Brilliant. Amazing. These are just two words that could describe the U.K. group Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats. Mind Control, the U.K. group’s third full-length album, is relatively perfect; a definite contender for many Best of 2013 lists. Why? Well, if a combination of the gigantic riffs of Black Sabbath, the catchy sing-song style of Alice Cooper, the balls-out energy of Iggy and The Stooges and the wild psychedelia of Roky Erickson sounds good, multiply by three and you’ll have a close approximation of Uncle Acid, et al.
Mind Control is completely and totally infectious. Songs like ‘Poison Apple,’ ‘Valley of the Dolls,’ and ‘Devil’s Work’ do eventually control the mind. Listen once. It will call out. Listen twice. It will own your soul. The third listen will be mostly subconscious. Utterly doomed. Any and all future listens will be for fun, or to show friends and family how good this band truly is. Bottom line: it will not disappoint. This is doom for the masses; a superb blend of styles, swirling and heavy guitars, booming bass, pounding drums, and vocals good enough to soothe the occult rock beast. Alarmingly great. Guaranteed to take up residence in your head, in your CD player, and on your turntable for many spins. Again, relatively perfect.
Heavy Days In Doom Town
Full Sets Feat.
Graves At Sea: Cough: Mournful Congregation1
Posted In Doom,Film,Music,Music Videos,Uncategorized
On May 2nd through 5th, a very special festival took place for it’s second year in a row – Heavy Days In Doom Town. The lineup was packed with some of the most killer heavy bands out right now around the world. Today CVLT Nation wants to celebrate HDDT’s 2nd year with a video essay featuring full sets from Graves At Sea, Cough and Mournful Congregation, and after watching this footage you might just book your ticket for next year’s fest! We we would like to salute everyone who put on this unreal DIY experience and much respect due to Astrid Tonella – check out her photos from this years Heavy Days In Doom Town here…She also had a photo exhibit at this years fest. Now spark a big split and peep two hours worth of DOOM!
CVLT Nation Label Mixtape Series
Curated by Aborted Society2
Posted In Death Rock,Dis-beat,Features,Mixtapes,Music
It’s bizarre to think that this label is now 13 years old; what started out as an art project and supplement to a print zine quickly kind of spiraled into much more than we ever anticipated. This mix represents the second half of ABSOC’s discography, and is intended to showcase the direction we have taken over the last 5 years or so. While all of these bands are quite different in nature, the one thing they all hold in common (outside of all of them being very nice people) is that they are all breaking out of typical genre molds and are doing something unique, while staying firmly rooted in DIY punk. We really try to identify bands we think are pushing the envelope, and keeping the underground challenging and provoking.
We are basically an analog label; our releases are all largely on vinyl and cassettes (very few CDs), and our only foray into digital distribution is via MP3 download cards. We really believe a record should be experienced with artwork, layout, and lyrics when available, and really put effort into making packaging unique. We are based in Seattle, and have largely focused on Northwest bands until recently with collaborations with partner labels in Sweden, Germany, and Canada.
We’d really like to thank Sean and Meghan and everyone involved at CVLT NATION for all of their amazing support over the past few years! And cheers to all of you whom have ordered from us, supported the label and came to the shows and tours we promote. It’s been an amazing ride and we are really excited for this upcoming year’s releases which will include the s/t debut full length from INSIDIOUS PROCESS, early 8” lathe and demo releases put to 12” by NÜ-KLĒ-ƏR BLAST SUNTAN, a re-issue of early material from KALASHNIKOV (Italy), and an upcoming split between ADELIT@S and KOHOSH (Seattle). Keep it DIY!
Rob + Matt
Aborted Society
www.abortedsociety.com
The Netherlands, as small as it actually is as a country, is a reliable source when it comes to producing heavy bands of all kinds. There are (and were) Death and Black Metal, Hardcore and Grindcore bands internationally perceived, and also when we talk about the filthy depths of Stoner-Rock and Sludge, the Netherlands have quite something to offer.
The Dutch outfit ACID DEATHTRIP recently released its debut EP via the well-known Reflections Records and fall into the latter category. Ridiculously hard riffs that seem to have more than a pair of extremely hairy balls dangling between their legs, a totally fuzzed-out distorted sound and an überheavy, neck-snapping rhythm section make your facial hair instantly sprout and your thirst for alcoholic beverages grow.
The six songs on ACID DEATHTRIP‘s self-titled EP clock in at about 19 minutes, so be assured that these guys don’t fuck around too long. The tracks get straight to the point; if you’re looking for endless solos and redundant repetitions, look somewhere else. Somehow ACID DEATHTRIP sounds like a real heavy version of some sleazy biker-rock band that plays exclusively in shady pubs for free drinks. Espoused by the extremely powerful, thick production, ACID DEATHTRIP provides a perfect soundtrack to slam loads of beer and devastate your living room. Witnessing this live is surely hella fun, too.
READ MORE…
Check out the new DARKTHRONE video for Lesser Men taken from The Underground Resistance!
JUDEE SILL:
The Ultra Talented…
Occult Folk Singer That The World Forgot!0
Posted In Apocalyptic Blues,Art,Mixed Media,Music
via Dusted Magazine
Born in Southern California in 1944, and dead in ’79, Judee Sill’s life was brief, yet filled with enough dark drama to satisfy a lifespan twice that long. It would be easy to relegate her life and musical career as a series of interesting footnotes in the biographies of other more well-known personas: her self-titled debut full-length was the first official release for David Geffen’s Asylum imprint; Graham Nash produced her most well known single “Jesus Was a Cross Maker,” which was a minor hit for Nash’s group the Hollies; she penned a hit single for the Turtles. But doing so would deny the power and majesty of the two albums she released during her lifetime. Critics reacted warmly to her music, commercial success never followed. By the time of her death at the end of the 1970s, she had vanished completely from the music scene, so much so that when word of her death due to a drug overdose trickled down, more than a few people were surprised – they assumed she had already passed.
Total Musical Primitivism
Total brutality: SLOW PLAGUE
Demo Review + Stream0
Posted In Black Metal,Doom,Music,Reviews
Utter filth in audio form – that’s the best description I can give you of the debut demo by London-based drum and bass doomsters Slow Plague. Low end and rhythm bathed in layers of dirt so deep as to be almost sub-sewer level, and with vocals that sound like Chris Reifert desperately yelling for help from the bottom of a Sarlacc pit. Neanderthal, atavistic violence performed at a knuckle dragging pace. Total musical primitivism, total brutality.
Take the song we get at the halfway point, the snarling “Hollow,” as just one example. Coloured with samples of grim, end-of-the-world dialogue over a wave of bass feedback, the duo kick into a Venom style gallop, alternating it with crawling slower parts, as those hideous vocals yell cursed exhortations. The pace drops right down about half way through into a full on dirge – and then, suddenly it’s over. Until the next song comes along and the nightmare begins again.
It isn’t pretty. It’s not precise, or polished. It’s just total horror from start to finish- the sonic equivalent of watching “Hellraiser” with the absolute worst case of delerium tremens imaginable. An ugly bastard spawned from an archaic point where the most atonal punk and the earliest roots of death metal collide (some of this could honestly be what Hellhammer could have sounded like had Tom Warrior just sung over the bass and drums instead of adding guitar), Slow Plague are absolutely not for the faint of heart, or those who like their music to have any hint of sophistication. Music for masochists.
Text by Eli Zeger
Label: To Live A Lie Records
The self-titled debut from Raleigh punk outfit Last Words is an atomic bomb of hardcore viciousness. The album kicks off with the crusty, surf rock sounding “Worth Nothing”. On “Trash and Dirt”, low tom drums blast into a straight-ahead rock groove while the line, “I don’t give a fuck who you are!” pierces your eardrums.
What I love most about Last Words are the brutal basslines, like on the thundering “FL” and the headbanging “Close on my Heels”.
The sound on this album is raw and gritty. I’ve found that with lo-fi recordings, the instruments tend to override each other, weakening the track. However, the instrumentation on Last Words is lo-fi, but still powerful.
This won’t be the last time you hear of Last Words. They show tremendous promise with this great debut. It’s easily one of the year’s top punk records.
Seems like we’ve got some true Norwegian metal on our hands here with the second release by Djevel, made up of members of notable metal acts such as Nettlecarrier, Kvelertak, LJÅ, Enslaved, Gehenna and Koldbrann. Recorded this past winter in Caliban Studios, Besatt Av Maane Og Natt is a triumph of an album – it is as ambitious as it is nostalgic. Djevel are innately important because of this very pure sense of nostalgia, as they are effortlessly recreating and redeveloping the sound of 90s Nordic black metal. Between the overwhelming sense of atmosphere and raw, blistering musicianship, Djevel juggle notions of fierce Northern apocalypse while simultaneously expressing a relative “newness” to tropes that are often made into caricatures by hip metalheads.
So let’s dig into it from the beginning – you’ll notice a painful bleakness that permeates from the moment the music begins. In the same way bands such as Deafheaven evoke a sense of unwavering emotion, particularly hope and honesty, Djevel would rather channel a painful, surrounding fear and uncomfortable tenseness. The first track’s overall speed is something for ones’ ears to behold, as Djevel seamlessly craft together powerful, thunderous drumming in conjunction with technically pleasing and exemplary guitar work. More importantly, the track plays with the relationship between atmospheric longing and the capacity for animalistic hate, which is a truly interesting listen. The track “Marefar” is beautifully written; it is a track that evokes a real sense of expedition and the daunting obstacles of a Viking sojourn, constantly rocking and churning while thundering onward. At one moment, there is a silence which quickly gives way to an undeniably fun guitar solo. But more importantly, the song reveals that Djevel are not a band in which each instrument works to create a sense of wholeness to a song, but rather than it is the work of the guitar players that is defining the music. This isn’t a bad thing at all, as it gives leeway to the drummer to play as fast as he wants while simultaneously letting each guitar player control the emotional turmoil that is being played.
READ MORE…
CVLT Nation Exclusive Streaming
3 New KATECHON Tracks!0
Posted In Death Metal,Features,Music,Streaming
Today day is your day to experience a more blissful sonic torment from the new KATECHON that is scheduled to come out any day now via Nuclear War Now Productions. All I can say is that from what I have heard so far, this is shaping up to be one of my favorite albums so far this year! CVLT Nation has the unreal honor to be streaming three new tracks from Man, God, Giant below: tune into KATECHON’s compositions of death: “Liquid decadence”, “Transition”and “Unbeing”!
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