2015: a list...

No order. No preference. One opinion.

*Black Wing--Is Doomed
*Spectral Voice--Necrotic Doom
*Mgla--Exercises in Futility
*Grift-Syner
*Denver Broncos UK--Songs 1 through 8
*Forndom--Flykt
*False--Untitled
*Chelsea Wolfe--Abyss
*Gloam-Hex of the Nine Heads
*Ulaan Passerine--Light in Dust
*Aelter IV--Love Eternal
*Vanum--Realm of Sacrifice
*Leviathan--Scar Sighted
*Bell Witch--Four Phantoms
*Night Slug--Loathe
*Killing Joke--Pylon
*Mount Eerie--Sauna
*Noltem--Mannaz
*Hope Drone--Cloak of Ash
*Shroud of the Heretic--Unorthodox Equilibrium
*Nahtrunar--Symbolis Mus
*Ride for Revenge--Ageless Powers Arise
*Snakes--Snakes
*Blood Incantation--Interdimensional Extinction
*Failure--The Heart is a Monster
*Sapthuran--Hildegical
*Akhyls--The Dreaming I
*Panopticon--Autumn Eternal
*Fight Amp--Constantly Off
*Steven Von Till--A Life Unto Itself
*Alda--Passage
*Zebras--The City of Sun
*Abyssal--Antikatastaseis
*Predatory Light/Vorde--Split
*Vastum--Hole Below
*Zelienople--Show Us The Fire
*Lightning Bolt--Fantasy Empire
*Andrew Hock--Crystalline Privative Opulence
*Pyramids--A Northern Meadow
*One Master--Reclusive Blasphemy
*Cruciamentum--Charnel Passages
*Nostalgist--Of Loves and Days Ago
*Barghest--Into Weeping Firmament
*Dispirit--Separation
*Bosse-de-Nage--All Fours
*John Mueller--A Magnetic Center

DBUK...

You may not have heard of the Denver Broncos UK, but you surely should. Hailing from Denver Colorado, they are a beautifully bare American folk band comprised of members of Slim Cessna's Auto Club and Munly & the Lupercalians. Jay Munly, Rebecca Vera, Dwight Pentacost, and Slim Cessna comprise this off kilter foray into dark Americana. The instrumentation is sparse (Munly on acoustic guitar, Vera on pump organ and cello, Cessna on percussion, and Pentacost on melodica, autoharp, and banjo), but intricately woven together to form waves of gothic droning. All four members contribute vocals in some form as Munly bellows the lead vocals with all his prowess. The lyrical content is an eccentric take on gothic country storytelling. This storytelling permeates all the songs conjuring visions of a back alley alliance with the supernatural powered by dust bowl reverie. The melodies and harmonies hauntingly resonate a beauty in the esoteric nature of the crooked spine of America. Things are not always what they seem, but the Denver Broncos UK deliver their music into the light. Whether you follow or not is up to you.

Ignore the interviewer, and enjoy this brief set of live songs...
youtube.com/watch?v=LgR39ciWTko

For more on the Denver Broncos UK or their affiliated groups follow the link...
slimcessnasautoclub.com

From the Region...

Welcome to the Midwaste... The Region, as it is miserably referred to, is a part of northwestern Indiana sharing a distinct flavor for indulging in nearby Chicago's urban glut. An overflow of despair, boredom, and post industrial hopelessness permeates the area and its populace. A haze of fuck all sentiment and anywhere is better than here wafts through the mentality of the residents. Life seems jumbled and slowed to a crawl as time tries to keep pace with the ever growing din of Chicago's crumbling and failing hopes and institutions flowing south along interstate 65. There is a certain kind of gloom that hangs over the area. This gloom radiates through the music of Cloakroom.

Cloakroom is a trio of factory workers hailing from the Region. Right away the gloom of their home and lives saturates everything about Cloakroom's slowcore haze. It's the fuzz of a bad relationship drowned in bottles of industrial and farm waste. This is a never ending relationship with a place and its people, that drags one's mental and physical health down to the factured streets going nowhere. Cloakroom crafts a blur of mid to late 90's anti-pop. Mid-tempo at its fastest, Cloakroom's music swells and sways like the meandering ways of a slow moving polluted river. There is the crunch from distorted guitar and bass when needed, never more than required or seemingly misplaced. The drums pound and accent with equal measure, and make sure to hold everything together. Cloakroom provoke a wandering carelessness with their music. If you end where you did not expect, then it may just be for the best. The vocals drone with a monotone bleakness that belies any hope. Cloakroom utilized a controlled sense of noise within their songs to drive the ambient elements into a shoegaze-y territory of fuzz and despair. The songs scorch the earth with a dusting of melancholy and bare emotion. Cloakroom are not a raging wildfire, but are the necessary controlled burn of a weed infested lot on a withered city block hinting at a minor renewal.

As factory workers, Cloakroom are sure to feel the strain of the death of middle America. Their music is a direct reflection of this. There is beauty in slow pain. There is beauty in loss. There is beauty in the failings of mankind. There is life nowhere (special). Cloakroom are on the edge of the void. Deciding to fall in or hang on a little longer, Cloakroom's music hints at the possibilities of a slight resurrection: a resurrection buoyed by a fractured and bleeding hope. A little blood soaked hope is not always a bad thing.

myndfuneral.bandcamp.com

Because You Missed It...

Auris Apothecary (Bloomington, IN) released one of the best albums of 2014: Book of Sand--The Bees and the Butterflies. Like many Auris Apothecary releases, The Bees and the Butterflies was limited to fifty lathe cut ten inch records. With this the label maintained their exploritory nature when it comes to physical releases, and also continued their trend of establishing meaning and substance with physical releases in an impersonal and failing digital world. Art has meaning and purpose. Art is not always accessible. Art is where you seek it.

What Book of Sand crafts on this release is a powerful droning slab of avant black metal. Everything in its right place. The songs are not a testament to the raging fury of the void. Rather, Book of Sand seemed compelled to find a cold beauty in the abstract melancholy of the natural world. There is a swirling haze surrounding the songs that seeps into the ears of the listener. The wailing screams are buried under the swelling guitar tempest as the blasting drums find little breathing room. Everything in its right place. The use of the cello throughout the album is the siren voice that breaks you upon the rocky shore. The cello rings somber and unsettling notes that continually establish a ghostly presence, often imbuing the songs with a quaint instrumental voice as if telling an old folk tale . Walls of well spaced feedback and reverb are ever present. Subtle tempo shifts take shape as the drums slow from blasting to simple and precise. The guitars are constantly flowing with churning ambition, as the layered noisy elements of the songs combine with the other instrumentation to develop an all encompassing state of thrall. Everything in its right place...

Book of Sand are at their height when all the elements within song come together or are laid bare as in the song Wayfarring Stranger (cello only). With The Bees and the Butterflies, Book of Sand have compiled a standout album. The album is short in running time. However, it is deep with preceived power, emotion, and presence, ultimately leaving the listener wanting more. Coyly melodic, The Bees and the Butterflies is a thorough and engimatic album, bound by tradition and steeped in the overwhelming confines of failing modernity. What will come to pass will pass, and Book of Sand are primed to stand headlong in any oncoming surge.



aurisapothecary.bandcamp.com/album/aax-091-the-bees-and-the-butterflies

2014 Best of List...

In no particular order... Missing some solid releases... It's a list. Nothing more, nothing less...

*Blut Aus Nord--Memoria Vestusta III: Saturnian Poetry
*Impetuous Ritual--Unholy Congregation of Hypocritical Ambivalence
*Falls of Rauros--Believe In No Coming Shore
*Whirr--Sway
*Taurus--No/Thing
*Agalloch--The Serpent & Sphere
*Nothing--Guilty of Everything
*Coffinworm--IV.I.VIII.
*Godflesh--A World Only Lit By Fire
*Old Man Gloom--Ape of God
*Krieg--Transient
*Wovenhand--Refactory Obdurate
*Have A Nice Life--Unnatural World
*Young Widows--Easy Pain
*Alraune--The Process of Self Immolation
*Atriarch--An Unending Pathway
*Blut Aus Nord/P.H.O.B.U.S.--Trinity
*Waldgefluster--Meine Fesseln
*Horseback--Piedmont Apocrypha
*Ritual Howls--Turkish Leather
*Shellac--Dude Incredible
*Yob--Clearing the Path to Ascend
*Woman Is The Earth--Depths
*We Are Hex--Bleach Brigade
*Saor--Aura
*Swans--To Be Kind
*The Body--I Shall Die Here
*Panopticon--Roads To the North
*Fossils--Flesh Hammer
*Death Fortress--Among the Ranks of the Unconquerable
*Book of Sand--The Bees and Butterflies
*Sun Worship--Elder Giants
*Boddicker--Crime Upheaval
*Death Blues--Ensemble


Indiana bands that rule(d) in 2014:
*Scared Leather
*Boddicker
*We Are Hex
*Coffinworm
*Nuclear Hellfrost
*Conjurer
*Kvlthammer
*Black Goat of the Woods

One of the best ever... Ice Nine.

In case you are unaware, one of the greatest hardcore bands was spawned from Indianapolis' early to mid 90's hardcore punk scene. That band was Ice Nine. Blistering, pummeling, intricate. Ice Nine ripped their way through the scene with a ragged world view and intensity that has hardly been matched. They pulled no punches other than those intended for all those in their path. Less political, Ice Nine used ingenious musicianship to breath fire into hardcore as their vehicle of self expression and distaste for the environment around them. Hardly apathetic, Ice Nine pounded, hammered, and in general abused their instruments into submission as they raged with barely contained anger and chaos. Their live show was a mass release of flowing energy, both positive and negative, as the music filled all those in range with dissonance and discord. Fuck you, Ice Nine were determined to do what they wanted both musically and personally. You were either with them or against them, often the former. Noisy and chaotic, the men of Ice Nine delivered an intensity that was addictive and inscrutable. Ice Nine were less about being understood, but more so a band formed around a working knowledge of an ever-contorting and often hopeless world birthed on a local midwestern level. The band was a release from every day life and personal problems. Ice Nine were a shredding embodiment of catharsis. When they were active, Ice Nine were one of the most vital bands. They didn't have fans. They had followers. Youth slammed into a cathartic need for release and relatability, and Ice Nine delivered on all fronts. Nostalgia has it place, but when dealing with Ice Nine nostalgia has no place. Respect is all that matters. And Ice Nine, after all these years, still garners all the respect a band of their power and presence should. No band did it better during their active years than Ice Nine. And with all great bands, their music is just as relative and powerful as it was originally. Through their now rare 7 inch releases and a cd discography on Happy Couples Never Last Records, Ice Nine still continue to invade eardrums with their brand of furious hardcore. Recently, their three year discography appeared on the band's bandcamp page. It would be wise of you to spend some time listening to Ice Nine's bestial brew of hardcore punk and know nothing has really changed. Complete respect.


icenine2.bandcamp.com

Ritual Knife Records...

You like underground bands bringing forth malice and spite. You like the grime and filth of the underbelly of humanity. You like the boot to the back of the head of normals and posers. You like your blades sharp and thirsty. If this sounds appealing, then Ritual Knife Records is sure to have a release or two for your eardrum evisceration. Focusing on local Indiana bands and quality distribution of like minded bands, Ritual Knife is poised to spew some much needed sacrificial blood on the underground tape scene. With releases from Boddicker and Scared Leather out now, the future looks devastating as the label demands its collective blood lust be satiated.

ritualknife.storenvy.com