Category Archives: Reviews

Just Released: Invader – Self-Titled

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Invader – Invader (6 March 2012, Innervenus Music)

Hey!  What are you doing tonight?  If you are anywhere within driving distance of the Southside of Pittsburgh today, cancel those plans now.  You are going to need to get yourself down to The Smiling Moose bar, where they are throwing  a CD release party you will absolutely not want to miss.  More details on that later; first let’s talk about this relatively new (founded in 2009) local band Invader and why you’ll definitely want to check out their self-titled album that has just been released by Innervenus.

Invader first came to my attention when their song “Plow City U.S.A.” was included on the Pittsburgh-area metal compilation Iron Atrocity v.1 (I can’t imagine any reason why you wouldn’t have a copy of it yet, since it’s awesome, and also free to download, but JUST IN CASE, you can grab it from here).  Then, I saw word around town that the band was putting a new record out this week; the official press release had two main points that really caught my eye: first, it listed similar artists “Nicki Minaj, Lady GaGa and The Grateful Dead,” and went on to say the five members of the band’s “goal is to play music that they themselves wanted to hear.”  Now, clearly that first part was a joke, but I did really appreciate the second quotation, because too often people just try to latch onto whatever current trend is out there, instead of playing what is genuine, and I think it really manifests in the sound a band produces.

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The “Signmeto” Unsigned Band of the Week: The Jack Antonio Project

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Well, it’s time once again for the “Signmeto” Unsigned Band of the Week feature, that thing where I talk about a band who has written to me on the “Sign Me to Roadrunner Records” website, looking for reviews of their music.  I listen to it, write about it, and share it with you.  Ready?  Here we go.

“ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT, SOCIALLY CONSCIOUS, IRREVERENT, MISUNDERSTOOD, COMEDY MUSIC!”

That’s how Jack Antonio of The Jack Antonio Project identifies himself.  He goes on to describe this “comedy music” as being “raw and simplistic and almost ‘bad’ on purpose to capture your attention,” with “the humour of Frank Zappa, the bizarreness of Captain Beefheart, the simplicity in songwriting of Daniel Johnston, the leftist politics of Jello Biafra and the voice a mixture of Doctor John and Tom Waits.”

This project was formed last October, in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, by a Canadian gentleman operating under the eponymic pseudonym.  During the intervening months, the concept has expanded from being a single singer/songwriter to working with a full backing band; at the end of February an EP was officially released, and is now available for purchase — stay tuned for further details on that, later in this review. Continue reading →

Out Today: Mondrian Oak – Aeon

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Mondrian Oak – Aeon (27 February 2012, Eibon Records)

Okay, stop right there. Before you read another word (and before I write any more) we need to get one thing out of the way immediately. Do you have a short attention span? Do people often refer to you as impatient? Has your mind already begun wandering away from this post, two or three sentences ago? If you answered “yes” to any of these (or if you didn’t answer at all because you lost track of the questions), there’s a chance this might not be for you. You may prefer to do some reading elsewhere this evening, and come back to visit me tomorrow. I’ll miss you, but I can understand.

For those who are still here, though, I’ve got quite a special treat in store for you tonight. Mondrian Oak, the instrumental post-metal (heavy emphasis on the “post”) quartet from Ancona, Italy, have put together their second album, called Aeon, and it’s available on CD right now from Aural Music‘s sub-label Eibon Records. It’s pretty fucking incredible, and you’ll have the opportunity to hear the whole thing before you go buy it.

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Out Today: Funeral in Heaven/Plecto Aliquem Capite – Astral Mantras of Dyslexia

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Funeral in Heaven / Plecto Aliquem Capite – Astral Mantras of Dyslexia (25 February 2012, Dunkelheit Producktionen)

Isn’t the internet an awesome thing?  I mean, seriously.  For those of us who are old enough to remember what life was like before, how much awesomer is it now that you have instantaneous access to pretty much any information you could ever want, anytime, anywhere?  Compared to back when you had to rely on just what you could find in books at the library — during the hours when the library was open?  Or, how much more convenient is it to be able to buy pretty much anything you can imagine, from any store anywhere — instead of having to physically go to your local store, again only during the time they were open, and settle for whatever they had to sell you?

Out of all of these things, though, probably the greatest benefit of the internet is not being able to find whatever you are looking for, but rather finding shit you never even had any idea existed.  Stuff you wouldn’t have dreamed about existing.  Now that we are able to communicate with all sorts of people all over the world, it’s amazing what sorts of craziness we now have access to.  Take music, for example, because obviously that’s what I’m eventually getting around to talking about.  Growing up, my only option was to go to the local National Record Mart or Camelot Music (both of which closed up shop ages ago, by the way) and browse through whatever tapes or CDs they had on their shelves.  I was able to hear some songs on the radio or on MTV, and if there was one that I especially liked, I could see if that album was in the store (and hope the rest of it was good, too).  Occasionally, I could rely on friends to introduce me to some things that I might not have heard elsewhere.  But mostly, I had no real way to discover new music aside from just randomly buying something and crossing my fingers.  Not being particularly wealthy, I wasn’t usually able to take risks like this, unless I was digging through the clearance bin (which did result in a few winners, but not often).

Nowadays, though… our musical options are literally endless.  There are so many places where you can sample new songs, new albums, new bands, even entirely new GENRES.  I never would have imagined that so much variation existed out there, or that I’d ever have the ability to be directly in touch with fans and bands from every corner of the globe!  Even without the internet, I knew about metal bands from places like Germany, Sweden, or Brazil, but in recent years that has definitely expanded to include way more parts of Europe, South America, Russia and the Far East, and even parts of Africa.  More recently still, the spotlight has increasingly been shone on the Middle East and India, and I am just ecstatic at the expanding knowledge I am gaining and the way my worldly musical experiences are growing ever wider.

Today, I am listening to a split release from two blackened metal bands from Sri Lanka, and if I’m not mistaken, this is the first music I’ve ever heard from that island nation in the Indian Ocean.  Naturally, I’m thrilled for the opportunity, and hopefully you will be too, so I am glad to share with you: Astral Mantras of Dyslexia, which consists of Astral Mantras by Funeral in Heaven, and Dyslexia by Plecto Aliquem Capite.

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Just Released: GIRLFIGHT – Holy Fuck

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GIRLFIGHT – Holy Fuck (22 February 2012, self-released)

Hey readers, how’s it going? Me, I’ve been pretty busy. Between working full-time, running a music blog of skyrocketing popularity, and taking online classes half-time, sometimes it can be a lot to juggle. Like today, when usually I’d be working on blog stuff while pretending to work, I had a bunch of school stuff that needed done instead. So that means for the majority of the day I ended up neglecting my duties here.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I forgot about you, or that I wasn’t busy finding new things to write about. I’ve always got something to listen to throughout the day, and today was no exception. And as luck would have it, on a day when I found myself without a whole lot of time to write, I came across something to share with you that hardly takes up any time at all: a two-song release that runs a mere six minutes.

Of course, just being short isn’t enough to make me want to recommend something to you. I wouldn’t want to waste any of your time, even if it’s only a little bit, with something shitty. Well, no need to worry about that. What I’ve got here is a nice healthy slab — well okay, more like a sliver — of high-quality angry Pittsburgh hardcore, courtesy of GIRLFIGHT.

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Out Last Month: Mouth of the Serpent – Manifest

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Mouth of the Serpent – Manifest (10 January 2012, Swimming with Sharks Records)

Good afternoon, Valley of Steel reader.  Or depending on where you live (or when you come across this post), good morning or good evening. If whatever time of day it happens to be is perhaps not so good for you, just bear with me, it’ll get better.  I’m going to introduce some more music to you, and I’ve got a feeling pretty soon everything will be just fine.

For starters, just look at that cover art up there!  Now that’s some cool shit, huh?  It was created by Tony Koehl, who has been responsible for quite a few other album covers (check out this gallery), probably the most high-profile of which was Black Dahlia Murder‘s 2009 album Deflorate (as seen here).

Anyway, back to this present work of art.  People say you shouldn’t judge what’s inside
a book or album or whatever, just based on the cover.  Good advice, but not very practical in real life — after all, isn’t that why there is a cover in the first place?  To give you an idea what you will expect from the contents, and to get you started in your decision whether you think you will like it or not?

Well in this case, the artwork definitely catches your eye, and that odd juxtaposition of themes could possibly confuse the viewer, but in a way that should leave you feeling curious about what lies within.  ARE you curious, Dear Reader?  I can’t quite tell what that giant swamp monster thing is doing, but it might be inhaling a tree — definitely it looks like it’s causing some sort of massive destruction.  The creature itself looks pretty grim and brutal, like you might expect to find on the cover of some pretty brutal death metal, right?  Then in the background, the scene is all outer-spacey and there’s like a transdimensional portal or something, exactly the sort of imagery that would be well-suited to some experimental tech-death music, wouldn’t you say?

I think you can probably guess what this is leading up to, and you’d be right: the material found on Manifest, the recently-released EP by Los Angeles’ Mouth of the Serpent, turns out to be an interesting amalgamation of all of the above — and much more!

 

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Out Today: Fist Fight in the Parking Lot – Self-Titled

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Fist Fight in the Parking Lot – Fist Fight in the Parking Lot (21 February 2012, Innervenus Music)

Good evening, readers! Sorry for the tardiness of this review — I totally meant to publish it this morning, but then I got distracted by something shiny. It happens. Actually it was an announcement that the new self-titled album by Corrosion of Conformity was streaming in full over at AOL Music. I hadn’t heard it yet, and I don’t know how long it’ll be available, so I wanted to jump on that. I’m sure you can understand. If you haven’t heard it yet, you’ll probably want to check it out, too.

From what I’d read about it, the new COC album is supposed to appeal to fans of their earlier, more hardcore-oriented work, as well as those who prefer their more recent foray into Sabbath-inspired stoner metal. So I was curious to see what it was all about. What I found surprised me: I heard very little of the sound mainly associated with either era of the band’s history, instead feeling more of an old-school doom vibe — along the lines of some of Wino‘s earlier work, or any of a slew of his bands’ imitators. A style I enjoy, to be sure, but one that can also seem monotonous at times, over the course of an entire record. This was one of those occasions: despite some higher points, the album really didn’t reach out and grab my attention at any point. Missing here were the truly memorable songs that make you want to sing along, or hear them again and again.

Well, all of that soon changed, because a little later in the day I switched gears to the brand new release by Pittsburgh’s Fist Fight in the Parking Lot, made available today through the Innervenus Music Collective.

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Out Today: Wykked Wytch – The Ultimate Deception

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Wykked Wytch – The Ultimate Deception (14 February 2012, Goomba Music)

Happy Valentine’s Day, readers! Hugs and kisses and hearts and flowers, and all that. I don’t know if they have anything like this wherever you live, but here, February 14th is supposed to be some sort of commemoration for the martyred Roman-Catholic Saint Valentinus (although various accounts differ as to which particular saint named Valentinus or Valentine the day is named for, or even whether he was actually a real person in the first place), but of course in typical fashion, any links to a religious observence that originally existed have long since gone out the window (just like Easter turned into a day for little kids to get fat eating bunnies made out of chocolate), and nowadays it’s mostly just a time where people are expected to spend a bunch of money on cards and candy or fancy dinners for their significant others. At least, if they want to keep that person as a significant other.

So, in keeping with this tradition, I’ve got a lovely Valentines Day gift for you, Dear Reader. It’s a heart-shaped box filled with dulcet melodies and harmonious sonnets; love songs with lyrics so beautiful you might just be moved to tears.

Yeah, fuck all that. Actually what I’ve got for you is a review of a record being released today on Goomba Music, called The Ultimate Deception, which is the fifth album by Floridian extreme metal band Wykked Wytch — whose core is as black as the crispy, charred remains of a martyr who’d been burnt at the stake.

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In Case You Missed It: Sanctorum – Semper Fidelis

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Sanctorum – Semper Fidelis (Auburn Fox Records, 21 March 2011)

Hello, friends.  I have to tell you, I am beginning to write this review once more, with some amount of trepidation.  That feeling has nothing to do with the album or the band in particular, but this is now the third time I’ve decided to sit down and write this, and the first two were cut short because I became otherwise distracted by some catastrophe.   Well, maybe that’s too strong of a word, but in any case, I’ve experienced a couple of unfortunate mishaps, each of which had me preoccupied on those particular days. So I’m hoping the third time will be the charm, for this review of Semper Fidelis, which happens to be the third album from Colcestrian metal band Sanctorum (following 2008’s Ashes of Redemption and their 2006 debut The Heavens Shall Burn).

This latest album is actually almost a year old by now, although I’ve only had a copy of it for the past two months — I actually just discovered the band after I reviewed My Ruin‘s A Southern Revelation when it was released back in December. Right around that same time, I learned that the bands would be performing together on an extensive tour across the UK (which, incidentally, just concluded last night in Sanctorum’s hometown of Colchester).

Anyway I hope I haven’t already frightened you away by talking about my own bad luck, because believe me– though I might have had some problems getting the opportunity to actually write about this album, there’s been no shortage of chances to listen to it, which I have done many, many times over these two months. (And, I might add, with no harmful side effects!)

So, keep on reading and I’ll finally get a chance to share this music with you, that I have been meaning to do for so long!

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Now Available for FREE: Sangre – The Great Tribulation

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Sangre – The Great Tribulation (JMD Distribution, 9 August 2011)

Hey! Remember last week when I told you about the new Kosher Komp compilation from Kosher Metal? The one that had a shit-ton of great songs on it, by a bunch of different bands, all for free? If not, go grab it now! Seriously. I’ll be waiting here when you get back.

Ok now, where were we… ton of great songs, bunch of different bands, right. One of those bands was the Inland Empire metal band Sangre, with their songs “The Great Tribulation” and “Forever I”. If you liked the blend of blackened prog-thrash presented in those two songs, then do I have some good news for you! Continue reading →