Moon Tooth - Freaks EP

Banged on about how great the one song they put up on bandcamp last month was. The whole EP is available now.

Imagine Angel Dust by Faith No More but a preposterously over the top tech metal widdle version.

Obstruct - No Life 7"

Early 80s Boston hardcore worship. Voorhees children.

Renounced - Conditioned From Birth (metalcore)

CHUG CHUG CHUG SQUEEK SQUEEK CHUG SQUEEK CHUGERDYCHUGERDYCHUGERDYCHUGERDY CHUG CHUG SQUEEEEEEEEEK.

Yup, metalcore. 7 Angels, 7 Plagues, Morning Again, Disembodied, Turmoil, Dragbody, Shai Hulud etc.

They even have a 'passionate' melodic guitar song called Interlude.

Quickly breaks back into chugs and squeels though.

I'll be incredibly disappointed if I catch them live and the guitars aren't permanently pointed skywards

Grime 2.0

Picked up the 4LP version of this at the recent independent record label market for a bargain £17 straight from the label. Yup, 4 whole LPs for £17.

The FLAC is available from Boomkat for £9. Still worth it.

It's basically a compilation of great current grime stuff. There's stuff on here from across the world which goes to show how it's spread from inner London.

Here's some decent tracks from it. The Preditah one especially is heavy as hell.:-





oh, and here's a short mix of it all

Spacebag - Magnetic Struggle (ex Rorschach/Kiss It Goodbye)

Prog-tastic instrumental riff fest.

Recommended via Shiny Grey Monotone (definitely one of my favourite music blogs). They mentioned stuff like Rush and Don Caballero. I reckon there's bits of The Fucking Champs in there. Perhaps if Gone jammed Nocturnus riffs? Great stuff.

It's folk from Rorschach, Die 116, Kiss It Goodbye, Playing Enemy etc and you know full well how great those bands are. They couldn't do a shit band if they tried.

Ovlov - AM (shoegaze/indie)

Great shoegaze/indie stuff from the same label that put out Pile

Kind of flits between Dinosaur Jr and woozy effects laden MBV type stuff.

They've got tunes to back it all up with. Ones that'll totally get stuck in your head. You could imagine it fitting on Captured Tracks if it wasn't quite so dirty.

Full Of Hell - Rudiments Of Mutilation (A389)

Utter brutality. downtuned heavy stuff with noise bits. slow, atonal non-mosh riff bits with fastblasts occasionally. If you took the mid-point of stuff like Man Is The Bastard/Crossed and Unruh/Left For Dead and took a detour via Eyehategod. This could have been on Bovine or Pessimiser. Metallic hardcore that's fucked in the head. No mosh. No fun. Perfect.

Sick/Tired - King Of Dirt (power violence)

Top notch power violence. As in power violence. Not a bunch of tepid piss-weak Spazz wannabes being 'wacky'.

A friend with impeccable taste just posted about this and it's virtually unheard of for him to recommend a current PV band. I'm listening now and I can hear why. They've got the brutality but also individuality in the riffs. They're focused on tearing your brain apart rather than just soundtracking mosh dudes with over familiar riffs.

Definitely in the spirit of bands like Iron Lung or Column Of Heaven etc.

Best music of 2013 so far

Lists are great. I'm quite happy that there seems to be a general trend of places doing roundups of "Best Records so far this year" at various points in the year. They're too good to be done only at the end of the year. Occupy the Gregorian Calendar ;-)

Anyway, I reckon 2013 has been fucking great for records so far. In particular order here's a bunch of really good ones:-

California X - s/t (Don Giovanni)

Merchandise - Total Nite (Night People)
FLAC - youtube

Mikal Cronin - MCII (Merge)

Pissed Jeans - Honeys (Sub Pop)

Roomrunner - Ideal Cities (Fan Death)

Power Trip - Manifest Decimation (Southern Lord)

Pine Barrens - Kingmaker (Super Fi/Art For Blind)

Beach Fossils - Clash The Truth (Captured Tracks)

Vhöl - s/t (Profound Lore)

Arboretum - Coming Out Of The Fog (Thrill Jockey)

Shugo Takumaru - In Focus (Polyvinyl)

Darkthrone - The Underground Resistance (Peaceville)

Autre Ne Veut - Anxiety (Software)

Chelsea Light Moving - s/t (Matador)

Spectral Park - s/t (Mexican Summer)

Syclops - A Blink Of An Eye (Running Back)
WAV

Daft Punk - Random Access Memories
Don't pretend you're too cool for school, that Moroder song was ace.

Dead Lord - Goodbye Repentance (High Roller)
no FLAC available - Youtube of a good song
Sweden's answer to Thin Lizzy.

Portal - Vexovoid (Profound Lore)
no FLAC available (shame as I've bought a few Profound Lore albums from their bandcamp page) - youtube
disgusting brain melting death metal

Omar S - Thank You For Letting Me Be Myself (FXHE)
WAV

Night Marchers - Allez Allez (Swami)
no FLAC available
It's John Reis for christ's sake

Maxmillion Dunbar - House Of Woo (RVNG)
Bandcamp

Church Whip - Psychedelic Nightmare (Vinyl Rites)
no FLAC available - youtube
raw black metal punk stuff

Hounds Of Hate - s/t (Painkiller)
no FLAC available - youtube
chuggy NYHC type stuff. think one of Pissed Jeans is involved

Incendiary - Cost Of Loving (Closed Casket Activities)
no FLAC available - youtube
90s mosh chug hc

Melvins - Everyone Loves Sausages (Ipecac)
Review - WAV
Melvins doing a covers album. Of course it's awesome.

Nails - Abandon All Life (Southern Lord)
Bandcamp
absolute savage riffery

Red Hare - Nites Of Midnite (Dischord)
no FLAC available - youtube
basically it's Swiz under a different name. harDCore greatness

Hardbodies - s/t
bandcamp
power pop/glam tunes

Damnations Hammer - Disciples Of The Hex
Review - Bandcamp
Celtic Frost worship

Cafe Kaput - Applied Music Vol 1: Science & Nature (Cafe Kaput)
Bandcamp
Library synth noodles in a Ghost Box style

Indricothere - II
Bandcamp
Insane tech widdle from Colin Marston (Krallice/Behold The Arctopus)

Night Birds - Born To Die In Suburbia (Grave Mistake)
Review - bandcamp
Tony Molina - Dissed And Dismissed
Bandcamp
Guy from Ovens doing more Weezer meets Guided By Voices stuff
Alabaster - s/t (Musicfearsatan)
Bandcamp
Kiss It Goodbye/Unsane/Keelhaul style hardcore from France

Brokeback - Brokeback And The Black Rock (Thrill Jockey
FLAC - youtube

Pye Corner Audio - Superstitious Century (Boomkat)
no FLAC available - youtube

Absolut - demo
Review - bandcamp
raw metal punk

Primitive Man - Scorn (Throatruiner)
Review - Bandcamp
crushing misanthropic doom like Noothgrush/Corrupted

Enforcer - Death By Fire
no FLAC available - youtube
heavy fucking metal

Lurch - demo
Review - Bandcamp
Think of stuff like Trance Syndicate, Band Of Susans, The God Machine, Foetus, Swans, Old Lady Drivers, Bastro, Steel Pole Bath Tub, Amphetamine Reptile etc.

Boards Of Canada

Function

Queens Of The Stone Age

Night Birds - Born To Die In Suburbia

OK, I've banged on about how fucking awesome Night Birds are previously - here and here

Obviously my taste in music is impeccable and you take my word as fucking gospel on what bands to check out. Therefore you should already be aware of just how good Night Birds are.

For the slackers sitting at the back of the class you need to get on this right now. Tuneful surf punk stuff. Think Adolescents, Wipers, Dead Kennedys, Agent Orange etc. One of those sounds that everyone from pop punk types to crusties to indie folk can't deny.

I guarantee you'll be whistling this tunes by the end of the week and clamouring for them to come over the UK and tour again.

Obliterations - s/t

Black Flag/Bl'ast! + 70s Rock stuff. They're doing a decent job of filling in the hole left by Annihilation Time. Obviously it isn't quite as good as AT but they set the bar extremely high. This is only Obliterations debut 7" so they've got the potential to become really mindblowing. For the moment the quality of the rocking is more than sufficient to warrant recommending a listen.

Wormed - Exodromos (Willowtip)

Ridiculously OTT tech/widdly death metal stuff on Willowtip. Ludicrous time signatures galore, guitar solos that make no sense whatsoever.

I could live without the vocals. They're just that bland, monotone growl that's popular in this kind of thing. Drums are a bit clicky as well.

However, if you can look past that, there's some very silly guitars going on.

Dirtdrinker - s/t (noise rock)

If you like stuff like Unsane, Ken Mode, Kowloon Walled City and Coalesce then you're going to be into this. It kind of exists in the grey area between noise rock and the good offkilter end of metallic hardcore (ie Hydrahead, Kiss It Goodbye, Botch, Deadguy etc). In some places the vocals even reach Steve Austin of Today Is The Day levels of intensity. They've got a good sense of dynamics and song structure as well. Certainly not one dimensional.

Fucking great stuff. So good I'm going to track down the vinyl rather than jsut buying the flac.

Noisem - Agony Defined (A389)

Was put off by the name a bit I must confess. Made me think of average mid-noughties vaguely tech euro grind on sub-Relapse labels for some reason.

Thankfully it's an awesome blast of Slayer/Exodus style thrash metal. Just 9, short & too the point songs so it doesn't out stay it's welcome. Just listened to it twice and it's a perfect instant hit of wailing guitar solos and mosh riffs and general thrashing.

You can immediately hear it's top tier stuff that's more than just a bit of retro-pastiche. Bang on.

Arc Neon - Blood Sport 2092

John Carpenter 80s film soundtrack synth worship that's not a million miles away from what the likes of Umberto, Zombi and Gatekeeper are doing.

This is the plot of the film:

"Welcome to Blood Sport, where the only prize is to die quickly."

"Set in the far corner of the galaxy this barbaric test of rage and evil is the only form of entertainment that's deemed legal by the Ultra-Mega Corps who now control the the intergalactic slave population. Each year the contestants are dropped on the dying planet of Zothique to do battle until only one stands victorious. However this year the body count might just be quadrupled..."

-You are condemned to Blood Sport.

Someone should make it.

gets a bit euphoric euro-trance towards the end of Remembering Past Winners though ;-)