Buscar:obsidian

Sarcasm has had a storied career. Originally formed in Sweden in 1987, Sarcasm would release blistering Death Metal throughout the early and mid-90’s. After a short-lived reunion in 1997, they would come back into the fold in 2015 with a new re-designed version of their lineup. Now they return with their new full-length album “Stellar Stream Obscured”. A concept-based album that is a journey. Managing to sound like their old selves, the bands launches a fine assault here featuring plenty of furious melodic rhythms alongside their traditional leanings. Although, they clearly have their ties in being an older Death Metal band, their sound still brings with it the youthful exuberance of newer Death Metal bands. They have this almost blackened style of Death Metal that cuts like a knife. The impressive guitar work is highlighted by the brutal blast beats and vile vocals emanating in every track. A surprising factor to their music is the slowing down of the tempo to offer up a more melodic sound. A lot of times the old school Death Metal bands seem to be stuck in their ways, but Sarcasm has implemented the more melodic sound to their brutal repertoire. One should appreciate the vile black metal styled vocals on the album, as they work so well together with the professional sounding musicianship. Take Black Metal, melodies, and Death Metal and blend it all up then you’ll have “Stellar Stream Obscured”. The music is beautiful, vile, and brutal all in the same. “Stellar Streams Obscured” is a triumphantly diverse Death Metal album that brings a complete and competent sound. Sarcasm deliver on every facet musically.

"‘Arise, Dan Sartain, Arise’, the latest studio album by America’s infamous rock ‘n’ roll troubadour Dan Sartain, will be released by One Little Independent Records. Made up of thirteen wickedly wisecracking, vintage surf-rock bangers, this concise and classic record incorporates everything that’s made Dan Sartain the genres favourite underdog over the last two decades.
Seeped in obsidian black humour with tracks like ‘Glasses Houses’, ‘Rooster In The Henhouse’ and ‘I Heard Laughing’ ruthlessly calling out those who would slight him while also riding the hard line of self-awareness, the biting witticism of these tracks pair wonderfully with the playful tone of Sartain’s slick-back dark doo-wop. Elsewhere on the likes of ‘True Love’ and ‘Fires and Floods’ the crooner gets a chance to flex his punk muscles, pushing the guitars further into distorted territory taking the late 50s garage-rock influence via the late 70s in much the same way The Ramones and The Damned did. But we’re transported right back again when Sartain slows down for ballad standouts such as ‘Kisses In The Morning’ and ‘Personal Injury Law’. Throughout ‘Arise, Dan Sartain, Arise’ searing surf guitars intertwine with beautifully haunted organ jabs, with rhythms pulled straight from saloon bars way out west, and cheeky wink-to-the-camera lyrical whimsy."

Get yo ass in the house, robot-- you cyber-spectre, you outhouse prime minister, you hard-headed mirror ninja, snapping selfies, living in the pixelated seams between bursts the of flashing images, birthed in a pool of TV static and Tik Tok dust. BLACK ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE AIR is here, not to save but to drown you. Heads better learn how to swim cause listen, this record is beat soup, hearty yet still minimal, a sonic mirage of prophetic soul that drop kicks your "chill beats to study to" Youtube playlist and hyper-intellectual rap podcasts into a hadron collider; it's only black matter on the other side-- 13 mesmerizing tracks about memory and imprinting and the future, all of them wafting through untouched space like the ghostly cinders of a world on fire, unbound and uncharted, vast and stretching across the universe. Moor Mother is a holographic figment of an Afrotopian dream, all at once goddess and warrior, mystic and cyborg, griot and future time traveller, etching noisy pieces of reverie into our consciousness for decades now. But check it: on BLACK ENCYCLOPEDIA she's joined by a wide-range of friends, collaborators and co-conspirators on a trip through the murky cosmos, navigating the black universe with stardust as currency. In these times, they'll say, as they click and mash their way through the same inter-webs that seek to strangle them, BLACK ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE AIR is just what we need: a post-everything, 12:01 on the doomsday clock, anti-trip hop type of situation. "We ain't gotta fight no more," they'll say; the rest of us, we'll put this record on and imagine again that it's real.

Restlessly awakening from the depths of a feverish slumber, doomed heavy metal masters KHEMMIS return to reveal their fourth full length studio album, DECEIVER, arriving via Nuclear Blast Records in November 2021. Six tracks of desolate, soul-awakening heaviness encapsulate a project that has been nearly three years in the making. With a title that reflects the internal struggles that many of us battle in our daily lives, DECEIVER is a ferociously honest and appetizingly raw piece of musical artistry.
The first single LIVING PYRE signifies far more than just the beginning of another musical endeavour for the band; it is a substantial benchmark for emotional struggle and growth. “When it comes to my own mental health, when I’m in a bad place, I can’t access the part of me that creates art. After reaching that understanding of myself, the bulk of this song came out in one sitting. I was feeling stable. I was feeling hopeful–even though so much outside in the world was not exactly inspiring. All of us needed a reason to feel a glimmer of hope,” recounts Hutcherson. With a big, quintessentially KHEMMIS chorus embellished by a swampy sorrow, this song incorporates familiar elements of the band’s sound with a touch of Swedish death metal in its latter half. “The reason that this was the song that came first lyrically was because I was juggling all the things that were happening with the inside and outside world intersecting. All the lyrics for me feel very ‘of the time.’ So much was happening in this world, and they were just my efforts to contend with it,” explains Pendergast. “Like Ben, this was a breakthrough moment for me. Once I got the song out, it allowed me to write other songs for the album. It’s less about the fire metaphor implied by the title than about the fact that in order to escape fire you have to find water. You find the deepest, darkest cavern…you just want to stay there forever. It slowly fills up and you eventually drown.”
HOUSE OF CADMUS was another deeply collaborative writing effort between all three members of KHEMMIS. “I thought the opening riff had this cool almost-swing to it...but evil,” recalls drummer Zach Coleman. “I was drawn to the atmosphere of that first riff, and it felt like it needed to be a song that was dark the whole way through. Ben and I discussed getting some New Orleans-style sounds somewhere on the album, and I think this is where we were able to sneak some in to tie together other aspects of the song.”
“I knew that I wanted the lead guitar line in the second half of the song to tie two very different parts together,” explains Hutcherson, “but the idea was all really abstract until we were in a room together. It wasn't until we jammed out that big funeral/death doom bridge and the slow, sad coda that we found out what we wanted that lead line to be: memorable and emotive. It was a very honest musical moment together.” The writing and recording processes of HOUSE OF CADMUS were so emotionally driven that even producer Dave Otero of Flatline Audio (Cephalic Carnage, Cattle Decapitation, Act Of Defiance) encountered his own deeply personal and intense connection with the song. “With the lyric turn at the end, I was inspired by Dave’s imagery,” says Pendergast. “This idea of a person leaving some important part of themselves behind as they float away and leave the thing they love on the shore. The sound of this song is like a lighthouse beam cutting through the fog in a dark night on the ocean.”
While the lyrical themes of DECEIVER;sorrow, pain, longing for hope, will no doubt be familiar to longtime fans, these six songs display a broader collection of musical influences than on any other KHEMMIS record to date. “It being our 4th album, especially after the transition between the last two albums, it felt really freeing. We felt that we could really do anything on this record,” explains Coleman. “There’s a lot here that we’ve never done before,” adds Pendergast. “In some areas it gets darkly psychedelic. I think we found a cool way to mutate things using transitions that feel really natural. There is a subtle symmetry between the first and last songs which is one of the things that makes listening to the full album a satisfying holistic experience. It builds from almost nothing, becomes very dark, and then you slowly crawl out of that lowest circle of hell.” KHEMMIS’s DECEIVER is a beautiful, musically ambitious journey from beginning to end drenched in impassioned melody and complex, unrestrained variations of sonic savagery adorned with chilling, intensely tragic cover art by frequent collaborator Sam Turner.

Restlessly awakening from the depths of a feverish slumber, doomed heavy metal masters KHEMMIS return to reveal their fourth full length studio album, DECEIVER, arriving via Nuclear Blast Records in November 2021. Six tracks of desolate, soul-awakening heaviness encapsulate a project that has been nearly three years in the making. With a title that reflects the internal struggles that many of us battle in our daily lives, DECEIVER is a ferociously honest and appetizingly raw piece of musical artistry.
The first single LIVING PYRE signifies far more than just the beginning of another musical endeavour for the band; it is a substantial benchmark for emotional struggle and growth. “When it comes to my own mental health, when I’m in a bad place, I can’t access the part of me that creates art. After reaching that understanding of myself, the bulk of this song came out in one sitting. I was feeling stable. I was feeling hopeful–even though so much outside in the world was not exactly inspiring. All of us needed a reason to feel a glimmer of hope,” recounts Hutcherson. With a big, quintessentially KHEMMIS chorus embellished by a swampy sorrow, this song incorporates familiar elements of the band’s sound with a touch of Swedish death metal in its latter half. “The reason that this was the song that came first lyrically was because I was juggling all the things that were happening with the inside and outside world intersecting. All the lyrics for me feel very ‘of the time.’ So much was happening in this world, and they were just my efforts to contend with it,” explains Pendergast. “Like Ben, this was a breakthrough moment for me. Once I got the song out, it allowed me to write other songs for the album. It’s less about the fire metaphor implied by the title than about the fact that in order to escape fire you have to find water. You find the deepest, darkest cavern…you just want to stay there forever. It slowly fills up and you eventually drown.”
HOUSE OF CADMUS was another deeply collaborative writing effort between all three members of KHEMMIS. “I thought the opening riff had this cool almost-swing to it...but evil,” recalls drummer Zach Coleman. “I was drawn to the atmosphere of that first riff, and it felt like it needed to be a song that was dark the whole way through. Ben and I discussed getting some New Orleans-style sounds somewhere on the album, and I think this is where we were able to sneak some in to tie together other aspects of the song.”
“I knew that I wanted the lead guitar line in the second half of the song to tie two very different parts together,” explains Hutcherson, “but the idea was all really abstract until we were in a room together. It wasn't until we jammed out that big funeral/death doom bridge and the slow, sad coda that we found out what we wanted that lead line to be: memorable and emotive. It was a very honest musical moment together.” The writing and recording processes of HOUSE OF CADMUS were so emotionally driven that even producer Dave Otero of Flatline Audio (Cephalic Carnage, Cattle Decapitation, Act Of Defiance) encountered his own deeply personal and intense connection with the song. “With the lyric turn at the end, I was inspired by Dave’s imagery,” says Pendergast. “This idea of a person leaving some important part of themselves behind as they float away and leave the thing they love on the shore. The sound of this song is like a lighthouse beam cutting through the fog in a dark night on the ocean.”
While the lyrical themes of DECEIVER;sorrow, pain, longing for hope, will no doubt be familiar to longtime fans, these six songs display a broader collection of musical influences than on any other KHEMMIS record to date. “It being our 4th album, especially after the transition between the last two albums, it felt really freeing. We felt that we could really do anything on this record,” explains Coleman. “There’s a lot here that we’ve never done before,” adds Pendergast. “In some areas it gets darkly psychedelic. I think we found a cool way to mutate things using transitions that feel really natural. There is a subtle symmetry between the first and last songs which is one of the things that makes listening to the full album a satisfying holistic experience. It builds from almost nothing, becomes very dark, and then you slowly crawl out of that lowest circle of hell.” KHEMMIS’s DECEIVER is a beautiful, musically ambitious journey from beginning to end drenched in impassioned melody and complex, unrestrained variations of sonic savagery adorned with chilling, intensely tragic cover art by frequent collaborator Sam Turner.

Emerging from the ashes of the band Church Of
Void, there is a new force rising up to pursue a
path in the name of doom. Fimir are set to release
their blistering debut album, ‘Tomb Of God’.
 Fimir were founded in 2019 by former Church Of
Void members G. Funeral, Magus Corvus, H.
Warlock, A.D. and Septic Apes’ drummer H.
Wizzard. From a mere spark in the dark and a
distant echo of forgotten riffs haunting in emptiness
from a collapsed doomstar of their former band,
Fimir got rid of their ghosts and started to work on
their first album right away, until the world went into
lockdown.
 The five-piece collective, hailing from the frozen
wastelands of Finland, used their time and
creativity wisely, and managed to put the final
touches on their upcoming debut, featuring six
heavy cosmic tracks unleashing an enthralling
blend of razor sharp riffage, haunting occult vibes,
ambient atmospheres and classic doom metal.
 For fans of Black Sabbath, Tiamat, Type O
Negative, Pentagram, Church Of Void, Reverend
Bizarre, Candlemass.
 LP on cyan coloured vinyl.

Mega Bog (der kosmopolitische Moniker der Musikerin/Künstlerin Erin Birgy) wendet sich von von der schwülen Atmosphäre der Grünlilien-Plantage des Vorgängeralbums "Dolphine" (2019) ab und bringt uns mit "Life, And Another" zurück auf unseren Heimatplaneten, in den dünnen Luftdruck eines Wüstentals, wo die vierzehn Songs geschrieben und wie Steine in der Landschaft verstreut wurden, jeder einzelne ein kostbares Juwel, das Birgy gemeißelt hat. Es ist eine weitere fantastische Off-World-Übertragung und ihr bisher anspruchsvollstes, forschendstes und zugänglichstes Statement. "Life, And Another" inszeniert ein halb-fiktionalisiertes Drama im Inneren des Ichs, mit Szenen kollektiver Sehnsucht auf der Bowlingbahn, Auseinandersetzungen über eine aufgeblähte Erinnerung außerhalb der Bar und einsamen Kreisen auf der Terrasse, die in sturer Ehrfurcht über den Hof hinausschauen. Diese Erinnerungen, sowohl aus der Vergangenheit als auch aus der Zukunft, sprudeln das ganze Album hindurch und präsentieren ihre Charaktere als neue Einträge in das Mega Bog Book of Symbols. Zusammen mit dem Co-Produzenten, Tontechniker und Perkussionisten James Krivchenia (BIG THIEF) lebte Erin Birgy in einer kleinen Hütte in der Nähe des Rio Grande und war zwischen ihren Tourneeplänen oft allein. In diesen Isolationen erlebte sie den teilweisen Verlust des "bekannten" Selbst inmitten der Weite. Aufgenommen in mehreren Sessions in verschiedenen Studios enthält "Life, And Another" instrumentale Beiträge von langjährigen und neuen Mitstreitern, darunter Aaron Otheim, Zach Burba, Will Segerstrom, Matt Bachmann, Andrew Dorset von Lake, James Krivchenia von Big Thief, Meg Duffy von Hand Habits, Jade Tcimpidis, Alex Liebman und die Co-Engineers Geoff Treager und Phil Hartunian. Ihre Hörer wissen inzwischen, dass sie MEGA BOG vertrauen können, dass sie kontinuierlich in tiefere und wildere, spirituelle Pop-Gefilde geführt werden. Flirrende Piano-Glissandi, eindringliche psychische Hintergrundstimmen und Tequila-inspirierte Improvisationen schleichen und kriechen über die dunkle Nacht-der-Seele-Rock'n'Roll-Traumlandschaft, bevor sie verschwinden, um Platz zu machen für Beschwörungen von stiller Klarheit und lebendig-atmenden Instrumentalpassagen. In "Life, And Another" verwandelt Mega Bog die brutale Schwere der Welt in den kollektiven Kampf des Lebens.

Verisimilitude’ continues drummer/composer Tyshawn Sorey’s effort to shatter the jazz piano trio tradition by extending the form to encompass the influence of the likes of Feldman, Debussy and Xenakis.
Now available on vinyl for the first time.
One of the most in-demand drummers in improvised music - he has collaborated extensively with the likes of John Zorn, Vijay Iyer, Steve Lehman, Claire Chase, George Lewis, and Roscoe Mitchell, among myriad others - Sorey is also in the vanguard of artists working in that liminal space between spontaneous composition and notated music.
The New Yorker calls Sorey “among the most formidable denizens of that inbetween zone,” while The Wall Street Journal has called him “a composer of radical and seemingly boundless ideas.”
Featuring Cory Smythe on piano and Chris Tordini on bass, the trio’s first release, ‘Alloy’ (Pi 2014), was described as “shadowy and elegant” by The New York Times. His 2015 release, ‘The Inner Spectrum of Variables’, which also features the same group joined by a string trio, was called “devastatingly gorgeous” by The Chicago Reader and “a genuine masterwork” by Stereogum.
The new work utilizes a wide array of percussion, along with judicious use of electronics to explore a wider textural soundscape. The result is a far-reaching and intensely beautiful work that daringly blurs the boundaries between composition and improvisation.
Personnel: Tyshawn Sorey (drums, percussion), Corey Smythe (piano, toy piano, electronics), Chris Tordini (bass)

The collaborative debut of American minimal techno pioneer Troy Pierce and Colombian audiovisual artist Natalia Escobar aka Poison Arrow was conceived in reverse: first they created a collection of shadowy surrealist videos, then wrote music inspired by them. This inverted process proved remarkably fruitful. Shatter is a simmering, slow-burn noir odyssey inspired by the Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus, traversing subtle shades of sleepwalker dub, metallic lament, broken beats, and erotic negative space. It's an effectively unsettling evocation of the legend's core theme: “There is nothing more complex than a shattered heart, or a heart that can't love.”

Considering their shared background trafficking in darkened dance floor modes, what's most striking about Pierce with Arrow's partnership is its rhythmic restraint. The album's 10 tracks seethe and shudder between glamor and gloom, with only occasional dread-steeped metronomes mapping the malaise to a grid. They speak of pursuing a “spatial approach” with this project, which manifests in the music's immersive design and patient execution, each mangled clang and rippling pool of bass allowed to reverberate

its full flickering waveform.

The collaborative debut of American minimal techno pioneer Troy Pierce and Colombian audiovisual artist Natalia Escobar aka Poison Arrow was conceived in reverse: first they created a collection of shadowy surrealist videos, then wrote music inspired by them. This inverted process proved remarkably fruitful. Shatter is a simmering, slow-burn noir odyssey inspired by the Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus, traversing subtle shades of sleepwalker dub, metallic lament, broken beats, and erotic negative space. It's an effectively unsettling evocation of the legend's core theme: "There is nothing more complex than a shattered heart, or a heart that can't love." Considering their shared background trafficking in darkened dance floor modes, what's most striking about Pierce with Arrow's partnership is its rhythmic restraint. The album's 10 tracks seethe and shudder between glamor and gloom, with only occasional dread-steeped metronomes mapping the malaise to a grid. They speak of pursuing a "spatial approach" with this project, which manifests in the music's immersive design and patient execution, each mangled clang and rippling pool of bass allowed to reverberate its full flickering waveform. Guest appearances by austere techno producer Konrad Black ("Obsidian Glass") and drum n bass institution dBridge ("It's A Love Story, After All") flow seamlessly into the whole, subtle sculptural accents on a dimly lit descent through purgatories of longing and lust. But the shadows recede for the record's closing cut, "Narcissus," which swells elegiacally in a mass of devotional drones over a muted heartbeat, like Narcissus gazing upon his reflection in holy awe: elusive true beauty, finally beheld, by itself.

FULL OF HELL make their Relapse debut with their most explosive album to date, Weeping Choir. Dynamic, pissed, and wholly urgent, the highly-anticipated Weeping Choir is a definitive statement of intent by one of the underground’s most dynamic and virulent entities. FULL OF HELL have once again culled the extreme elements from hardcore, metal, and power electronics to redefine darkness and sheer brutality. Distorted guitars and ominous, disparate electronics grind and gnash against rapid-fire drumming as FULL OF HELL take themes of religion, loss, hatred, and set them ablaze. Recorded by the critically acclaimed Kurt Ballou at GodCity Studio, Weeping Choir sees FULL OF HELL fully unleashed. Abrasive, confrontational, none equal!

Nicola Cruz re-visits his second album 'Siku', released earlier this year to widespread acclaim, with ‘Siku Reworks’. The release provides the listener with another perspective on the ‘Siku’ domain, one envisioned in different corners of the world; Argentina, the UK, and Japan to name a few. In an effort to unlink the original material, Cruz has selected producers to re-work a designated song on 'Siku'; according to their own style. Additionally, Cruz has chosen to re-record two tracks whose live versions have stuck with him throughout a year of constant touring.

‘Siku Reworks’ invokes a psychedelic view of the original material, Hermetics (R&S) provides deep atmospherics with his take on 'Obsidiana'; and Nicola offers an acid-merengue-infused live version of 'Señor de las Piedras'; alongside an infectious and club-ready re-work of live favourite 'Siete'. In some ways it's hard to define Nicola'ssound, shaped by years of global touring, and every track here is unique and succeeds in breaking from the usual electronic music format in captivating fashion.

For his inaugural EP under new guise 'Yem Gel', NTS Manchester resident and visual artist Alecs Pierce comes through with a four-track cacophony of sounds for Dave Maclean (Django Django) run label Kick + Clap.
From previous experimental outings as Obsidian Pond, gristed petunia and, Handi Dogh he returns with this new project based solely on electronic compositions, giving the multi-instrumentalist artist a chance to further explore his electronic leanings. Operating with a clear mission statement, Yem Gel moniker seeks to live up to its name's reference to malleable 'fictional future plastics' by offering a set of genre-spanning compositions, drawing from multiple influences from ambient, drum 'n' bass or grime and leaving us wondering where he might take us next.

Roots In Heaven is a Berlin-based act that could very easily capitalize on his past accomplishments within the world of intrepid electronic music. As a label owner, resident DJ at cutting-edge clubs, and accomplished solo artist behind a number of conceptually unique full-length albums, the conceiver of this project won't likely need any introduction to the intrepid fans of electronic music. As an extension of this artist's already solid commitment to deep sound, Roots in Heaven represents a new voyage without the help of biographical cues to his listeners: hidden behind an evocative mesh mask lined with obsidian feathers, Roots in Heaven ignores the need to provide 'social proof' or self-justification. He communicates purely through the language of concentrated sensory impression, for which reason he has titled his debut, 'Petites Madeleines,' after one of the most memorable descriptive sequences in literary history (the famous meditation on the madeleine from Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu). As a prelude to the first full-length, Roots In Heaven has issued an untitled EP as a resounding 'shot across the bow'. However, this record is no half-conceived experiment to see what works and what doesn't, nor does it even feel like an 'EP' (in the traditional meaning of being a précis whose full report is available elsewhere). Attentive listening to its contents can cause a kind of time dilation, and a mysterious feeling of entering a world where familiar dualities (nature vs. technology, action vs. contemplation) are replaced by a feeling of total immanence. The A-side, 'Sang des Betes", accomplishes this with cascading, viscous layers of electronic tones that narrow and widen, rise and fall like the breath of some ancient entity. Periodically, bright flashes of tone arc across the horizon of the sound space, emphatically present but also elusive.