Fire Bombs From the Void: Rote Hexe’s New “Red Witch” Album0
Posted In Doom,Music,Reviews,Sludge,Uncategorized
Rote Hexe’s newest release is like the feeling of being slowly bludgeoned to death with a lead pipe, directly across the face. The LA duo has found the prefect concoction of sludgey doom, blood splatters of 90′s post-punk, and a healthy dose of raw hatred. There is no shoegazey downtempo guitar, and no passages of misanthropic pondering here, just the better parts of every Buzzov*en, and Acid Bath album mixed with tincture droplets of Hot Snakes, here and there, to make one ferocious record, fit for the not-so-chill beard set. Elizabeth Gordon’s drumming keeps the stereotypical doom plod, but always to drive the pace forward, and never to fall back against it. Meanwhile, Aaron D.C. Edge’s guitar falls somewhere beneath the dungeons of drop D, and has all the fury of a buzzsaw gnashing bones. All of which is sewn together by Aaron’s glass hammered, fury ignited vokills.
The four tracks on,”Red Witch,” ease deceptively in with a phonograph laden sample from Alfred Hitchcock’s,”Music to Be Murdered By,” before punching you straight in the face with the full force of, “The Brightest Decaying Star.” More samples lead the way for the sophomorial, “Journey of the Forsaken Monk,” which creeps in, but keeps the unrelenting brutality prevalent throughout the album, especially when it comes the meat cleaving vocals. The record’s, “Red Witch,” namesake has a definite metal-cum-90′s-post-hxc feel to it, but that only adds to the dynamic and variation of Rote Hexe, who are clearly making excellent music based on their own wants and needs. Even when the track breaks down, it never gives way, with the drums and guitar still beating a bloody pulse under Aaron’s feral voice. We leave the witches to burn with a sludge-merchants southern-riffed wet dream, in the twisted body of, “Through Bramble, Thorn, and Thistle,” which happens to be the very hole I dwell in. All in all, it’s an eclectic, organic, and unified sound that the duo of Rote Hexe has thrown down on the, “Red Witch,” album. It is most definitely worth taking your time to wrap your fingers around this bleak treasure, which is soon to be released on Cricket Cemetery out of DC.
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Video Dronez: The Inadvertant Art of Lost VHS Footage1
Posted In Art,Avant Garde,Film,Mixed Media,Music,Music Videos
Hello there children of the night. First, let me say that I am neither dead, nor staggering amongst the undead. Rather, trying to completely shift the paradigm of one’s life proves to be an Atlasean task once again. None the less…… I am back to say a very proud happy one year to Cvlt Nation, who’s midnight musings are still some of the best in the web. Hopefully this post is worthy amongst those sharp quills.
When I was growing up, there was no youtube, no vimeo, no redtube, and the internet was still some sort of futuristic wizardy, merely hinted at in the folds of “Wargames.” But we did have VHS tapes, and in these bits of chocolate ribbon, we found any hope of ever catching glimpses of far away or far gone groups. However, unlike their digital grandchildren, these tangible treasures could only be experienced with actual possession. For our purposes, this rarely meant the original copy, but instead some ill-gotten dub (of which, some were the stuff legends were made of). The problem there was the same incurred with an interbred society, very soon down the line, the degradation was beyond markedly noticeable. So, instead of crisp clear picture, what you viewed, instead, was ethereally other-dimensional being, bathed in warbles, blips, and all manner of snow. More often than not, this was a completely acceptable price to pay to steal a glimpse of your favorite group, from Canada, (or Mars for all you knew), but looking back on this footage today, I find an unintentional artform rises out of the analogue. Now, even if I can find perfectly crystal footage of band I’m after, I also dig for this long lost VHS footage, in hopes of a view to that other world. Here are some examples I’ve conjured. Think less about the fact that this is such and such band, and instead, with that in the back of you mind, let yourself get lost in this happenstantial aesthetic.
I was riveted to this Mayhem footage from the late 80′s, beyond the interesting peek into how different both the band and the scene were at this time, not to mention the Venom and Celtic Frost covers, the inadvertent movement of the images in this near basement found footage are mesmerizing.
More vidz after the jump.
Summoning the Winds of War: The Unearthed Tome of Antichrist’s Sacrament of Blood1
Posted In Black Metal,Death Metal,Music,Reviews
In the confines of my spacious and befuddled skull, I can’t imagine the sprawling northern tundras of the mythic lands of Norway and Sweden remotely compare to the hand rubbing, logging lands of Canada. This is a possible error of fatal proportions on my end. But, listening to the vile and violent underground disharmonics that have oozed out of each, a creature from a different space and time would hardly be able to draw a distinction. In fact, suckling off of the feral wolven teat of the Swedish lineage of bands such as Beherit, Canada has manifested some of the blackest bile to date.
In the Darkness Far From the Carnival: Arcturus’ Aspera Hiems Symfonia1
Posted In Avant Garde,Black Metal,Music,Reviews
Without much guidance or access to portals of the unknown, my ability to grab at the music and culture beneath the surface was a tricky thing growing up. However, pallid in comparison to my interests today, there were moments of grim hope. One such, (and feel free to insert uproarious laughter here), was stumbling into Century Media’s “Firestarter” compilation in college. Equal parts odd, interesting, and cliche, this was one of my first experiences near actual black metal (at a time when all of the monumental events were taking place). One of the standout tracks on that murder was “Wintry Grey” by Arcturus. Clean, clear, dynamic, symphonic, yet, very black metal indeed. Which is why, of all oddities, I made a quick stab for a used copy of, “Aspera Hiems Symfonia,” when it appeared in a CD exchange store in West Virginia (a story not worth telling), some three years later.
While I can share a deep and voided affinity for all of the compositional and experimental variations of and progressions from black metal (hell, I wrote the promo for the new Locrian record), when all the breath is done, I want nothing more than to curl around the thick black bile of the violently simple kvlt strain. I find myself returning again and again to the earlier sounds that sprung from the graven-wombs of the second wave (Ulver’s “Nattens Madrigal” is the only album I need to take to the afterlife), to the uglier war-monikered plagues in this (thank Lucifer) post-third wave world. And while I would most certainly die at the chopping block, as a heretic, in a coven of elitists, I often come back to certain albums I feel never quite got the notice they deserved.
Feel More Pain After The Jump!
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I have been listening to the Richmond, VA based lo-fi crust outfit, Aghast, reap through the killing fields for at least half a decade now, and with each new release, their wolven fangs only seem to sharpen with ferocity. Forgoing the course stayed lockstep of traditional D-beat, and far too hyperactively fueled to carry the epic European crust traditions, Aghast is most aligned to the chaos of Japanese bands, falling in and around Gauze, S.O.B., Gouka, Unholy Grave, and others on that somewhat cohesive end of the spectrum.
Everyone has that sacred tome, that list of names. A short set of tight text annotating which bands created a permanent and Shopehauer-esque shift in one’s view of the world. I remember being stuck in Mississippi in my rather non-existent youth. With no access to good music, or culture of any sort, progressive objects were stumbled into in a total darkness. Somewhere in college I began to sort out a little more light from the world. This was a time when internet access consisted of all the magic that email could muster, so one was sequestered to the economy of the US postal service. I’d attained a treasured catalogue of Slap-A-Ham Records’ releases, and one album’s description not only caught my eye, but stood out with a “molasses” description, instead of the frantic powerviolence promised amongst the other albums.
Allow me to step into the fray with the cliché of,“Infernal Hailz!” My name is Denman, and I hold down the dark fortresses of Washington, DC. Enough about me, however, let’s talk about a little metal, shall we?
During the endless gluttony of black metal releases that met blood to air during the last decade, there were surely many an overlooked black pearl. One album I’ve always thought slipped through those wicked cracks (often filled with questionable releases by New York record collecting jet setters), was Black Dawn’s, “Blood for Satan.” Even forgoing the fact that they sported one of the best album covers and names for this aural dagger, the group hammered out a relentlessly punishing ode to horned gods, from beginning to end.
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