November 2, 2011

By Jason Heller | November 2, 2011 | 5:00pm

Music Features Music

Punk, hardcore, metal, noise: Music shouldn’t always be easy on the ears. Each month, Loud unearths some of the loudest, crudest, weirdest, and/or heaviest sounds writhing beneath the surface. The world’s not getting any quieter. Neither should we.

Album stream: Taake, Noregs Vaapen
Taake’s Ulvhedin Hoest isn’t exactly one of the cuddliest people on the planet. But for someone who seems happy stirring up shit and trying to alienate fans, he sure has made an accessible album. Noregs Vaapen is Taake’s latest full-length, and it’s an impeccably raw, morbidly melodic disc that erupts spasmodically into jagged grooves and soaring choruses. Yes, it also features banjo. But only barely—and when the pickin’ eventually shows up, it conjures eerie apparitions of what it might sound like if the Devil really did go down to Georgia. Here’s a full-album stream of Noregs Vaapen, which was released on Tuesday.

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Taake – Noregs Vaapen by TheAVClub

Song debut: House Of Low Culture, “Inappropriate Body” (excerpt)
Regular readers of this column might remember my glowing recommendation of Mare Decendrii, the latest album from Mamiffer. That project is the brainchild of singer-keyboardist Faith Coloccia, and it’s now aided and abetted by Coloccia’s husband, Isis’ Aaron Turner. The two have switched roles on Poisoned Soil, the latest album (available from Taiga/Sub Rosa) from Turner’s long-running side project, House Of Low Culture. With Coloccia playing more of a supporting role, Poisoned Soil is another cryptic, desolate voyage into Turner’s ambient-industrial headspace. Turner has kindly has put together an excerpt of the album’s “Inappropriate Body” for Loud to debut. Grab an anchor and dive in.

House Of Low Culture – Inappropriate Body by TheAVClub

Song debut: Animals As Leaders, “Cylindrical Sea”
In my ongoing attempt to ignore the existence of the term “djent” metal for as long as I can get away with it, I’m going to call Weightless—the latest album from Animals As Leaders—as I see it: another of the band’s amazing, head-spinning frenzies of prog-metal. The instrumental group has pulled out all the stops. Or rather, it’s piled them on. Virtuosically choppy and riddled with glitches, Weightless somehow remains liquid and organic. Set for release Nov. 8, Weightless features the track “Cylindrical Sea”—debuting below.

Animals As Leaders – Cylindrical Sea by TheAVClub

As prog-steeped and vocally accomplished as any band named after a Van Der Graaf Generator song ought to be, San Francisco’s Giant Squid has been toiling away in its own warped corner of the ocean for a few years now, plying an oddly lilting and lyrical style of post-metal. Cenotes, the group’s new album, doesn’t let itself drown in artiness, though; contorting harmony to the point of implosion—and then topping it off with some harrowing cello—the disc’s conceptual pressure stays even-keeled and accessible.

Former Swans member Jarboe has collaborated with everyone from Neurosis to Cobalt. Add Hull to that list of heavy-hitters. The Brooklyn outfit’s new full-length, Beyond The Lightless Sky, sports a couple guest appearances by Jarboe, who lends her eerie trill to some of the disc’s most atmospheric moments. Make no mistake, though: Hull has topped itself here, constructing a monolith of progressive sludge that belies its occasional flashes of hum and hush.

Hull – Just A Trace Of Early Dawn by TheAVClub

With so many well-intentioned yet generic retro-thrash bands around, Evile is a blessing. Time after time, the British group just nails it, mixing thrash tradition with skull-deforming savagery and graceful, microscopically precise playing. Five Serpent’s Teeth is no different; stuffed to the point of rupture with riffs Dave Mustaine would kill to be able to still deliver, the disc never fails to balance melody, technicality, and soulful aggression.

2011 has been the year of Profound Lore—and the label’s not letting a single month go by without delivering something worthwhile. This time around, it’s The Obsidian Plains by Wolvhammer. Dismiss this as yet another drop in the bucket of sludgy doom, and you’ll be missing out. Elemental, charred around the gills, and distorted the point of insensibility, Obsidian smokes more heavily than a Herman Cain staffer. Consider it Loud’s unofficial album of the month.

Earlier this year, Lake Of Blood delivered As Time And Tide Erode Stone, its two-very-long-songs saga. Structurally, Surachai’s To No Avail seems similar. Comprising a pair of 10-minute-plus tracks, the Chicago band’s new disc also traffics in sustained, Deathspell Omega-style blasts of bleakness and atonality. But unlike Lake Of Blood, Surachai rarely comes up for air, coasting instead on an acidic pall of negativity and noise. That’s a thumbs up, by the way.

Surachai – To No Avail by TheAVClub

Fresh off its long-delayed split LP with fellow metalgazer (sorry, the shoe fits) Rosetta, Junius has unleashed Reports From The Threshold Of Death. The ethereality oozes like congealed plasma out of this one; there’s an almost cathedral-like shiver to the disc’s jet-black majesty. The sweeping, melodramatic vocals of guitarist-keyboardist Joseph Martinez might be a bit much for some to take—imagine Cave In’s Stephen Brodsky crossed with Cold Cave’s Wes Eisold—but dude knows how to sell it.

I’m a sucker for punk vets slowing down and getting creepier. Hence my utter adoration of the self-titled debut by Alaric. The Bay Area supergroup features members of Dead And Gone, Noothgrush, and Cross Stitched Eyes (among others), but don’t expect to hear any of that in Alaric. Instead, the album navigates a loping, tribal, post-punk wasteland that calls to mind early-’80s fringe-dwellers like In Camera and Crawling Chaos—only crusted with hints of early Amebix.

Alaric – Your God by TheAVClub

Sometimes all you really need is a good flushing and scouring of the skull. Ottawa’s Fuck The Facts has long delivered such cranial colonics. Die Miserable, its long-awaited new full-length, doesn’t skimp on the caustic grit. But there’s an impressively oppressive gravity—not to mention a jabbering insanity—to the album’s stark, metallic hardcore that defies extrication.

On the other end of the punk spectrum, The Shitty Limits most definitely don’t exert anything resembling a gravitational pull. The band’s scratchy, garbled, sardonic Speculate/Accumulate is a full-on treble-fest, featuring a vicious, desperate death-surf twang and a load of artful, post-garage smarts that carry on the mostly forgotten tradition of The Fall, Alternative TV, and Zounds.

The Shitty Limits – Future Mantra by TheAVClub

Total Abuse’s last album, Mutt, made my best-of list for 2010, thanks in part to the band’s unflinching worship of the trailblazing ’80s hardcore band, Void. But Total Abuse is a creature of its own design. The proof is in its latest, Prison Sweat, a gnarled, snarling onslaught of cracked bones and bruised dreams. It’s also far messier and weirder than Mutt, which is quite a perverse accomplishment. Then again, TA eat perversity for Sunday brunch.

Total Abuse – Masked Killer by TheAVClub

Retro Loud: Void, Sessions 1981-83
Seeing as how Total Abuse is so heavily inspired by Void, it seems appropriate—and conveniently timely—to mention Dischord’s new Void collection, Sessions 1981-83. For such a massively influential band, Void has always been poorly served, release-wise, with numerous recording sessions available only as bootlegs. Void’s most infamous recording—its swansong, Potions For Bad Dreams, which the band shelved and refused to let Touch & Go release—remains unavailable to those who don’t know how to Google search, but Dischord Records has finally collected various other odds and ends for Sessions. The real gems make up the Hit And Run Session, 20 tracks from 1981 that add a meaty underbelly to Void’s self-loathing, feedback-laced, foaming-at-the-mouth nihilism.

Void – Authority by TheAVClub