While the opening “Different Kind” is a spacy, almost Shoegaze disguised pretty gloomy song, the following tracks are more likely a mixture of Simon & Garfunkel with The Beatles, half way between the Beat vibe and the oversea perfumed mixture of Country and Folk, here and there with gentle electronic layers, but mostly staying in the warm, acoustic area of the music, mainly a mixture of Pop, Folk and Country.
“The Humming”, just as its title suggest, it’s a quiet, intimate journey in mainly friendly and familiar places. It’s actually “nice”, maybe too nice throughout and a few dissonances, unexpected twists, beat changes would make this dream-walk more interesting, or, maybe it is just me, always restless and fever burned! “Hailstorm” try to break up a little bit this “lullaby” feels like groove of the album bringing a little bit tension in; “Behind The Scenes” have a mysterious, glowing electronic pulse and groove, but throughout Mirna Stanic and Martin Zietek hesitate to breakout, make small steps close to the edge, but finally they don’t jump into the wilderness of the unknown. One of their best moment is the Garbage flavored “Gravity” with a more nervous groove; while the closing title track will rock you to the sweetest sleep smoothly. Read more Minor Sounds – The Humming (2012)
Slunq – Spoiled Portion (2012)
The music of Slunq is so genreless and quite post-everything that it is impossible to stick a label on it; to force it into one of the “casual” drawers of the “music industry/business”. But, against the general trends, this is music and not just “food for our iPods”, not just background noise to fill up our ears – and brains – and cut off any possible contact with the people we may crash into on our way back and forth between home and job.
The much anticipated debut album, “Spoiled Portion”, is a post-modern journey into some gloomy music with very different flavours including Post-Grunge and Post-Industrial. Think of Jerry Cantrell (Alice In Chains) on a heavy Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails, How to Destroy Angels) diet, but adding an obvious, typical English flavour to it and although lots of influences are there, you can’t really pinpoint anything – the guys managed to twist everything into their own style and deliver genuine material for our listening pleasure.
The result of 2 years effort, the 11 tracks of “Spoiled Portion” paint not the present, but the future sound of Rock. Read more Slunq – Spoiled Portion (2012)
Marillion – Sounds That Can’t Be Made (2012)
Unbelievable, but this is the band’s 17th studio album! Most of their fans are totally and exclusively in love with their debut trilogy of “Script for a Jester’s Tear (1983)”, “Fugazi (1984)”, and “Misplaced Childhood (1985)”, and everything after Fish leaving and “Clutching at Straws (1987)” seems to did not really mattered. And yes, this is kind of unfair, but Marillion after 1988 and with Steve Hogarth as their new singer, was a totally different plate of food – food for spirit, obviously. And yes, as Hogarth fairly noticed in an interview in 2000: “If we had known when I joined Marillion what we know now, we’d have changed the name and been a new band. It was a mistake to keep the name, because what it represented in the mid-Eighties is a millstone we now carry. If we’d changed it, I think we would have been better off. We would have been judged for our music. It’s such a grave injustice that the media constantly calls us a “dinosaur prog band”…”
And Marillion had a few great moments and several good albums in the last two decades, but mainly the media refuse to notice them. Read more Marillion – Sounds That Can’t Be Made (2012)
Re-Machined. A Tribute To Deep Purple’s Machine Head (2012)
I was one year and seven month years old when “Machine Head” was released by EMI for Europe and Japan, respectively Warner Bros. Records for U.S.A. My mom had and spanned this record back then and those vinyls had their magic charm, trust me! My love for music came mainly because of those vinyl records, those 12-inch covers and those scratches! Not missing my mom’s soup, but my mom’s record collection!
On the 40th anniversary of releasing “Machine Head”, Eagle Records will be released on October 1 this tribute album including nine plus one bonus track album alining artists such as Chickenfoot, Metallica, The Flaming Lips, Iron Maiden, Black Label Society, Glenn Hughes with Chad Smith, Carlos Santana with Jacoby Shaddix (of Papa Roach), Jimmy Barnes, Kings of Chaos and a collaboration of Steve Vai with Glenn Hughes with Chad Smith. Not a particular fan, but still sucker for their “Burn My Eyes” album, I think Robb Flynn’s Machine Head should be definitively on this album, but, unfortunately, they aren’t. Imagine a “Highway Star” performed by Flynn’s killing machine! Not that Chickenfoot didn’t managed well the task, but… Read more Re-Machined. A Tribute To Deep Purple’s Machine Head (2012)
Bone Dance – Self-Titled (2012)
Morgan Mechling – vocals, Phillip Davis – guitars and vocals, Kasey Richardson – guitars, Bryce Kresge – bass and visuals, and Patrick Santana – drums are here to unleash the Hell of fury and contorted, merciless Metal. Forging genres, melting into one Black Metal and (Post) Hardcore, Sludge and Doom, technical and extreme Metal, Bone Dance is not “just” a band, but an attitude, a state of spirit and mind, and they delivering not “only” music, but their work is a manifest. Back in the days, Rollins Band had this kind of attitude and energy, although Bone Dance speeding up wildly, just like you put a 33⅓ r.p.m. spinning vinyl record up on 45 while Morgan Mechling keep on howling bloody deadly.
Grinding the tooth of chaotic Hardcore/Metal, Bone Dance enforce the balance and sharpness, clarity in their music, find the equilibrium between rage and conscience, despair and revolt, gloom and grooves. And throughout this extremely consistent 10 tracks, Bone Dance manage to merge the extremes: slowly grinding moments with brutally fast overtakes; contorted and gloomy riffs with cutting to the bone sharp ones; truly distorted, twisted passages with groovy, powerful build-ups. This wild, but fluid approach keeps the listener attention sharp throughout this massacre. Give up all hopes and push play!! Read more Bone Dance – Self-Titled (2012)
Kabul Golf Club – Le Bal Du Rat Mort, EP (2012)
Contorted and dissonant, with roots back to Steve Albini’s Big Black and Shellac, reminding me of some pioneering bands such as Cop Shoot Cop, Cardiacs and H.P. Zinker, and being similarly psycho and sick such as some contemporaries like The Dillinger Escape Plan and Blood Brothers, Kabul Golf Club are the brand new monster children of Limburg, Belgium. Merging Noise Rock rawness with Post-Hardcore resonances, KGC might seems a quite unfriendly band, for the comfortable, “decent” listener eventually even not listenable, but this is so fresh, so wild, so honest, so uncompromising, that is hard not to admire their effort for genuine self-expression. This kind of rebellious, twisted Metal have a long and fruitful history already, “Minus 45” for instance could find its place easily on VoiVod’s legendary “Nothingface” album, but this whole aggressive raging incorporates the fury of a brand new generation which must be heard. KGC proves creativity and talent, all their dissonances and noises, all that madness and chaos perfectly reflect the world we are living in, on the other hand, at the end everything fits in and makes perfect sense in their compositions. Read more Kabul Golf Club – Le Bal Du Rat Mort, EP (2012)
Ektomorf – Black Flag (2012)
Although they have been often criticized as being heavily influenced by Max Cavalera’s Sepultura and Soulfly, Ektomorf managed to gather a serious fan base around Europe and the perseverance of Zoltán “Zoli” Farkas finally were fructified. Too similar to Sepultura and Soulfly or not, Ektomorf deliver the same kind of merciless, intense, Hardcore fueled, modern, Groove Metal. In these riffs, screaming vocals, heavily pounding drums there is no compromise, but fury, focused anger, brutally expressed honest, human revolt.
Ektomorf was founded in 1993 in Mezőkovácsháza, Hungary, a small city near the Romanian border, by Zoltán “Zoli” Farkas. Due to his gypsy background Zoli saw himself confronted with racism and prejudices, which made even harder for an East European Metal band to get recognized, locally and internationally. After releasing 3 records and touring Hungary back and forth, their breakthrough came when they started collaboration with Danish producer Tue Madsen. They singed to Nuclear Blast in 2004 and moved to AFM Records in 2009 being label mates with bands such as U.D.O., Doro, Masterplan, Annihilator, etc.
“Black Flag” is the band’s eight studio album, although, on February 17, 2012, the band relesed through AFM Records an album entitled “The Acoustic” consist in 12 “unplugged” (acoustic) versions of newly recorded songs from previous records, plus two cover songs, “Simple Man” by Lynyrd Skynyrd and Johnny Cash’s “Folsom Prison Blues”. Read more Ektomorf – Black Flag (2012)
Cats Park – Face the Future, EP (2012)
“Face the Future” came like a glass of water in the middle of the desert. In a world preoccupied to be the loudest, the fastest, the most distorted and the most contorted, where everybody is in such a hurry and nobody actually care about anything and anybody, Cats Park disconnected me for several minutes from this whole madness. Although songs like “Time To Quit” have their own flavor of (urban) madness. But generally speaking, this made me feel easy, easy like a Sunday morning. 🙂 “Face the Future” was my little getaway from the present. Read more Cats Park – Face the Future, EP (2012)
Le Minus – Make My Day (2012)
At first instinct it seems handy to label Le Minus as a Primus follower and probably this French trio would not even consider themselves insulted, but listening throughout “Make My Day”, beside the obvious Les Claypool influences, Le Minus incorporates in their vivid musical universe elements which lead back to bands such as Mordred, Infectious Grooves, Fishbone, Living Colour and Rush. Sometimes getting wickeder and more Metal fueled (“Playing With Echoes”, “One Parachute”), the band forged some furious heavy riffs to combine them with some twisted funky grooves and crazy rhythmic structures finding the perfect balance between heaviness and fluidity, precision and wildness, complexity and efficiency.
Lord Murray, sing and play the bass pretty close in Les Claypool’s manner; Captain’ Yo have those Primus flavored crazy solos, but also deliver some serious riffs while drummer MOX is responsible for the solid structural and rhythmical bases of the trio. 9 tracks, a wild, colorful incursion in the experimental/avant-garde outer limits of Rock/Metal, an explosive fusion of energy and power, colors and flavors, murderous grooves, perfectly suitable for the fans of Claypool and Primus, but not only, more conventional/conservator listeners, fans of Rush for instance, may find this pretty exciting. Read more Le Minus – Make My Day (2012)
Katrin the Thrill – Evil Eye Charm (2012)
Katrin the Thrill reminds me of a young Patti Smith, she could be a drowning in melancholy PJ Harvey or a sober Courtney Love, possibly a less gloomy, but still dark enough Melissa Auf der Maur. Having some strong Post-Rock resonances, Katrin the Thrill exploring the path between building upon gentle acoustic layers and tearing the dreams apart by screaming guitars and pounding drums. A woman might seems sexy and fragile, but she is eventually even further dangerous and deadly when she strikes. “Evil Eye Charm” it’s like a walk through Wonderland: never really know what will jump off to you behind the next song. And this is definitively a positive tension which keeps your attention sharp throughout the album while every song has it’s own little Magic, it’s a painting with sounds from another universe.
One of my favorites is the closing “Warmer” because it’s not only warmer with some sparkling piano chords, but gave us the much anticipated release. But I love equally the whole journey from the pulsing start with “Losing” which kind of throw us into the eye of the rising hurricane, through the theatrical break-downs of “Under The Skylight” or the gentle chords of “Lyds”. Classic in the most possible positive sense, but out of the patterns, experimental, explorer, looking further, breathing and alive. Pretty charming journey actually, no fill-ups, no empty or useless spaces (moments), but struggling emotions throughout. Read more Katrin the Thrill – Evil Eye Charm (2012)
