This is the second release from German label Ván this year that’s got me really excited. Whereas The Devil’s Blood take a playful approach to pagan rites, Griftegard cast an epic pall of quasi-religious, existential gloom – this is not a criticism, this is remarkable stuff.

Sacred.Solemn.Severe is the musical equivalent of a Doré etching, or perhaps a rainy day in Highgate Cemetery. Chants, hymns and histrionic, impassioned crooning tell of hatred of the flesh and solemn introspection. The overwhelming protestant puritanical aesthetic is both claustrophobic and apocalyptic – Griftegard wield Christian symbolism like a sledgehammer.

Unlike many doom acts who lurk on the periphery of parody with Hammer Horror theatrics, Griftegard emanate a sense of solemn, ernest duty – this is serious stuff, and at times is somewhat unsettling. This is underpinned by some exemplary song writing and haunting soulful melody. These 6 long songs end at with the ultimate finale – death, but there are undertones of rebirth or perhaps redemption, and you get the feeling that Griftegard have a lot more to say.

Griftegard display a depth, clarity and coherence that other Doom bands could only aspire to. A steamy breath of cold, dank winter air – both refreshing and unnerving.

Listen on Myspace

Buy from Amazon

The classic rock revival, for the most part, has left me cold. Bands like The Answer and Stone Gods indulging in big riffs and big balls show such a lack of imagination. Dutch classic rockers The Devil’s Blood have snuck into the metal arena on the back of Doom Metal’s recent surge in popularity. Their occult leanings and intermittent Sabbath referencing appears to have endeared them to the Doom community perhaps on the lookout for some light relief, particularly with their feelgood hit of the late summer I’ll Be Your Ghost. But what a welcome interloper this is!

Delivering classic rock in the vain of Blue Oyster Cult and Coven with Sabbath and Thin Lizzy flourishes, The Devil’s Blood are retro, but have their own distinctive identity. The singer’s quivering vibrato may polarise listeners as it can get pretty grating, but is largely smoothed out by the silky multi-part vocal harmonies of which this album is awash. Their sound is darkly atmospheric and truly epic. Huge riffs and harmonised dual guitars cut through the dreamy sheen giving this album some real punch and there are some razor sharp and perfectly timed guitar solos displaying prodigious fret board agility without being too showy.

Final track The Ant-Kosmik Magick is surely one of the standout tracks of any band this year. This sublime psychedelic rocker concludes the album with the best Floydesque guitar duel since Opeth’s Burden or Coheed and Cambria’s The Final Cut (indeed this is one of many parallels with C&C’s retro prog).

This album is perfectly executed and immaculately timed. There there’s no fat here at all – every track is a stormer. Despite the dark lyrical themes of witchery and black magick, this album is ultimately uplifting. Backward leaning without every being a parody, showing contemporary flourishes and some exemplary pop songwriting smarts.

German label Ván appear to have hit paydirt having also signed superb Swedish doomsters Griftegård. This will be in my albums of the year. Go buy it, because these guys deserve to be very popular indeed.

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1 band, 5 questions, 1 minute per question...

Profile

Name: James “Rambo” Pearce

Band: Stone Circle

From: Brighton, UK

What you do in Stone Circle: Bass and Manager

Label: Unsigned

Website: http://www.myspace.com/stonecirclemetal

The Questions

Describe Stone Circle in exactly 3 words

Epic, Dark, Progressive

Name 3 albums you could not live without

1. Katatonia – Great Cold Distance
2. Opeth – My Arms your Hearse
3. At the Gates – Slaughter of the Soul

Tell me something I don’t know about Stone Circle

We live together!

What is Stone Circle doing at the moment?

Currently writing and getting ready to record our album in October. Getting organized to go on tour!

You have 5 minutes alone with Simon Cowell, how will you use them?

I would probably give him a handshake and tell him how he is 99% right on most of those shitty talent shows… Then make him give us a major record deal by asking Sam (Drums) to intimidate him immensely!

Necro Deathmort’s name suggests “death death death” and their Myspace classification is set to “grunge/grunge/grunge”, however their music is not even remotely either. In fact, if you dig deeper, the London duo consider themselves more drone doom than anything else quoting a major influence from early Earth. However, Necro’s eclectic pseudo-style is closer in spirit to the creepy electronica of Aphex Twin or cut and paste trip-hop of Coldcut although the predominant influence here would seem to be that of breakbeat alchemist DJ Shadow (from the Endtroducing era). The album’s title – This Beat is Necrotronic – clearly nods towards the retro-beat-electronica that saturates this collection.

Necro’s drone nestles quietly beneath the loops and breakbeats creating ambient tones reminiscent of a hip-hop inflected take Sunn O)))’s spookyscapes. Technicolour Minstrel Show is pure ambient, minimalist drone, while Hurt Me I’m Bored is a much more traditional doom affair with guitars and real drums dominating the lightly electronic undertones. On the brief Origami Werewolf the styles seem to mesh more cleanly and this is perhaps the coherent edge that this album needs to really shine. Final track The Ultimate Testament takes Boris style drone to its logical conclusion and is perhaps an allusion of the entropic nature of the universe in which we live.

It’s clear that Necro take their art with a pinch of salt. The Beat is Necrotronic is certainly creative, and its originality comes from the mix of styles, rather than the music itself. It is a playful work of ADHD genre noodling that will no doubt irritate the hell out of the genre purists (of all the various genre’s this record references) which is always a good thing. But if you alienate everyone, then what are you left with? Is this album just too damn erratic to be anything other than very niche? Or could this genre hopping opus please the wider audience?

All this aside, this motley assemblage of loops and doom really put a smile on my face, and it’ll certainly get heavy rotation on my iPod. Given I’m a fan of pretty much all the genres and artists mentioned here, this was guaranteed to entertain me. There’s a legion of folks out there with similar tastes out there, but we’re hard to pin down. If you stumble across this expecting drone, then keep an open mind. If you’re merely looking for something really fresh and thoroughly entertaining then look no further.

Listen to Necro Deathmort on Myspace

Buy the album here

The vast majority of unsigned bands out there are either shit, superfluous, disposable or just copies of another band. Unfortunately, the race for a record deal is usually won by those bands sprouting in the better watered plots, and the rest of the seedlings will wither and die – such are the strains of being in band. So when I come across a band that’s really decent but is lurking in the shady, untended parts of the musical garden I immediately get a bit nervous – if someone doesn’t sign them soon, they may stop what their doing and get a proper job, which would be very bad.

New Zealand’s Photonic are one such band. Photonic is really one guy called Craig. His music has nothing to do with much of the other music out there today. Somehow he has crafted a set of tracks that is both forward leaning and backward looking. It’s also totally unclassifiable.

So where do we start with this brilliant, self-published, motley collection of vignette’s and vast-scapes he’s dubbed Recorded Contact? First and foremost, this is not metal, at least for the most part. There’s no predominant style here other than perhaps sparse, indignant hardcore reminiscent of Fugazi with post-rock tendencies drifting into Mogwai territory. However, the spirit of this collection is as much rooted into the petulant lo-fi of 90’s alt icons like Pavement and Guided by Voices, and the psych-pop-metal of Pixies.

Photonic’s songs veer between half-complete ADHD experiments and fully formed post-rock mini-epics. Vocals sprinkle this album almost at random, and styles change mid-song. On the first couple of listens (and I’d listened to most of these tracks on the band’s Myspace, like, 5 times, before buying the album) you really don’t know what’s coming next.

The production is stripped back to the point of being resolutely lo-fi, which constitutes a sizeable chunk of this album’s charm. It’s difficult to tell whether this sound is intentional or the result of having too little wonga to afford a decent recording. However, let’s keep our man Craig away from Pro-tools lest he be tempted – the production here is just perfect as it is.

Photonic are another one of those bands that mix a bunch of my favourite styles in magical ways, but what an unexpected mix this is. It’s impossible to know where to place this within the modern skewed-spectrum of *cores. Craig describes Photonic as “a rock metal power-chord psychedelic beats party” and appears unable or unwilling to classify the band himself – indeed there is no-one else out there is recording music like this, at least to my knowledge. Given this, anyone who signs Photonic will be gambling on a band that damn near impossible to market. This is the travesty of the music industry, where conformity is rewarded and individuality is ignored.

Shit, someone better sign Photonic, otherwise I’ll start a record label and I’ll do it myself!

In the meantime, I implore you, give Photonic some of your money and time (check out most of the album on their myspace here). This seedling needs watering, as the world will be a duller place without it.

Another couple of UKMU unsigned reviews for your existential enrichment.

The brutal Skull of a Mammoth:

First impressions are deceptive. Skull of a Mammoth’s name lead me to expect lumbering doom laden metal. The bell chimes followed by eerie keyboards and owl toots of the first track here did nothing to dispel this and even conjured and air of Spinal Tap, or worse Bad News (“Bells don’t go dung, cows go dung!”). Oh dear, I thought, and braced myself for some cheese, only to be swiftly bludgeoned from my lazy reverie by a cannon ball sized chunk of Lamb of God style ferocity.

London’s Skull of a Mammoth are a curious mix. The vocals, and overall approach to stripped down, to the point brutality is resolutely Lamb of God, but these tracks effortlessly skip between Metalcore, Black Metal and Melodic Death.

Read more…

The burgeoning 15 Times Dead:

With a name like 15 Times Dead, I expected these guys would be another cookie cutter metal/death-core bands, so I was pleasantly surprised when a neatly packaged retro-thrash band tore its way out of the Myspace player.

What seems apparent from the recent revival of this revered sub-genre is that the hardcore elements that helped form the rudiments of this style are well represented (DRI, COC, Anthrax, Nuclear Assault), but the classic metal influence is less well represented (unless you count the endless power metal bands). This is perhaps because the big names on that edge are still going strong – namely Metallica and Megadeth. It’s certainly cool to be punking it up, but could it ever be cool to sound like Metallica when the beast lumbers on through varying levels of purist disrepute? This is perhaps why the labels aren’t clambering to sign up bands like 15 Times Dead.

That’s not to say that 15 Times Dead are a one trick pony. This music is deceptively diverse. The thrash masters are all here (Metallica, Anthrax and Testament seep through in varying levels) but there’s a grounding here in classic rock which is tempered by grunge and alternative flavours.

Read more…

Since the hot topic of the moment is unsigned bands giving their music away free, I thought I’d mention one of my favourite bands at the moment, Cloudkicker, who are doing exactly that.

Cloudkicker from Columbus, Ohio are a instrumental post/prog-metal act that thus far, to my knowledge, have given their entire back catalogue away free as downloads (all available here for your enjoyment).

This is significant to me. When I first heard their tracks on Myspace, I thought it was decent enough, but nothing to get excited about, and buggered off to hunt down some more fresh tunes. Later, I came by the link to their download page, and being the habitual horder that I am, I downloaded their back catalogue as it was enjoyable enough and would pass some time. These tracks spent a few weeks turning up randomly on shuffle, and slowly started to infect me. Soon I found myself consciously choosing to listen to Cloudkicker.

Cloudkicker use percussive, pulsing guitars and lightly industrial flavours of bands like Meshuggah and Strapping Young Lad and blend with subtle swathes of ambient melody. Cloudkicker grows. This is precisely why giving their music away free is a good idea.

Folks are unlikely to keep going back to Myspace to listen to tracks, and much metal music, especially stuff like this, needs more than a cursory listen to really grok. Cloudkicker are unsigned. It seems unlikely that they would have gained the notoriety that they have purely on Myspace or by charging for CD’s or MP3’s. To my knowledge they don’t promote themselves (certainly not this side of the Atlantic) and the magazines give them no love. So they found their way to me by reputation and onto my playlist through regular listens. I have already told several people about them, and now I’m telling you.

Download these tracks. The worst that can happen is that you don’t like them, at which point just delete them.

A cheeky double scoop of unsigned acts on UKMU for you consumption.

The delectable Dycian Maze:

History repeats. This is particularly apparent in popular music. In 25 to 30 year cycles, music styles re-emerge, reboot and evolve. Some returning genres are more welcome than others. The current 80’s synth-pop revival is nauseating for example, but I’m quite looking forward to grunge coming back round again. One welcome reboot was thrash metal. Bands like Municipal Waste and SSS are farming the routes of this revered genre (DRI, Slayer, SOD) to amusing effect. It’s fun and they sing about beer a lot. However, somewhere in that latter half of the 80’s thrash evolved. Albums like Ride the Lightening, Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying, History of a Time to Come, Arise took this mishmash of punk and metal and sculpted into a progressive artform. So thrash re-emerged a couple of years ago, but where’s the progression?

Dycian Maze would seem to represent a reprisal of this transitional phase. They aren’t necessarily pushing boundaries but they do make this vital period sound fresh again. The music they play is not new, but this is no shallow revisionism, the spirit of those masterworks is here in spades.

Read more…

The humdrum Hammersalt:

I don’t know if any of you are ancient enough to remember Baddiel and Skinner’s sketch show The Mary Whitehouse experience. They had this great skit lampooning The Cure – the implication was that they could make any song sound depressing, so every week they dressed up like the Cure and preformed songs like the Laughing Policeman in depressing goth style.
I have a similar problem with Hammersalt, except (in similarly depressing style) they seem to be able to make any song sound like Load-era Metallica – the singer sounds spookily like James Hetfield from those albums. Given that this band are British, and the singer’s surname is Booyse it seems unlikely that he’s Hetfield’s long lost brother. What’s slightly more confusing is that they cite every corporate heavy rock band from the last 20 years (from Pumpkins to Foos to Shinedown) as an influence on their MySpace except Metallica. Are we to believe that he stumbled on this distinctive vocal style by chance?

This makes it hard to divine what they really about – it’s kind of like that trick: say milk milk milk milk milk milk….what do cows drink?

Read more…

I picked up a recommendation for Electric Mud Generator on a progressive rock thread on UKMU. Despite having released 2 albums these guys have managed to slip largely under the popular radar. Their music is an extremely fashionable mix of classic prog, prog metal and doom (with a little folk thrown in for good measure). The galloping doom of She Wore Thorns culminates into a very convincing Maiden-esque solo, while the brooding epic Winter evokes Rush and King Crimson and has a rousing chorus to die for. This is a territory I had expected Amplifier would start to occupy when the released their “difficult” second album Insider.

This release is somewhat timely, and I hope the world sits up and takes notice, as there’s plenty of deeply mediocre bands occupying this space at the moment.

British progressive metal upstarts Xerath aren’t so much adding something new to the scene, but merely mashing it up in a very entertaining way. Combining the metronomic brutality of Meshuggah with orchestral ambience. It’s a compelling mix, and one which conjures Faith No More at times, although it’s still more Decapitated than Dimmu Borgir.

Their debut album I is out now.

http://www.last.fm/music/Xerath/_/False+History