Album Review-Wolves Carry My Name: Black Earth Tongue

It's about 6:00 am.  Pitch shit black, and I've been up since 3:15, on the road since 4:00.  Drank enough coffee to kill a horse and only about 50% sure I'm on the right road.  I'm in no mood for the horrible atrocities and audible crimes perpetrated by this so-called "morning radio".  Bieber, Bieber, country, church service, talk show, church service....  I think my soul wants to vomit.  With miles of some of NY's most boring highway ahead, I decided this was the perfect opportunity to blast the new Wolves Carry My Name album, "Black Earth Tongue".  Released on Oct 14, 2016, I got my copy the day it came out, but this was my first opportunity to listen to it straight through, uninterrupted.  Their previous release "Among the Ashes and Ruins", instantly became one of my favorite albums and I have been not so patiently waiting for a follow up ever since.  I had high hopes and was not disappointed.  This was exactly the kind of kick in the teeth I needed to get through this dismal ride. 

Only seconds in and I'm feeling rejuvenated, rocking down the highway speed limits be damned.  I've heard listening to good music is a legal defense. Legitimate in any court for speeding.  But don't quote me on that.  At only about 29 minutes long this isn't an exceptionally long album.  But it doesn't need to be.  There is no fluff, no filler, no fucking around here.  They get in, get the job done and get out!  Like a precision bank robbery.  In and out before you know what hit you, leaving you holding your ass looking for you wallet and all the killer cat food coupons contained within. 

Their Bandcamp page describes their sound as "a bastard of 90's sludge metal and ruthless hardcore fused into sonic waves of blackness".  That description works for me as they fall under no conventional label.  A tempo faster than your typical sludge but with vocals just a vicious.  Guitar hooks and stoner rock moments with a more ambient doomy feel other times.  All the different elements are woven together seamlessly.  I am guilty of never paying much attention to listening to an album in order, but one thing that struck me about the first album was how it flowed,this album is no different.  Teeth Black as Coffin Nails serves as an introduction and Tamam Shud is a fitting conclusion.  The thought about every aspect is evident throughout.  From the arrangements to the track layout.  No wasted time.  Hard hitting and straight to the point.  Do yourself a favor and check out their Bandcamp and pick up a copy. 

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Sunday Sludge: Bottom Feeder - "Grinding Teeth"

You can believe all you want there's a life to everything. Argue with the tautology that one thing leads to another and the symbiosis is free of time restraints. There's no life without soil, there is no soil without life, right? Stop it. There's no soil without death. It's a caustic and callous perspective, but if nothing died we'd run out of space to live. So simplistic, I know. But death becomes soil and soil nourishes crops and crops are dealt all over the world to feed just about everything.

But you don't wanna hear about death. You wanna hear about soccer games and good times with old friends and you want social media to scatter that fuckin' fake bullshit to all your fish-eatin' followers so your life can seem less awful than theirs. Come on. We're exhausted with all of it, and so is Copenhagen's Bottom Feeder. Their 2013 LP Grinding Teeth missed my queue, and finally screening the album in winter's worst months is my just desserts. If there IS a life to everything, then Bottom Feeder offer reminders of death, loss, and scattered thoughts.

From the onset of Void's cryptic politicking and repellent screeches, listeners will struggle to balance the abrasive and the numbing. Sunday Sludge hasn't offered anything this vile in ages, as agonizingly sharp and piercing licks counter sanded flesh. Seven staggering ticks both stick and sway beneath the veil of a Randy Blythe vocal, both viscous and torturous, swaying and hanging like limbs stuck to severed tendons.

On Life Support offers sick groove behind abrasive feedback, but we're given no reason to dance. The track showcases a duality that makes this album so compelling. It's frightening to realize you're not allowed to feel good. A punctuated, pervasive stop-start dynamic is all-encompassing in its negativity, but the marriage of punk meters and locomotive thickness is a lacing that ignores traditional structures. A lead-in to the title track smooths a wavering of black-molasses doom spreading over slabs of cold-stone sludge. Grinding Teeth's most vile track is also its most true, offering swaying hatred and a staggering spew of vitriol to anyone who'll listen.

The revved sludge of Tension drags us through frozen fields littered with broken stalks. There's no end to the abrasion, and while guitars offer the promise of escape, it's those filthy tempos that pin your shoulders. The back-and-forth is as dizzying as the repeated strikes, but you'll ultimately return to your knees in an indentured servitude. The echoed haunt of Dehydration is intermissionary in its unsettling showcase of a slow, dark embrace. If you can, simply give in to the extraction of hope. At least for a few moments until we meet the cringe-worthy Trusted By Few. The pendulum of lament has swung straight south, while pairing grinds and screeches is a punky-paced fist-fuck of motor-breathed tempos. Believe it or not, it's as in-your-face as anything else on the album.

If you've read this, you're likely the sort of fuck-up who could embrace Grinding Teeth's all-encompassing negativity. Do you really wanna feel better about things? Sometimes there's comfort in darkness, perhaps because it's real and un-glossed. If the sweet ain't so sweet without the sour, then Bottom Feeder have the world pretty-well figured out. These six tracks are jaded, sharp, and painful. When you think about it, it sounds like your marriage. Your commute. Your meetings with your boss. Maybe Bottom Feeder know you better than you know yourself. Sad, huh?

For fans of: Grief, Buzzov*en, Eyehategod
Pair with: Indian Brown Ale, Dogfish Head Craft Brewery, Inc.

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Sunday Sludge: Deuil - "Acceptance/Rebuild"

"But the trees in Stephen's Green were fragrant of rain and the rain-sodden earth gave forth its mortal odour, a faint incense rising upward through the mould from many hearts."

You're just in a state of shock. Give it a few days until the realization of total loss throws you to the floor in bawling fits. Everyone is expecting you to break down; just do your best to keep it from happening in public, mate. There are stages. This is normal. Assert all you want that it's not fair and doesn't seem real, but that can't change the fact that you've been left alone and the backbone you thought you had suddenly needs tightening.

"Deuil" translates to mourning, so perhaps the tight-lipped side-stares could've been expected. But Belgium's blackened funeral-sludge quartet offer an atmosphere of total loss and wash it down with angst and an audience of cautious observation. Acceptance/Rebuild responds to that knock on your door with slow tempos, tightly-threaded swirls of haunt, and skyward glances hoping to prevent tears from streaming south. That being said, it's gonna take a few listens before you're fully willing to start the grieving process.

Two tracks totaling twenty-seven agonizing minutes, eh? Trust us, it's pretty good. The tracks seem to execute exactly what their names suggest. Acceptance employs disembodied chants and a cloud of floating-static riffs to distract from the impending slow-sipping sludge stomp. Layers emerge and mournful sobs breed skin-scratching crackles, all under the canopy of inwardly-directed anger. Rueful violence splits at the edges and reveals a self-hate that just might block this "acceptance" from ever truly happening. Massive walls of regret swell and sweep with processional droning as backmasked memories linger and tick. The seventeen-minute opener is melodic and melancholy, completely exhausting in all its thick grief.

But if there's any hope of forward-thinking, Rebuild provides it. Consider it a white-winter gaze at what's left and what lies ahead. Hollow guitars expand with accompaniments of fuzz and slow tempos, but they find their steam and build under suspicious progressions. The guitars remain distant and guarded, but the track remains ever-confident in its promises of new life. The post-metal rhythms elevate and send us into a total warp of perception. The ultimate sludge-drone field of churning doubt where we lay our heads is, quite simply, another world.

Deuil channel their hurt in a direction that saturates and completely submerges anyone nearby. Acceptance/Rebuild isn't gonna let you stuff down the pain. The wholly-unsettling manner through which they deliver this sludge leaves little time to notice the dirt; you're focusing on the dead. When you do find a way to cope, Deuil are gonna be directly at your side. It seems they've done this before. Hell, this album could serve as a clinic on loss, mourning, and how the fuck you move on.

For fans of: Rorcal, Mournful Congregation, Lycus
Pair with: Über Sun Imperial Summer Wheat, Southern Tier Brewing Company

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LP Review: Light Bearer - Silver Tongue

Oh man I have been waiting to hear this new album from Light Bearer for what seems like an aeon.

Formed in 2010 and hailing from London UK, Light Bearer is a concept musical project created by vocalist Alex and his band mates Matthew - guitar, Jamie - Guitar, Gerfried - Bass, Joe - Drums and Lee - Keyboard.

Silver Tongue is the 2nd instalment in what will collectively be known as the “Æsahættr Tetralogy”. Amongst other themes it tells the story of Lucifer, the bringer, or bearer of  light drawing influences from the writings of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and the Book of Genesis. One could be forgiven for thinking that the subject matter is wholly religious but despite the subject matter, their lyrical content is aggressively anti theist, pro feminist and anti speciesist. As their biography states, 'It is an allegorical tale which directly deconstructs and derails monotheistic mythology, attacking religious ideology which has created oppressive cultural norms around gender, sexuality, race, species and progressive thought.'

The vocalist, Alex, was once the front man of another concept band, the now sadly ended Fall of Efrafa. Boy, what a damn fine band they were, putting out 3 masterpieces of atmospheric hardcore, doom and post metal with elements of crust thrown in. They were a difficult band to define and that is what made them so unique. Now with Light Bearer, a similar melting pot of genres continues, expertly crafted into another masterpiece of heart breaking and emotional barrage of beautiful noise. Light Bearer go everywhere, plucking your heart strings, messing with your head, filling you with a whole range of emotions; it is a journey into the collective soul of humankind and it tears out the rawest of emotions, ones we all know so well and have all felt countless times.

I want to cry with joy, I want to laugh at the universal joke, I want stand tall and raise my arms to the sky; this is what liberation and redemption sounds like, it is what it feels like. Light Bearer get right in there and bring it all to the surface.

The 6 tracks that comprise this album consist of solemn but beautifully sauntering string sections, brass instruments, heavy guitar and bass, tight percussion and hardcore style vocals with moments of luscious harmonic singing. There are heavy moments of doom and sludge, of atmospheric drone, searing and uplifting post-metal, faster crust and hardcore break outs and soft and sad classical introspection. Light Bearer go all over the place and it is perfect and a real testament to the musicians song writing talents.

After hearing the album the first time I went back and immediately listened to it over again, and again and again. I have listened to it many times every day since it was released and it just gets better with every hearing. It is a masterpiece, and I do not use that word lightly here. I really mean it.

After completing each listen I feel lifted and I feel a better person for it, as if a burden of weight has been taken from me.

If a melding of atmospheric post metal/hardcore/doom/drone/crust is your thing then bag this release. Even if it isn't then bag it anyway. You will not be disappointed.

Soon to be released on vinyl from Halo of Flies Records for its US release and Alerta Antifascista Records for the European release it will feature the incredible artwork of Alex the vocalist of Light Bearer.

Until then, Silver Tongue is now available from their bandcamp as a name your price digital download.

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