Jute Gyte - Isolation [2012]

Jute Gyte might just be the second coming of American black metal. Although this one-man (Adam Kalmbach) act's sheer prolificness (18 albums - not all of which are black metal - since 2006 and 10 over the past two years alone - and yes, that is a word - Google says so) might lead the unaware prospective listener into dismissing his work as thoughtless and just churned out for the sake of it, I can assure you that is not the case. No, here, Mr Kalmbach produces a fine collection of riffs, brought together with delightful cohesion to make a fine black metal album. Aside from the ambient title-track, which, to my ears at least, is just futile and does not improve the album at all, every song is a winner (as with all the best albums). Although this won't quite crack my top 10 of 2012 (a fine year for music), it's on the edge of it and well worth a listen.

Bandcamp

White Medal - Yorkshire Steel demo [2012]

YAAAAAARKSHIRE! YAAAAAARKSHIRE! Or so we say whenever we come across a Southerner (for what it's worth, the Scottish are Southerners too). White Medal originally attracted my attention with their 2010 Agbrigg Beast demo - and although that didn't seem to be much cop at the time, it's grown on me. Still, this is a lot better. For a band that have been around just 5 years, White Medal have certainly done splits with some prominent bands - first the almighty Skullflower (back in 2010), and more recently Caïna (meh), and Slægt (I haven't heard the split itself yet, but Slægt are a solid Danish band - their S/T demo is worth a listen). As for this, well, it's raw black metal. Far from revolutionary, but what White Medal do, they do it very well. Songs are constructed with a hypnotic feeling, and this is well achieved.

128 kbps

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Dying Fetus - Destroy The Opposition [2000]

Although Dying Fetus have a large role in unleashing the hordes of shitty deathcore bands at the moment, no-one hates 'Slaughter Of The Soul' for what it influenced, so why should this be hated? Dying Fetus' first two suffered from horrific production values, so this was their first album which could really stand on compositional ability alone.

320 kbps

DMCA complaint received. For a dead link. For an album released 12 years ago.

Discordance Axis - The Inalienable Dreamless [2001]

In all honesty, I'm not a huge fan of this album. Sure, I like it, but I don't deify it as many latter-day grindcore fans seem to. But then again, I'm not a fan of the likes of Gridlink and Cellgraft which this undeniably influenced largely - I like my grindcore punky, not technical. That said, it clearly is a seminal album, and one of the best examples of the style it pioneered. For that reason, it's worth a listen even if you only listen to grindcore from time to time as a novelty. It will never, in my eyes, reach the level of seminality (is that a word?) of the likes of Terrorizer and Brutal Truth, let alone Repulsion and Napalm Death, but it's on the second tier certainly. Don't be influenced by the torrent of over-technical shit it spawned.

192 kbps

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Blasphemy - Blood Upon The Altar demo [1989]

The surprising thing about this demo, the precursor to the legendary album Fallen Angel of Doom, is that its production is actually clearer than that of the full-length. Certainly, when just getting into Blasphemy, it helped me personally to overcome the murkiness of the full-length, especially with my then-predisposition to more overtly melodic forms of black metal. That's not to say it isn't completely ferocious - it is - but it's a little more accessible than the album. But it's more than just alternative recordings of the songs found on FAoD - not only do four of its full tracks not appear on the album, but the structure of the recording offers an entirely different perspective. Really, this is, if not equally seminal, almost as seminal as Fallen Angel of Doom. It's worth a listen if you have any interest in black metal (and for what it's worth, it's also easier to get on CD due to the 2007 Osmose reissue with Gods of War).

v1 VBR

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Stuff I'm looking for

If anyone's got any of the following, an upload would be very much appreciated:

Bestial Death - Suicide Of The Immortal demo
Archenemy - Violent Harm
Black Dethe - Any or all of the demos
Dragged Into Sunlight - Terminal Aggressor EP
PDF: Pawel 'verneer' Nazarewicz's 'Building A Bankroll: Full Ring Edition'
Mutant - Wreck Your Neck EP
Morriah - Let The Sword Fall demo
Nifelheim (ITALY) - Parabiosis demo
NAPALM DEATH DEMOS (other than Hatred Surge - Punk Is A Rotting Corpse is a fake)

Re-re-upload: Blasphemy - Fallen Angel Of Doom [1990]

Another debut, Fallen Angel Of Doom should be played to all poseurs at maximum volume. Ahem. Now banned from playing in the USA, Canada's Blasphemy were surely one of the best early black/thrash bands, not to mention the pioneers of the whole bestial black metal scene. Although much aped since, especially by their countrymen, Fallen Angel Of Doom remains untouched in its pure uncompromising aggression and quality. Not to be passed up upon.

Re-upload notes: I've added a little bit to the description to reflect the general higher quality of the bios of recent uploads, but I'm not sure I'm going to do this for every album as it would simply take too long. Also, it's a different rip with a better bitrate.

320 kbps

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Re-post: The Gerogerigegege - Yellow Trash Bazooka EP [1993]

The Gerogerigegege the most eccentric noise you'l ever find, lead by a weird man that dresses like a lady and a exhibitionist that masturbates on live performances. The musical portfolio is vast and included punk releases, grindcore, harsh noise, ambient, music concrete and conceptual works in dozens of records spread over 15 years. The band has currently vanished and since the early 2000's no one know exactly what happened to them especially the frontman. But enough about the band's background this is one of their grind and noise releases it is an EP famous because it features 79 tracks in less than 15 minutes. Basically you hear 1,2,3,4 in most songs and a quick burst of instruments, sometimes the vocalist says the title of the song and it's over to the next one. My personal opinion over this is that it's funny if you like it or not it's up to you...

Re-post notes: This is so good it needed more spotlight.

Download

Laurasia Awaits Us - Apathy Remains Victorious [2012]

This is a band request, and although I can't give it 100% approval due to not having listened to the whole thing (it's not really my style), the tracks I listened to on YouTube seem decent enough. Laurasia Awaits Us is a self-described Finnish post/doom metal band. Although the former is represented by just a little tinge of the NeurIsisian axis, the latter comes across relatively well. The riffs seem good enough too. Recommended for fans of sombre doom with harsh vocals.

320 kbps (I presume)

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Rapidgator

REVIEW: Kabul Golf Club - Le Bal Du Rat Mort EP [2012]

Firstly, I’d like to apologise to the band for the time it took me to get this review out. I’ve been in touch in the interim, but four months after receiving the promo copy should be, and is, unacceptable. With that out of the way, on to the EP itself. Although I don’t have the packaging in front of me (left it in Oxford like a twit), I remember it being pleasantly, but not fantastically presented. It’s a very simple digipack – without booklet or anything. However, the presentation is more than adequate for what I believe to be their first EP. The artwork is done in a noir style, with some hideous creature (or maybe it’s one of the members) skulking around in the dark – it’s not the prettiest thing you’ll ever see, but it does suit the music contained therein.

As for the music, the band claim to take influence from acts like At The Drive In, Shellac, Blood Brothers and The Dillinger Escape Plan. Unfortunately, as the only one of those four I’ve heard is the latter, I’m not really qualified to comment on that, but what the music provides is noisy (an attribute provided by the delicious fuzzy bass sound), angular math rock with hardcore influence (but stopping short of full-blown mathcore). From my limited experience within that region (I’m afraid I didn’t really explore much more once I heard Cows), the style is executed adequately but not fantastically. Indeed, although there are some hooks within the music, they are rather transient in the memory, and after four listens to the (fifteen-minute) EP, I could remember nothing save for the general sound and parts of the first and final tracks (the latter of which had a video released – once again, it’s nice to know that a band know what their stronger material is). Indeed, the fact that structures and melody-rhythm associations are often repeated does nothing to help the memorability of the material.

The sound would, I think, be made a little more interesting were the short noisy passages to be extended, either the quieter ones or simply the short passages of crushing atonality. This is not solely for the fact that they provide contrast to the otherwise nigh-on relentless stop-start approach to the music (which, although enjoyable in small doses, should not be repeated for fifteen minutes lest they become nothing but irritating in my humble opinion), but also because they themselves seem well-composed and, in the heavier atonal sections, project an almost nihilistic feeling at the listener. They would also help, I suppose, to distinguish KGC more from the rest of the scene and provide them with a unique style (for what it’s worth, they’re closer to Godflesh than Meshuggah).

Instrumentally, it would be lying to suggest that KGC are anything but competent – although for the most part nothing particularly special technicality-wise is attempted, none of it is particularly simple to play (or at least, none of it seems to be, syncopated rhythms abound in the EP). Furthermore, the production of each instrument is done nicely, and it comes cohesively together as a whole. Despite my gripes above about the composition, the result of this is that KGC would work very nicely as background music were it not for the undoubtedly-intrusive stop-start approach. I must, however, say that there is one weak point instrumentally – the vocalist, although competent, is very generic in approach and really adds nothing to the music. I’d go as far as to suggest that this would do just as well were it fully instrumental.

To summarise, I’d say that although there is nothing inherently wrong with the music of Kabul Golf Club, there is likewise little to elevate them above being ‘average’. Math-rock aficionados may disagree with me, but there is nothing special about this. It’s not offensive – far from it – but I really would not recommend going out of your way to seek it out.

5/10

I'm not sure whether I have permission to post a download link, but apparently The Elementary Revolt posted one at the band's request, so I'll link you there.

Official website

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Axegrinder - The Rise Of The Serpent Men [1989] and a couple of demos

Seeing as we've all been saying (okay, I've been saying) for a while that this blog sorely lacks some classic crust, I thought I'd mark my return home (and thus more frequent posts for a while) with some of it. Axegrinder is one of the classic British crust bands, and as was the trademark of that time period, there's no d-beat to be found here. Instead, there's a sound that's described much better by this post at the Terminal Sound Nuisance blog than I could ever do (incidentally, it's a fucking solid blog, you should check it out if you have the chance and are into punk music). But I'll just lazily paraphrase the post - the demos are more like Antisect while the full-length is more like Amebix. The demos included in the file (I'm not uploading separately because I'm lazy, so if you already have the full length and have a poor connection it might be best to find the demos elsewhere) are the Grind the Enemy and Live in Wimbledon demos from 1987. Sorry about the poor quality of the latter.

96 kbps (LiW); 128 kbps (GtE); 192 kbps (TRotSM)

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