mindflair - green bakery

.... a unique mixture of old-school hardcore, jazzy riffs (but not the boring demonstrating way!) and modern blasting to the core grind is a quite short time period. Really short compared to the quality, energy and uniqueness delivered by this debut reminding, but never copying, Brutal Truth's "Sounds of the animal kingdom" era…

... smacks you over the head with 15 tracks of groovy "baked" grindcore with tortured vocals, in league with the punked out blast power of BRUTAL TRUTH's later material, weighed down by massive crushing grooves. While Mindflair speeds up to Mach 10 blasts and unleashs some wacked out intricate structures which might vaguely remind you of Dillinger Escape Plan or Burnt By The Sun, MINDFLAIR mostly keep their green-grind locked into early-EARACHE, Napalm Death / Heresy / Brutal Truth style mode. Green Bakery is an intensely effective mix of crushing raw HC, brutal grindcore, and the occasional element of death metal and crustcore/d-beat. MINDFLAIR features members of esteemed German speecore/powerviolence masters KENT BROCKMAN and FLACHENBRAND.

The guitar sound extremely resembles TERRORIZER's cult album "World Downfall" and even apart from that TERRORIZER can be used as reference. As far as you can see, you get blasting from the barrel, but always with sense and intelligence. Speed for speed's sake won't be found on this CD, no, some "slower" parts bring in at least a minimum in variety. The production also is very powerful, what would you want more, the singer offers the whole spectrum between deep garglegrunt from the depths of the coal chamber and hysteric barking like FILTHY CHRISTIANS.

mindbakery greenflair

resurrecturis - the cuckoo clocks of hell

resurrecturis holds its own amongst most of today’s current metal.... Splicing death metal intricacies a la Death and Swedish metal devices galore, this eight-track offering displays a band who know not only how to growl, bellow, and sound like the fury of Hell has cracked the Earth, but a band whose precision and technical ability stands up amongst the elite of the genre. As heavy as Cryptopsy with the experimental edge of Candiria .... this group's swan song is a beautifully brutal way to end out on.

The italian band moves in the path of underground extreme and experimental death metal.

.... they have their own style and influences from the american
death metal and thrash scene mostly, with hardcore paths ....

cuckoo for resurrecturis

moonshine

This self-titled debut from Baltimore's MOONSHINE opens with a gnarly swampy sludge chug w/ harmonized guitar attack that would make CROWBAR proud, setting the stage for their extremely heavy,moody, and often haunting sludge/doom/crust assault. Rising from the ashes of local bands WAKE UP ON FIRE and INURE, this is closer in spirit to the tribalist, apocalyptic crustcore-meets-post rock of WAKE UP ON FIRE, but MOONSHINE gets WAY slower and heavier, mixing crushingly heavy sludgecore n' crawling Doom metal with frontwoman Mis' sickening vocals (sort of like a cross between Edgy from BURNING WITCH and Amy from NAUSEA ) as well as some neat and unexpected shifts in musical direction. Like when the band's superdirge bottoms out, revealing a weird, smoky blues break with Mis' eerie crooning. Or the AWESOME reverb-drenched moments where MOONSHINE starts sounding like a ragged, ghostly COWBOY JUNKIES, right before unleashing monster doomcrust riffs again in a thunderstorm of amp damage and gooey blastbeats. Loaded with epic, grandiose guitarwork, this is a cool mix of Southern Lord-style extreme Doom, the sort of psychedelic neo-crustcore that has been coming out of Baltimore for the past few years (a gooey, atonal buzz heavily influenced by those Cali hemp wizards DYSTOPIA), and grimy, grungy, Southern-rock tinged sludge like EYEHATEGOD, RWAKE and BUZZOV*EN.

moonshine

motherscratchers - cleaver + hatchet

The MotherScratchers dual release of Cleaver and Hatchet brings to the public their stoned punk-metal sound. Heavy stoner riffs and strong metal sensibility with punk rooted ballsiness, rounded out with vocals that half the time sound like GG Allin toward the end of his career and much of the rest of the time like the Melvins - this is all in store for those of you who expose youself to this. That's a recommendation by the way. Sporting a sound that is referential but possessing of its own personality, the music herein is a bridge between punksters and THC'd-out doomsters.

the Motherscratchers are ass clinching loud, diverse, obnoxious, and meat pounding heavy without sounding like buttrock or heavy metal. no whining here..... the singer has got a mouth that spits raw beef and steel girders. if you like that stoner rock crap, you'll like the motherscratchers.... the motherscratchers have been together over the course of 5 years. their first two releases, "the cleaver" and "the hatchet", is a collection of old and new material spanning over the 5 year period..... their influences are wide and diverse. like: scratch acid, alice donut, melvins, ed hall, secret chiefs 3, and the jesus lizard

motherscratchers - cleaver

motherscratchers - hatchet

Entombed dating the Melvins while making out to old smelltallica....

... is how mendozza could be described

Their sludgy, grungy metal which resembles, at times, the likes of Unsane and The Melvins is about as heavy as the 8,800 tons of water that the gigantic destroyer used to displace at sea.

A powerful sludge-hammer with nice melodic lead work, where Sabbath riffs meet the power of High On Fire... a goddamn heavy doom rocker, everything is destroyed! Sounds like Down with Crowbar and Eye Hate God together! Killer!!.... they will get big soon! Believe me!

mendozza - hmcs uganda

test-site

Test-Site (form. known as blackwater) is lead by guitarist James Potter. Potter has played in some of Milwaukee's heaviest bands. He wielded the lead guitar for the legendary Dr. Shrinker then went along for the ride when Shrinker morphed into the mighty Feck. Feck imploded under their own weight leaving Potter band-less. He even gave up the guitar for a while. Soon the Gods of the Mighty Riff came calling again. He teamed up with Tim Wick on drums (Epsom Blu) and Matt Budda on bass (Ballpoint) to form the crushing Test-Site.

The Test-Site sound is like the universes of Dr. Shrinker and Feck colliding in a Big Bang of crushing riff laden mayhem. Sparse harsh vocals pepper the decimated landscape leaving you devastated. Heavy, catchy, powerful and mesmerizing, taking the strength of Metal infusing it with 70's Prog-rock (leaving all the crap out). Throw the influence of Italian horror films and the psych films of Alejandro Jodorowsky into the mix makes Test-Site the powerful entity it is.

test-site

kung pao - sheboygan

Imagine the classic dynamics and womp of Tad, the sonic theory of Unsane, the tightness of Helmet, and the humor and edge of Killdozer. Understand these influences, but realize that Kung Pao have their own style and are unique to the underground. Imagine you're a brat, now boil yourself in beer, grill yourself to perfection and lay down in a comfortable onion bun, cover yourself in spicy mustard, and be eaten alive. The time has come, step up to the throne of the Denim Nation and take the ride of your life to Sheboygan, you will never be the same....

Straight in the face, intense, right in the ear... Feel you hair fly back like that Maxell commercial... Heavy as shit... just pure heavy rock.... Heavy sludgy dirt rock.... Bolt down the furniture.... Kung Pao serve up a platter of pure drivin' rock.... Full-bore sludge metal, riff-centric, bong-headed bliss....

..Denim clad noise machine... Frisbee rolled joints and a tank of nitrous oxide... Sheboygan is a visceral outing-no fluff here, just pure, high decibel NYC sludge... abrasive beat-you-over-the-head pummeling noise... Like dead bodies hitting the bottom of shallow graves... This is by far the loudest, dirtiest rawk and roll I've ever heard...

.... stomps around like a caged animal... Well worth many spins while getting high or drunk or looking at that Man-o-war poster above the bed.... A piece of advice, don't listen when you're feeling suicidal

kung pao - sheboygan

kalmex & the riffmerchants - it goes to eleven

KALMEX & THE RIFFMERCHANTS (featuring members of Plutocracy, No Less, Agents Of Satan, Emetic and Immortal Fate) twist your mind with a unique style of psychedelic instrumental heavy hardcore. These veterans of the Bay Area hardcore scene are not afraid to let their prog and arena rock influences glow in their twisted heshed-out compositions...imagine mixing AC/DC and Pink Floyd with Cro-Mags, Napalm Death and Mahavishnu Orchestra!!

heavy as f***, instrumental prog-core with blastbeats and fist-raising, horns-to-the-skies riffage. If you're into the heavy prog /blacklight-metal stuff coming out of the extreme hardcore punk scene (like all of the killer stuff LIFE IS ABUSE Records has put out), get this.

... imagine Black Flag on acid jamming with Zappa and Beefheart. Twisted instrumental madness ...

kalmex & the riffmerchants - it goes to eleven

glitter pals - unleash the compassion

NYC duo resurrect the fat-string heaviosity of KARP and GODHEADSILO as filtered through dayglo art damage. Spooky-ooky chants kick into the 1st track with that special kind of high-tension rubber band crunch that only a massively distorted bass guitar can deliver, overtop a spazztoid caffeine-driven drum attack…yup, we’ve got another bass and drums duo with Glitterpals, but this has Mookie and Jake, GENGHIS TRON affiliates both, which = zero jackassery when it comes to laying down the frenzy. Mondo post-Am Rep riff muggings at double speed interrupted by blasting whiteouts of heavy duty thrash are the order of the day on Unleash The Compassion , and though this is a brief affair at only 4 songs , it’s all about power. I think these two are picking up the trail abandoned by GODHEADSILO …yeah! Big Big BIG production from Martin Bisi , master knob turner for the likes of SWANS , BOREDOMS , and SONIC YOUTH. feat. members of GENGHIS TRON! - - Crucial Blast

glidder pows

the galvin-wilhelm-miller quartet

Mind-boggling schizoid avant grind / powerviolence from this bizarre trio, errrr, "quartet", from Buffalo, NY, featuring members of Avulsion and Parade of the Lifeless.

Blazing complex grindcore jams stretched to upwards of 9 minutes at a time mixing the most bulldozing blasts of double bass, ferocious, IRATE vocals that shift suddenly into Fantomas-esque throat weirdness, piccolo snare and tornado guitar runs with church choirs, devestating breakdowns, middle eastern motifs, squealing sax, tribal percussion, swirling ambience, jazz structure, sampled vocals, keyboards, and more.

Their brand of complex, epic exploratory grindcore is really unlike anything previously released, effectively turning the genre over on itself with bizarre stream-of-consciousness, attention-deficit disordered amalgamations concocted in the Quartet's music library/laboratory.

It's like Brutal Truth and Discordance Axis reconfigured as some sort of mutant John Zorn / Naked City grindcore experiment, but more brutal than over-the-top avant garde - - from crucial blast

galvinwilhelmmillerquartet

carrion - the crime of idle hands

CARRION - the Crime Of Idle Hands

... effortlessly melds post-hardcore crunch to Am Rep violent insanity and stonerized riffing. Like black flag 's "My War" genetically fused to dazzling killmen and early Today is The Day, while veering between emotional outbursts akin to Fugazi and atonal doom trudge.

... not easy listening music, and although it's quite angular and complicated at times, it isn't aimed at the progressive crowd either... pure bred noise hard rock reminiscent of the dirty American sound of the late 80s, from bog black over to tumor circus to Jesus Lizard and the slower moments of Pushead's Septic Death.....heavy rhythmic work on the bass and drums, the single guitar is more distorted than you would expect, with a dense lyricism on the slower instrumental parts... lyrics are very depressing, carried well by the desperate high strung voice of Nick Skrobisz who is also responsible for the excellent guitar playing and the colourful cover artwork.... the longer tracks drive you deepest into the disturbed mental imagery that their music tries to convey.... mathy and rocking at the same time

Brutal like the squirts..... carrying a post-hardcore torch while wearing an Am Rep shirt with yellow underarms. ... straight ahead f'n heavy, that is if you consider Dazzling Killmen to be straight ahead.... surmises it's punk and metal roots ... could be the crust kids raised on metal's version of slayer's South Of Heaven or perhaps My War

... like MASTODON if their muse was punk and not metal, but no punk would play and write intricate guitar parts and time changes like those found here .... pretty goddamn heavy, as heavy as anyone else, but not in the typical downtuned, bludgeoning, battering way... more cerebral than anything else. It won't make anyone thrash around in fits, but once all is said and done, the ass feels kicked.... vocals & music compliment each other well. Both are frenzied, but never veer out of control. The lyrics, like the vocals, are p*ssed but don't become redundant and are poignant.

.... picture a band standing midway between Mastodon and Today Is The Day, then picture said band standing midway between Neurosis and Black Flag 's My War.... drummer is a powerhouse, the guitarist can veer from Fugazi weirdness to total atonal doom in the drop of a hat, and the bassist has a nice fat tone that propels everything along, while still playing incredibly complex lines. Notice the word complex... not technical, but complex. The arrangements are complex, the playing complex, but none of this is ever technical... There is a huge helping of punk ...

...knocks you straight in the head.... beautifully raw and supremely heavy at the same time..... not metal, not hardcore, not punk, just heavy... discordant riffs & dirgey vocals. These guys have a knack for making you feel the pain in their music.... it speaks of pain and loss more effectively than any whinning maggot with a hip-retro haircut and a record advance could while yelling about how his girlfriend dumped him.... these guys do not think nor write songs like the average heavy band.... (they have a) knack for removing musical boundaries while still injecting an overdose of emotion ....the album sounds seven miles wide.... sheer heaviness. You can hear every damn instrument in the mix... Carrion put this advantage to full use, charging ahead with an energy and live-feel that knocks you for a loop. These guys are making worthwhile and unique music that deserves to be heard.

carrion - the crime of idle hands

grievous - one breath from winter + erebus

"THESE RIFFS ARE THICKER THAN TONY IOMMI'S MOUSTACHE!"
-- Superhero Artist Management


"One Breath from Winter" Reviews:

...dark and heavy all around with good production, interesting and hard hitting songs, and cool artwork. Heavy chugging, post-hardcore romp through the swamp ...a sludgier version of Cult of Luna, the music sets both an epic atmosphere and a layer of filth to bury you under ...hardcore bellowing and screaming and a groove to keep you lurching .... crawling, slow tempo with the infamous double bass roll ...solid molasses soaked slab of heavy, dark and slow

... slow, heavy and painful... like a steamroller over children

... the viscous qualities of sludge and the ambience of doom but w/ an occasional classic metal riff. ....doomy vibe, sludges speed, and metal trappings RIYL: Weedeater, Jumbos Killcrane, Ufomammut, Buried at Sea

.... dense as overgrown swamp land, with the riffs low-hanging and the vocals scraping gravel as they growl and gurgle along. Drum hits flap through songs like gigantic bat wings, melodies clang like bells for the dead and the doomed... channels nefarious alien life forms including a bit of William S. Burroughs, whose sampled vocals add an extra eerie edge

... fantastic doom, with deep throbbing bass and wahed out chugaholic stoner guitar, deep echoing drums and insanely sick vocals... every curdling scream.... takes the listener on a great journey.... like being lost in some foreboding north western woods, in mid winter



"Erebus" Reviews:

... a tight professional unity, with a strong emphasis on a somewhat filthy down-tuned mood and feel. The sound quality and production is far from lacking throughout all five tracks... vocals are strong, brilliant, consistently angry... incredible sense of dread they produce musically... intensity of the tales they unfold before us.

... slices of what it feels like to be alive in a world that glistens on the surface, but seethes and boils underneath... a world which appears perfect and pristine, but secretly writhes in agony, dirty, unclean.... dark and dirty and unforgiving

... Pulsing, pounding, annihilating, attacking with honesty; fully prepared to rip and render any false holiness limp, helpless, begging for mercy in the face of the one with eyes of pure blackness and complete knowledge.

Eerie, disturbing and heavy unlike the mere cookie cutter stomp and growl clutter too common today... drives like a 62 Chrysler 500 with 6 holes in the muffler, doing 45 on a dusty desert road. Sometimes, they may slow to pick up a lonely hitch hiker, then like in a horror movie... all hell breaks loose

chug-a-holic, anti social and disconcerting doom.... Dark, down-tuned, blues-driven riffs with vocals that emit like curdling caustic fumes from the forgotten bogs of the dark lands. The subject matter of 'Erebus' is mostly a reflection of a frightened america with samples, clips, apocalyptic drones, undertones and musings.... soundtrack to the "end of days"... Musically depressing, with not a lot to make you feel good about life, or get you motivated.... fuses said doom with a black metal mentality... with the slowest blast beats I've ever heard.... file it next to Hellhammer, Yob and Burning Witch."


one breath from winter + erebus