INTERVIEW: Shadow Woods Festival founder Mary Spiro

By: Mark Ambrose

Last September, hundreds of metal fans took to White Hall, Maryland for the third, and what was quite possibly the final, Shadow Woods Metal Festival.  A three day mashup of camping, workshops, and, most importantly, true underground heavy metal of all stripes, it has quietly become one of the most highly regarded music experiences by those lucky enough to have attended.  When I spoke with festival founder, overseer, music writer (at www.metallomusikum.com) and all around genre veteran Mary Spiro, she was content to lay the Shadow Woods experiment to rest for the time being.  However, in the last year, despite venue changes, date and lineup adjustments, and the myriad headaches of producing a truly independent festival (i.e. NO corporate sponsorships), Shadow Woods IV returns to White Hall Maryland this September 13-16.  Today, THE SLUDGELORD finally presents our interview with Mary from last year’s festivities, as well as her top reasons for attending this year’s festival.

Sl: What made you decide to undertake the massive effort to create a festival like this THREE times, let alone once?

Mary Spiro: Sheer stupidity.  I had attended Stella Naturain 2013.  I had always liked the idea of listening to music outside anyway.  Years ago I had attended a bluegrass festival that had camping and bluegrass in Winfield, KS.  Stella Naturawas a nice experience except the year I went it snowed in the middle of it.  Which is still held in September but it snowed in Tahoe National Forest so they lost a day there.  My original idea for this wasn’t something as big as this.  It was more, “Don’t I know somebody who potentially has some property who would let me set up some bands?” or someone with a barn… Just a kind of DIY kind of thing.  Apparently, I don’t know anybody like that so I started hunting around for campsites that you could rent in their entirety.  I just thought it would be fun to get a few bands together.  The tipping point came when I realized I wasn’t going to get this property for a low amount of money.  In order to draw enough people to pay for the expensive property, I was going to have to get bigger bands.  I had done shows in regular venues, but to have an outdoor thing… over the course of eighteen months of planning it just became evident it was going to be a lot more expensive than I’d realized.  You end up realizing you have to get a band that is going to attract a lot more people.  So Midnight was like the Holy Grail band for the first year and we got them!  Every year I feel like the lineup has been amazing.

SL: You said elsewhere that this is an experiment that has run its course.  Has it become too much of a logistical nightmare or do you see it as something you could scale back on?  What’s the future of Shadow Woods?

MS: It’s a number of things.  Superficially, this property is for sale.  If the people who buy it don’t want to host it, that’s a major issue.  Logistically, it is very time consuming and I have a full-time job.  I do this for fun.  I’m not trying to make a name for myself, I’m trying to have fun.  I’m trying to recreate an experience I had at other outdoor music festivals and do it in a way that was appealing to me.  I just literally did it for myself [laughs].  But there’s also another thing… it takes a while for anything to catch on, but I’ve just kind of been amazed that people who live within 30 or 40 minutes aren’t willing to just come out for the day.  They can go home and sleep in their own beds, they don’t have to camp!  And metalheads, American metalheads don’t seem to be very hearty.  They like their creature comforts and hairdryers.  This, to me, seems like backyard camping, while Stella Natura was very rustic.  There were no showers, no running water.  It was rough.  We were in the mountains and then it got cold and it snowed.  And then with the bluegrass festival it was very rustic.  I think it had centralized bathhouses but there were no showers.  And it wasn’t in a very pretty place.  But this is like backyard camping!  There are electrical outlets! 

SL: The setting here is so idyllic, too.

MS: Yeah I’ve come to understand maybe metalheads aren’t all that hearty and just want to go to a fest and stay in a hotel, like Death Fest.  I’ve heard there are some camping fests in the Midwest, like Minnesota.  I guess I was just surprised… We’ve got bands that are singing about nature and trees and shit and people aren’t willing.  Come on, now.  But the local people not willing to come out is just weird to me.  I’m surprised that more people haven’t come, but maybe my expectations are too high.

SL: What do you see as your comfortable level of involvement going forward?  Or are you just focused on getting through this weekend?

MS: I’m hit up all the time by bands who want to do shows in the Baltimore area, and if I like the band I’ll do it, and if I don’t I pass it off to someone more interested.  I’ll still do shows and maybe something like this on a much smaller scale, like on a Friday to Saturday, but it is so expensive.  And I have lost money.  The first two years I’ve lost quite a bit of money so I have to catch up on that.  But on the other hand I’ve had private individuals contribute a lot of money.  So that’s shocking to me that people would be willing to do that sort of thing.

What were your “gateway bands” for heavy music?

MS: So, I’m very old.  I’m 53 years old.  I’ve been listening to music of all kinds for a really long time.  The original band when I was 13 was KISS.  Is that corpsepaint?  I don’t know.  And I got into Metallica when they were popular, when they were coming around in the 80s.  I’ve went along with it, but I also had a family and raised kids and had to scale back my involvement.  In the last ten years… Enslaved, I’m a big fan.  I love Craft.  And I like very unusual bands like Oranssi Pazuzu.  I like anything that catches my eye.

I think something that’s very interesting to me, a lot of people when they go to music festivals want to see all their favorite bands in one place.  The concept of Shadow Woods was always the opposite of that.  This is where you come to learn about new bands you’ve never heard of before that you didn’t know about.  I think that particular strategy is very difficult for a lot of people.  They think, “Why would I go see a bunch of bands I don’t know?”  I think there are a lot people who aren’t willing to discover new music like that.

SL: For people willing to discover, you end up getting a lot of excellent stuff.  I had never heard Sloth Herder or Erlkonig before but you put them on an equal footing with bands like Panopticon or Vastum or Woe and suddenly I’ve found two great bands I would have never discovered before this weekend, even with all the stuff we get at the site.

MS: It’s selfish really [laughs].  These are all bands I wanted to see.  I think what’s also cool is I’ve made lifelong friends.  There are people here who think like me about music.

With Shadow Woods IV on the horizon, Mary also took the time to send me her top 3 reasons to attend this year’s festival:

MS: 1. Discover new music. 2. New music handpicked from the best of the underground. Not necessarily trendy or trending but great bands. 3. The "camp" atmosphere. People unleash at SWMF. They reclaim the wildness of childhood and can do so without judgement because everyone is doing it.

The End

Shadow Woods IVopens September 13 at Camp Hidden Valley in White Hall, Maryland.  This year’s acts include Abigail Williams, Xasthur, Cloak, Wolf King, Imperial Triumphant, Ghost Bath, Heavy Templeand many, many more.  

REVIEW: Organ Dealer/ Nerve Grind/ Invertebrate, Split (EP)

By: Mark Ambrose

Album Type: EP

Date Released: 01/07/2018

Label: Night Animal Records

“Organ Dealer/ Nerve Grind/ Invertebrate Split EP” DD//7” track listing

1. Organ Dealer,”Feed”

2. Organ Dealer, “Burn”

3. Organ Dealer, “Remnants”

4. Organ Dealer, “Totality”

5. Organ Dealer, “Contour”

6. Organ Dealer, “Silence”

7. Never Grind, “Bow to Nothingness”

8. Never Grind, Existential Significance

9. Never Grind, Worthless Failure

10. Invertebrate, “Mindgout”

11. Invertebrate, “Fuckface”

12. Invertebrate, “Good for Nothing”

13. Invertebrate, “Choke”

14. Invertebrate, “The Reckoning”

15. Invertebrate, “Chump”

The Review:

               

It’s a god damned golden age of grind.  Even the overlooked gems are getting second lives in the form of reissues (who the hell would expect beautiful, expansive Spazz discographies in multiple formats NOW?), reunions, international festivals, and bona fide geniuses putting out fresh releases constantly.  The deluge of content is overwhelming, but the appreciation for the true forebears quickly wipes out posers and tryhards.  Plus, there’s a certain punky self-effacing attitude that is undeniable about grind – this shit is on the fringes, and not in some right wing edgelord way.  It’s crass, it’s brutal, it’s sometimes silly, but for those who love it, there are few ways better than spending fifteen minutes (or often less) than smashing your way through a grind split.  The best of them have the minute shifts in style and tone that make the genre far more diverse than its harshest critics would have you believe.  And if it’s just a mediocre effort – hell who doesn’t have fifteen minutes to spare?  Thankfully, the three-way collaboration from Organ Dealer, Nerve Grind, and Invertebrate, heralded as an East Coast/West Coast “meeting of the grinds”, is definitely the former: an all-star smashup that offers entry for genre newbies and no holds barred true grind annihilation for the most seasoned veterans.

               

Organ Dealer may be my favorite underground grind band of the moment.  Maybe it’s the hometown pride, maybe it’s the sheer volume of output, but there’s also genuine craft to what they’re releasing – a sometimes mathy, sometimes hardcore balance that makes them stand out on every release.  I’m a fan of the dual vocal style as they employ it here, with guitarist Tom Maher offering guttural backup to Scot Moriarty’s higher register hardcore bark; it’s not necessarily melodic, but there’s a dynamic force and musicality to the way Moriarty spits out (on “Burn”), “You cannot gaze at me! Without me life is naught!” 

The balance of Trevor Gramm’s clear, pristine basswork; the dual guitar riffing of Jeff Knoblauch & Maher; and Eric Schnee’s mind warping drumming start the EP with the breakneck “Feed” and the brutality never relents. 

“Totality” is the most distinctly “mathcore” sounding cut, with Schnee ascending into jazz-metal bodhisattva mode.  When they back off from blast beat pummeling, like on personal fave “Contour”, Organ Dealer slides into a sneering punk swing that just hits me in the perfect way – I wanted to start my own circle pit on mass transit but had to settle for upsetting my seatmate on the bus with excessive headbanging.  “Silence” is a grim standout for me – it’s not “classic” grind, but it’s nasty and heavy, and the perfect bookend to the six stellar tracks Organ Dealer lay down.

               

Nerve Grind go straight for the lizard brain, offering ignorant as fuck deathy grind that doesn’t even crack the two minute mark.  I didn’t have a lyric sheet for this one, but with titles like “Bow to Nothingness”, “Existential Significance”, and “Worthless Failure”, I assume guitarist/vocalist Jeff is bellowing out some truly soul-crushing madness – the perfect match for the downtuned murky progressions.  The drumming by Douglas is that relentless old school blast beat madness that only requires a simple kit but genuine chops that would make black metal Frost wannabes cry into their plastic mead horns.  It’s brutal and short and solid grind.

               

Invertebrate highlight that weird playful grind attitude I really love.  Using key samples and excellent timing, they often made me laugh out loud before launching into misanthropic sludge-inflected grind.  Lyrics like “fucking disgrace / emotions erase / good for nothing / pile of shit” highlight the mantra (if there is one) of this band’s 7 tracks: fuck you AND fuck me, too.  Another power trio, they have a solid vocal interplay by all three members, with one offering a somewhat adenoidal bark that was weirdly satisfying and unique amid the deathy growls and hardcore shouts.  The majority of the tracks are breakneck classic grind, with satisfying forays into sludgy, groove-inflected riffing.  I’d be really interested in seeing them break out more in a full-length, even if it’s just 15 minutes long, too.

               

Overall, this untitled split doesn’t reinvent or redefine anything about grind, but with so many lauded, heavy bands eschewing just what endeared them to metal audiences (the “black” in the “blackgaze” crop, the “metal” in the prog metal glut), Organ Dealer, Nerve Grind and Invertebrate stick to brutal basics and seem all the more remarkable because of the lack of gimmicky bullshit.  When they throw in some unexpected grooves, ease back into a slower tempo, or pepper in some funny sampling, they serve as essential reminders that heavy bands can be innovative and exciting without hopping on the latest bandwagon or hitching themselves to the fads that crest and crash every few years in American metal circles.  These guys are lifers – the fact that they’re excellent musicians is just that much more exciting for anyone who’s been paying attention to the underground.

“Organ Dealer/ Nerve Grind/ Invertebrate Split EP” is available here

Band info: OrganDealer|| NerveGrind|| Invertebrate

REVIEW: Craft, "White Noise and Black Metal"

By: Mark Ambrose

Album Type: EP

Date Released: 22/06/2018

Label: Season of Mist

With their frenetic guitar work, inspired bits of avant garde songwriting, and bleak lyrics, Craft are dead set on reminding us that the vast majority of existence is a lifeless, black wasteland.  

“White Noise and Black Metal”CD//CS//DD//LP track listing:

1. The Cosmic Sphere Falls

2. Again

3. Undone

4. Tragedy of Pointless Games

5. Darkness Falls

6. Crimson

7. YHVH’s Shadow

8. White Noise

The Review:

               

Summertime black metal is a weird proposition for me.  It’s warm, it’s sunny, everyone is hitting the beach, and, here in the northeastern US, it’s been repugnantly humid.  It feels much more like deathy, sludgy, occasionally grind weather to me.  That deep, swampy rot that makes you want to pass out in the shade somewhere, until the temperature starts to drop at night and the prospect of frost in the morning is suddenly in the air again.  The real beginning of black metal season, in other words.  But occasionally you get something that blasts a frozen gust through the humid misery, showing a glimpse of that endless, cold waste at the heart of black metal.  From what I’ve heard, Immortal’snewest record manages to return the listeners to Blashyrkh, even in the hundred degree days of July.  Less heralded but no less impressive is the latest from Sweden’s Craft, who have been quietly amassing a small but incredible discography in the last twenty years. 

It’s been seven years since Craft laid out a full length, and metal empires have risen and fallen.  It’s appropriate that with opener “The Cosmic Sphere Falls”coalesces around timeless themes: depression, dread, apocalypse, death and destruction.  “It is eternal. It is beyond.”  The winding, interweaving guitar lines, slightly askew time signatures, and whispered/screamed lyrics are hypnotic and terrifying – almost avant garde but simultaneously catchy.  The bass is palpable and there’s nearly no midrange – in my ears a perfect black metal balance.  And while the drumming is amazing, it’s not overly busy.   Lyrically, “Again” is far more harrowing than the icy cold opener.  A description of self-harm descending into self-annihilation, it’s juxtaposed against an undeniably hooky guitar line and rhythmic stomp.  The dual guitar leads of Joakim Karlsson and John Doe, skewing off into discordant tremolo bursts, are sickening, while the double-time bursts are oddly affirming against such miserable themes.

“Undone” solidifies the tension at the core of “White Noise and Black Metal”: personal turmoil and universal chaos.  “Undone”pulls back from the suicidal precipice of “Again”, focusing the speaker’s rage toward a cosmos in need of annihilation.  The tone is appropriately symphonic – spiritually, that is.  This doesn’t go full Dimmu Borgir or anything.  “Tragedy of Pointless Games” trades the epic for the individually misanthropic once again.  It’s a somber dirge that sounds like the best of mid-period Celtic Frost – I even expected some OUGH!s to burst through the gloom.  Instead, singer Nox opines “Awakened and cast into fleshbound pain / Into a tragedy of pointless games,” with such conviction that I felt utterly frozen in the midsummer heat. 

When it feels nearly unbearably grim, “White Noise and Black Metal” shifts toward a black ‘n’ roll banger, “Darkness Falls”.  Somewhat evocative of latter day Satyricon (natch), the first track of side two is a bit of an amalgam of the themes so far, with some creepy otherworldly descriptions sneaking into a grim reality.  But before things can get too fantastical, the true horror emerges at the end: “There's a shadow hanging under a tree / And a rope is a tool to set one free.”  Instrumental track “Crimson”is an interesting dirge, highlighting the musical prowess of Karlsson and Doe, and allowing bassist Phil Cirone’s skillful and restrained work to shine, but it still feels a lot like any other instrumental interlude.

Thankfully the last two tracks may be the best on the record.  “YHVH’s Shadow” is a blasphemous screed that is, once again, catchy as hell, especially in a four on the floor headbanger midsection that may be the most fun on a depressing record I’ve had this year.  The sinewy, sinister lead guitar line was stuck in my head for days after my initial spin of the record, and is some simple, inspired songwriting.  The final track, “White Noise”, is a final kissoff to existence itself – individual or universal, where the human experience is something to be endured, a “distasteful, tiresome thing.”  I should note here that Nox’s delivery is uniformly excellent on the record, but on this track it may be the most intelligible, adding extra heft to the fury.  There’s a dynamic balance between the chugging rhythm guitar and the high end lead work, and a final crescendo that’s so intense it feels like the world itself may be falling to pieces.

Against all expectations, I found myself truly immersed in a black metal record despite the season, despite the warmth, the sun, the muggy misery.  I was reminded that the heat death of the universe is inevitable, that the nature of things is stasis, that death is so, so much longer than the brief bits of living.  “White Noise and Black Metal” is more than a glimpse of winter – it’s a blast of cosmic cold.  With their frenetic guitar work, inspired bits of avant garde songwriting, and bleak lyrics, Craft are dead set on reminding us that the vast majority of existence is a lifeless, black wasteland.  That’s far more chilling than even the darkest Norse myths or winter nights.

“White Noise and Black Metal” is available here

Band info: bandcamp || facebook

INTERVIEW: Wormrot @ The Meatlocker in Montclair, NJ (June 3rd 2018)

By: Mark Ambrose

In May and June of this year, Singapore’s Wormrot embarked on their first US tour in years, culminating on June 3^rd at the Meatlocker in Montclair, NJ.  The set was once in a lifetime spectacular, enervating a wall to wall crowd from start to finish.  Though the show wrapped up after 1 AM, I was wide awake for hours afterward, trying to put into words the emotionally transcendent moment the few of us lucky to be there had witnessed.  This show, and this tour, were the result of years of planning, frustration, and hard work by bookers, tour managers, local musicians, and the band themselves.  I was honored to sit and speak for a few moments that evening with founding member, vocalist and lyricist Arif.  He went in depth about a number of topics: just how tumultuous it can be for foreign visitors to the United States, especially musicians; the frustration of creating art in a colonized society; the experience of playing a heralded set at this year’s Maryland Deathfest; and the relentless struggle of being separated from his wife (Wormrotmanager Azean) and their son in order to perform around the world.

SL: First off, can you explain what happened when the tour booked for 2017 fell through?

Arif: So we were supposed to tour the US last year but we weren’t prepared visa-wise.  It was a little bit of last minute preparation and due to the political climate we didn’t want to risk it.  We were a little more prepared this year.  Visas are expensive and we had to go through interviews with the US embassy in Singapore.  Thankfully things went smoothly and we’re here now.

SL: On top of that, you had some issues around your equipment this time – apparently some things were held up in customs?

Arif: It’s not a tour if shit doesn’t happen.  One of our friends was supposed to come with us and mentioned the wrong fucking thing and was deported.  We were being interviewed and he was asked, “What do you do in the band?” And he probably mentioned he sells stuff.  And if you mention money, they’re going to interrogate you.  And on top of that, our luggage was all in his name.  That was the start of the complications.  It took us about a week to get our luggage back, but we borrowed equipment from bands, used our same clothes for a week – no toiletries or whatever.  So it was a little rough.  But thankfully everything is with us now.

SL: So with these hurdles and headaches – is that particular to US touring or is it anytime your travel internationally to play that you’ll encounter these frustrations?

Arif: I think it’s probably our luck is not that great. I’m sure it’s easy to travel.  Our luggage was supposed to be under our names but someone in Singapore customs put it all under one name.  I guess… better luck next time!

SL: What was your preparation for Maryland Deathfest?

Arif: It’s good NOT to prep yourself.  Be yourself.  We’re not trying to impress anyone or show off or say we’re better than other bands.  If people like it, fucking great.  Try not to pressure yourself every show.  Stay calm and have fun.

SL: Are you working towards any new material or a new release?

Arif: Afer this tour we’re heading out again – not another tour but the Obscene Extreme Festival in the Czech Republic.  It’s the 20^th anniversary so we’re really honored to be there.  After that we’ll probably start writing the new album.  But we’re going to take our time – we do not like to rush albums.  Usually what we do is Rasyid, our guitarist, will come up with a riff and a few drum beats and we’ll jam it out in a studio.  And I’ll just blurt our something to go alone with the music and write the lyrics during the recording process.  On “Voices”, after they recorded the guitar and drums so I had fixed, concrete music, I started writing the lyrics.

SL: This will be the second album with drummer Vijesh on drums.  Does he take an active part in songwriting or is it jammed out in studio?  What’s the musical approach?

Arif: Raysid is the main songwriter of the band.  He has all the riffs built out already. Vijesh and I will have some tweaks or modify things.

SL: As you work towards new material, what are some topics that have been on your mind?  A lot of bands, especially in grindcore, are focused on the immediately political, but with a record like “Voices”it seemed a lot more personally focused with some crossover to broader issues.

Arif: A zillion grindcore bands start talking about politics – and this is just my opinion – it’s pretty redundant.  They are talking about changing the world but the world is still fucked!  So there is no point in my point of view.  I’ll take every single album of ours as a diary.  I think its way more meaningful so we can look back at the lyrics and go “oh shit we went through all that shit!” So we try not to be as political… It depends on what we experience through the year.  If it was a depressing year, it’s probably a depressing album.  With “Voices”that ended up being a really depressing album.  We lost our drummer [Fitri] that year and we almost quit the band.  But we pulled it through.

SL: Do you feel in a more positive mode now?

Arif: So far it’s been very positive.  I’m a little concerned about the next album – it’s probably going to be a very positive album!  But at the same time, we’re still going through social issues.  We’ll mix it up.

SL: Is there much you’re taking in, as far as music or culture, that’s locally produced? 

Arif: Singapore is basically a Westernized country.  The majority of our shows or TV is US stuff.  Locally we have cuisine and stuff like that.  Culture-wise – it’s basically fading off.  We don’t have much forested area – its high rises.  A lot of the old buildings have been demolished.  So, I have no idea – we are a westernized island.

SL: What do you dig into to get centered or relaxed?

Arif: Really, spending time with my wife and son.  Family comes first.  Living in Singapore you can become a robot.  It’s all about work.  There’s no time for leisure.  You have to make the best out of it.  Touring is sort of like a holiday, but a tiring fucking holiday.  It’s always about work.  Actually, I work in a warehouse doing a twelve-hour shift every day.  When we get back from tour, the next day will be back to work.  Living in Singapore is really fucking expensive, too.  I’m sorry to depress you!

SL: Well with the amount of energy and money people expend to really keep a band going, it’s pretty remarkable that you guys can still work, and do these tough tours, and maintain a job, and keep making, frankly, amazing records!

Arif: You know, we have friends back home who used to be in bands and had to quit to make money or keep a job or have a family and at the time I would say, “Oh you’re a fucking pussy!”  But you have to pay your rent.  Now that I’m at that stage, having a child, I can see that quitting a band is probably a good move.  But I’m not going to be a robot.  I need a break from that reality and Wormrot is a big deal in my life.  Wormrot is bigger than the three of us now and I’m not going to put it to rest.

SL: Last question: What are some bands you were able to take in and enjoy this tour?

Arif: Oh man – we have seen so many great fucking bands.  We’re touring with Escuelaand they’re just killing it every night.  I loved Sarlacc – a Star Wars inspired band that is fucking groovy.  Organ Dealer. Chepang.  I didn’t get to watch Pig Destroyer but they probably killed it.  I managed to watch Godflesh for five minutes and it was amazing.  There are a lot of underground bands that kicked our asses every night that I can’t remember the name of right now!

The End

Band info: facebook || bandcamp

REVIEW: Smock, "Interstellar Nobdy" [EP]

By: Mark Ambrose

Album Type: EP

Date Released: June 15, 2018

Label: Independent

Smock harnesses the darkest corners of retro rock, riding on surf guitar lines, fuzzed out bass, tight as fuck drum fills, and the often sweet but occasionally sinister vocals of Jenne Benicaso.

“Interstellar Nobody” DD track listing

1. Interstellar Nobody

2. Weird One

3. High Life

4. Bleach

The Review:

Maybe it’s the heat.  Maybe it’s the relentless humidity.  Maybe it’s that godawful haze that hangs over the industrial skyline.  But for me, this summer has been punctuated by tripped out psychedelic, punky, metallic garage rock weirdness.  In the same way that black metal treks through frozen tundra feels most effective after the truly bitter January chill has set in, the slick, sweaty, kind of nauseating midsummer swelter makes me feel like around every corner there could be a freakish Robert Crumb caricature or a roving pack of S. Clay Wilson pirate-bikers primed to bash my face with a bottle.  And there are few records as appropriate for these paranoid delusions as “Interstellar Nobody”, the debut EP by NJ’s own Smock.

A lot of neo-psych lays the flower power bullshit on thick, missing the speed-addled discomfort inherent in a lot of the best shit that influenced a generation of Pebbles and Nuggets listeners.  I mean, sure, the blissful Eastern mystic stuff has its place, but does it rock?  Not hardly.  Thankfully, Smock harnesses the darkest corners of retro rock, riding on surf guitar lines, fuzzed out bass, tight as fuck drum fills, and the often sweet but occasionally sinister vocals of Jenne Benicaso.  When, on closer “Bleach”, he croons “You know it. / I’ll wait, I’ll wait / I’m still waiting for you…” there’s something a bit unsavory, especially layered with reverb and over a krautrock progression their forebears from Neu! would be proud of.

The title track on is a sweet slice of doomy stoner rock that reminded me of the most promising tracks by Uncle Acid, but unlike the steadily midtempo jams of the English post-Wizard class, Smocklaunches into faster garage punk on “Weird One”.  The warbling, trebly high end guitar work of Benicaso and Zach Inkley is deftly balanced by Cameron Smith’s hefty bass tones, and the steady rhythms (courtesy of Dee Morris) makes “Weird One” the type of banger someone could (gasp!) maybe bop along to.  “High Life”, the fastest song on the EP, is also the most neurotic.  Benicaso’s hallucinatory narrations – “Sun becomes the sky / The Mud turns into the clay / The kingdom crumbles down / Are you listening” – are eerie but strangely beautiful.

“Bleach”, the aforementioned krautrock-indebted closer, is really a marvel and a testament to how promising this quartet is.  The opening buildup feels like the classic live-in-studio cuts of the garage greats Smock draws from, but organic, in this case, doesn’t mean low quality.  Both guitars are balanced in the mix, the bass has a solid presence, and Benicaso’s vocals maintain that distance in the mix that more rock bands need to aspire to.  The guitar harmonies are really lovely too, and manage to sound heavy without sounding like atonal noise.  It’s the rare record that drew me in more the further I went, and left me aching for the next (hopefully full length) release.  And while it’s the perfect jam for my summer, I’d be happy to spin these tracks any time of year.

“Interstellar Nobody”is available at here

Band info: bandcamp || facebook

ALBUM REVIEW: Churchburn, “None Shall Live… The Hymns of Misery”

By: Mark Ambrose

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 13/07/2018

Label: Armageddon Shop

 Churchburn return with more relentless nihilism, it is apocalyptically ambitious and the music is as rabidly unholy as their name would suggest.

“None Shall Live… The Hymns of Misery”CS//CD//DD//LP track listing

1. Vexare

2. Lines of Red

3. Misery Hymns

4. Authorized to Cleanse

5. Before the Inferno

6. Relieved by Burning Lead

7. Kaustos

The Review:

In 2014, Rhode Island’s Churchburnunleashed “The Awaiting Coffins” – one of the heaviest, most auspicious debuts in sludge.  With a pedigree that included members of Vital Remains and Grief, the accomplished musicianship wasn’t a surprise – it was the sheer fucking menace that did me in.  The riffs, the production, the punishing rhythms and drum work all coalesced into one of my favorite go-to records.  But with four years and a lineup change, there was, perhaps, the troubling thought that Churchburn would be another one of those miraculous one-and-done projects.  Thankfully, with “None Shall Live… The Hymns of Misery”, Churchburn returns with more relentless nihilism than I’d thought possible.  If anything, this is more apocalyptically ambitious, with consistent audio references to natural disaster: waves crashing, winds shrieking, and always the agonized mass of human voices.  And as for the music… Well damn, it’s as rabidly unholy as their name would suggest.

From the seething, crackling ambient nightmare tones of “Vexare”, Churchburn establish “…The Hymns of Misery” as a production layered with pure filth.  The repeated, dirge like riff is vaguely industrial and overtly terrifying – I imagined planetary siege engines, powdered bones trailing behind, crackling through a domain of carbonized waste.  After that intro, the chiming, watery lead guitar of “Lines of Red”belies the real songwriting chops underneath the Churchburnchaos.  There are hooks and harmonies that symphonic posers would love to copy, but these moments are all the more stellar when juxtaposed with the fried, chugging rhythm lines.  Dave Suzuki’s demonic vocal delivery is uniformly unhinged, conveying pure rage at one moment and abject despair in the next.  And the guitar solo on this one is sheer death shred mastery, before the finale of ignorant headbanging perfection.  The contrasts between the ethereal (clean guitar lines and spare, distant samples) and thick, crushing dissonance makes “Misery Hymns”another compelling trek through hopelessness; the plodding trudge that gives way to an epic finale is one of my favorite moments on record this year.

If there’s one element self-appointed “brutal” bands sometimes lack, its virtuosity.  In that respect, Churchburn are astounding outliers, not only for their shred and groove bona fides, but their facility with genre warping and tonal shifts.  “Authorized to Cleanse” and “Before the Inferno” center around guitar pyrotechnics, but they are so tonally distinct it’s mind boggling.  While “…Cleanse” glides between harmonies and neo-classical progressions, and borders on elegant black metal bombast, “…Inferno” is more distinctly avant garde, using Eastern scales on top of groove oriented heavy blues sludge.  Beneath this riff-worship, the rhythm section is relentless, smashing out blast beats, looser classic doom, tribal sounds and inhuman industrial beats, rooted by thick, gnarly bass tones.  “Relieved by Burning Lead” serves as the apotheosis of the record, opening with a haunting spoken word intro before launching into a chilling anti-human anthem.  The winding melodies, throat shredding vocals, double kick onslaughts, even frantic basslines (!) – each time I queue up this track I can feel my blood pressure rising, my BPM slowly sliding into the red.  It’s an ordeal of a song, but I find myself blasting it over and over again, as if I can somehow inure myself to its corrosive power.  Closing track "Kaustos" acts as a parallel of “Vexare” – another dark slab of instrumental metal that is somehow more mournful than the industrial inhumanity of Vexare.  This feels like a requiem.

“None Shall Live… The Hymns of Misery” is available here

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