Noise Not Music #2: Bast, Artificial Brain, The Unsemble And More
Wednesday, 26 February 2014
Written by Ben Bland
Welcome to the latest edition of Noise Not Music on Stereoboard, the only repository for all your extreme musical needs. From black metal, to drone, to grindcore, to power electronics, this column focuses on music that exists far out into the musical wilderness. Listeners of a more circumspect nature are advised read on with caution…
Profound Lore have pulled another rabbit out of the hat with Artificial Brain. A death metal band with brains and brawn in equal measure is a rarity in an age when most seem to think that the only options are to submit fully to ultra-technicality or ultra-old school Morbid Angel worship. While it would be misleading to say that Artificial Brain have a foot in each of those camps, ‘Labyrinth Constellation’ does a good job of taking the best elements from both.
Opening up with the hammer blow that is Brain Transplant, and continuing down the winding paths of Absorbing Black Ignition, ‘Labyrinth Constellation’ makes it clear early on that Artificial Brain aren’t afraid of planetoid sized riffs or large dabs of melody. Indeed, it's that melody that's so impressive about them on first listen.
It’s not a strain indebted to the Gothenburg school of death metal but instead more akin to the heavier moments of Swedish prog masters Opeth, with twisting guitar lines melding with deep growled vocals and a preposterously busy rhythm section. The petty might say there is a slight dip in quality in the middle of this record, but there remains enough about ‘Labyrinth Constellation’ to make it one of the finest death metal debuts of recent years.
Bast - ‘Spectres’ (Black Bow)
Psychedelic blackened doom upstarts Bast (pictured) kick off their debut full-length with the kind of battering ram you would expect, and fail to throw in too many curveballs along the way, but ‘Spectres’ is good enough to succeed without any great originality.
The key to Bast’s sound is their songwriting, which is something that, unfortunately, most acts of their ilk seem to treat with the sort of ignorant disdain usually reserved for people who claim that Slipknot are the heaviest band on the planet.
The opening two tracks demonstrate Bast’s strengths in this department particularly effectively. In the Beginning is a potent slab of 21st century black metal while Denizens sounds like Neurosis being subsumed by the spirit of Darkthrone. Epic closer Outside the Circle, meanwhile, has shades of Amenra in its dominant, feedback-drenched glory.
Bong - ‘Stoner Rock’ (Ritual Productions)
If Sunn O)))’s recent collaboration with Ulver, or demo releases, haven’t quite satisfied your drone metal needs then you’d be well advised to seek out ‘Stoner Rock’. A lot about Bong is obvious from their name (the album title probably wasn’t needed to drive home the point), but their moniker also puts them under a certain deal of pressure. There are hundreds of weed obsessed bands out there, worshipping at the altar of Sabbathian slowness, but Bong are something more than that.
‘Stoner Rock’, comprised of just two tracks, is their fourth album and, at over 70 minutes, it’s comfortably in Sleep-esque territory when it comes to uncompromising, resonant riffs. They’ve also got a sitar player (which isn’t particularly noticeable). Frankly, from the information you get on the tin, and the ludicrous cover art, ‘Stoner Rock’ should be total bollocks, but it’s not. Lacking any of the avant-garde credentials of Sunn O))) or most of their worthy acolytes, this is drone metal that does what it says on the tin with such conviction that it’s hard to critique. A massive record in all senses of the word.
Cripple Bastards - ‘Nero in Metastasi’ (Relapse)
It’s something of a thankless task being a grindcore band in 2014. What is there left to be done within its limiting chief characteristics? Well, Italian veterans Cripple Bastards don’t have the answer to that question, but they do have a truckload of top notch new material.
‘Nero in Metastasi’, the group’s eighth album (and first on major metal indie Relapse), is better than 95% of grind you’ll hear out there these days. Most of the album rockets along at traditional grind pace, with vocalist Giulio the Bastard cheerily spitting out all sorts of bile.
Tracks like Regime Artificiale (guess what that one’s about) and Anima in Disgregazonie certainly prove that Italians can do subhuman grind savagery better than their country’s musical reputation suggests they should, while the lengthy Splendore e Tenebra splutters and groans with all the ardour of a dying plague victim in your sitting room.
Gnaw Their Tongues & Alkerdeel - ‘DyodyoAsema’ (Consouling Sounds)
Who would have thought that a collaboration between Dutch blackened noise terrorist Maurice de Jong (Gnaw Their Tongues) and Belgian dark sludgersAlkerdeel would be so monumentally horrific? The answer is, of course, just about anyone who knows anything about either of these two artists. But this, a fifth anniversary celebration release for Belgian purveyors of excellence Consouling Sounds, is a particularly filthy excursion even by their standards.
'DyodoAsema' is one 20 minute track, but this release still plumbs more depths than most artists of similarly depraved musical vocabularies manage over the course of several releases, which is testament to both Gnaw Their Tongues’ and Alkerdeel’s dedication to producing sonic disturbance of the cruellest order.
The fact that 'DyodoAsema' moves between ominous black metal tremolo riffing, darkly hammered piano chords, guttural squalling and the sound of buzzing insects without feeling overly contrived is reason enough to seek this out if you’re a fan of the murkiest music around. A real contender for release of the month this one.
Towers - ‘II’ (Eolian Empire)
Portland bass and drums duo Towers are the sort of band you can visualise as you listen to them. Picture two demented chaps crawling through a swamp of treacle so that they can engage in a spit and sawdust bar fight with the lead character from Cormac McCarthy’s anti-western classic ‘Blood Meridian’.
This rambling imagery may not tell you exactly what Towers sound like, but it’s hard to sum them up in a more straightforward style. Elements of crust, industrial, noise and sludge are all present in their sound but none of them dominate. Instead ‘II’ is a unique cocktail of sound that sees Towers trudge defiantly through lengthy tales of what one can only presume to be utter gloom.
The only real problem with it is that, at four tracks and just under forty minutes, it’s a little too short to be as misanthropic as its hellish aural recipe perhaps suggests it should. Nevertheless, this comes highly recommended if something different is what you’re after.
The Unsemble - ‘The Unsemble’ (Ipecac)
Talking of different, here are the Unsemble. A trio featuring Duane Denison (Jesus Lizard, Tomahawk), Alexander Hacke (EinsturzendeNeubauten, Crime and the City Solution) and Brian Kotzur (Silver Jews), this is one band that should turn a few heads.
Ipecac is an appropriate home for something this defiantly undefinable. Certainly, any attempts to pigeonhole the Unsemble will only end in tears, given that the trio show an almost perverse disregard for curating a sonic identity for their new project over this self-titled debut’s fifteen tracks.
There are flickers of their previous projects, glints of Zorn at his least chaotic and of the revolutionary avant-prog act Henry Cow, yet neither of those artists have been as wilfully structureless, even careless in their approach. Some of these songs are improvisations but others apparently are not, but it’s hard to tell which is which. Every track feels like it may just collapse at any moment, as if the power in the studio has blown. Some tracks do. In essence, I have no idea what the Unsemble are doing. All I know is that I like it.
I couldn’t not give a brief mention to this lovingly put together issuing of the entire Demilich discography on Svart Records. A Finnish death metal act from the early ‘90s, Demilich’s sound points forward to bands who would not exist until at least a decade after the release of their only album, 1993’s ‘Nespithe’.
That album is included here, alongside everything else Demilich ever recorded during their brief existence, but it has been given a caring, and much needed, remastering so that, in short, it sounds better than ever.
This isn’t death metal at its most accessible, and nor is it necessarily going to please avid tech heads, but it is a brutal demonstration of extreme metal at its most forward thinking and thought provoking. Even 20 years on Demilich’s music makes for essential listening for any fan of experimentally minded extreme metal.
Phew, if that’s not enough to keep you going for the next few weeks then your extreme musical greed knows no bounds. Until next time, adjø!
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