2021

Album Review: Crawl Below – “9 Mile Square” 8/10 (Doomgaze)

It definitely takes a special skill to make music which manages to feel beautiful while maintaining a strong sense of melancholy. Perhaps one of the most obvious examples is The Cure, whose dark and mournful brand of post-punk is often deeply moving at the same time. In the 90s, Type O Negative took that doom and gloom to even further extremes, whilst still allowing soaring and ethereal melodies to poke through. To give a more a recent example, even Pallbearer’s stellar Forgotten Days LP from last year had some genuinely uplifting moments amid the band’s weighty doom and their lyrical meditations on grief. If you like any of those bands, then chances are you’ll enjoy Crawl Below’s 9 Mile Square. […]

2021

Album Review: For Your Health – “In Spite Of” 9/10 (Post Hardcore)

There’s been a fair bit of buzz around For Your Health since their inception in 2018. A large part of this is no doubt down to their impressive work ethic. In 2019, they played some 100 shows, releasing an impressive split with Shin Guard and an EP in the same year. Last year they had even more shows planned (apparently at least 160) but these were sadly cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. Of course, hard work is all well and good, but will only get a band so far if the music isn’t there to back it up. Fortunately, the quartet’s debut full-length In Spite Of, like their shorter records before it, definitely delivers on that front. […]

2021

Album Review: Estuarine – “Nyarlathotep” 9/10 (Death Grind)

This album falls into the genre of death grind. And wow is it ever what it was advertised to be. I first thought “Nyarlathotep that’s a mouthful.” So, like the curious person that I am, I did a quick google search of the name of the album, which revealed the origin, Nyarlathotep resides in the hp lovecraft mythos. The epithet for Nyarlathotep being “the crawling chaos” I think it’s a poignant choice for this album title. There are 8 tracks on this beast of an album. The longest being the last at 3 mins. The overall length is 10 minutes. […]

2021

Album Review: Ad Nauseam – “Imperative Imperceptible Impulse” 10/10 (Black/Death)

When we think of the term “avant-garde”, what does that bring to mind? On a definition level, we might think of the ideas of pushing boundaries or rejecting traditional concepts. On a musical level, we usually associate the avant-garde with dissonance and atonality, complex polyrhythms, and envelope-pushing experimentation. We metalheads probably think of Gorguts, or maybe Ulcerate, perhaps Blut aus Nord, or Dodecahedron. Well, get ready folks, because if you didn’t think of Ad Nauseam when you thought of avant-garde, after you listen to Imperative Imperceptible Impulse, you might think of them before anyone else. […]