Charnel House – Voiceless Hymns C70
Auris Apothecary
Voiceless Hymns is essentially a compilation of instrumentalist Adam Sommers’ work before his collaboration with vocalist Priestess Hellfire over two major pieces of music – a Self-Titled album and a split with a band called Agakus. As such, it has all the charm of a demo including inconsistent recording quality, tape machine flaws and other unintended recording artifacts – necessary naivete. So these charming recordings contrast significantly with Charnel House‘s current sound.
The Self Titled side can be divided into two …
Koufar – Lebanon For Lebanese
Fusty Cunt Records
Koufar has kind of taken a back-seat to A. Chami’s other projects, lately. It is probably the most notorious of his monickers, spurring confusion and apprehension amongst outsiders because of the project’s nationalistic overtones. It’s often that his politics have become his calling card to some who have little understanding of Koufar from a musical standpoint. Moreso than Purity Of The Cedars, Lebanon For Lebanese is an unpolished shrapnel of destruction, flowing from sonic cannonballs of rhythmic scrapes and detonated with …
Pleasure Strain – Illness Attraction C32
Starved Relations
I’ve really been digging this quick release lately and I say quick because billing this as a C32 is a little decieving. It has the same material on both sides so it’s closer to a C16. Either way I have no previous experience with the project so I’m going at this review based on this release alone. Artwork is typical photocopied high contrast black and white which fits the rough sound very well.
Pleasure Strain offers up a sick combo of power electronics and …
Stone Wired – Umbral Depth Of Shade
Exabyss Records
I have never heard of Stonewired before and I don’t think I would have sought them out. Sadly, many of the same maladroit artistic implementations that plagued the Voidmorf release I reviewed are present here (and I shall not go into details). This would have been a shame as Umbral Depth Of Shade is a bleak and crushing work of death industrial that covers a wide variety of styles.
The minute “Regressed Back To The State Of Primal Being” thumps in your speakers, …
Babelfishh – Writhe In The Elements EP C20
IHAA Records
While there is an underlying hip-hop current going on here, Writhe In The Elements traverses a pretty large and almost insurmountable spectrum of sound sources, influences and composition choices. In the twenty minutes that this beast unfurls its wings and bellows foul noxious fumes, Writhe… has the touch of an artist wearing many masks but still retaining a tangible humanity – one of frustration, contempt, self-analysis, and self-ridicule – in spite of being beaten back by the elements, one that hopes …