EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE: Age of Woe – “Gospel of Lies”


Ghost Cult is stoked to bring you the new stand-alone single from Age of Woe’s, “Gospel of Lies”. This is the veteran band’s first new music since their 2016’s An Ill WInd Blowing and kicks off the next chapter in the bands’ history. The death – doom – progressive – sludge band has been gaining steam over the last few years. The band has performed at vanguard metal festivals such as Inferno Metal Festival, Incubate Festival, SWR Barroselas Metalfest, Berlin Swamp Fest, Bloodshed Fest, and Scorched Tundra. “Gospel of Lies” is also the first new song with Keijo Niinimaa (Rotten Sound / Morbid Evils / Goatburner). Jam out to the track now!

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Incubate 2016 Part II: Tilburg, The Netherlands


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An Ocean Of Storms, Susanne A. Maathuis Photography

Part II:

Not many bands can say they played every single day of a four-day festival. Well, Slow Down, Molasses can! The Canadian shoegazers took to the stage at various venues over the weekend. They mostly played songs from their brand new record 100% Sunshine, which you could buy on PINK vinyl (needless to say, we did). Continue reading


Incubate Festival 2016 Part 1: Tilburg, Netherlands


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We’re back at Incubate Festival in the Dutch town of Tilburg to see all of the weird and wonderful this alternative music festival has to offer. Tilburg is in the midst of its last warm summer days and on our way to pick up a ticket we already see a lot of familiar faces. Incubate, we’ve missed you! Instead of having a week-long festival, this year Incubate has split up into three different editions (May/September/December), of which the four-day long September weekend is the biggest. Continue reading


Video: Nothing – Curse Of The Sun, Europen Tour Begins This Weekend


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Post-punk shoegazers Nothing have released a new music video for their track ‘Curse Of The Sun’ from their recent album Tired Of Tomorrow (Relapse). You can watch the video at this link or below:

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Incubate 2016 Line Up Set, Thurston Moore, Deerhoof, YOB, Nothing, Mutilation Rites And More


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Incubate Festival, one of the essential yearly gatherings of music, art, film and other cutting edge in Europe is back in 2016. Continue reading


Incubate Festival Part II: Tilburg, NL


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We’re five days into Incubate Festival and still shivering from the impressive performances of The Melvins, Girl Band and Shining. Ready to watch some more of our favorite bands and discover another handful of new ones, we once again throw ourselves into the lively heart of the city of Tilburg.

Lumerians, photo by Susanne A. Maathuis

Lumerians, photo by Susanne A. Maathuis

Lumerians opens our Friday night in one of the smaller rooms of the immense theatre of Tilburg. The audience has taken a comfortable seat on the wooden tribune that opposes the stage while the band plays a hypnotizing, spacey post-punk with a light 60’s sound to it. They are dressed up as monks in robes of a shimmering, glittery material and behind them play such fantastic psychedelic visuals that we’re too mesmerized to even think about dancing along.

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Grave Pleasures, photo by Susanne A. Maathuis

One big bonus point that comes with having a festival bang in city center is the abundance of good food. Overpriced hamburgers and soggy fries don’t make it on to our menu during Incubate. On our way to Hall of Fame to see Grave Pleasures, we find out that, what previously had been an abandoned industrial park crossed by rusty old train tracks, suddenly houses an atmospherically lit and freely accessible food truck festival. Dinner this weekend: sorted.

When we manage to tear ourselves away from the smell of freshly ground coffee and char-grilled hamburgers, Grave Pleasures, risen from the ashes of Beastmilk, give us a theatrical and captivating performance. Their sound is edgier than before but still has that recognizable apocalyptic feel to it. For a complete change of sound, we head off to Little Devil, where Belgian Associality shows us the fun side of punk with songs about punk granddads and a man who only drinks Jupiler beer.

Converge, photo by Susanne A. Maathuis

Converge, photo by Susanne A. Maathuis

We’re still singing along to the chorus of the beer song when we arrive at the biggest name of the day: Converge. In a relentlessly loud performance, the hardcore punk legends live up to their name and put down one of the best shows of the week. A few hundred people are stage-diving and dancing in the pit as if their punk credentials depend on it. Frontman Jacob Bannon radiates a contagious energy as he belts out hit after hit. Sweaty and exhausted, we call it a night.

Saturday brings about a problem of an entirely different caliber. With so many different venues with each their own selection of beers on tap, we have a bit of a heavy head on our way to the first name on our list. Finnish K-X-P’s melodic, electronic sound with a definite hint of krautrock wouldn’t feel misplaced in the vaults of an abandoned Berlin power plant. However, the wooden beams, high ceilings and stained glass windows in Dudok, create a beautiful contrast to the industrial noises and ghostly sounds of the band. They put on a captivating show that calms our heads and prepares us well for the rest of the night.

 

Extase’s small stage and low ceiling sets the perfect vibe for a loud, no nonsense punk band and this is exactly what we get from Priests. Frontwoman Katie Alice Greer has an incredible stage presence. She parades on stage, screaming, singing and roaring in a skintight, giraffe-patterned suit and manages to give the audience a permanent death stare that would make Courtney Love green with envy. Priests gives us precisely what we go to Incubate for: seeing a relatively unknown act for the first time, who absolutely blows the patches off our jackets.

On the final day of the festival we finally have a sunny day and immediately take advantage of it to watch a show in the Muzentuin, a courtyard of the town’s art academy. We watch Surfer Blood play alternative rock with a lovely summer feel to it, before we decide it’s time to dive back into the loudness and head to Hall of Fame where the hardcore punkers from Jesus Police are tearing the stage to shreds. With so many bands playing at the same time, it’s sometimes tough to decide which ones to go and see and we may have been slightly favorable towards Jesus Police because of their name (it was a tough decision to skip Cocaine Piss later on).

Black Heart Rebellion, photo by Susanne A. Maathuis

Black Heart Rebellion, photo by Susanne A. Maathuis

Melodic post-rockers The Black Heart Rebellion whip us up into a Seventies progressive rock infused dream as they close the night in a ram packed Little Devil. With the imprint of the happy, sweaty faces of the crowd still in the back of our minds, we dash back to Midi to catch the second half of Wire, who have called upon about twenty guitarists from other bands at the festival to join them on stage. In a haze of perfectly orchestrated noise, they temporarily form The Pink Flag Orchestra and perform their 1977 debut album song ‘Pink Flag’ in a playful and legendary conclusion of the festival.

We cool off outside, still a little high from Wire’s brilliant performance, and convince ourselves that, yes, we still have enough spirit and adrenaline to make it to the after party in Extase. Chief Developer of Incubate Joost Heijthuijsen is one of the DJ’s, so within an hour of arrival we are part of a long conga line and attempt to dance to German schlager music. What a way to end a festival! The next day we hear that Neneh Cherry, who closed the festival in the Muzentuin on Sunday, was apparently part of that conga line and had a great time at the after party. She’s 51 years old and we had to agree she definitely beat us all at being the coolest person at the festival that night.

 

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WORDS BY CÉLINE HUIZER

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SUSANNE A. MAATHUIS


Incubate Festival Part I: Tilburg, NL


 

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The first rainy, windy days of September blow in independent music festival Incubate. But you won’t catch us trotting through muddy fields while drinking beer from plastic cups, because this art, music and theatre festival takes place in the lively heart of Tilburg city. Notoriously home to Roadburn Festival, Tilburg proves there’s more to it than just its large music venue 013. Amongst the venues used during Incubate are a church, an old cinema, a theatre and a skate park, alongside a range of bars scattered throughout the town. Each of the bars stick to their own theme; for instance Paradox has mainly jazz and avant-garde artists while Extase is the place to be for rock and psychedelic. Our home base for the week was Little Devil, the infamous metal and punk den of Tilburg.

Art work at Incubate Festival. Photo by Susanne A. Maathuis

Art work at Incubate Festival. Photo by Susanne A. Maathuis

Being a seven-day-long marathon of a festival, Incubate offers an impressive program. Every day you can pick from an incredible range of things to do: you can participate in the music quiz, watch a theatre performance, visit an art exhibition, see a film, do a beer brewing masterclass and hopefully you’ll still have time to watch your favorite bands perform. During the week, the music program doesn’t start until six so there’s plenty of time to explore the town and the entire culture Incubate brings with it.

The Melvins, by Susanne A. Mathuis

The Melvins, by Susanne A. Mathuis

But in the end, music is what we came here for and we didn’t have to wait long for the first excitement to creep in. Punk legends The Melvins played two exclusive shows this week, the first one rolling in on Tuesday. Big Business members Jared Warren and Coady Willis once more joined Dale Crover and King Buzzo for a loud and mesmerizing show at Midi, a former cinema where the comfy red seats are still visible stacked up behind the bar. We wish we could’ve been floating over the stage just so we could constantly watch the drummers captivatingly mirroring each other on a fused double drum set. As Jared Warren leaves the room after ending the last song with a hypnotizing “So long, we’ll never see you again”, Dale Crover pipes up to the microphone, singing “Until tomorrow, tomorrow, there’s another show, tomorrow, it’s only a day-,” Yeah, we were all guilty of singing along.

 

Trying to ignore the lingering realization it is a Tuesday, we pay a late night visit to Dudok and stumble right into Irish post-punk/noise act Girl Band. On the top floor of a former Catholic school, holy figures watch down on us from the stained glass windows as we try to catch a glimpse of singer Dara Kiely through the haze of legs kicking through the air. He’s suffering from a torn ligament and is determined to make up for his lack of running around, which means we mostly has view of an erratically shaking head of blond hair. Despite the religious feel to the location, Girl Band brings about an almost demonic amount of noise. Had it been up to Kiely, he would’ve crowd-surfed right with us in his wheelchair.

The best things at Incubate always happen when you get sidetracked from your plans because you accidentally run into something else. On our way into town to see Dead Neanderthals, we pass the Hall of Fame. This venue is set in a large old building next to abandoned train tracks, which nowadays houses the town’s indoor skate park. After dragging ourselves away from watching the skaters go on with their day as if Incubate is a film playing in the background, we end up in a backroom where Belgian hardcore punkers Daggers are creating the musical equivalent of a Molotov cocktail. In an explosion of noise and distortion, they took our after-dinner apathy and kicked it right up our ass.

Still experiencing aftershocks from the deafening volume in the Hall of Fame, we ended up at the old cinema again, where Dead Neanderthals were tasked with curating the Thursday. They had invited UK noise rockers Three Trapped Tigers to open the night and Norwegian blackjazzers (is that even a word?) Shining to end with a bang. Their own show is nothing less than a wall of sound. Just layer over layer of noise. We hear dark jazz, some metal, some industrial, and all of it blends neatly into a ball of pure awesomeness. When their set is finished, we overhear a guy saying: “Wow, now there’s noise and there is noise.” Sums it up, really.

Shining, by Susanne A. Mathuis

Shining, by Susanne A. Mathuis

Shining shows us exactly how sexy metal can be. Frontman Jørgen Munkeby almost makes you forget there’s an entire band behind him. The rawness in Shining is by now far gone and their music is so rhythmic it’s nearly impossible to stand still and look cool. From the hairstyles and matching black outfits to the technical precision with which all the instruments collide, everything is razor sharp and ever so slick. They put up a theatrical and energetic performance in which Munkeby and his saxophone often take the spotlight. Loud and in your face but, man, so super, super smooth.

Shining, by Susanne A. Mathuis

Shining, by Susanne A. Mathuis

In a haze of sweat and with our hearts still beating in Shining tunes, we stumble outside, only to land in the middle of a gathering. An unplanned gathering, that is. It happens a lot at Incubate. In front of every venue, people meet in the streets. Not only is the entire Tilburg music scene present at the festival, so are a lot of people who only see each other every year at Incubate (and maybe Roadburn). Meeting new people is easy, as “wow, what a show” seems to elicit reactions from pretty much everyone present outside, regardless of the show. It’s hard to think it’s only Thursday and the main part of the festival hasn’t even begun yet. But sleep is for the weak, and the Little Devil doesn’t plan on closing at midnight.

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WORDS BY CÉLINE HUIZER

PHOTOS BY SUSANNE A. MAATHUIS

 


Wire, Ufomammut Added To The 11th Incubate Festival


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Seminal avnt-garde post-punks Wire have been added at the closing act of the upcoming 11th edition of the Incubate Festival on September 20th. Wire will be hosting a special curated event of like-minded bands dubbed DRILL: featuring Wire themselves, Pink Flag Guitar Orchestra, Novella, and Tomanga.

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Italian instrumental doom masters Ufomammut have been added to the September 19th program along with 11Paranoias, Gcu:ll, Vidunder, Hypnos.

Ufomammut, by Hillarie Jason Photography

 

Based in and around the city of Tilburg NL, Incubate has previously announced a plethora of bands, including to separate nights with The Melvins, on September 15th and 16. Overall the fest will host over 300 bands, collaborative visual artists, seminars, underground film, comedy, other events, and a host of vendors at a dozen venues throughout the city. Tickets are on sale now.


Incubate 2014: Re-Revisited


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The Tenth edition of the Incubate Festival, festival celebrated by tens of thousands in Tilburg, closed this weekend after their biggest fest ever. The Ghost Cult Team in Tilburg was at the festival and our reviews are live here on the website. We wanted to to take one more look at this ground breaking, week -long event via the lens of our photographer Susanne A. Maathuis and some of the terrific images she captured. Thanks again also goes to our correspondent Lorraine Lysen for her excellent account of the artists that mattered. Enjoy!

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Incubate Review Part I

Incubate Review Part II

Incubate Review Part III

 

Incubate Festival on Facebook

Susanne A. Maathuis Photography on Facebook

 

 


Incubate Festival- Part III: Live at Tilburg, NL


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Saturday

It’s early evening and The Midi is host to Spindrift, a band who play what can only be called ‘Psychedelic Western Cinematic Rock ‘n Roll.’ Most members of the band are, in fact, wearing cowboy hats, and the audience is having a ball dancing along to these tunes. The vocals are often used as an instrument, creating haunting melodies largely without lyrics. Kirkpatrick Thomas’ vocals are strong, and he sings very well in his falsetto range. The drums are very percussive and are occasionally supported by tambourines and some very intensely played maracas.

Projections are a very important part of Spindrift’s shows: the band is currently touring Spindrift – Ghost of the West, where they play the album that serves as the score to the film. Spindrift have done something like this before, with the 2007 film The Legend of God’s Gun, which was based on their 2002 album by the same name. One big difference between the two film projects is the substance of the films, with The Legend of God’s Gun being a homage to the band’s favourite spaghetti westerns, while Ghost of the West focuses on the past, present, and future of the west.

They played a great new song called ‘Kama Sutra Tiger Attack’.

 

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A good 20 minutes before the show and it is already getting difficult to actually enter the venue; it seems most of Incubate has come to see Wovenhand play. They start off very heavily, and the sound is close to stoner and dark psychedelic. The music is accented by percussive drumming, and features David Eugene Edwards’ characteristic vocals through a condenser microphone. After a couple of songs Edwards’ takes out his banjo for a few songs with a more country feel, before going back to his guitar.

Naturally, the focus of this show is Wovenhand’s latest album, Refractory Obdurate, which was released in April of this year. This album is much heavier in sound than the previous few, and while this means the bearded rhythm section of the band can showcase their excellence, it also meant that a few members of the audience were taken aback by the ferocity of the music.

 

As usual, Edwards puts his heart and soul into his performance, and the show is filled with a tranquil sort of energy which is quite unique to this band.

 

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If I had to summarise a show GOAT in one word it would probably be spellbinding. Luckily, I am allowed to expand upon that, and try to explain just how magical this show is to someone who was not there.

The bare bones of it are as follows:

The band consists of drums, bass, guitar, and singers, and everyone is masked and dressed in an odd assortment of robes. The two singers wear African gowns and masks with feathers, and they dance around the stage with bells, bangles, ribbons, and sticks with feathers.

There is much more to the show however, as the music is an intoxicating blend of all sorts of tribal and folk music with a much heavier psychedelic rock and stoner base. The beats inspire to move and to completely lose yourself in the music, urged on by the shamanistic outfits of the singer and the ritualistic dancing on stage. There is no better time to witness GOAT than late at night, when they fill the darkness with chanting and haunting melodies, and the audience and the singers dance until they drop, or until their ritual is completed, and their spell is released.

GOAT’s new album, Commune, has just come out this September, and is filled with this wondrous spiritual and cultural mixture.

 

 

Sunday:

Sol Invictus (De NWE Vorst) are a British neofolk band who have been playing in a variety of settings since the band’s conception in 1987 by Tony Wakeford. They play good strong emotional songs, laced with a kind of melancholy that only the British can achieve. The bass, percussion, and electric guitar are very good at lending emphasis to the lyrics. The vocals are in a small range but have a great deal of expression. They sometimes seem closer to spoken word recitation than conventional singing. The violin and flute provide the melody that the vocals lack, and the drums lend a very dramatic air to the songs.

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Sol Invuctus also play a few songs form their new album for the first time. This new album, called Once Upon a Time, is out as of 26th of September, and is in the 70s progressive and dark folk genres.

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As we settle down into our seats in the theatre of Tilburg we are welcomed by Marinke, one of the curators for Incubate, who is proud to present Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra. This is one of many incarnations of the project usually called Silver Mt. Zion, whose official band name changes every time someone joins or leaves the band.

This orchestra, which consists of two violins, a bass, a guitar, and a drummer who also plays the organ, plays a mixture of any and all genres of music, including classical, reggae, blues, and stoner. The rhythm section sets the foundation, and the guitar and violins build on it, often with a drone played by guitar or violin and melodies played on top of that with the remaining instruments. The bass does not play the drone, but is in fact very melodic and weaves through the rest of the music. The vocals are often in duets, but this band can also sing five vocal lines at once. Sometimes the female vocals are below the male vocals and this creates a pleasant kind of tension.

Silver Mt. Zion pretty much played the entire 2014 album: Fuck Off Get Free We Pour Light on Everything, and the loud applauding of the audience’s standing ovation called the band back on stage for an encore, for which we were very grateful.

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God is an Astronaut is the last band playing at Incubate 2014, and their show is a great end to the week. They manage to transition seamlessly between soft and heavy sounds, have a good balance in the guitar sound, very tasteful bass licks, and a drummer capable of great subtlety in his playing. Many of the songs are framed by keyboards, and the vocals, whether clear and delicate or synthesised, are ethereal in sound and remind a lot of the vocals by Alcest’s Neige. The music very atmospheric, but occasionally has sharper edges to the riffs and a slightly more aggressive sound, which make it very danceable.

The stage presence and audience interaction are both pretty good, they don’t shy away from speaking to the crowd and the new keyboard player / guitarist Jamie Dean jumped off stage into the audience a few times to headbang and borrow someone’s sunglasses. While drumming on the live shows is usually done by Stephan Whelan, due to an infection in his leg he had to leave for home. Luckily for the band, they write and record their albums with Lloyd Hanney, who flew in to finish the rest of the tour.

 

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GIAA also played a new song, and it is much heavier in sound, more in the post-metal and even post-black direction. The new album is planned for spring next year.

 

 

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WORDS: LORRAINE LYSEN

PHOTOS: SUSANNE A. MAATHUIS PHOTOGRAPHY