Voivod - Dimension Hatröss

by Cosmo Lee

Last weekend marked the 20th anniversary of Voivod's Dimension Hatröss. The core of Voivod's golden era trilogy, it bridged Killing Technology's departure from prior Motörhead worship and Nothingface's prog polish. The record remains revelatory today. That's because it's elusive; it hits you and runs away at the same time. So much metal feels like an end game: head for death as fast and hard as possible. Voivod did that early on, but then they started poking and prodding and turning things inside out. By Dimension Hatröss, the band had twisted thrash into strange, futuristic forms. (Perhaps it was a spiritual forebear of Meshuggah.) Denis "Piggy" D'Amour (RIP) was recognizable within a few notes, a distinction few guitarists ever reach. Other things were going on here, particularly conceptually with regard to the band's Voivod mascot - see this interview - but for me, this is where Piggy found his six-string voice.

Tribal Convictions
Macrosolutions to Megaproblems

The Dimension Hatröss demos are available here.

The Endless Blockade - Primitive

by Jess Blumensheid

The day The Endless Blockade aren't pissed, there will be no god. (Ed. note: Or there might be one.) They live up to their name by instilling extreme wrath for human trash, wasteful lifestyles, and the fear of god in every release. Such hostility allows The Endless Blockade to enclose themselves with music elitism, pretentiousness, and isolationism. But taking hostility to such an extent is potentially counterproductive by inviting others to share the same distaste for humankind and love for powerful music.

Irrationalism Uberalles
Thick Skin, Transparent Blood
Perfection

Primitive (20 Buck Spin, 2008) explodes in severely acidic rage. The album slabs together a mash of coarse power violence, splintering harsh noise, and commanding power electronics. The Endless Blockade evoke the loathsomeness of Man Is the Bastard and the throbbing fast-slow-fast construction of Crossed Out. In particular, the rasping blastbeats and rapid riffs in "Irrationalism Uberalles" share similarities with those of Crossed Out's "Crown of Thorns."

With Scott Hull's mixing touch, Primitive breathes just enough. "Thick Skin, Transparent Blood" slows things down, opening with tasty, lumbering chords. Taps on the snare warn of imminent attack; guitars then spew their guts through projectile vomiting. Such wrath mirrors the Nietzsche quote in the liner notes:

All idealists imagine that the causes they serve are significantly better than the other causes in the world; they do not want to believe that if their cause is to flourish at all, it needs exactly the same foul smelling manure that all other human undertakings require.

The band lectures similarly in "Perfection" and "Do Not Resuscitate." In the former, deafening static accompanies snippets of religious discourse. Amid violent power electronics, the song hisses, "Man understands divinity like a dog understands electricity." Such words truly bring home The Endless Blockade's discontent with our ignorance.

Buy:
The End
20 Buck Spin

RIP Cursed

Bad news from Canada's Cursed. Say it ain't so, Joe.

Yeah, you heard. Apparently, it gets even worse. That's all I know or even want to know for now. We got robbed at the very end of tour in a totally unreal, extremely sketchy series of events that still makes no sense at all, only leads to paranoia, anger and a total loss of faith. Passports, money, all the costs of the tour. Either way, whoever did it, it was a bullet in the head, the end of the line. A sudden and totally fucked up way for it to end, which I know will be fitting when I look back on it. All we could do was play the show, badly, and go our ways with whatever money we could muster. I hitched a ride back to Prague with Tomas. Since I can't do a fucking thing about it, I'm going to hang out with my girl, and friends, stare at some Czech mountains and try not to think about it. Needless to say, all outstanding plans are off. All this shit aside, thanks to everyone that helped out and travelled from all over for the shows on this tour, all the kids and bands we played and stayed with. Minus a few fucked up shows, it was probably the best tour we ever had. Thanks everyone for your good wishes. I'll elaborate when I'm home next week, for now - yes it's true, and yes it's over.

Heartbreaking to hear from a band that meant what they said, whose sound roared their name. III: Architects of Troubled Sleep (Goodfellow, 2008) was that rare record I was afraid to review. Words couldn't do it justice. How do you review storm clouds and dirt clods? Part me of wants Cursed to live on. The other part wants them to honor their own words in "Antihero Resuscitator": "All my antiheroes are dead, gone to far-off beds / And I got orders – Do Not Resuscitate / Leave them in the ground, we’ve got our own frustrations." May you find the peace you never had.

Antihero Resuscitator

Buy:
Relapse
Interpunk

Howl, Mendozza

Howl

In the current issue of Decibel (#44, Iron Maiden cover), I've done the "Throw Me a Frickin' Bone!" column, which reviews demos and unsigned records. Some of them are actually good. The two of note this time are by Howl and Mendozza. Both are hairy and sound like it. (One of my non-metalhead friends read the column, after which she turned to me and asked, "What is 'beard metal'?" It was so cute.)

Howl - And the Gnawing...
Mendozza - The Rise of the Piscean

Howl hail from Providence, RI, and remind me a little of Lair of the Minotaur, but with more color. Dig that half-speed Slayer riff in the middle of "And the Gnawing..."! This June, these dudes and dudette will play at Indiana's Dude Fest, which really should be called Beard Fest. Also hirsute and heavy are Vancouver's Mendozza, who drop an absolutely nasty wah-wah workout in "The Rise of the Piscean." The criss-crossing bluesy leads are pure Sabbath, and pure awesomeness. Somehow this band ended up on the Underworld: Evolution soundtrack next to Atreyu and My Chemical Romance - WTF?!

Buy:
Howl
Mendozza

Nadja, Russian Circles

Nadja seem to have emptied their hard drive onto CD's, sent them out, and gotten signed to 10 labels simultaneously. By the end of 2008, they will have put out 15 releases in two years. That's too much. But it's about right if you consider each album as a song. Make one long ambient fuzzfest, divide it into tracks, call it an album - next! At Pitchfork, I've reviewed two recent Nadja reissues, Skin Turns to Glass and Bliss Torn from Emptiness. (The artwork for the latter is above.) I've also reviewed the new Russian Circles record.

Nadja - Bliss Torn from Emptiness (excerpt)
Russian Circles - Youngblood

Devin Townsend, DEP, Dub Trio, and more

Devin Townsend

I've published 22 pieces since my last update a month ago. I've also started to write for Pitchfork. Both are somewhat ridiculous propositions, I realize, so I don't even know where to start. Just look at the sidebar and see if anything appeals to you. If you think all that will take a while to read - imagine the time it took to write it. I'm particularly proud of my Landmine Marathon live review. It's the first thing I've written in a long, long time that I actually enjoy reading.

Devin Townsend - By Your Command (excerpt)
The Dillinger Escape Plan - Milk Lizard

Despite all this, I'm already horribly behind on 2008 releases, and hopelessly so for 2007. And the other day, I saw some metal site's top 10 lists for 2006, and realized I hadn't heard the vast majority of those picks. Fie! You'd think it were a crime to listen to records more than once. Devin Townsend and The Dillinger Escape Plan added to my ever-expanding list of Top X records I didn't hear last year. Both appeal to me for their humor - Townsend, for his hilarious space opera about an alien in search of the ultimate cup of coffee, and DEP, for essentially cloning Faith No More, who were always winking and nodding at something, even if you never knew what it was.

Senate - The Great Northern Scenekill

Contrary to what its title might suggest, The Great Northern Scenekill (self-released, 2006) has nothing to do with Pantera. It's modern thrashy melodic death metal, and quite aggressive - think Darkane or Darkest Hour. This Canadian band features Martyr drummer Patrice Hamelin (who's touring with Despised Icon this year); this record has Threat Signal's Marco Bressette on bass, though he's no longer in the band. Tue Madsen did the mastering, with Tue Madsen results - punchy and compressed.

Victorious Hatred
Queen of Sorrow

This album is a perfect example of why I love doing this site. You'd never guess from hearing it that the band isn't signed. It easily stacks up against the rest of what's out there. Even if it's not the most original stuff, I invariably find myself tapping my foot and throwing some goats.

It's also a perfect example of what drives metal - riffs. Basically, this album is one bad-ass riff after another, and ridiculously so. Just count the killer riffs in "Victorious Hatred" - it's almost brazen. That choppy last riff in "Queen of Sorrow"? Sick. I picture these guys slaving away in a sweatshop; they're not making Hallmark cards or fortune cookies, but killer riffs. There's this guy with a whip, and he won't let the band leave until they've made 50 killer riffs each day.

Yes, I know I'm weird.

A few rookie mistakes on this debut-full length: a cute but completely inappropriate jazz guitar intro, fluctuating levels of vocals in the mix. I don't mind the latter, though, as the raspy yells are somewhat faceless. "Queen of Sorrow" does hit some awesome multitracked singing at 4:28 that's so Def Leppard - hell yeah.

Eat poutine, drink Molson, and find this at Senate's MySpace. The entire album is available for streaming at the band's website.

Pholde - Aperture of the Internal Surface

Afe Records is one of my happier discoveries this year. This Italian dark ambient/experimental label, run by Andrea Marutti, stands for both quantity and quality. Its discography is enormous, yet each release comes in awe-inspiring packaging - limited edition CD-R with pro-printed A5 sleeve and high quality artwork. For the past few months, I've listened to Afe releases almost every day, both as background and foreground music. There's no one Afe sound, but in plurality, Afe is slowly seeping under my skin.

Aperture of the Internal Surface (excerpt)
Manifested by the Occurrence (excerpt)

Pholde is Canada's Alan Bloor, who records harsher sounds as Knurl. Bloor is a trained musician, with experience in jazz bass and classical guitar. For Pholde, though, he drops tonality in favor of metallic timbres - metal the substance, not the genre. Imagine sticking your head inside a gigantic, 50 meter-wide cymbal as giants and dwarves run their hands around its surfaces, extracting every sound it can produce. One gets the sensation of falling into a bottomless foundry.

At two long tracks (31:31 and 14:13), Aperture of the Internal Surface forces reorientation of listening modes. One stops listening for songs and starts listening to sound. The waveforms reveal that the tracks have contours, though they're not obvious in such dilated timeframes. The title track is five slow crescendos; "Manifested by the Occurrence" is two long sections. Bloor recorded these tracks as single takes sans overdubs. It's a tribute to his skill with sound manipulation that I can listen to essentially 45 minutes of metallic cymbal sounds and enjoy every moment.

Aperture of the Internal Surface is available from Afe's mail order.

3 Inches of Blood, Fugazi, Ministry, and more

3 Inches of Blood

Some new writing up - at Metal Injection, I have reviews of film buffs/metalcore-rs Killwhitneydead and Relapse retro thrashers Dekapitator. At Stylus, I have a look back at Fugazi's most underrated record, Steady Diet of Nothing, as well as reviews of the Speed Kills...Again compilation on Heavy Artillery, metal-obsessed rapper Necro, falsetto-fueled 3 Inches of Blood, Ministry's final album (that cover of The Doors' "Roadhouse Blues" is unbelievably banging), Xasthur's excellent latest mopefest, and Bloody Panda, who actually sound like their name - slow, fuzzy, wounded.

3 Inches of Blood - Night Marauders
Ministry - Roadhouse Blues
Xasthur - Cemetery of Shattered Masks

I would never have forecast this, but 3 Inches of Blood's Fire Up the Blades is my favorite metal album this year. Their last record was OK, but they seriously stepped it up this time. I have not had this much fun with metal in a long, long time. Every time I hear this album, goats and invisible oranges start flying and one-man moshpits erupt in my apartment. This is the kind of music that leads to unwise, impulsive tattoos. I'm no danger of being like the guy who got Ken Susi's face tattooed on his ass - but I'm just sayin'.

Icewind - All Is Dust

For the first time in my life, I'm into power metal, and I think I know why. In the course of moving, I don't have any speakers right now except for the crappy ones on my laptop. Thus, atmospheric stuff like black or doom metal doesn't translate, but bright, shiny melodies do. Also, maybe in my state of flux, I'm subconsciously gravitating to Western chord progressions resolving conventionally and comfortingly. Maybe.

No Other Way
Trapped in a Dream

But while my guard is down, I haven't lost my mind. Power metal still must pass a very high bar before escaping its default frisbee status in my household. The vocals can't be too annoying, the keyboards can't be too obtrusive, and there have to be actual guitar riffs.

On these scores, Canada's Icewind mostly win. For a debut album, All Is Dust (Underground Symphony, 2007) is friggin' solid, holding my attention all the way through, even with a slight sag in the middle for ballads. The last few songs really pack some oomph. Dig those vocal octave leaps in "No Other Way" and the crazy complicated arrangement of "Trapped in a Dream." Despite their baroque nature, the songs hit their marks with crisp chord changes and transitions. Tight execution, memorable songs, strong effort overall.

The artwork is horribly cheesy, a mess of mismatched fonts and Thomas Kinkade soft focus filters, but you can't win 'em all. You aren't going to get many power metal recommendations from me, so hop to it. All Is Dust is available directly from the band's MySpace.

The Red Chord, Darkest Hour, Halford, etc.

The Red Chord

I'm moving from Berlin to San Francisco at the end of this month. This, combined with excessive travel (five trans-Atlantic crossings in six weeks, with five destination airports and way too much sleeping while sitting), has severely hampered my recent productivity.

The Red Chord - Tread on the Necks of Kings
Halford - Made in Hell
Year of No Light - Traversée

However, I've published a bit since my last update - dual reviews of Azalea City Penis Club/Robin Allender and Caina/Godheadscope at Stylus, as well as a review of Immolation and an interview with Year of No Light. At Metal Injection, I've reviewed The Red Chord, Darkest Hour, Halford, Mortuus, and Ion Dissonance, as well as a DVD of the Metalmania 2006 festival and a fine book by Keith Kahn-Harris.

Sleep Research Facility - Deep Frieze

Cold Spring bills Deep Frieze (2007) as "dark ambient," which is sort of true; the nether regions of this release are often dimly-lit. But for the most part, this disc matches its cover - glacial and wintry. This isn't the tranquil beauty that Norwegian black metal fetishizes. It's the harsh indefiniteness of a Midwest winter, with temperatures biting and winds swirling all around.

79°S 83°W (excerpt)

But beneath the snowdrifts lies structure. These 10+ minute tracks have long, slow arcs, morphing through abstract, sometimes soothing tonalities. For such epic settings, the background and high end carry surprising detail. Occasionally the tones crystallize into a Fortress of Solitude; a distant, walkie-talkie voice interjects at one point.

I've tested this album in my own sleep research facility (i.e., bed), and it's wonderful for such purposes. However, it also sounds great cranked up. It's calming at times, and menacing at others - I've found no better audio representation of winter. Put on your gloves and pick up this icy slab at Cold Spring.

Writing Roundup - The Esoteric, Wolf, Into Eternity

My review of The Esoteric's Subverter is up at Stylus. Great album, great band, why aren't these guys huge???

Also, I've started writing for Metal Injection. I've been a fan of the site for a while. In its early days, it put out primitive, often hilarious shows composed of metal videos, tongue-in-cheek interviews, and some extremely silly skits. Now they've grown up and changed their format to on-demand streaming, with much of the same content, just broken up into more user-friendly bits. The site is more of an awesome time-suck than ever before, so I encourage you to browse around. This week for Metal Injection, I've reviewed the new Wolf and Into Eternity. Enjoy!

Stolen Babies, Unexpect dual review

My dual review of Stolen Babies' There Be Squabbles Ahead and Unexpect's In a Flesh Aquarium is up at Stylus.

Fuck the Facts - Backstabber Etiquette

Since I recently reviewed Fuck the Facts' Stigmata High-Five, I thought I'd revisit 2002's Backstabber Etiquette. If Stigmata is a well-oiled machine, then Backstabber is a crazy, unhinged beast. This is the band's first album with Mel Mongeon, and while she doesn't have the control she has now, her vocals here are amazingly feral.

The songs on Backstabber are spastic as hell. "Ballet Addict" has awesomely twitchy riffs, while the chords and dynamics in the middle of "The Burning Side" bring to mind "The Call of Ktulu"! Grindcore is the foundation, but the band takes frequent detours through technical death metal, prog weirdness, and random samples and bits of dialogue. Two fuzzed-out ambient interludes help break up the already broken-up album. Dillinger who?

Fuck the Facts - Ballet Addict
Fuck the Facts - The Burning Side

The production is thin, but that only adds to the music's manic intensity. This is one of those albums you put on after a hard day when you just want to annihilate everything. Pick this up

@ Relapse
@ Willowtip
@ Crucial Blast
@ Fuck the Facts

Fuck the Facts, Landmine Marathon dual review

My dual review of Fuck the Facts' Stigmata High-Five and Landmine Marathon's Wounded is up at Stylus. You can read it here.