Wide-eyed confusion and general bewilderment are the most common reactions after laying eyes upon Las Vegas act Spiritworld for the first time. Slayer in Stetsons is usually the next. Yes, the unlikely looking Nevadans might look like the founder members of a Billy Ray Cyrus and Garth Brooks cosplay fan club but their music is a very different beast indeed.
Whenever conversations about thrash metal inevitably turn to the question of, “if the Big Four were a Big Five…”, American acts usually tend to be among the first suggestions. However, when people finally remember Europe exists, the first name mentioned is always the same. Kreator.Continue reading
Just when you thought there were no genres left to combine, up pops Ohio act Untamed Land with Scandinavian riffs and a cowboy hat, delivering an album that sounds like the soundtrack to The Good, The Bad & The Ugly if it had been written by Satyricon.
Metallica has paid tribute to Ennio Morricone, who has passed away at age 91. In addition to being an academy award-winning composer for Quentin Tarantino for The Hateful Eight, Morricone is eternally linked to Metallica lore. He composed the track “The Ecstacy of Gold”, from the soundtrack to “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly”, which is the dramatic music that has opened ever Metallica show since 1984. The band also recorded their own full band version of the track for a tribute album, Everybody Loves Ennio Morricone.Continue reading
Wraith sees London-based post-electronic pioneers Teeth Of The Sea taking a step away from the noise inflected menace of their earlier work following the departure of Mat Colegate after 2015’s Highly Deadly Black Tarantula (both Rocket Records). Yet their latest outing feels like the answer to a challenge, of sorts. In its absence, the progressive, playfully experimental composition style (paired with an often unapologetically wry approach to theme) brings to the fore the bands inherently theatrical bent. The result is something akin to the lost soundtrack to a late 90s Indie, cyber-Punk thriller.Continue reading
The world is awash with Heavy Metal supergroups. But the pool of mega-star filled bands that actually delivered anything of real quality, however, is shallow indeed. Luckily, Legend of the Seagullmen might just be one of the weirdest super groups to deliver an album drowning in quality.Continue reading
Haunting post-punks Lowlands released their début album today, Lovers Blessings via Thrill Me Records. Ghost Cult is proud to bring you the full album stream, which you can hear below:Continue reading
There’s a curious opening to All Is Left To See (Temple of Torturous), the third album from Swedish quartet Moloken: the initial vocal a deep breathing exercise over some Post / Sludge atmospherics. The ensuing bellow is not much louder than those harsh inhalations yet is utterly horrific, a blasting roar capable of severing limbs.
That violent yet ethereal background remains largely the album’s template, a bright yet oppressive swell which is given a more sparing yet just as effective Morricone-style jangle in its title track: a throttled, emphysemic delivery waiting for the drums and hissing riffs to join in. There is a real sinister edge here, and no little intrigue due to the creative structures and nature of the sound. When Jakob Burstedt’s drums do fly in it’s with a blistering ferocity and perfect timing, the less fraught passages building their entry expertly.
There is, however, a lack of weight which is partly due to those riffs often being sunk low in the mix: something that a blend of hostility and heart-plucking solemnity largely masks but doesn’t wholly obliterate. The brief running time of just under half an hour is another minor drawback, with three tracks coming in under the two-minute mark and robbing this album’s expected audience of something to get their teeth into; despite the gorgeous, delicate chiming bells of the paradoxically-titled ‘Wreckage’. The coruscating post-hardcore of ‘Seventh Circle’ is the kind of elongated, brutal yet inventive melancholy that this album should have seen more of; its plunking bass reaching into the soul with each pluck of the strings, its building intensity utterly chilling. The rhythm section is the high point of the enigmatic ‘I Dig Deeper’, Burstedt’s magnificent stickwork and Niklas Bӓckstrӧm’s plummeting basslines driving into an oscillating ambience.
It takes a while but, ultimately, All is Left to See is a testament to this unshackled outfit who let their creative juices flow freely, not least through the harrowing cello of the tragic and hair-raising closer ‘Beginning of the End’, to create a highly listenable if occasionally infuriating set. Here, more would indeed have been more.
7.0/10.0
PAUL QUINN
