CRUSTCAKE PICKS - NEW CAKE IN THE OVEN: DEAD NEANDERTHALS - JAZZHAMMER/STORMANNSGALSKAP

By Andy O'Connor (TX)

Grindcore, more so than the varieties of music/"music" we cover, is best enjoyed through short bursts. There's so much flying at the listener at once -- over-distorted speed-picked guitars, drums that make the metronome go "fuck this," and indecipherable ramblings of madmen (or laymen masquerading as madmen -- that too much of a good thing is, well, too much. That's why Gridlink can get away with calling a 12-minute record a full-length, and how Dutch sax-and-drum duo Dead Neanderthals' releases, which usually skirt around the 10-minute line, could never be considered overstuffed. Jazzhammer/Stormannsgalskap, the latest effort from Dead Neanderthals, is the longest yet, clocking in at just over 19 minutes. Normally known for their blast-and-blow style, they change up the assault here, spreading out the brutality. Does it work? Brilliantly.

Are you ready for a deeper penetration?



You've likely heard the George Orwell quote "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." A lamentation of loss of personal freedoms, it's also an apt summation of how drummer Rene approaches his kit on the record's first cut, "Jazzhammer." Stamping on the face of music for nine minutes and 19 seconds, his constant barrage makes "Jazzhammer" live up to its name. They are the hammer, you are the nail, the peon. Saxophonist Otto provides a steady baritone drone for the course of the track. Towards the end of the song, he throws in a few cranky solos, which then segue into a harsh synthesizer fade-out. With all those elements melding, "Jazzhammer" is almost like a HNW (Harsh Noise Wall, which sounds like exactly what you'd think it'd sound like) piece with more propulsion. The density makes it appear monolithic, but there's a lot of movement going on, some of which should be your head thrashing.

Otto becomes the center on "Stormannsgalskap," treating us to the skronk we've come to fear from Dead Neanderthals. He doesn't immediately go for the throat, letting his baritone saxophone build with dread before going all out. When Otto solos, though, it's as though Kaoru Abe never died. His horn screams all over the place, unleashing a Pollockian torrent of squeals and wails. Rene does not stir up the endless blockade he did on "Jazzhammer," but his stable footwork contrasts well with Otto's recklessness. Oddly enough, "Stormannsgalskap" displays a small offering of mercy around 6:18, slowing down and letting you catch a much-needed breath. That air won't be enough, cause soon after Otto and Rene resume to pummel.

Think you've recovered from that?

With the Dead Neanderthals' profile rising on the strength of a release like this, you may never.

Stream Jazzhammer/Stormannsgalskap:

Continue Reading...

FRESHLY BAKED: DREAMLESS

In "Freshly Baked," we feature promising young bands or bands that are otherwise lacking the attention we think they deserve.

By Andy O'Connor (TX Once More)

Give me a chance to talk to you about Minneapolis' Dreamless, and I will make your ears fall off. I could harp on about their fusion of metal and shoegaze that does't neuter the power of either. Let me rant about how vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Cory Strand lets himself bleed lyrically and sonically all over this record, layering a legion of swirling, heavy guitars over howls of unattainable dreams and the ugliness of human relationships. For comparisons, you could listen to me name-drop The Angelic Process in an infinite loop. And you've already heard me rave about how their debut album, All This Sorrow, All These Knives, sneaked up on me at the 11th hour to make my Top 10 of 2011 list.

The most important thing I can say is that you need to isolate yourself for a good hour and you really need to listen to this band.

I chatted with Strand and guitarist Ben Zientara about the actress that inspired "Dreams of Chloe," the increasing influence of shoegaze in metal, and why the record should be played as loud as possible.





Crustcake: How and when did Dreamless form?

Cory Strand (guitars, bass, vocals): I started Dreamless in 2005 as a solo project, basically to be a catch-all moniker for my various musical interests. My first love has always been and will always be black metal, and Dreamless was initially going to be the outlet for that. Then I thought it’d be great to do this band that worked in all these different styles, be it black metal, or power drone, or super-stripped down Jesus and Mary Chain-style pop songs, or Fushitsusha-style noise rock terrorism -- the stuff I was really into. I was playing with Ben and Matt [Rolfe, drums] in The Kafka Dreams and there were things I really wanted to do musically that just weren’t right for us. I don’t think Matt and Ben really relished the idea of my wanting to play black metal and bringing it into KD, so I just came up with Dreamless. All This Sorrow was originally supposed to be me playing everything, but when I played through some of the songs with Matt I knew he’d be a much better drummer, so I asked him to be on the record. After that I brought Ben in too, because I knew he’d bring different guitar elements in. We’d been playing so long together by that point that we’d achieved the sort of “zen” communication, where we could all anticipate each other’s moves musically. It came out far superior to what I could have achieved on my own.

Ben Zientara (guitars): Cory made it pretty clear that he was going to record a solo record. He had all the songs written, and was going to go into the studio by himself and record them. Then he asked Matt to play drums. Then he asked me to come and play guitar. So it was the same band, with a slightly different approach. But I love working with these guys, so I said yes right away.

Crustcake: Tell us about your pedalboard and setup. How do you get those sounds?

Strand: For the record, I used my Gibson SG through my 1973 Custom Hiwatt 100, through a vintage Hiwatt cabinet. The main distortion is a Zvex Fuzz Factory, although on some songs I used a Boss Hyperfuzz on the overdubs. It’s a much dirtier, muddier sound. Live I use my Fender Jaguar and a Rat, because the feedback is a little more intense. For pedals, I used a Boss Digital Delay (indispensable), a Danelectro Echo pedal (one of my favorite pedals -- cheap but awesome), and Ben’s wah. On the noisier section of “It’s Not Worth It,” I ran everything through a Boss Phase Shifter, which gave it all those crazy flange and tremolo effects. On pretty much all of the guitar solos, I used a Boss Digital Reverb/Delay to give it a little more resonance. For the clean guitar sounds, I had our recording engineer Adam’s Boss Chorus Ensemble, which is a beautiful sounding pedal. I liked it so much I bought it from him. It crapped out a few months later, which pretty much broke my heart. I’ve been wanting to replace it since, but finances haven’t really allowed for it. The swirl of guitar sounds is pretty much achieved by a very liberal application of all the echoes and delays.

I don’t want to downplay Adam’s contributions. Without his engineering and mixing, the album wouldn’t sound near as engulfing as it does. He had worked with us on other records and pretty much knew exactly what we were going for, how we worked, the guitar sounds we preferred. I really think of him as another member of our little collective.

Zientara: For this recording, I played my old Ibanez ST-50 through a ‘80s Fender Dual Showman head, into a Trace Elliot 4x12 cabinet. On my pedalboard, I used an Electro-Harmonix Polyphonic Octave Generator, into a big black Rat distortion pedal, into a Dunlop 95Q wah, into a BOSS DD-5 digital delay, into a Line 6 DL-4 delay modeler/loop sampler. I used just the Rat for all the rhythm parts in every song, and I used the POG, delay, and loop sampler to get the hyper-octave sounds on "Glimmering" and "It's Not Worth It."

Crustcake: How do you approach songwriting?

Strand: It all just comes from my practicing. My writing process is weird -- I’ll have these single weeks where there’s just a flood of stuff that I love, and then for the rest of the month, I can’t come up with anything worth two shits. It’s frustrating but I understand that’s just how it works for me and I’ve got to keep playing. I have a really clear idea in my head of how I want the songs to go. Sometimes they change when we rehearse them, sometimes not. “Glimmering” changed as a result of Matt and I playing around with it-the original track never had the clean guitar section. “Drown My Soul” didn’t change at all -- the way I conceived it is exactly the way it turned out on record. With Dreamless, I have always tried to keep it simple and emphasize the repetitious, hypnotic aspects of the songs. I love zoning out and getting lost in a riff. You really only need one if it’s awesome enough.

Crustcake: How did “Dreams of Chloe” come to be? Who exactly is “Chloe?”

Strand: I don’t remember when exactly “Dreams of Chloe” was written. I think it was actually one of the last songs I came up with for All This Sorrow, but I could be off on the chronology. I had a lot of trouble with the lyrics. Some I like, but some I think I was trying to get too poetic with. The “Chloe” of the song is none other than Chloe Sevigny, who I’ve always had a huge celebrity crush on. That year she’d been in Manderlay and Broken Flowers so I was pretty immersed in her. I wanted to make the song reflect my interpretation of her persona -- the airy, ethereal quality she brings to her work. She’s got the best “heroin eyes,” which I totally love. For a while I made her the unofficial Dreamless muse-I had a picture of her on my drum kit, too, with the words “Chloe loves Cory’s drumming” scrawled above it. Totally crushed out.

Crustcake: Is the idea of sublime beauty something you're attracted to, creatively?

Strand: Very much so, yes. My favorite works of art, be they records, or films, or photographs, or paintings, or whatever, they all venture into the realm of the ethereal. Suggestions are really powerful for me, way more than actualities. The film program that I’m in emphasizes the need for a narrative, and I have a really hard time accommodating that constraint. Not everything has to be so laid out. If the work is open, people will have stronger response to it, and they’ll feel more of a personal connection to it.

If you look at a photograph by Alec Soth, be it a landscape or a portrait, there’s nothing obvious about it. There’s no set beginning or end. The meaning is completely left for the individual viewer. There are certainly emotions and suggestions of theme, but they’re more based on whatever any given individual is already bringing to the photograph. The actual meaning is elusive and vague, and for me that’s incredibly powerful. Other examples of the same are Werner Herzog’s film work, or Terrence Malick’s. Musically, something like Troum or Eliane Radigue. They all circle around the same aesthetic. They want to engage you on a totally unique and individual level. It’s about wonder, and expanse.

I try and bring that to Dreamless. Even though songs like “Chloe” or “Glimmering” are about specific people and specific events that happened to me, I tried to keep the lyrics open. “Chloe” in particular for me is about Chloe Sevigny, but the lyrics never explicitly state that. People who know me well get it, but for anyone else listening, the song could be about anything. When I was in high school, I would listen to Mudhoney and feel like Mark Arm was singing about my life, because his lyrics were personal enough to seem like they came from my experiences, and open enough to not be exclusive, even though they were his memories, and his failures, and his fuck-ups. It’s intense when you can experience music that way. I hope we’ve accomplished that, or even come somewhere close.

Crustcake: If I had to pick one song as my choice cut of the record, it would be “Discordance.” How did that song come into the form that it is now?

Strand: “Discordance” was one of the first songs I wrote, right after “Glimmering,” and I think more than anything I’ve done those two songs reflect my worldview. Everyone is going to fuck you somehow, there’s no permanence aside from sadness, and no one is ever going to really understand the experience of being you. Everything ultimately fails. The only escape is removal. My favorite lyrical subject is suicide and suicidal feelings -- for me, it’s pretty much the only truly romantic notion left in art. The lyrics are purposely vague but still evoke some sort of sorrow, or boredom. Sometimes I get frightened by the huge blocks of time that I need to move through, sometimes I worry that I’m not making enough of them.

The music is so simple -- it’s really Matt who gives it the huge, cataclysmic weight it has. “Discordance” originally started as a much slower, more somber track with none of the mass. The original version was meant to be clean guitar, super ghostly and languid, minimal drums. Without Matt, I think “Discordance” would probably fall flat. The off-time swing type structure he brings to it really highlights the exhaustion I was trying to convey with the song. All of the extra guitars on there are me-for some reason “Discordance” strikes me as our most MBV moment. There’s a lot of guitar work on that track I’m very happy with. It all swirls in and out, and it’s melodic, but it’s somewhat out of control as well.

Crustcake: "Nothing Irreparable Has Happened Here" is the doomiest of the songs on the record, yet the title seems hopeful. Is there black humor at work here? What more can you tell us about this track?

Strand: It sounds hopeful but it’s not. The title of that track is actually taken from the Home Movies episode “Impressions,” where Brendon is trying to impress Cynthia and he fucks it all up. The end of the episode is Brendon running through all these things he could say to fix it, trying to tell himself the situation isn’t beyond repair, that “nothing irreparable has happened here,” but it’s fucked. It’s all falling apart, right in front of him. It’s such a beautiful moment, and so true to my own life experiences, the awkwardness of trying to get to know other people and always being afraid that you’re fucking it up, and it’s so achingly sad and heartbreaking to watch Brendon try and deny what he knows to be true. I suppose that qualifies as black humour, naming a song after a cartoon. It’s actually the second time I’ve done it. On the Kafka Dreams record there’s a song called “Isobel” that was totally inspired by an episode of Pokemon in which Meowth falls in love with Meowzy (a girl version of himself) and she ends up hating him because she considers him beneath her. There’s a shot of Meowth alone on a rooftop gazing up at the stars and he asks “I wonder if Meowzy’s looking at the same moon?” He’s asking himself, and it’s so yearning, and the emotion of it is so incredibly simple and visceral and unpretentious. Those kinds of feelings are what I’m trying to get across with my music…maybe that seems immature to a degree but it’s affecting for me. I’ve felt those things. They hurt. Other people can really fuck you up. I know what it’s like. I think everyone does.

Crustcake: The closer, “Drown My Soul,” is the most “metal” of the songs, with a faster pace and angrier vocals. Were you going for an “all-guns-blazing” effect to close out the record?

Zientara: To me, this album represents the emotional torment surrounding someone's decision to end it all after they realize that the person they love with all their being is completely out of reach. This song really is like "going out all-guns-blazing." The decision is made; there's no turning back; this is the final "fuck you all" before the end. It's a compelling sentiment to the teenager trapped inside of me.

Strand: I’m glad you’re asking about “Drown My Soul,” because it is pretty different compared to the rest of the record. I wrote “Drown My Soul” in high school, when I was playing in a couple different bands -- one very Nirvana-influenced grunge and the other a hardcore/death metal hybrid. I was super depressed and obsessed with this one girl and everything I wrote then was about her, or for her, and all the shit I was feeling at the time. “Drown My Soul” was a fantasy of suicide, my teenage ego fully taking over. Honestly, it’s a pattern that’s repeated itself many times in my life, and I can’t seem to escape it. There’s some material I have for the next Dreamless record that was born out of a similar episode that essentially ruined me as a functioning person for the better part of a year. As far as “Drown My Soul,” neither high school band ever used the song --- it was either “too heavy” or “not metal enough.” I’ve always liked it, and it was so awesome to be able to record it with Ben and Matt. I didn’t change anything about it -- I even used the original notebook sheet I wrote the lyrics on in the studio. It’s probably my favorite vocal performance on the record-it was the last one we recorded and my voice was super raw and I belted it out in one take. I really like the first guitar solo there, too. Ben still thinks the twin finger-tapping solos at the end are funny, but I love them. Tapping never goes out of style. To a certain degree “Drown My Soul” is also a love letter to the metal I worshipped as a teenager (and still do) -- Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer. Especially Slayer.

Crustcake: Metal isn't normally so open about love and relationships with women. What do you think accounts for this?

Strand: Perception. Aesthetic. I can’t imagine listening to something like Deicide’s Legion and getting the same feel from it if the lyrics were about Glen Benton’s marital woes rather than beheading prophets, trifixions, and burning in hell. It just doesn’t work. It’s the same with staunchly orthodox black metal -- there’s a very specific vision in mind and a need to work within a very narrow confine in order to meet the genre definition. For some bands, preserving the rebelliousness of black metal is incredibly important, and personally themed lyrics aren’t going to accomplish it.

With Dreamless, we’re not a metal band per se, so the only sorts of lyrics I’m writing are personal. It’s what feels right to me, like those songs couldn’t be about anything else. With Yog-Sothoth (mine and Ben’s doom/psych band) the subject matter is way more tongue in cheek, with no personal connection at all. The music necessitates the lyrical approach.

Some bands work between the two. When I listen to Mutiilation’s “The Bitter Taste of Emotional Void” I get floored by the extremity of the song, because it’s about suicide, but at the same time has this sick chorus of “O Satan…” and I fucking love it. You can fuse the personal to the occult and come out with something amazing.

Crustcake: The liner notes of the record declare: “Please Play This Record Loud. Maximum Volume Yields Maximum Results.” Why should listeners blast this record?

Strand: The sound is massive. We put so much texture into it and so many layers, the only way I can envision listening to it is at hyper levels. It just becomes one glorious, depressive blur. Dreamless is an exercise in catharsis and emotion, and its impact is best felt at serious volumes. We recorded it loud, we play loud, we mastered it loud. It’s also Sunn O)))’s credo, and it’s always stuck in my head.

Zientara: There's so much going on in every song. It behooves the listener to drown out all distractions and focus on the interplay of the three or four guitars on every track. Total negation of ego is desirable for a true listening experience.

Crustcake: Also according to the liner notes, the music was arranged in 2006. What took so long to get it all recorded?

Strand: We actually recorded it in one weekend -- we just weren’t able to release it ourselves because of finances and all of our personal lives going through drastic changes. The three of us work quickly -- we don’t really agonize or second guess much, it’s more about the immediacy of whatever moment we’re in. We try to get stuff on the first take as much as possible. I think that approach lends our music a certain raw quality.

Zientara: We recorded it in 2006, and we intended to put it out ourselves, but it ended up sitting “in the can” for the about 5 years until R. Loren told us he wanted to release it. We used to have a slogan: "We're not broke, we're just fucking lazy." Then we had various life-changes which caused us to actually be broke, so we amended the saying to "We're broke AND we're fucking lazy."

Crustcake: What do you make of shoegaze becoming an increasingly prominent fixture in metal?

Zientara: I think, like I mentioned before, total negation of ego is desirable for a true listening experience. Metal, to me, is about negation of ego by heavy riffs and raw emotion. The shoegaze aspect adds a repetitive, somnambulant element to the mix, which we long ago decided was necessary in our own music to further our creative goals. For us, it allows the songs to become multi-layered improvisational pieces with some rules about form like "let's play this riff for about ten minutes, and then we'll go over it and improvise these complimentary parts." It's very freeing to approach songwriting that way. All you need is one good riff and some inspired playing. The creative process is immediate and editing is kept to a minimum.

Strand: When it’s done well, I love it. A band like Nadja gets it -- the crush plus the blur equals pure transcendent excess. The two aesthetics can marry really well together and have the capacity to create works of incredible depth, beauty, and emotional resonance. Even though they’ve been getting more boring with each new record, Alcest’s Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde never ceases to take my breath away. The intensity of the first track alone destroys me every time, and I hope someday in my life I’ll write something that wondrously open. There was a record a few years ago on Ars Magna by Chaos Moon, Languor Into Echoes Beyond, that really exemplified the shoegaze/metal sound for me-it’s this super agonized, gorgeous collection of songs that sounds like Leviathan at war with Troum, and it’s just emotionally harrowing. Same with Wrath of the Weak (sadly defunct) -- the shoegaze elements are used to reach a new plateau of understanding and feeling, or nullification of feeling. I see it in suicidal BM bands like Trist or Through the Pain, too -- it’s about texture and density and how far a certain emotion can be pushed. They want you to get lost in the sound, and that’s what shoegaze is for me.

If My Bloody Valentine were anything, they were heavy, and I think people forget that sometimes. The specter of metal has always been with shoegaze.

Crustcake: Ben, how do you reconcile the idea that metal is the negation of the ego with the individualism (or at least the perception of individualism) often found in metal?

Zientara: Well, I said that negation of ego is necessary for a true listening experience, and I think that it's totally true. My favorite music is the kind that can let me escape my own head for a while, get into a totally different frame of mind, forget who I am, what I'm doing, and all the problems in my life. So when I listen to something, I want to be able to do that; lose the ego, lose self-awareness, and escape. I consider myself a pretty engaged person in "real life," but I think there's great value in leaving it all behind for a while. I listen to a lot of ambient/spacey shit, like Klaus Schulze, Brian Eno, Harold Budd, etc. Now that music certainly has a lot going on for the performer; no doubt Mr. Budd meticulously designs his pieces, and loses none of that intricacy and intentionality in the performance thereof, but what I get out of the music is a chance to immerse myself in the immediate experience, and to allow myself to be surprised by every new note. I might not be fully using all my faculties to experience it, but this is how I've decided that I get the most out of music.

When I listen to metal, I treat it the same way; I forget myself and headbang, play air drums, or allow my body to be taken over by the music, but there's another way I think metal music is about negation of ego. If you're talking about proto-metal, like Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath, that stuff is all about id; pleasure, desire, pain, fear; just pure emotion. And once you're talking about the height of '80s thrash and death metal, Metallica and Slayer and Deicide, that music is 100% pure escapism. I'm not gonna slit throats and kill people and wear their skin and worship Satan, but I can appreciate the catharsis that can come from the chance to immerse myself in the pure emotions involved with those actions. And the music is driving, frenetic, and heavy as shit; it produces a physical reaction that comes from deep inside, certainly not from the "self." Not that some people don't allow those feelings to completely govern who they are, anyway...

And yes, finger-tapping still makes me giggle. It's awesome, but it makes me laugh like a crazed little kid.

Crustcake: Cory, you've mentioned to me before your love for Red House Painters and Mark Kozelek. What about him informs your work?

Strand: Again, your comparison was incredibly flattering. I don’t know if I could say Mark Kozelek is a direct influence on the music I write, but I love his records under all his guises. There’s something so fractured and pained and real in what he does. It’s almost untouchable. I listen to What’s Next to the Moon all the time and even though it’s essentially just some AC/DC songs, Kozelek just turns them inside out and transforms them into haunting, shattering bits of confession. He makes them his own. His voice carries so much passion and yearning and regret, and when you hear it you know it’s so fucking real for him. He brings you in to his world. The intimacy is intense. That authenticity is missing from a lot of music. I hear it in Grouper, and Lyrinx...it’s a woundedness, I guess. I hear it in the voices of Paul Westerberg, Thurston Moore, and Stephen Malkmus too. They have something.

If I took anything from Kozelek, it’s the vocals. I am nowhere near him, but I love his laconic, conversational delivery, and I try to bring that into Dreamless. He’s willing to let songs take their own time. His book of lyrics, Nights of Passed Over, ranks right up there with T.S. Eliot for me. It’s otherworldly.

Crustcake: Minneapolis seems like an odd city musically -- you don’t hear about it much, but then someone like Prince or something like Husker Du will pop up. What do you make of the music community there?

Strand: That’s weird, because all of our local rags around here constantly write about how Minneapolis is seen as some sort of hotbed of cool shit. We don’t really fit in to the scene very much. Part of it is because we rarely play live, but another part of it is the gross favoritism. The same bands get written about every year. When those bands break up or fail, the bands their members started afterward get written up. It’s a really shitty brand of local nepotism. We do have some great challenging bands here, but they’re never talked about.

I’ve got some serious personal issues with the Minneapolis scene. Ben and Matt might not agree with me, but I don’t see much of a sense of community here at all. A lot of the local musicians I come into contact with are too busy trying to top the next person in sardonicism to really commit to anything musically interesting or exploratory. I’ve tried to get lots of things going with people, to no avail. It always comes back to Ben and me. At this point I’m fine with it -- I just won’t inflate the aura here and tell you it’s awesome when it’s really pretty interconnected and exclusive.

Zientara: Minneapolis is just like any other large city, I suppose. There is a ton of music happening here every day, and most of it is utter shit, so I try to focus on the good stuff. People here are generally really well informed, and there are lots of people with good taste, but the "scene" if you can narrow it down, is pretty focused on jangly indie folk-pop-rock, and getting shows is all about who you know and how many people you can get to come drink beer. The local college radio station is pretty cool, and we have a big-time "Alternative" Public Radio station, but neither has any place for 10-plus-minute shoegaze-metal pieces. Both of them play the 5:26 radio edit of [Sonic Youth's] "The Diamond Sea" instead of the album cut, if you take my meaning. Still, there are a few labels who are putting out interesting and challenging underground music, Small Doses and Roaratorio are two that come to mind. And there are a handful of speakeasy places that host the more esoteric locals and touring bands. There is a small but proud contingent of bands that get very little respect locally, but have really good responses from national and international audiences. I hope we can be part of that group.

Strand: Don’t forget about Taiga Records! Gorgeous vinyl and packaging.

Crustcake: Who did the cover art? How does it fit in aesthetically with the record?

Strand: It’s by Scott Candey of Crionic Mind. He had done the artwork for a record that Ben and I put out on our label, Yith Recordings. I liked it, so I wrote to him and asked him to do the Dreamless layout. I gave him some of the elements I wanted (razor blades, faeries, slit wrists) and let him go for it. The inner artwork is sort of my tribute to The Melvins’ Lysol record -- all those roses overlapping, creating visual psychedelia. I think Scott’s work captures the tone of the record pretty well -- it’s definitely got a hazy, vague sadness and anger to it, and the idea of suicide is everywhere.

Joe Beres actually did a rework for us when R. Loren picked the album up -- he didn’t give himself a credit, but he designed the insert, which makes a really nice contrast to all the chilly colors.

Crustcake: How did you hook up with Handmade Birds to release the record?

Strand: Chance. R. Loren heard our material, got in touch, and it went from there. I love his work in Pyramids, and he’s just an obsessive seeker of music. I’m really pleased to be working with such an amazing label. I love non-genre specific labels and Handmade Birds really embraces that. R. Loren is really supportive of what we’re doing musically, and it’s an ideal collaboration for me. We’re on the same label as Our Love Will Destroy The World and Lovesliescrushing, two of my musical idols. It’s like being a little kid. It blows my mind whenever I think about it.

Crustcake: Have y'all begun working on new Dreamless material already? And will it take another five years to be released?

Strand: The new album is written. At least the music -- I haven’t thought much about lyrics yet. I’ve got about ten songs, all more or less in the same vein as All This Sorrow. If anything it’s a little heavier and slightly faster, but there’s some stuff I had prepared for a split with Wrath of the Weak that never came out because I couldn’t get my shit together and scrape up the money to record -- those songs are definitely in the slow, sludged out realm. Those’ll be on the new one, too. We just need to rehearse it.

As far as a time frame for a new record, I really don’t know. Matt’s moving to LaCrosse to pursue his medical career so we’ll have to get a new drummer and I’m pretty exacting about the type of person we need for it. There aren’t many people that could play the way he does. Maybe I’m just biased because I’ve worked with him for so long. Ideally, I have a couple long form songs that I’d like to record this summer with Matt and put out on vinyl, but it all comes down to time and money. Ben and Matt both work as well as go to school, they’ve got young kids, I’m in school -- it’s really difficult to find the time. Real life is in opposition to a lot of creativity.

Zientara: Like I mentioned earlier, our motto refers directly to our laziness, but it’s really more about having other things going on in our lives. And the recording process is so rewarding to us, that if we can get such gratification there, why go further? The process of creating and refining music, and the energy we can feel between each other while we’re recording is what it’s all about for us. We've got hours of material recorded over various projects -- for Yog-Sothoth, we have a full-length record, a double CD, and enough material to fill another 60 minutes, recorded, mastered, and ready to go.

The problem is that once we've recorded the stuff, we don't know what to do with it. Maybe we all still feel a little wary because, of the 1000 Kafkas Dreams CDs we pressed 11 years ago, probably over 700 are still in boxes at our houses, and a bunch of the rest are languishing in the warehouse of one of the local CD shops. I think I can speak for Cory when I say we're lousy at self-promotion. I wish I could go the whole DIY way and achieve excellent results and accolades, but I just can't.

R. Loren is the model of a driven person. He knows how to get things done. The guy has so many irons in the fire, and the drive to make each one turn into something excellent. That's why this is such an ideal pairing; his drive lights a fire under our asses. I think we'll have something recorded by the end of the summer. I've got all of Cory's demos, and I can't wait to get to work on them.

I know that the music will have the same immediacy as the first record, because, even though we're going to have more time to get a feel for the material before it's recorded, the process of recording inspires us, causes us to accept chance, and challenges us to bring our best stuff to the table, especially as it regards overdubs. Everything I played as an overdub for All This Sorrow was figured out moments ahead of the recording; it's all serendipity, or inspiration, or whatever you want to call it.

Maybe we’ll find a similar passion for playing live, but we’ll never, ever be one of those bands that plays 3 or 4 shows a month, in our own city. I think somewhere around 3 or 4 a year (unless we’re on tour) would be ideal for us all.

Crustcake: Do you envision Dreamless doing a soundtrack?

Strand: I’m actually in film school, so a soundtrack probably isn’t far off. I’ve composed music for some of my short films; one of the pieces I ended up liking enough to actually rework into a Dreamless track. It’ll be on the next record. As far as doing music for other people, I’m open to it if the right projects and collaborators present themselves. A director asked if I’d compose some music for a film he’s making this summer, but it’s a comedy, so I didn’t do it. I just can’t get into that mentality. It isn’t the aesthetic I work in.

Crustcake: What kind of film are you looking to get into?

Strand: I’m going into cinematography, so I’ll probably end up freelancing after I graduate. There’s actually good opportunity here for filming live shows…as far as feature films, I’d just like to work with people who have a similar vision of things. I’m interested in ideas of philosophy, violence, transcendence…I love nature and landscape photography and I incorporate it into my own films-hopefully I’ll have the opportunity to do it professionally. It’s all about collaboration, which worries me given my introversion and anxiety problems, but you end up having a decent understanding of who you’d pair well with. The director/cinematographer relationship is quite focused and intense-you have to respect and challenge each other and really be working towards the same vision. I’m not interested in bland, action-oriented shit or comedy. It’s got to have feeling, and it can’t be afraid of it.

Continue Reading...

HAPPY HOLIDAZE: VALENTINE'S DAY

How can Valentine's Day be metal, you ask? Metal is about HATE and DESTRUCTION, not LOVE and CREATION! Well, French poet Charles Baudelaire proved otherwise way before metal was invented with his poem "Une Charonge," often translated as "A Carcass." Baudelaire speaks of rotting flesh like most of us would talk about someone we'd like to engage in carnal pleasure with. However it's translated, it sure is attractively lurid. Swedish death metallers Grave would take that obsession further with "In Love," off of their classic Into the Grave. Ladies give themselves to Grave for the first stanza alone - "You lie so nice in front of me/As I brought you from your grave/You lost some skin and a lot of weight/But still you look sexy in your new shape." Don't we all seek that kind of affection? "Love" kicks off our Valentine's Day playlist, perfect whether you've got someone waiting to tear off your flesh or you're forever alone.

Grave - "In Love"



Carcass - "No Love Lost"


Anthrax - "NFB (Dallabnikufesin)"


Floor - "Tales of Lolita"


Iggy and the Stooges - "Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell"


Type O Negative - "Christian Woman"


Mortician - "Three on a Meathook"


W.A.S.P. - "Animal (Fuck Like a Beast)"

Continue Reading...

CRUSTCAKE PICKS - NEW CAKE IN THE OVEN: CORMORANT - DWELLINGS

By Chase Macabre (STL)

On their Facebook page, Cormorant describe the genre of music they play as "post-black metal weirdshit." While existing in the same aesthetic sphere as other US black metal, especially those with whom they share the same long red bridge over the bay, the band is closer to black Sabbath than they are to Darkthrone or Bathory or any other black metal band. To call them "black metal" is like calling Krallice, Kvelertak or Rotting Christ "black metal"―it's a jumping off point.

Hailing from the Bay Area, the four-piece self-released their latest full-length album, Dwellings, just before the end of 2011. Much like haarp's brilliant The Filth, the record was released well after most critics had shored up their "Best Of's" (including myself, sorry guys.) The staunchly independent band funded the record themselves, calling it "a labor of love" and quipped, "no labels were harmed in the creation of this album."

Dwellings was produced by Justin Weis at Trakworx Studios in San Francisco. Coincidental or not, Cormorant shares sonic similarities with several of the bands Weis has produced in the past, including Agalloch and Ludicra. Dwellings, however, is nearly the opposite of their previous LP, Metazoa. In an interview with Lars Gotrich of NPR, vocalist and bassist Arthur von Nagel said:

"[With] Metazoa, we were so excited to be in a big studio with a legendary producer [that] we just threw everything into the pot, you know? Tons of guest vocals, string sections, pianos... it's a messy album in a sense. I feel that's the charm of it — I hope! With Dwellings, we wanted that exactitude from Justin to come through, but we also wanted a certain blackness and roughness."

Despite pulling back in a lot of ways, Dwellings has a warm fullness and is at times majestic. Some of the majesty and warmth is thanks to the band recording to tape, a method that is about as old as Cormorant's music sounds. Big '70s rock n' roll riffs swing with ballsy swagger and huge, boomy drum sounds would put a smile on even Bonham's face. The band shares vocal duties and do everything from bile-throated, raspy gargles to thrash metal yells and ethereal clean vocals. The seven songs are cinematic; the band weaves musical narratives and gracefully changes dynamics and crosses genre lines like Moses on dry ground. For lesser bands, this usually equates to a hodgepodge of ADHD riffage. However, Cormorant's maturity is on display, slowly building musical themes, writing transition sentences between paragraphs, skillfully selecting what adds to the story and deleting what retracts.

Cormorant's storytelling prowess isn't only found in their music either, as Nagel spends considerable time researching and crafting his lyrics. A lot has been made of the lyrics to "Junta." The song retells in stark relief the genocide in Guinea during a pro-democracy rally in 2009 using quotes because, as Nagel puts it, "the horror tells itself." "Junta" is immediately striking with the first line stating, "What horrors we wage/in the light of day/bodies left decaying/for the world to see" over top of a riff like a battle cry. Each song on Dwellings is like this. They are all based on real stories and that have immediacy and are heavier than any "trve" black metal band that lives in a fantasy worlds. Cormorant are authentic.

Regardless of what genre you really want to label Cormorant, their integration of black metal and "weirdshit" on Dwellings is more than black and rough enough for me and probably for you, too.

Listen to Cormorant




Photo of Dwellings' cover. Painted by Alice Duke

Continue Reading...

CRUSTCAKE INTERVIEWS: SUTEKH HEXEN

by theseseans (NYC)

There are bands that I listen to, and there are bands that take me over. Sutekh Hexen, are the latter. As I recently found myself immersed in a world of harsh noise, Sutekh Hexen were a very welcome discovery. Their sound has been highly abrasive, using a substantial amount of raw noise, which as I wrote in my Best of 2011 list, receiving equal mix and attention as the musical elements. This is a not a band where feedback lures into the end of a song, or noise is used sparingly for texture.

Sutekh Hexen's new record, Larvae is available for pre order from Handmade Birds right now, and will see an official release on February 21, 2012. It explores new themes, namely light, and produces different sounds through that focus. In interviewing the band I was curious to know what drives them to create, and how they expanded their sound with Larvae. The responses I got are very satisfying. Sutekh Hexen care deeply for their art, and their devotion to it is obvious in the words you'll find below.

Crustcake: How did Sutekh Hexen begin?
 
Scott Miller (guitar, vocals, percussion, electronics): Kevin and I had been playing together for a couple of years in various bands and ensembles and we decided one day to focus energy on starting a new project that was totally focused on occult values and concepts. We recorded three c10 demos in late 2009 and really started to feel a deep connection to the extreme balance that we were working within, the rest just followed suit.

Kevin Gan Yuen (guitars, electronics): It actually took time for us to fully realize Sutekh Hexen. 

Once we began: this has easily been thee most pro-active project either of us has ever been involved with.

Scott and I have known each other for quite some time, we had performed live and recorded for several projects in the past, but at that point: nothing exclusively of own. Considering that we both have wide-ranges of musical interests, we often discuss songs we love, hate and how we would have approached the composition differently.  

These in-depth conversations were very mutual between us and once we committed to recording ideas to exchange back and forth, we kept impressing each other with these really intense and complex compositions of great riffs, field-recordings and layers upon layers of ambient passages/scathing-noise assaults. 

It literally became a "lets see who can out-do each other," but the more we worked together, the more I realized that this is the
natural process of chaos:order for us.

Crustcake: Why does Sutekh Hexen exist?

Scott: For me personally, SH exists as an audio document of my ritual and meditative work. I have always felt a great relation to the sounds we create as a soundtrack to Left Hand Path leanings and I like to think that there is an inspirational current that is captured within our music. It's all just an outlet for expression.

Kevin: Personally, it is practicing the process of creation, destruction and the in-between; live, this is a much more intensified meditative experience, when attempting to re-enter this space.

Crustcake: Larvae feels much different then Luciform and your preceding releases. The mood and atmosphere in Larvae are constantly shifting - what inspired that?

Scott: I believe that Larvae is just a progression from what we were doing on Luciform. This was the first time that we had opened our doors to a new member and Lee really brought a powerful sense of creativity to the table that naturally enabled the expansion.

Kevin: Being able to play the songs live encouraged the direction of "Larvae", having Lee available to fortify the wall of sound has allowed Scott to focus solely on guitar live, because he was literally jumping between two to three things at once during live performances and the most important inspirational-influence on this record, really was us all being on the same-page sonically during the writing-process.

Crustcake: Specifically, can you discuss the song "Let There Be Light?"  

Scott: "La Det Bli Lys" was a concept far before it was actually written. I notice quite frequently that we are misconstrued as being propelled by the force of anger, which is definitely an inspirational emotion that the three of us receive from, but generally speaking I feel that we excel the most through various states of depression and overall disconnect. That track you are speaking of comes from that place of hopelessness and despair. Considering the fact that anger is a secondary emotion, I relate that sickening feeling of being almost trapped in a cycle of downfall to how the sounds and vocals meander through an almost blackened pit of emptiness before crashing headlong into that subsequent hatred for that cycling. All of our music is coming from the same channels, but with this LP in particular I feel that we embraced that suffocating build up of energies that leads us to that point of expression of a more maddening state.

Kevin: Appropriately the final track on the LP. We were all in similar states-of-mind whilst finalizing this record. 
I am not the only one that will admit experiencing severe transitions in our personal lives from the start to the completion of this album, which naturally influenced an aural-existence on the threshold and finally reaching an apex of sorts. 

Crustcake: Can you discuss what makes Sutekh Hexen's musical aspects come together? 

Scott: The 3 of us operate individually. Whereas I may present an arrangement that stems from C focused guitar patterning and low end derived sound manipulations, Kevin and Lee bring forth a lot more of the textural and soundscape sounds that bring everything together. The energies that each of us bring to the songs is solely based upon our separate interpretations of the ground being covered. I feel that it's this individualistic process that enables the music to encompass a far greater spectrum of sound manipulation and fortifies the comprehension of what we are truly expression through the sounds. As a result, there becomes a sense of ownership on varied levels that we can all relate to in our own ways.

Kevin: We individually present something new, complimentary or what can be considered finite to each composition. It has honestly been about having bandmates who share the drive and ability to conceptualize ideas, bringing these ideas into to fruition and finally: reflecting on the cohesive results as a whole.. it is pretty remarkable how well we work together, for example: while sometimes not even discussing what direction we want a track to head-in and the end-result, being exactly what we all heard.

Crustcake: Despite the difference from your other material, how did you know "Seraph"'s grooving guitar was Sutekh Hexen?

Scott: When Kevin and I were working on that track (and "Chains" on the other side of the Luciform LP) I was listening to a lot of Hellshock, Discharge, No Funeral, Skitsystem and other more punk fueled metal and d-beat bands and it just indirectly bled through into the formation of those couple songs. I don't feel that "Seraph" sounds like any of those bands, so to speak, but it has a lot more of a punked out structure to the chord progressions and strum patterns that most of our songs don't have.

Kevin: I felt like playing crusty death-metal riffs. I was listening to Entombed and Grave, but do not feel like this song sounds like either of the bands. Also, with our tuning, we are able to implement one of the open-strings as a sympathetic-note that will basically provide a drone or percussive element while riffing on the higher-register strings.

Crustcake: Beyond the outside elements and influences that this riff arrived from, I was hoping you could comment on what made you know that this riff would fit within Sutekh Hexen, despite it's difference from the majority of your other riffs. - What made you say 'Yes, I need to bring this riff into Sutekh Hexen?'

KevinWell, it was established that we wanted to write a few tracks that were heavily riff-based. "Seraph" and "Chains" specifically; we write songs that we want to hear that we have not heard before and that is it.   

Crustcake: Some of your previous work has a similar effect on me that pure noise does, can you talk about your approach to producing something that balances noise and music so evenly?

Scott: We seem to get asked this question a lot and really to me it just seems natural. There's such a deep comfort I find in the expansive qualities of "noise" as an expressive art form and to unlearn the formula of black metal and reformulate it through an experimental filter opens doors to a whole new world of rarely charted frequencies and tone. I'm in no way comparing us, but bands like Neurosis and Agoraphobic Nosebleed amongst many others have been incorporating more noise related and atmospheric elements to their music for years. Fuck, and then there was Comets on Fire that had such a killer oscillating experimental layer that really blew open extreme currents of psychedelia. So, I think that when we sit down to work on new material we are processing the sounds with the noise and more structured instrumentation within a similar, yet far less refined, school of thought as those before us.

Kevin: Seriously, I think have a good sense of sonic-balance comes from growing-up listening to music with headphones in the dark; this was before there were iPods and before it was normal to listen to songs on your computer through shitty speakers. I still don't get it: dulling the experience beyond relevance, it's worse than listening to music while driving with the windows down... so much of the experience of perception is compromised these days... people just don't listen like they used to.

It always fascinated me how many layers of sound existed on so many records and it kept this continuity that I always sought to duplicate in bands, but it wasn't until Scott, whom shares the same sonic-philosophies, that it happened, not only on record, but when we would play live in our various projects.

Crustcake: Where does the noise side of your material derive from?

Scott: We build our noise from everything from feedback to contact mics to tape loops to oscillators to whatever we feel directed to incorporate sounds from. Most all of our songs have layers of noise created by each of us on our own in our own ways of capturing those sounds. On Larvae in particular, Lee brought in a lot of organic percussive elements such as a Georgia Long Lead pinecone and Lupin pods that we recorded through room mics and minimal effects that added some nice percussive and textural layers of noise.

Kevin: We record and edit all sources for the noise-elements ourselves. It has been something I think all of us have been doing some time before Sutekh Hexen. Personally, it used to be an obsession of mine, to walk around the city, foothills or wherever with a cassette-tape recorder and computer-mic. These days the same level of curiosity exists, but with better gear! like my Zoom H4 or iPhone. Field-recording and "noise" techniques were discovered and admired through individuals like: Masami Akita, Chris Watson and Pau Torres --- but it was bands like: Neurosis/Tribes of Neurot, Swans and Ulver, that really opened my eyes to making these same aural-elements applicable to what I wanted to do.

Crustcake: How do you approach preforming live, as a two piece and now as a three piece?

Scott: Our live shows are very much ritual magick in the sense that we write our live compositional pieces to have an ebb and flow that coincides with the concept that we are working within at that time. It's always been this way. Currently we have been performing a 2 song/30 minute set with "Isvar Savasana" from the Larvae LP and a song I've been calling, "The Collects", which is slated to come our later this year as the a side of a 12" called Movements and the Current on Flenser, we blend the ending of one into the beginning of the other making the ritual one continuous piece. There is always an element of spontaneity that we incorporate into our live sets that leaves the door open to improvisations at any given point of the songs, even though the pieces have been written and structured initially as compositions.

Kevin: As mentioned earlier, we now write a majority of our songs with the intention of performing them live. 
 
I would say that each of our songs should blend-seemlessly into one-another if we were to play them live back-to-back.. an unnoticeable transition, which we have and do. That said, there has been a lot of improvisation since we decided to play live. The point here, is that our compositions are structured, very structured, but we like to challenge ourselves every now and again.

Crustcake: I read on HHS's playlist posting that Scott commented,  "I think lyrics for the most part are trite and I can go without"  Does this apply to your own music as well? Can you talk about the creative process for your words - titles and lyrics?

Scott: Of course this applies to us as well. Larvae is the first release we have done that actually has the lyrics printed and even that has been done as a spot UV layer that obscures them. I feel that the listening to and receiving of comprehension of music is going to be different to everyone and taking that into consideration, I feel that the art becomes cheapened when there is a dictation as to what and where the piece is coming from. What might make one listener conjure up feelings of disappointment and sorrow very well may bring up feelings of rage and hatred to another, it's this freedom of individuality and relation that we all work from and hope our music is received through. Titles of songs and lyrics have very deep connections to the individual channels each track is built from at some layer or another, but I prefer to keep an almost ambiguous sense of direction when it comes to being heard by others. I read a review recently that made comment of my vocals being "murderous" which is not at all an angle that I take with my approach, but I embraced the listener's understanding and relative connection to the sound as being natural to the one writing the review. So with that said, the titles and lyrics for each release come from specific elements of our ritual work and intent, but are not ever meant to be the foundation upon which others take from the songs.

Kevin: Maybe. I have always been an advocate for individual-interpretation: Aural and Visual creations may initially have intent through an individual, but ultimately: creation and destruction are relative. There is something to absorb/expel at every point of formation. I think the problem with this world is that a lot of people have taken everything too literally. Does it matter?

Crustcake: Can you then comment on why the human voice is a constant element in your art? If the words the voice carries is not the reason for the inclusion on vocals, what is it about the human voice that makes it so essential to Sutekh Hexen?

Kevin: The human voice, like any other instrument can convey a range of emotions and potentially set the tone of a track, drastically. Where voice is applicable in Sutekh Hexen, I feel it establishes the human-connection to our work.

Continue Reading...

CRUSTCAKE STREAMS: COP PROBLEM - 'MONUMENTS'

Took us long enough, but we've got our first stream for 2012!

Cop Problem are a new ensemble from Philadelphia, and if you're into crusty, d-beat-laden hardcore, they'll be a favorite for you. So far, they've only got a tape to their name, but that will change soon. The group will release a self-titled EP through War Torn Records on March 29, and we've got the first track, "Monuments" for you now. Will it cause problems with the authorities? If it does, let us know! We won't take it down, we just want to make sure the band lives up to its name.

There isn't much more we need to say - stream "Monuments" below. Should you dig it, you can pre-order the 7" here. For those living in Europe, you can cop it (pun most certainly intended) at Prejudice Me.





Cop Problem 7" Track Listing:
1. Monuments
2. Along For The Ride
3. Blinded By Power

Continue Reading...

LIVE REVIEW: GHOST

Ghost
When: January 28, 2012

Where: Marquis Theater, Denver, CO
With: Blood Ceremony, Ancient VVisdom

By Andy O'Connor (Denver)

Ghost were prepared to make waves in the States as support for Enslaved last year, but even a fervor for the Dark Lord can't make visa problems instantly go away. You mean to tell me that he can make me kill my parents, but can't cross the ocean? Some days, you have to put logic behind you and acknowledge that a good show is a good show. And Ghost definitely showed Denver that they're more than hype.


Dedicated readers know I have a problem with Austin's Ancient VVisdom. For those new to the site, they sound like a diet Death in June -- acoustic guitars, horns and skulls as stage props, dark vibes, but no real cohesion or depth. I was somewhat willing to give them the benefit of the doubt the first time around because they had formed not too long ago. Now, I can't say I'm as nice. Granted, they are a fit on the tour package: like Ghost, they play "accessible" music with an occult message. Their main problem still persists -- they took an idea that sounds good on paper (or, as Erick put it, a blow-fueled conversation at 5 a.m.) and haven't done much with it. Also, those lyrics. Metal isn't always home to poet laureates, but without distortion to cover your ass, you gotta try harder. Reform Iron Age now!

Toronto's Blood Ceremony followed, and had they done an out-of-tune rendition of "The Litanies of Satan" for the entirety of their set, they would have automatically been better than Ancient VVisdom. Thankfully, they have higher standards. Imagine Cathedral had they emphasized both their later groovy direction and the folk touches found on Forest of Equilibrium, and you've got a good idea of what they're going for. People eat up the flute, but it's definitely not a gimmick -- Alia O'Brien's lines are complimentary, not show-offy. They do what Coven couldn't -- be heavy and delicate without half-assing either. And while I realize we should move beyond discussing metal womens' looks, I can't help but notice O'Brien bears a resemblance to Lea Michele of "Glee" fame. Twins separated in a ritual? We know who's on the righteous path.

Denver, clearly, was there to praise Ghost. Not to say that the crowd was stillborn during the past two bands, but I think I heard a more raucous response to the lights dimming for Ghost's arrival than I did during either preceding bands' sets. This was none more evident than when a sect of the crowd tore into a Bible during "Elizabeth," but unlike Black Witchery, Ghost aren't really suited towards shredding a bible. Their tunes are more for burning the bible slowly as incense while you consummate a Satanic marriage. Besides, these amateurs took way too long to desecrate the Bible - the hordes under Impurath's command at Rites of Darkness had that sucker clean in half the time!

Even if part of the audience was misdirected, they had good reason to be - Ghost are a more complete band in a live setting. Initially, I was worried that the Marquis Theater, a rather small place for the bands they tend to book, would cramp Ghost. Ancient VVisdom's bassist Trans Am -- we recognized each other because he worked at the Jackalope, a bar I frequented in my Austin days -- told me that Denver was their most intimate show thus far. Were Papa Emeritus I and His Nameless Ghouls forced to reveal themselves because of the small stage? Such a fate wasn't to bear fruit, and praise Satan for it! Ghost's "Melissa, I'm burnin' for you" sound comes off heavier and sexier with bigger, punchier guitars. Hearing Emeritus' voice and seeing pictures of the band is one thing, but to have both synched is startling. He's got the Evil Pope gig down - he looks menacing and sings about forbidden concepts, but his smooth voice convinces you that he's preaching the Good Word. Ghost's set was rather short, clocking in under an hour. There was no encore, just a ripping rendition of the band's best song, "Ritual," to close the night. They've got what it takes to be a great live band - they just need to record another album.

Missed Ghost this time around? They'll serve as support for Opeth and Mastodon's upcoming national tour! Check the dates at Mastodon's site.

Continue Reading...

CAKE BITES: KOOL KEITH IN CHICAGO

Kool Keith
When: January 22, 2012
Where: Reggie's Rock Club, Chicago, IL

By Carmelo Espanola (CHI)

With Cake Bites, we present you with sweet, crusty morsels of our writing in bite-sized form. Think of them as heavy metal petit fours -- all killer, no filler left-hooks to your brain's mouth.

It's not often that hip hop artists possess crossover appeal to metal fans. Public Enemy, Wu-Tang Clan, Ice-T, DJ Screw, and the Judgement Night soundtrack usually come to mind. But if there is one hip hop artist that has the most in common with the same obsessively detailed lyrical themes of metal, it would have to be Mr. Spankmaster himself, Kool Keith.

For the uninitiated, Kool Keith, a former member of the influential group Ultramagnetic MC's, is a one-in-a-million lyricist with a peculiar mind. Here is an individual who pens tales in grim detail that combines the unrepentant sleaziness of Venom, the social commentary of Napalm Death, and the gore obsession of Autopsy. He even has a penchant for sci-fi themes not unlike Voivod. The similarities to metal don't stop there. One of Kool Keith's alter egos is a Carcass-esque murderous medical deviant named Dr. Octagon, whose debut album, Dr. Octagonyecologist, had cover art that was crafted by one of metal's most influential artists, Pushead. His other alter ego, Dr. Dooom, shares the same attraction to '70s exploitation cinema visuals as Electric Wizard. Even Aesop Dekker, drummer of avant-garde metal bands Agalloch and Worm Ouroborous, has inducted Kool Keith in the hallowed halls of his carefully curated tome, Cosmic Hearse.

On an exceptionally rainy January evening, I made my way to Reggie's, fending off a hailstorm while waiting for the bus. Maybe this weird weather occurrence was a sign of things to come. Kid Static and a slew of local openers warmed up the crowd prior to Kool Keith's rare headlining appearance. Once Kool Keith made his way to the stage, he unleashed his otherworldly subconscious into the appreciative crowd.

Sporting Gucci sunglasses along with a rhinestone encrusted Thelma and Louise style headwrap, his dress aesthetic was already turning heads with looks of bewildered awe. He culled a well-balanced set list from his deep discography, mainly from Black Elvis, Spankmaster, and his landmark album of unadulterated sleaze, Sex Style. The way his lyrics traveled from his flow to the neurons of the crowd felt like a subconscious conference call with some of history's most cerebral explorers such as Carl Jung, Sigmund Freud, Marquis De Sade, and Blowfly. The real highlight for was when he performed a good number of Dr. Octagon songs, such as the inquisitive ballad “Blue Flowers” and the sadistically gruesome “Halfsharkalligatorhalfman.” It was also quite interesting to note that both the gentlemen and the ladies in the venue showed the most enthusiasm as they sang along to the chorus of the title track from Sex.

With the Octagonyecologist and Sex albums having reached their 15-year milestones in the last couple of years, it is more important more than ever for Kool Keith to educate the masses on what real hip hop is, as well as bringing his raucous live show to metal audiences and beyond.

Continue Reading...