock breakdowns tear latin reggae sections apart. Holy fuck, that all happens in three tracks.
Nohari-Fuck Your Scene
Raw and visceral yet tasteful. I am floored that only three dudes contributed to this album. The sheer amount of original guitar parts and the surplus of different vocal timbres sounds like a four-piece with guest vocals. For the most part Nohari follows the, “nothing can last for more than five seconds,” attitude of grindcore, but the twists and turns yield better results than most. Mike Haner’s guitar work is skillful but catchy, Bradley Cook’s drumming is equally skillful and entirely moshable. Cook also recorded the album. It is obvious this album was recorded with minimal equipment and funding, however Cook manages to get an excellent sound. The vocals and especially the low end of cook’s kit sound especially strong. Nohari is six awesome songs long. I want more.
Crippling Fear-Demo/assorted facebook tracks
Do you like screeching dissonant cacophony interspersed with catchy riffs? Then you will love Boston’s Crippling Fear. Punk as fuck, Crippling Fear’s predominant desire is to play super fast songs for their friends. Given how good their output is they deserve a lot more friends. Check out their facebook.
Buried at Birth-Pestilent Hallucinations
Kick Ass grindcore with awesome dualing vocals. While Badass guitar riffs abound Buried at Birth’s true marker is their rhythm section. Donovan Kelley is an excellent finger-style bassist who is actually audible in the mix and Ryan Fassler mixes up the blasts with excellent tom and cymbal work. Go to Grindcorekaraoke.com and download Pestilent Hallucinations it fucking rips. Also, remember to read the lyrics they skirt the boundary of brutal and poetic in the best way.
Cloud Rat-S/T LP
May the blastbeats never stop, except of course for the crushing mid-tempo sections. Cloud Rat is one of my favorite grind-core acts and this LP will show you why. Cloud Rat mix it up, I hear inklings of Napalm Death, Converge and Agoraphobic Nosebleed in their sound along with Doom and Noise influences. In a genre filled with vicious vocalists Madison is one of the best. Her range of yells and shrieks perfectly compliment the awesome drumming and guitar work. If you like extreme metal this is a band for you.
薔薇の葬列-Blacklight Beauty EP
Truly beautiful guitar music. Drones and static walk hand in hand with acoustic guitar lines to create an oddly pop drone album. All of the untitled tracks flow together, while each has its own personality they are fairly similar pieces. You touched my stomach breaks the album in two with eight minutes of bassy static and crackling. Blacklight Beauty is a great debut EP please check it out.
http://baranosoretsu.bandcamp.com/album/blacklight-beauty-ep
Kyle Bobby Dunn-Ways of Meaning
Ambient music is often reflective of spirituality, distance, space. Cold sounds promoting meditation and emptiness. Combining ambient music with a visual, such as in a TV show, lends the music a new emotive quality. Ways of Meaning invokes all of the typical ambient feelings and provokes various emotions without the aid of a visual. Track 5, Movement For The Completely Fucked, invokes sadness and longing in all the right ways, while Canyon Meadows will bring a smile to your lips. Kyle is right up there with Roger Eno and Robert Fripp in producing highly musical an emotive ambient pieces.
Veedu-Sueños de Fronteras en Llamas
It may be worth hopping on a plane to Venezuela to catch these guys live. While the EP consists of two full songs with spoken intro and outro tracks, you only need two tracks to know that Veedu is legit. Crusty verse-chorus-verse-chorus sections are broken up by longer instrumental sections and well-timed samples. The recording quality isn’t great, but the tunes are good enough that they shine through. Hopefully more tunes with better recording quality are on the way.
The Fierce & The Dead-If It Carries On Like This We Are Moving To Morecambe
Wow. Sometimes it sounds like Merzbow. Sometimes it sounds like Joshua Tree era U2. Sometimes it sounds like Bill Frisell and Flea are jamming out. This album is the polar opposite of boring. Though it touches on many genres If It Carries On Like This We Are Moving To Morecambe draws in reoccuring musical themes often enough to provide a sense of continuity absent from many more simplistic albums. I fervently hope The Fierce & The Dead continue to push themselves to make music this unique and interesting.
Makeshift Reviews 