I’m from Kentucky, the heart of Bluegrass and Country music, sort of… I think Nashville would disagree and probably Oklahoma, Kansas and any other state that cuddles up next to the southern states would as well. But to say I grew up around Country Music is an understatement, for years I was immersed in it. […]

Freed of this Flesh, the second EP from Portland, Oregon’s Trees continues the pattern of their first release: Two 13+ minute tracks of crushing, droning doom.  Like contemporaries Habsyll and Otesanek, Trees occupy the outer reaches of doom, where riffs are stretched into the atmosphere and notes into decaying feedback.  It’s not exactly original but […]

Not to make excuses, but Subarachnoid Space isn’t exactly the hardest band to lose track of. Having released three good-bordering on-excellent albums on Relapse’s experimental imprint, Release Entertainment, the instrumental group led by guitarist Melynda Jackson (that’s not her on the cover) has sort of always floated on the periphery of the experimental space rock […]

Ugh. I feel queasy. While not overly impressed with the last offering from this Netherlands madman who goes by the name of Mories, there’s something about this album that literally hooks me, reels me in an gives me a tangible sense of disgust and self loathing. Maybe it’s the more perverse, sexually depraved nature of […]

Of the recent spate of doomy metallic hardcore bands that have emerged in this brave new millennium to date, France’s Overmars have possibly been among the most overlooked and underrated. Beginning their career with a limited split CD w/Japanese crusters Fugue, the innovative seven-piece was barely a blip on the radar until Candlelight Records issued […]

Trees seems an odd choice of name for this Portland quartet, who ooze a ponderously slow brand of psychedelic black doom. When paired with a different act, the name Trees would conjure up images of graceful boughs, sheaved in green and waving in the wind, or shaggy willows, drooping to brush their tendrils across a […]

I’ve found my next Halloween album. You know, the music you put on your stereo, speakers pointing out an open window and blaring into the street for all the trick-or-treaters and their bemused parents? The past few years I’ve used a playlist of Cradle of Filth‘s overwrought instrumentals – way more elegant than the cheapo […]

While no instrumental metal expert or aficionado, I really enjoyed my first exposure to Virginia’s oddly named Souvenir’s Young America. Though superficially they play an expected form of lush, instrumental post rock a la Tides or Pelican, the very subtle injections of an almost Ennio Morricone-like Old Western undercurrent make the affair sound like a […]

Here’s solid re-release of this French shoegazer/post rock act’s debut album (originally released on Radar Swarm Records in 2006 and also as a 2LP Gatefold album by Atropine Records/E-Vinyl Record for you collectors out there), and while not on par with fellow Frenchmen Overmars, Nord is a sound addition to slightly more aggressive likes of […]

In the early 1970’s the British Government was reprimanded by the European Convention on Human Rights for torturing suspected IRA members by using a Sensory Deprivation method know as “White Noise”. Well, I think the European Convention on Human Rights needs to investigate Crucial Blast and France’s Monarch! for similar offenses. What’s better than 1 […]

Here’s another off the wall noisy alt rock record from Crucial Blast, similar to Black Elk’s recent self titled effort, and like that effort, is a swing and miss despite the bands Once boasting members of Don Caballero and Zombi (and probably giving readers a rough idea of the band’s sound), Pittsburgh’s (((Microwaves))) is a […]

I could (and most likely will) spend this whole review going down the laundry list of elements that Genghis Tron pile on a dangerously teetering table for your amusement and distraction (Grindcore, 80’s Hip-hop, Shred, Porn soundtrack funk, post-hardcore, gabber….) on this 5 song introduction to their fucked-up little world; but suffice it to say […]