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High Llamas

Hey Panda

Drag City

***High Llamas present Hey Panda—a modern pop music/deep listening experience that could only issue forth from their personal quadrant of the galaxy. Hey Panda projects soulfully through an enervating abstract of today’s popular music; the sound of the Llamas’ stately melodies and expressive ditties laid open—blissfully shattered—with drums and vocals hitting different, burning sounds and contemporary production twists pulling the ear at every turn. For the past few decades, High Llamas have trafficked in contemporary pop sounds directed toward the avant end of the spectrum as much as not. But here the message was clear. Llamas’ composer-in-residence Sean O’Hagan was determined to let go. Hey Panda does just that, with a set of tunes reflecting on multiple levels how definitions change over the course of a lifetime, radiating an optimism derived from the diverse conundrums of today.

Sadier, Laetitia

Rooting For Love

Drag City

***Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier issues a call to the traumatized civilizations of Earth: we’re urged to finally evolve past our countless millennia of suffering and alienation. Her songs score the complexities and harmonies within this directive: organ, guitar, bass, synth, trombone, vibraphone, live and programmed drums, and a vocal assembly of men and women billed as The Choir, working intricate chord/tempo/and dynamic changes, as Laetitia’s empathic presence leads the way.

Toral, Rafael

Spectral Evolution

Moikai

***Rafael Toral returns to the electric guitar after a decade-plus in his “Space Program,” composing only with self-built electronic modules. Here, the unique compositional fronts of guitar and electronics crush together in a powerful new synthesis.

Biafra, Jello With Doa

Last Scream Of The Missing Neighbors

Alternative Tentacles

***ORIGINALLY FROM 1989 AND BACK IN PRINT ON LIMITED COLORED VINYL AFTER NEARLY 20 YEARS!!! The album-length result of Biafra's collaboration with long-time associates D.O.A. for the super soundtrack of Terminal City Ricochet! Both DKs and D.O.A. began playing music in the same week of 1978, so perhaps this project was bound to happen. It sure seems like it... "...a roaring rock record that puts [Biafra's] trademark whiny vocals and songs to D.O.A.'s meat-and-cojones guitar power. Through a half-dozen numbers like 'Wish I Was in El Salvador,' 'Attack of the Peacekeepers' and the epic 'Full Metal Jackoff,' Last Scream proudly re-hoists the DK flag in all but name." – Trouser Press

Young, La Monte / Marian Zazeela

Dream House 78'17"

Superior Viaduct

Originally released in 1974 on Shandar, Dream House 78'17" is the second full-length album by La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela. This first-time US edition reproduces the original gatefold sleeve with beautiful calligraphy by Zazeela and liner notes by Young and French musicologist Daniel Caux. Side one was recorded at a private concert (on the date and time indicated by the title) and features Young and Zazeela's voices against a sine wave drone with Jon Hassell on trumpet and Garrett List on trombone. This work is a section of the longer composition Map of 49's Dream the Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery (begun in 1966 as a sub-section of the even larger work The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, which was begun in 1964 with Young's group The Theatre of Eternal Music). The piece evolves with the oscillator changing pitch and dictating an ornate pattern over the course of a staggering 39-minute performance. Side two is an example of one of the sets of frequencies sustained in the Dream House, the composite sound environments conceived by Young and Zazeela. The composer suggests listening while seated – to experience how the sound interacts with the room and other perceptions of its arrangement – as well as while walking. As Young states, "The frequency ratios are monitored continuously as lissajous patterns on the oscilloscopes and, in spite of the great stability of the oscillators, the phase relationships of the sine waves gradually drift which...

Nomeansno

Wrong

Alternative Tentacles

At last, one of the all-time bat legends, Nomeansno has returned to Alternative Tentacles Records. The entire catalog no less, starting with their most beloved album, Wrong. Using the original all-analog master, from the original mother, as engineered by George Horn, John Wright, and Jello Biafra. Nomeansno formed in a vacuum, in Victoria, British Columbia in 1979 and honing their sounds for years before relocating to Vancouver and releasing eleven albums over an almost forty year career, including a collaborative album with Jello Biafra, and numerous EPs and singles. Originally formed as a two-piece by brothers John and Rob Wright, and later joined by monster guitarist, Andy Kerr. Mixing hardcore punk, dark lyrics, and sophisticated arrangements boarding on prog, Nomeansno was massively influential and widely regarded as the first band to be referred to as “math rock”. Originally released on Alternative Tentacles in 1989, Wrong stands on its own and is still considered to be a much-loved classic. Allmusic called the album a masterpiece and a definitive jazz core album. In 2021, the album was voted by the public’s to win the Canadian Polaris Heritage Prize to honor classic Canadian albums released before the creation of the award. In 2015, drummer John Wright described the album as their “most popular album by a country mile” and to the St. Louis Music Press of Wrong’s success to the rise of alternative music and the success of Nirvana: “That’s where all the buzz about us came from. We were touring throughout the...

Segall, Ty

Three Bells

Drag City

***Ty Segall follows 2022’s acoustic introspection opus Hello, Hi with a deeper, wilder journey to the center of the self. With Three Bells, he’s created a set of his most ambitious, elastic songs, using his musical vocabulary with ever-increasing sophistication. It’s an obsessive quest for an expression that answers back to the riptide always pulling him subconsciously into the depths. Questions we all ask in our own private mirrors are faced down here—and regardless of what the mysterious “Three Bells” mean in the context of the album’s libretto, you can be assured that Ty’s ringing them for himself, and for the rest of us in turn. It’s a growing up and out of your head parable, but the farther out you get, the farther in you go. The two-headed suggestion of 2012’s Twins has grown ever more complex, as the outside/inside world of perception dissolves into a greater world of the senses — all six or seven of them! Since Ty deals in sounds, Three Bells rings with them most of all: sounds signaling the next phase, ringing to keep you stuck, or to set you free, with guitars like voices, questioning and answering the others in their turn.

Phobocosm

Foreordained

Dark Descent

Montréal’s Phobocosm continue their career-spanning collaboration with Dark Descent Records with third full-length Foreordained. Foreordained is an amalgamation of everything that came before it. A perfectly balanced fusion of the murky death metal depravity of debut Deprived, blended with the devastating doom of Bringer Of Drought. Remarkably, this was the plan all along: “When we wrote Deprived, we decided that our first three albums would be a trilogy, so Foreordained is the last chapter of that trilogy. We made a conscious effort to pace all three albums in a similar manner, since we wanted them to be linked—starting with a slow, crushing doom song and concluding with a long, epic, depressive one. It’s not a coincidence,” reveals guitarist Samuel Dufour. As their genre of choice would suggest, Foreordained’s lyrical concepts are about death, as well as the futility of denying one’s inherent mortality. Hence the name of the album; meaning predestined, inevitable: “Since death is unavoidable, the end of all life and of our planet is also unavoidable, so there are apocalyptic themes also. The closer ‘For an Aeon’ is about a possible way the world as we know it could end.” Wrapped in artwork by the inimitable Lauri Laaksonen of Desolate Shrine, Convocation and Pestilent Hex fame, Foreordained is set to be a 2024 death metal highlight.

Psychic Trash

Psychic Trash

Riding Easy

For the better part of the last fifteen years, the duo of Max Dameron (guitar / vox) and Sam Ford (drums / vox) have been too weird and too wild for this lame-ass planet. After enjoying vagabond stints living in Portland, Los Angeles, and Brooklyn, they now call Detroit home. Here they rebuild, out of the scraps and wreckage of the 21st century, something which casts aside any rules or adherence to banal tropes: Psychic Trash. Specializing in the unexpected, Dameron and Ford have wrought an individual sound that’s as much post-Melvins sludge punk as it is futurist prog-metal. Their forthcoming self-titled debut, recorded in 2022 at High-Bias in Detroit, puts on display the fruits of their metamorphosis. From the soaring triumphal fuzz of “Uncanny Valley” or the sweep and thrust of “House Of Butterflies,” their craft is precise—they’re just making up their own shapes to sculpt. Times change and artists mature: under the name Psychic Trash, Ford and Dameron come to Riding Easy Records as veterans turning a fresh page, reinvigorated at the prospect of forging a new path and the beneficiaries of about a decade and a half’s slog through the underground. Psychic Trash’s self-titled debut is unmistakably uncompromising, a little theatrical, intermittently manic, and deceptively broad in style for just how much punk rests beneath.

Demoncy

Black Star Gnosis

Dark Descent

After more than eleven years since the release of Enthroned Is the Night, the legendary beast of Demoncy rears its ugly head once more—in league with Dark Descent Records—and perhaps at the top of its malevolent powers. Led by illustrious founder Ixithra, upcoming fifth album Black Star Gnosis is a true testament to constancy and vision in the name of evil. With this new offering, Demoncy deliver the record most sonically akin to 1999’s Joined In Darkness since the turn of the century. The primitive reverb-laden production seamlessly complements the songcraft of unfathomable darkness, resulting in an inimitable hellish soundscape unique to Demoncy alone. The crushing compositions are accompanied by a commanding subterranean bass frequency, as well as Ixithra’s uniquely coarse vocal performances—which also bear a striking resemblance to the second album. Having formed in 1989, Demoncy are among the eldest US black metal bands in existence.

Catatonic Suns

s/t

Agitated

Brand new album from young Allentown, PA three-piece Catatonic Suns. Their first for Agitated Records. Catatonic Suns comprises eight songs (seven originals, and an Original Sins cover) and has blown Agitated's collective minds. Their previous album was an incredible melding of big-sounding US/UK underground sounds, but this album has taken that fire further. The band have developed more of a hi-fidelity psychedelic rock with a shoegazery shimmer akin to the late '80s / early '90s Pacific Northwest sound in cahoots with the UK sound of early '90s Creation / 4AD. For fans of Screaming Trees, Nirvana, The Verve (early), Slowdive, Ride, Alice In Chains. Songs that soar, these new recordings verge on the epic.

Faith Healer

The Hand That Fits The Glove

Mint

Faith Healer quietly crystallizes on their new album The Hand That Fits The Glove, reshaping their already approachable pop sound into something even more immediate and invigorating. With their 2017 album Try ;-), the duo of Jessica Jalbert and producer/multi-instrumentalist Renny Wilson began stripping away some of the ‘60s chamber pop influences that had informed the earliest Faith Healer material, and these eight new songs continue expanding outward in new directions. It’s a multicolored assortment of richly detailed songwriting that feels surprisingly straightforward, knowingly concealing its complexities always just beneath a sheen of composed cool. The evolution that brought Faith Healer to this point has been ongoing since the project’s earliest days. Jalbert and Wilson had been working together since the time when Jalbert was still performing under her own name in the early 2010’s, transitioning to the Faith Healer moniker on 2015 album Cosmic Troubles and their creative partnership truly solidifying with Try ;-). Those albums were built from the ground up with an insular design, with sole contributors Jalbert and Wilson adding overdubs and sculpting the sound. The core Faith Healer duo expands their membership for the first time on The Hand That Fits The Glove, inviting additional musicians into the picture and filling out the sound with a live band feel. Players from various intersections of Canada’s indie circles played on the album, including contributions from longtime Faith Healer collaborators like Jenni Roberts (who’s also done some time as a touring musician on runs with TOPS...

Manning, Barbara

Charm Of Yesterday…Convenience Of Tomorrow

Ba Da Bing!

Maybe everything has been going to such shit lately because Barbara Manning has been hibernating. A Matador Records mainstay and pivotal indie-rock pioneer of the nineties, Manning has continually written material that matches the quality of the many songs she covers. Both as a performer and a listener, Barbara Manning is a passionate lifer. While her music is compact and succinct, it is steeped in multitudes of genre periods and styles. From SF Seals to her work with Stuart Moxham (Young Marble Giants) to The Go-Luckys, every collaboration carries her genius melodies and lyricism. In a four minute catchy song, Manning can communicate what others require novels to express. Her fans include Yo La Tengo, The Clean, Sonic Youth, Tall Dwarfs, Pavement, Calexico, The Replacements, and even Faust (don’t forget her prolific work as half of free-sound stalwarts Glands Of External Secretion.) With an upcoming tour joining Codeine, Manning felt the time was right for something new. Thus, Charm Of Yesterday…Convenience Of Tomorrow. It compiles a few different periods. Chico Daze is a song cycle that absorbed the dark times and experiences she had in Northern California through the 2010s. The Porch Series cover songs were Manning’s antidote to pandemic madness, and features the music of Elliott Smith, Edgar Winter, Richard & Linda Thompson, Galaxie 500, Bob Dylan and The Handsome Family. Now situated near Los Angeles, where she works as a drama teacher, Manning has been playing live again and recording, channeling her innate sense of theatricality and dynamics...

Bradley, Muireann

I Kept These Old Blues

Tompkins Square

***Muireann Bradley is a young blues, ragtime, roots and folk guitarist and singer based in Ballybofey in County Donegal Ireland. Tompkins Square actually signed her when she was 13, but because of Covid and just “growing up", the process of recording took place over three years. She will be 17 in December, 2023. "This is my first album. Most of these tunes were originally recorded by the great blues men and women who were making records from the 1920s and 1930s right up in some cases to the early 1970s. I have also found inspiration for the renditions recorded here in the playing of some of the musicians who began recording this music in the 1960s and later, and who in some cases learned at the feet of the greats. Many of these guitarists played pivotal roles in the 1960s blues revival and subsequent 'rediscovery' of many of the greats of country blues. I grew up steeped in these old blues in the hills overlooking the valley of the River Finn just outside the town of Ballybofey in County Donegal. My father would play this music constantly at home and wherever we went in the car and talk about it endlessly whether anyone was listening or not, telling stories about the lives of these musicians as if they were legend, mythology or the evening news. My father could of course play all this stuff on guitar, I remember watching him when I was very young and thinking 'I want to...

Bertucci, Lea

Of Shadow and Substance

Cibachrome Editions

***Acclaimed NYC experimental musician Lea Bertucci explores dissonance, drone and dynamics with two new longform compositions for strings, electronics, harp and percussion on Of Shadow and Substance. “More so than any of my other music, I don’t feel that these works belong to me,” Bertucci writes. “There is something about them that is beyond myself as an individual and provides, if anything, a brief glimpse into what it is to be human in what feels like these waning days of the Anthropocene.” Working with instrumentation in the ancient “just intonation” tuning structure (in which notes are spaced exclusively at whole-number ratios of frequencies) and a textural approach to composition, even commonly-heard timbres such as cello, harp and double bass in Of Shadow and Substance are afforded a sense of deep, ancestral knowing. The record opens with “Vapours”, whose contemplative, semi-improvisational, interflowing lines of acoustic instrumentation swell and expand like the passage of time, as if revealing an ancient, eternal memory, old as humanity itself. Its spacious, mutable open strings and droning harmonies do not favour a soloist or even any single melody, but instead blur and coalesce into one entity, drifting from consonance to discordance in harmonic clusters. A dizzying middle section gives rise to a sense of panic, pulling the strands of languid, drifting vapours into a volatile tumult before resettling into a misty, atmospheric trance-state. Bertucci writes: “A “vapor” is a molecule that exists on the verge between a liquid, gaseous or solid state, and the archaic term...

Guided By Voices

Nowhere To Go But Up

GBV Inc

This record is massive and amazing. Nowhere To Go But Up is Guided By Voices’ third album of 2023 (and thirty-ninth overall) and is a sprawling, wild adventure. With virtually no choruses and just two repeated lyrics in forty minutes, GBV is audacious and unafraid. One of the most fully realized works that Guided By Voices has created, Nowhere To Go But Up showcases an expert rock band at the top of their game. The band is on a roll and unstoppable. Following their monumental 40th Anniversary Celebration in Dayton, Ohio, GBV begins their fifth decade with a bang!

Dream Unending & Worm

Starpath

20 Buck Spin

In both 2021 and 2022, Dream Unending and Worm releases closed out the year at 20 Buck Spin. For 2023, to complete the year-end trifecta, the two doomed titans now appear together on one towering release of cosmic duality, Starpath. With both bands dropping major works back to back in the previous two years, they became intrinsically linked in the imaginations of the fanbases. And while musically they almost couldn’t be farther apart, the foundational points when exhumed of the Earth, have plenty in common. The latest tracks from Dream Unending, “So Many Chances” and “If Not Now When” further dissolve the goth / post-punk elements that existed within earlier output, continuing to build upon the spacious free-form drift of extended guitar passages, pensively heavy riffs and Justin DeTore’s thunderous roar. Phil Swanson, who appeared as guest clean vocalist on Song Of Salvation, returns again here. These two extended pieces represent the most realized incarnation yet of where Derrick Vella and Justin DeTore are steering the ship. Worm, as they are now known for, continue to be an ever shape-shifting entity of pure virtuosic blackness. “Ravensblood” embraces vampyric black metal with icy keys and eerie cemetery melodies. The chillingly atmospheric “Midwinter Tears” invokes a snow covered gothic mood and side ender “Sea Of Sorrow” encapsulates the necromantic shred of lead guitarist Wroth Septentrion over Phantom Slaughter’s idiosyncratic black doom and immortally haunted crypt invocations. Two bands, two unique approaches, a chasmic spectrum of light from radiant impassioned creation to...

Cruciamentum

Obsidian Refractions

Profound Lore

Eight years following their debut album Charnel Passages—which was one of the most anticipated death metal debuts of current canon—US-via-UK abyssic death metal contingent Cruciamentum have finally emerged with their sophomore album Obsidian Refractions. Now more commanding than ever with a formidable new lineup, Obsidian Refractions sees Cruciamentum deliver their most advanced, demanding and overpowering work yet. Taking everything in the band’s death metal paradigm to the next sonic measure beyond anything the band have previously released, this latest release combines the very essence and aesthetic of ancient cult death metal while encapsulating the dynamic, complex, next-level affectations relevant in today’s death metal landscape. The darkness and resonating unequivocal, uncompromising evil and magnitude surrounding Obsidian Refractions also builds upon the band’s aura of dark death metal majesty, combined with the progressive, savage and complex-yet-aggressive substance of the album through the unrelenting and ever tectonic-shifting riff assault. Witness a modern death metal monument unparalleled.

Foetal Juice

Grotesque

Gore House Productions

***Prepare for a violent and relentless assault on your senses as Manchester's very own death metal behemoths, Foetal Juice, unleash their latest sonic monstrosity, Grotesque. With a sound that pays homage to early Death Metal and Grindcore legends, Foetal Juice is back with their signature blend of aggression, dark humor, and groove that will leave you gasping for breath. Grotesque is a cataclysmic ode to the very essence of extreme metal, offering listeners a harrowing journey through a maelstrom of brutality. Foetal Juice's lyrical content is as darkly humorous as ever, providing a wickedly entertaining contrast to the musical onslaught. Each track on Grotesque is a violent masterpiece, meticulously crafted to deliver a relentless assault on your senses.

Reed, Mike

The Separatist Party

Astral Spirits

***Long before the pandemic, Mike Reed had been thinking about isolation, haunted by a 2015 story in The New York Times about the death of a resident named George Bell, a hoarder who passed away at home, his body undiscovered for nearly a week. In January 2022, Reed gathered a group of some of the most creative figures in Chicago’s experimental and improvised music community to put sound to those thoughts of forced seclusion: cornetist Ben LaMar Gay, poet and spoken word artist Marvin Tate, and members of Bitchin Bajas (Rob Frye, Cooper Crain, and Dan Quinlivan). Together, they called the new group and its resulting album The Separatist Party, echoing the loner persona all six musicians transmit at times. It’s the first installment of a three-album cycle involving a varied cast of musicians, dealing with themes of inner and outer human isolation. The six musicians coalesced into an exciting new ensemble commingling a wide array of styles and influences into a groove-oriented expression of communion in the face of crippling solitude. One can glean wisps of Don Cherry’s Organic Music conception, the ecstatic fire of Pharoah Sanders, the cycling minimalism of Terry Riley, the motoric rhythms of Krautrock, the exploratory tones of Sun Ra, and clipped soul of vintage Ethiopian music within The Separatist Party, but no single element arrives wholesale. Mike Reed drums, percussion, Rob Frye tenor saxophone, flute, percussion Cooper Crain guitar, synthesizer Dan Quinlivan synthesizer Marvin Tate vocals Ben LaMar Gay cornet, flugelhorn, percussion

Hamburger, Neil

Presents Seasonal Depression Suite

Drag City

***The curtain rings down on 2023, and so much more, with the proverbial “Opus You Didn’t Know You Were Waiting For”—a new musical from Erik Paparozzi and Gregg Turkington—and the first-ever Drag City Christmas/Holiday album—Neil Hamburger Presents Seasonal Depression Suite. Through the lens of various guests stuck in a perfectly average chain-hotel during the holiday season, wallowing in self-pity and paranoia, reliving personal catastrophes both real and imagined, or simply trying to use the hotel vending machine. Influenced by everything from Thom Bell to Tommy to the trollish misery of Trip Advisor reviews, Seasonal Depression Suite provides another entry in the sprawling satirical critique of America that Turkington has been engaged in with his multifarious enterprises and collaborations since the early 90s. Features an all-star cast including: Neil Finn (Split Enz, Crowded House, Fleetwood Mac), Annabella Lwin (Bow Wow Wow), Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls), Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, acclaimed singer/ performance artist Puddles Pity Party, voice actress Natalie Peyser, J.P. Hasson (Pleaseeasaur), enigmatic vocalist (and Frank Sinatra’s granddaughter) A.J. Lambert, Paparozzi himself and, of course, Neil Hamburger.

Vastum

Inward To Gethsemane

20 Buck Spin

***ON LIMITED BLOOD RED / SILVER MERGE VINYL!!! Four years and one pandemic on from Orificial Purge, Vastum, the longest running band on the 20 Buck Spin roster, offers up its fifth bludgeoning document of psychic malaise and lost faith with Inward To Gethsemane. As before, the abject disgust unsparingly captured in Vastum’s unique approach continues to drape the music with an aura of discomfiting unease. The cavernous density Vastum has made a core element of its discography remains as inhuman as ever, continuing to delve into darker atmospheres, yet never devolving into ambient murk; on the contrary it’s always punishing and with a fearsome momentum. The distinctively harrowing dual vocal attack of Daniel Butler and Leila Abdul-Rauf appears throughout Inward; the possessed narrators of Vastum’s hellish underworld. Eight minute album closer “Corpus Fractum” manifests a transformative and even experimental side of the band musically and vocally, while sustaining the characteristic merciless power they are revered for across its five albums. Between the sporadic but legendary live performances and a worshipped discography of modern era true death metal, Vastum has become a torchbearer of the grisly and grotesque underground, both within its native Bay Area and well beyond. Inward To Gethsemane carves another notch in Vastum’s totem of deviance.

Carlton Melton

Turn To Earth

Agitated

Northern California psychedelic sorcerers Carlton Melton are brain surfers, mind trippers—“psychlists,” if you prefer. The band will take your head for a ride, occasionally rushing at superluminal speeds through a wormhole or gliding softly on a gentle breeze in a leafy glade. Sometimes your brain needs to rage, and sometimes it needs to repose. For a decade and a half, the band has yo-yo’ed, almost schizophrenically, between these two modes: walloping space jams with furious guitar solos in one hemisphere of the brain and ethereal, feather-light splashdowns in the other. Not to mention a track here and there that builds from the latter into the former. But with two new releases in 2023, the band has evolved. Whether psych rock or ambient trance, their sound remains driving, organic, and flowing. With the addition of Anthony Taibi (White Manna, DDT), however, the group’s metal freak-outs are Hawkwindier and their droning kraut trances are Spacemen 3-er. In January, the quartet released the playfully spacey Resemble Ensemble, recorded in Taibi’s home studio 3D Light. October now sees the band Turn To Earth, a work with scents of Autumn, a season of death and transition. The cover art evokes a vine-covered, electric crucifix. The sound is, well, earthy but also gritty and striving towards change. The album was recorded in Fall 2022 and now harvested in Fall 2023. Phil Becker (Terry Gross, Pins Of Light) contributed drums and percussion to a few tracks on Turn To Earth, recording the album at El Studio in...

Todd, Pat & The Rankoutsiders

Sons Of The City Ditch

Dog Meat Records

A resurgent Dog Meat Records is thrilled and proud to release a new album by a resurgent rock'n'roller and an old friend, Pat Todd and his band Tje Rankoutsiders. The seventh album by LA's finest rock'n'roll band comes some 36 years after the label's first dalliances with Pat, back when he fronted the legendary Lazy Cowgirls. The new album shows that Pat has lost none of his spark, that his voice and songwriting have only gotten stronger, and that he's got another killer band behind him, one that mixes classic '70s punk rock roots with country, blues and rock'n'roll in a manner that sits somewhere between Exile on Main Street and LAMF. The new album is highlighted as usual by Pat Todd's fantastic songs. A prolific writer with an eye on life in the margins—whether they be in small towns or the big sprawling city he has called home for 40 years—Todd routinely hits the mark where youth and the advancement of age find common ground in alienation and wilfulness. Pat knows that rock’n’roll is not necessarily a young person's game, and nor is it a glamourous one; the name he gave this band accurately points to where he and they are coming from. New originals like 'All We Have To Show', the horn-riffing rocker 'Living In A World of Hurt' and the raucous country-folk punker 'Goodbye to the World' are up there with anything he has ever written, and the Rankoutsiders play them even better than ever. Indeed, a...

Ex Everything

Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart

Neurot Recordings

Our world has been gradually falling apart. This may seem like a bleak point of view, but the collapse being witnessed inspired post-mathcore outfit Ex Everything as they created their eruptive debut Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart. “Everything around us–politically, socially, environmentally—seems to be stretching and breaking,” says guitarist Jon Howell. “Our record sits in that terrifying place where you’ve been watching it happen.” The Bay Area quartet boasts current and former members of Kowloon Walled City, Early Graves, Mercy Ties, Blowupnihilist, Less Art and others, but listeners shouldn’t mistake this for a short-term project or side band. This is a priority, every member focused and committed, and it only takes a few minutes with the album to understand how serious they are. “This band is completely its own thing,” says Howell. “It addresses the part of us that wants to write fast, chaotic, knotty, messy, pissed off music.” Started initially in 2018 between Howell and bassist Ben Thorne, drummer Dan Sneddon joined in 2019, solidifying the core of the band. After going through the usual growing pains, spiked with a global pandemic, they recruited vocalist Andre Sanabria who understood what the band needed and delivered it with a fierce dedication. Cut to the band heading into Sharkbite Studios with Scott Evans—whose engineering credits include Yautja, Town Portal and Ghoul—and the band was finally able to hear what they’d accomplished. Slow Change Will Pull Us Apart is a near-perfect fusion of Dischord-influenced math rock and noisecore, a nuanced...

Scream

DC Special

Dischord

***Scream formed in 1979. Drummer Kent Stacks, bassist Skeeter Enoch Thompson and the brothers Pete and Franz Stahl attended school together in Bailey’s Crossroads, Virginia, when they began to discover the punk and new wave scene in DC and the provocative power of making music. Like most of the punk bands in DC, they were influenced by the Bad Brains, but their rock and roll sensibilities set them apart. In 1982, they went into Inner Ear Studio with Ian MacKaye and Eddie Janney to record Dischord's first full length album, Still Screaming. Scream followed this with a second full length album, This Side Up, in 1984. The band toured throughout the US and were one of the first US hardcore bands to tour Europe and the UK. In 1987, they released Banging the Drum, which was recorded at both Southern Studios in London and Inner Ear. In 1988, No More Censorship was released on reggae label RAS records. Scream returned to Dischord to release Fumble in 1993. They made a few line-up changes along the way, including the addition of their friend Harley Davidson on second guitar, and, when Kent Stacks left the band to start a family, they asked a young local drummer, Dave Grohl, to take over. After a number of years with "the Scream team," Dave went on to join Nirvana and form The Foo Fighters. In 1996, at a Christmas reunion show, Kent Stacks returned as Scream’s drummer; the show was recorded and released as the...

Meshlir, Delia

Bring Back The Light

Ba Da Bing!

Delia Meshlir presents her new album, Bring Back The Light, which is her second release on Ba Da Bing Records. On the Swiss artist’s new record, Meshlir expands her sound to skillful new levels, with woodwinds and synthesizer adding to her guitar playing. It was recorded in Switzerland’s Alps, as well as at the illustrious Figure 8 Studios in Brooklyn, NY. Grief can open a window to the past. Nostalgia whelms, and childhood memories surface. While making Bring Back The Light, Meshlir struggled with the loss of her grandmother and the severed ties she felt with her family. The phrase “bring back the light” served as a mantra, manifesting with a return to authenticity and a celebration of healing. For Light, Meshlir reunited with the piano, an instrument she’s played since she was eight. She explains, “It was on the piano that I learned to compose and create worlds that transcribed my emotions. I felt the need to return to what I did as a child, alone in my room.” Dissolving judgment and embracing desires, Meshlir sparked a needed light within her to create the record. Basic tracks done, Meslir expanded instrumentation; the final masters exploring a range of sounds, from ’70s psychedelic rock to ’80s inspired tracks heavy with sax and synth. “I wanted different textures of the instruments and effects I used to immerse you into each and every song,” she says. “I love when music is already saying what the lyrics are going to tell, when...

Reverence To Paroxysm

Lux Morte

Dark Descent

Forming in 2020 and with a split and live album already under their belts, Mexico City’s Reverence To Paroxysm, unveil their debut album Lux Morte via Dark Descent Records. Taking a viciously old school approach with disgusting riffs contorting upon pulverizing drums, this macabre descent into decay shall grip one from the very earliest moments. Gurgling vocals spew eldritch slime upon the meaty instrumentals, with thick bass lines giving a chunky low end to the sound. Taking all of the most morbidly revolting elements of underground death metal, Reverence To Paroxysm bludgeons their way into the skull with fleshy hammer blows. The talents of frontman Antimo Buonnano, previously from death-grind legends Disgorge, among many others, brings a veteran element to the band, injecting their abhorrent legacy into his latest involvements. The slower moments will drag one through the sepulchral dirt while more upbeat assaults thrash the meat from the bone like a bladed whip of sonic poison. The gloomy dynamics, visceral hooks and brutal execution will mercilessly execute all in their path and only a fool would not to submit to Reverence To Paroxysm. Eerie soundscapes entwine with putrescent primitive pounding, giving a rancid and yet atmospheric listen. The more one delves into this record, the more subtle nuances will be found scattered throughout, adding texture and detail while falling into the monstrously cataclysmic feel of the entire piece, all very naturally. Although an odiously primal energy is draped across this entire record, there are some very cleverly placed and...

Kontusion

s/t

Sentient Ruin Laboratories

***East Coast raw death metal/punk savages Kontusion finally release their pulverizing debut self-tiled demo on vinyl, CD and cassette (reissue) via Sentient Ruin, in the wake of its original 2022 self-release on tape and digital formats. Upon release the four-track, seventeen-minute slab of necrotized terror saw the duo of drummer Chris Moore (Repulsion, Coke Bust) and of vocalist, guitarist and bassist Mark Bronzino (ANS, Mammoth Grinder) revel into a gore-splattered, chaos-torn disfiguration of lo-fi, blown out primitive death metal and punk-infused carnage reminiscent of (and influenced by) 80's and 90's bands like Terrorizer, Napalm Death, Discharge, and Convulse. The four skull-crushing tracks see Kontusion regress to a state of demented, feral abandon, incorporating influences from raw punk and hardcore to deconstruct death metal and reduce it to a mangled and scattered pulp reeking of terror and shrouded in destruction. Single-sided LP pressing housed in silkscreened jackets.

Gravesend

Gowanus Death Stomp

20 Buck Spin

The dark, seedy underworld of New York City once again emerges as the cityscape is tainted by sewage, crack smoke and the trade of flesh. The streets, once bustling with life, permeate with the grotesque and filth-ridden chaos of yesteryear. Among these harsh realities, within the walls of the dimly lit alley ways, a stench reeks of bodily fluids and rat feces. On the subway platforms, desperate souls engage in random acts of violence on one another over a few measly bucks. The East River runs a sickly green and the city’s hue mirrors the shadows cast by these illicit endeavors. Amid this unsettling somber reality a soundscape to capture the horror is now realized in the form of Gravesend’s second album. The new album Gowanus Death Stomp compounds the cruelty displayed on 2021 debut Methods Of Human Disposal into an ever more gritty and primal barrage of violence. At the crossroads of criminal depravity and urban malaise, Gravesend utilize many tools of the trade. Black / death / grind / war metal all meld seamlessly into a tar pit of scathing back-alley sadism and acid-tongued vocals. Like a newly found corpse down by the docks, the smell of decomposition is wafting out of every track on Gowanus Death Stomp. And as with NYC’s underground legends from Cro-Mags to Swans to Type O Negative, Gravesend embodies the pulse of the city, even as that pulse bleeds out on the concrete.

Left Cross

Upon Desecrated Altars

Profound Lore

Emerging in 2015 with a uniquely hostile brand of war charged death metal, Virginia’s Left Cross quickly established themselves as a merciless live act seemingly incapable of restraint. Forging and refining their sound over several releases, the band continued their relentless assault while losing none of their murderous intent. Now veterans of countless campaigns, they return to unleash their sophomore effort, Upon Desecrated Altars, under the banner of Profound Lore Records. A cacophonous offering, Upon Desecrated Altars joins grotesque melodies with an inhuman vehemence that forgoes any ambiguity. Little to no respite can be found as each track builds upon the devastation of the last, ultimately rising to a crescendo of conquest. With a salvo of blistering solos, thunderous percussion and infernal commands, Left Cross declares victory and marches onward.

Niecy Blues

Exit Simulation

Kranky

South Carolina singer and producer Niecy Blues describes her songwriting process like an undertow: “I feel a strange pull, and let it carry me, following swirling leaves… whole days roll by, forgetting about the body.” Their full-length debut, Exit Simulation, captures this sense of deep-rooted divination, cycling between simmering ballads, ghosted R&B, downtempo gospel, and looped vocal improvisations—often within the same track. The title is taken from a science fiction novel she read during the purgatory of the pandemic, alluding to a dimensional ideation of departure—“the permission to imagine leaving.” Recorded in her current home of Charleston, she characterizes the album’s mood in terms both reflective and raw: an exploration of things suppressed, foundations beginning to crack, “talking myself off a ledge.” The music of Niecy Blues transposes reverie and reckoning into emotive devotionals of keys, guitar, bass, synth, and bewitched voice, steeped in sacred atmospheres gleaned from a youth spent in a religious Oklahoma household: “My first experience with ambient music was church—slow songs of worship, with delay on the guitar… even if you don’t believe, you feel something.”

Thanamagus

Lie In Wait

Carbonized

***Three years after their debut demo, Thanamagus return with unstoppable death metal power on Lie in Wait. Recorded by Charlie Koryn (Ascended Dead, Chthonic Deity, Negative Prayer) at The Underworld Studios in Portland, Oregon. Mixed and mastered by Damien Herring (Blood Incantation, Horrendous, Witch Vomit) at Subterranean Watchtower Studios. Artwork by Yuri Kahan (Cerebral Rot, Funebrarum, Trepanation) Five song single-sided 12" with Eetched B-Side. Vinyl housed in matte-finished single LP jacket with polybag. Double-sided insert and download card Included. Shrink-wrapped jewel case CD comes with eight-page booklet.

V/a

Brown Acid - The Seventeenth Trip

Riding Easy

Lucky number seventeen? Believe it. Those at Brown Acid have been scouring the highways and byways of America for even more hidden stashes of psych / garage / proto-punk madness from the so-called Aquarian Age. There’s no flower power here, though—just acid casualties, rock stompers and major freakouts. As always, the songs have been officially licensed, and all the artists get paid. Some samples of this trip include: Stone Hedge were a seven-piece rock band out of Michigan with a penchant for Creedence and anthropomorphism. “Smokey Bear” is their 1972 tribute to the official mascot of the U.S. Forest Services—not to mention the A side of their sole single—and it recalls the kind of organ-drenched swamp jam that soundtracked many a Burt Reynolds flick back in the day. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, may not be known as a cultural mecca, but they did produce Truth & Janey. This deadly hard rock trio delivered their holy grail full-length, No Rest For The Wicked, back in 1976. “Around and Around” is a Chuck Berry cover that originally appeared on a 1973 single the band released under the earlier name Truth. Originally released in 1973, “High School Letter” is the debut single from San Diego rock squad Glory. This infectious bonehead cruncher features future Beat Farmer Jerry Raney and the original rhythm section of Iron Butterfly in bassist Greg Willis and drummer Jack Pinney. Glory is what they got up to after their former bandmates left for L.A.’s garden of Eden. “Jack the...

Nervous Gender

Music From Hell

Dark Entries

Nervous Gender’s legendary synthpunk LP Music From Hell burbles up from infernal depths to resurface on Dark Entries! Confrontational, unhinged, and unabashedly queer, Music from Hell is an unholy grail for fans of the strangest underbellies of post-punk, minimal synth, and early industrial music, and is presented here newly remastered and on expanded double LP. Nervous Gender (de)formed in LA in 1978 at the hands of Phranc, Gerardo Velaquez, Edward Stapleton, and Michael Ochoa. Phranc, the androgynous embodiment of the band’s name, left in 1980. Following her departure, a wide cast of LA freaks would find themselves drawn into the band’s orbit, including Alice Bag of the Bags, Paul Roessler of the Screamers, the Germs’ Don Bolles, and an 8-year old drummer named Sven Pfeiffer. In 1980, Nervous Gender appeared on the seminal Live at Target compilation alongside Factrix, uns, and Flipper. With the band’s notoriety cemented, Music from Hell followed in 1981 on Subterranean Records (as no LA label would touch this material). Side A, dubbed “Martyr Complex”, presents a more punk-forward sound with live drum salvos and slabs of aggressive synth. These twitchy, unsettling shockers ooze with the kind of snotty misanthropy that will endear them to fans of the Screamers or Crass. Side B, known as “Beelzebub Youth”, is a live performance the band labeled "an electronic bruto-canto dissertation on the banality of spiritual transcendence." Mutant melodies cede way to synthesized clangs, whirs, bleeps, manipulated tapes, and howls of despair. In addition to all the material from...

Superchunk

Misfits & Mistakes: Singles, B-Sides and Strays 2007 - 2023

Merge

***Misfits & Mistakes: Singles, B-sides & Strays 2007–2023 is Superchunk’s fourth singles compilation, a massive, 4-LP (or 2-CD) collection covering their triumphant return from hiatus. The amount of ground covered within its gorgeous packaging is staggering: 50 songs, 16 of which are on physical media for the first time, sourced from out-of-print releases, digital singles, compilations, and more—a vital piece of the Superchunk canon. Featuring extensive liner notes by Mac McCaughan (with additional notes from Laura Ballance), Misfits & Mistakes tells the story of each release, from why they chose to cover songs by The Misfits, The Cure, Destiny’s Child, and Bananarama, to working with collaborators like Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee), Jane Wiedlin (The Go-Go’s), Eleanor Friedberger, Damian Abraham (Fucked Up), Norman Blake and Raymond McGinley (Teenage Fanclub), and more!

Circus Devils

Squeeze The Needle

GBV Inc

Formed in 2001, the psychedelic rock trio Circus Devils features vocalist Robert Pollard, backed by brothers Todd Tobias and Tim Tobias. In their first album in six years, and their fifteenth overall, Circus Devils is back with Squeeze The Needle, a funhouse romp full of rock and roll swagger and childlike glee. The pounding psychedelia of the single “The Owl Presents…” harkens back to The Doors. Mixed into the twenty-track song collage are heavy rock thumpers (“Street Toughs,” “Mama’s Got A Brand New Snake”), cryptic interludes (“Age Of Transfusion”), and pretty acoustic pieces (“Difficult Dreamer,” “The Joke is Over”).

Divine Horsemen

Bitter End Of A Sweet Night

In The Red

The renaissance of Divine Horsemen—which began in 2021 with In The Red’s release of Hot Rise Of An Ice Cream Phoenix, the legendary Los Angeles punk band’s first release in 33 years—continues with a thrilling and unexpected new album, Bitter End Of A Sweet Night. The new sixteen-track collection again features the band’s co-founding members, singers-songwriters Chris Desjardins (better known as Chris D.) and Julie Christensen, and the core members of the ferocious Hot Rise band—guitarist / co-writer Peter Andrus (a member of the group’s late ’80s lineup), bassist Bobby Permanent and X’s nonpareil drummer DJ Bonebrake. The sound is filled out by Green On Red and Dream Syndicate keyboardist Chris Cacavas (who appeared on the 1984 Chris D. / Divine Horsemen album Time Stands Still) and classically trained violinist Elizabeth Wilson. Desjardins produced the album. Divine Horsemen’s dramatic In The Red bow and a 2020 archival set of club performances from 1985 and 1987, issued by Feeding Tube Records, reacquainted listeners with their stormy power and eclectic roots-punk musicianship, which diversified the searing approach taken by Desjardins’ previous band, foundational L.A. punk unit the Flesh Eaters. (Christiansen had previously regrouped with her former husband and musical partner Desjardins on I Used to Be Pretty, the 2018 album that reunited the 1980 “all-star” Flesh Eaters lineup.) Reaction to the group’s rebirth was rapturous. Jaime Pina of Punk Globe called Hot Rise Of An Ice Cream Phoenix “brilliant,” adding, “The music is lush with both acoustic and electric guitars and the...

Wayfarer

American Gothic

Profound Lore

Wayfarer is the pre-eminent Western American metal band. Comprised of four black clad players from Denver, Colorado, the band’s sound draws from the deep wells of black metal, gothic country, and Americana, creating a thunderous and uniquely American genre of metal all to their own. After ten years of existence, the band presents American Gothic —a defining statement of Western heavy music that explores the dark soul of the nation itself. This time working alongside accomplished producer Arthur Rizk (Kreator, Soulfy) the band brings an aggressive and expansive vision to life in a new full length album. Led by powerful riffing, bleak melodic sensibilities, and pointed songwriting, this record serves as a funeral for the American dream. Caked in dust, and buried deep in blood and gunpowder, it paints a brutal and beautiful portrait, and sees Wayfarer elevate their unique and genuine brand of metal to new heights.

Ragana

Desolation's Flower

Flenser

Ragana is a duo whose members alternate duties on drums, guitar, and vocals to produce some of the most unique and affecting dark music in metal today. The two-piece came together in 2011 in the DIY punk scene of Olympia, WA and are now based in Olympia and Oakland, CA. In their time together so far, Ragana have self-released five albums and teamed up with genre-favourite Thou for a split release in 2018. The following year, Ragana released their heralded We Know That The Heavens Are Empty EP and have quietly been working on new music ever since. The band signed with The Flenser in late 2022 and now present their forthcoming debut album for the label, Desolation’s Flower. On Desolation’s Flower, Ragana draws upon a number of influences from the flora and fauna of their Pacific Northwest origins to the darkly nostalgic folk of Mt. Eerie and, yes, their Olympian forebears Wolves In The Throne Room, synthesising them into an experimental, highly idiosyncratic take on black metal. Held together by an intense focus on raw emotion and haunting atmospherics, Ragana shifts seamlessly from tender, mesmerising vocal harmonies to piercing, heart-ripping screams and back again, yielding music that is heavy, beautiful and punishing all at once. Written over the past few tumultuous years, Desolation’s Flower is the band’s most devastating effort to date, containing seven incantations of loss, rage, pain and hope. Expertly engineered by the masterful Nicholas Wilbur at the Unknown Studio in Anacortes, Washington (Planning For Burial, drowse,...