“It’s Pink Floyd turned up to fifty”, my mate said. I’d never heard Waters or Gilmour roar with the same ferocity as Steff, lead vocalist of Sheffield quartet Ba’al, but the band do display a level of progression and turn of pace that would fit in with the Prog legends’ template. The phenomenal power and blackened hostility of the music, however, leaves any such comparisons in the shade.Continue reading
On the back of announcing their first headline tour of the USA this spring with Rivers of Nihil, Conjurer has announced February 2019 tour dates including shows in the UK and an appearance at Complexity Fest, in the Netherlands. The festival also features Zeal & Ardor, The Ocean, and Shining. Conjurer continues to tour behind their acclaimed album Mire, released last March via Holy Roar Records.Continue reading
To say that HoldTight PR has a whole cohort of bands that sit very much within the Ghost Cult world is to state the bleedin’ obvious. With a specialism in noisy, discordant, progressive, sludgy, punky and cutting edge, we’re easy bedfellows. Added to that, head honcho Lisa Coverdale is a potty-mouthed whirling dervish with a wicked sense of humour and a way with words that lures you into checking out her bands with a glint of excitement before you’ve even hit play. We’re delighted to continue to work with her to give exposure to a whole host of the modern underground scenes’ best new up-and-coming bands. We’re also pretty chuffed to be hosting her albums of the year post, too…Continue reading
Several years ago I reviewed a local gig containing a set by Manchester-based post-Hardcore band Knifecrimes, and enjoyed a chat with their fresh-faced East Anglian guitarist. These days Joe Clayton still classes Manchester as home but is now a sought-after producer and mastermind of the multi-faceted, enigmatic Pijn, whose first album proper Loss (Holy Roar) is a pulsing ball of creativity.Continue reading
In the wake of 2016’s Herb Your Enthusiasm (Black Bow), Wigan’s Boss Keloid established themselves as one of the best Metal bands in the UK. New album Melted on the Inch (Holy Roar) make a quantum leap into new, genuinely progressive territory yet still creating a contender for album of the year.Continue reading
The only certainties in this life are death, taxes and Holy Roar not releasing bad records. With both Conjurer and Rolo Tomassi already blazing a trail this year, Holy Roar’s next world-beater comes to us from Denmark’s Møl, who may have just about perfected the whole Shoegaze/Black Metal trend with Jord (Holy Road Records), a record whose delicate intricacies are as emotionally devastating as its grossly incandescent rage.Continue reading
Back again with my old friends at Holy Roar Records, and this time it is the début from Cologne’s Giver. Here we have a band of real talent willing to go beyond the usual restraints of the genre; Where The Cycle Breaks is not just another Hardcore album.Continue reading
Well, bugger me! Holy Roar Records just continue to bring us some of the best underground heavy music around at the moment. I had previously reviewed The Barn from Idylls from the label and the quality is matched and even bettered here on Atrophy which is the début album from Windsor, Ontario’s Minors. The overriding feeling here is a sense of oppression and being pinned to my seat as the band dealt out wave upon wave of hardcore Sludge drenched in feedback, a stylistic choice which was very prevalent throughout. Continue reading
I first saw Croydon bludgers Slabdragger three years ago and, having been completely flattened by their bone-crunching resonance, immediately bought first album Regress (Holy Roar Records). Despite it being good, I subsequently felt they were a band to be witnessed rather than merely heard.That all changes here. Sophomore long-player Rise of the Dawncrusher (Holy Roar Records) is a mammoth, sprawling journey through the black holes of the cosmos, an achievement all the more amazing given the setbacks the band has suffered in recent years. The musical twangs of opener ‘Mercenary Blues’ carry enough portent to warn of the forthcoming walls of forest-levelling sound and, despite the melodic hollers of Yusuf Tary and Jim Threader, the ensuing riff grabs your soul and sticks it in a blender. Stoner-Sludge in tone and feel yet Psychedelic in its warping terror, the difference here is the wonderfully enlivening, Progressive nature of the linking passages: versatile verses with vocal switches between Blackened screams and guttural roars, still underpinned by the cavernous yet occasionally cascading stellar pathway.
Whatever Slabdragger had before, the ability to flick such a heavy pattern through the chords has multiplied their appeal tenfold. With four of the five tracks here easily surpassing the ten-minute mark, the listener is in for the long haul, yet will not for a second feel dragged along. The elongated coda of ‘…Blues’ possesses an electrifying emotion that rips apart the fabric of the template; while the segue into the bulldozing, YOB-tinged ‘Evacuate!’ pulverises the ears and introduces a rampant, occasionally nasty Jazz-infused groove. Severin Black’s drum pattern following the ominous intro of ‘Shrine of Debauchery’ is simple yet potent, hauling Tary’s terrifying bassline in its wake and setting the tone for the claustrophobia of the swelling, pulsating body.
And this is merely halfway in. The album’s last two tracks cover 33 minutes and crush so comprehensively they create a vacuum, riding and bouncing off planets as they travel along. The beauty of this second slab of vinyl is the paradoxical compatibility between its extremes: the implosive power of ‘Dawncrusher Rising’s opening gambit begins so steadily, growing almost unnoticeably to a gravestone-cracking rut whilst remaining compelling, hypnotic, masterful. The monstrous Blues of closer ‘Implosion Rites’, meanwhile, is Cream slowed to a crawl and delivered by Zeus, Poseidon and Hades: the slowed rhythms fulminating and muscular, the harmonised vocals Ozzy-esque yet resplendent, the pedal effects gradually halting the earth’s rotation.
Quite simply, and to retain the mythical analogy, this is Atlas: utterly despondent, pissed off with his fate, and deciding to fling the planets around after a few beers and a reefer. Rise of the Dawncrusher is fucking incredible, an unmissable masterpiece of both its genre and its times.
9.5/10.0
PAUL QUINN
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From across the international underground, titanic darlings of doom Conan and Bongripper have collected in glorious exaltation of distortion to deliver a merciless barrage of sludge and stone, with a head-splitting synergy sure to send shock waves throughout their respective scenes.Continue reading