Wreck and Reference - Content

No artist sounds like Wreck and Reference. Maybe my musical interests and knowledge are a bit narrow, but I doubt I'm wrong about my previous statement. Last year's Youth was not only one of my favorite records of the year, but one of the most intriguing and genuinely different things I came across. As the band's progressed, we are given Content, an EP that has many of Youth 's attributes, but brings them into a whole new world.

"Absurdities and Echos," the opener for the EP, is a water logged subterranean cloud of swirling textures - both haunting and otherworldly - organic drum work and the band's best vocals yet. The vocals are augmented in a way that they reverberate in a lower tone and sound like the singer is trapped far below ground and yelling to the surface through an old well. They ebb and flow over the rich drone of effects that come through as a dark hum, sparkling static, and stabs of some type of melodic synth.


B-side of Content  is "Abhorrence," a track which sounds more akin to last year's  Youth. Making use of higher and scratchier vocals, harsh textures that sit below some type of melodic keyed synth instrument, and ever building drums, "Abhorrence" is much more of a car crash than the slow slosh of "Absurdities and Echos."

What Wreck and Reference do so well is simple; they create moody music that's dense but easily appealing. There's a lot going on in each track, but the band does well to include a tangible melody, an accessible vocal line, or an alluring atmosphere. There's no easy way to pigeon hole the band, and we shouldn't look to, but the music finds itself in the company of only particular aspects of other bands: Swans's penchant to trudge and burn, the cathartic momentum of Neurosis's best works and maybe the moodiness of post-punk. The live drums do well to offset the mostly programmed sounds of everything else and the vocals are dynamic enough to easily convey the mood of the lyrics.

While it's only two songs, I've become enamored and absorbed in Content in a way that didn't come so quickly with Youth. While vastly different, the EP does remind me a bit of Urfaust's Drei Rituale Jenseits Des Kosmos, which is way more trance-inducing and repetitive, but a similarly engrossing drone that relies on ambiance and non guitar sounds.

Preorder directly from Flenser and stream for free at the Band's Bandcamp.

Ruined Families - Blank Language

Blank Language is that light at the end of the tunnel, the album that twists and turns the way you'd want and the distant dream you've been thinking about since you first had it some years ago. Well...maybe not you, but this is something that I've been itching for ever since I first delved into hardcore music. Ruined Families's style could be pigeon holed as post-hardcore, but what really matters is the fulfilling sensation of the album and all the different notes it hits. Whether those notes are emotional, melodic, or rhythmic, Blank Language is an impressive effort that melds a myriad of influences and sounds into a unique and pulsating album.

Fell Voices - Regnum Saturni

With their third album, Regnum Saturni, U.S. black metal act Fell Voices find themselves playing into abstracts and delving deeper into ritualistic chaos. The album was recorded live, a trait that means a lot to me, not only in the band's character, but also in the band's sheer sonic power.Unlike previous efforts, Fell Voices dedicate the first breath to a spoken sample by poet Mary Oliver, a poem which sets the thematic tone of the album and ties into the album's title and mythos. Gone are the repetitive and intricate melodies of the their last lp and instead the band uses tremolo riffing and black metal stylings to create a sort of drone that doesn't shamble, but rather blurs.

Blessings - Bittervatten

Band's like Sweden's Blessings instill a certain kind of emotion in me that I'm not sure I can accurately describe. The relatively young 3-piece blends so many different styles, all of which I like, that I find myself wondering why this hasn't been done as well before. The emotion that rises from the perfect mixing of sounds, textures, styles, and influences, could simply be elation; maybe someone's finally done it?

Botanist - IV: Mandragora

IV: Mandragora, the fourth album by one man drum and dulcimer act Botanist, might be the entity's most fleshed out and realized effort. Elements of black metal shine through a bit more obvious as it sounds like the hammered dulcimer is distorted this time around and the tempo strays from the dirge that seemed to accompany most of III: Doom in Bloom, Botanist's most recent work before this.

Iron Lung - White Glove Test

"music" cover

Power violence's most forward thinking act are back with their ambitious new album entitled White Glove Test. Further pushing the band's ammonia soaked aesthetic and affinity for jangley Ginnesque guitars in a blender, Iron Lung, create a claustrophobic and energetic album. The album has three incarnations: a "music" version, which is guitars, vocals, drums; a "noise" version which runs the same length as the music version and sounds like a backdrop for a Lynch film; and then the "together" version in which both the "noise" and the "music" versions play simultaneously; creating, for me, the best version.

Vemod - Venter på stormene

The everlasting universe of things

Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,

Now dark--now glittering--now reflecting gloom--

Now lending splendour, where from secret springs

The source of human thought its tribute brings

Of waters--with a sound but half its own,

Such as a feeble brook will oft assume,

In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,

Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,

Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river

Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

"Mont Blanc" by Percy Shelley 

Is it too early to have an album of the year?* Maybe - but, I'm willing to put money down that come December of this year (and every year) I'll still be spinning Vemod's Venter på stormene and getting lost in it like it's the first time I've heard it. Loyal readers might recall me talking about this one somewhat recently and how excited I was with only the first track released. I can't recall the last time I obsessed so much over one song from an album that hadn't even been released yet and I can't recall a time when my expectations have been met and further smashed by the eventual album.