ALBUM REVIEW: Daughters, “You Won’t Get What You Want”

By: Charlie Butler

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 26/10/2018

Label: Ipecac Recordings

Daughters are making noise rock that sounds like it has been beamed back to the present from a million years in the future. "You Won't Get What You Want" is an incredible album that casually destroys all peers and reminds everyone who is in charge.

“You Won’t Get What You Want” CD//DD//2LP track listing:

1. City Song
2. Long Road No Turns
3. Satan In The Wait
4. The Flammable Man
5. The Lords Song
6. Less Sex
7. Daughter
8. The Reason They Hate Me
9. Ocean Song
10. Guest House

The Review:

The mere existence of a new LP from notorious Rhode Island miscreants Daughters in 2018 is cause for celebration. The fact that "You Won't Get What You Want" is the quartet's first album since 2010 yet somehow manages to continue the band's wildly chaotic tradition of reinvention and innovation is nothing short of a miracle. 

The record kicks off deep in alien territory with the unsettling claustrophobia of "City Song". The ominous thud of sparse drums, a wash of crackling low-end fuzz and Alexis Marshall's spooked drawl combine to create an air of inescapable anxiety that sounds more like “Liars”than anything from the Hydra Head catalogue. As the dread builds, guitars create a sharp, piercing squall akin to being attacked with a dentist's drill. It's devastating start to a wild and tense ride through constantly shifting sonic terrain. 

Following this storming entrance it's obvious that Daughters have maintained their uncompromising approach but found new ways to torment the listener. "Ocean Song" takes the template of "City Song"and draws it out into a relentless pound that builds in volume in intensity to its savage conclusion. The dustbowl twang of "Daughter" builds up to a climax of twinkling synths that could almost be described as pretty while "Satan In The Wait" manages to combine uneasy tension with bursts of hypnotic melody.

Every track on "You Won't Get What You Want" seems to demonstrate that Daughters have an almost bottomless pit of inspiration to draw upon. Even songs like the weirdly funky "Less Sex" which sounds like sinister minimal r'n'b being mauled by HEALTH work and feel totally at home on this record next to the more gnarly, frenetic moments. "The Flammable Man" is a whirlwind two minute reminder of the bands hyperactive past while the menacing churn of "Long Road No Turns" acts as the conduit from their back catalogue to their current incarnation. "The Lords Song" and "The Reason They Hate Me"even come close to resembling something like conventional punk rock, albeit a queasy, shambling repetitive thrash like Pissed Jeans at their most unkempt.

There are many bands out there making noise rock that take influence from the past and bend it into weird new forms. Daughters are making noise rock that sounds like it has been beamed back to the present from a million years in the future. "You Won't Get What You Want"is an incredible album that casually destroys all peers and reminds everyone who is in charge.

“You Won’t Get What You Want” is available here

Band info: bandcamp || facebook

ALBUM REVIEW: Spotlights - "Seismic"

By: Victor Van Ommen

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 06/10/2017

Label: Ipecac Recordings

Be it the album’s title, the heft of the cascading guitar riffs, or the thick atmosphere the band creates, this is a serious release that’s here to make a statement.  “Seismic” is an album that’s easy to get lost in, which judging by the depth of sound, is exactly what Spotlights set out to do.

“Seismic” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1. Seismic

2. Learn to Breathe

3. The Size of the Planet

4. Ghost of a Glowing Forest

5. Under the Earth

6. A Southern Death

7. The Opening

8. What is This? Where Are We?

9. Hollow Bones

10. Hang Us All

11. The Hope of a Storm

The Review:

New York- based, husband and wife duo Spotlights wants nothing less than to be taken seriously on their Ipecac Recordings debut album, “Seismic.” Be it the album’s title, the heft of the cascading guitar riffs, or the thick atmosphere the band creates, this is a serious release that’s here to make a statement. Everything is mapped out; there are no false steps, no room for improvisation, just a hefty slab of post-metal-whatever rock music. And you know what, it’s damn good!

Musically, Spotlights has a few obvious influences – I’m looking at you Deftones and ISIS – but that shouldn’t be a surprise considering the label the band is on. Luckily, Spotlights uses these two bands as just that, influences, and prevents the band coming across as a watered down band confined to a particular time and genre.

It’s the layers that make Spotlightswhat they are. They hit loud and hard at face value and that’s great. The guitar riffs are crunchy and slow and the drums are in your face. Everything is turned up real loud, which is exactly how the album should be listened to. Once the volume is turned up and the listener sits back, that’s when Spotlights really starts to unfold.

Spotlights is able to put all the tools at their disposal to good use. Be it in the way the synthesizers accentuate the tenderness in the fat riffing or how the sound of strummed guitar strings deep in the mix help round things out, “Seismic” becomes a release that’s as tall as it is wide. The hour plus run time might be a touch on the long side of things, but when there’s so much mood and atmosphere, an album’s run time becomes insignificant pretty quickly.

Understanding “Seismic” means understanding the layers. The songs are there and the sound is big. Spotlights make their presence known with these elements. Then the accents are found; the synthesizers are well placed and the vocals provide just that bit of necessary breathing room. “Seismic” is an album that’s easy to get lost in, which judging by the depth of sound, is exactly what Spotlights set out to do.

“Seismic” is available here

Band info: Facebook || Bandcamp

ALBUM REVIEW: Dead Cross - "Dead Cross"

By: Charlie Butler

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 04/08/2017

Label: Ipecac Recordings |

Three One G

While Dead Cross don’t quite deliver the all-out face-melting insanity you may expect from their constituent parts, this debut is still an exhilarating burst of queasy punk rock mayhem that reminds most young pretenders who’s in charge.

“Dead Cross” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1. Seizure and Desist
2. Idiopathic
3. Obedience School
4. Shillelagh
5. Bela Lugosi’s Dead
6. Divine Filth
7. Grave Slave
8. The Future Has Been Cancelled
9. Gag Reflex
10. Church of the Motherfuckers

The Review:

It’s impossible not to get excited about the talent gathered to form Dead Cross. Any new project from Mike Patton comes with high expectations, but throw in the mighty drum skills of Dave Lombardo, The Locust’s Justin Pearson on bass and Festival Of Dead Deer’s Michael Crain unleashing six-string carnage and anticipation goes through the roof.

What’s most apparent on the band’s debut LP is that they sound like they are having a total blast. Dead Cross’ blend of no-nonsense hardcore punk, restless metal and goth-tinged weirdness may be slightly more straightforward than the band member’s career peaks but it packs a real punch.

The highlights of this album come when Dead Cross switch between breathless intensity and slower sections within the space of a track. “Idiopathic” and “Obedience School” are sub-three minute epics that find the band ripping through furious riffs and sections of reverb-assisted grandeur. This backdrop of ever-changing sounds and moods give Patton freedom to unleash his full arsenal of vocal talents from smooth crooning to incomprehensible gurgles and screams. Most disturbing is his mumbled utterances of “Tampax” over the bizarre locked groove that ends “Gag Reflex”.

“Shillelagh” is the closest Dead Cross get to Faith No More territory with a strong “King For A Day...”feel to its ever-shifting punk rock churn. The second half of the album finds the band channelling the spirit of Pearsonand Crain’s 31G Recordspast, particularly the off-kilter rock’n’roll discord of “The Future Has Been Cancelled”. The only slight misfire here is their cover of Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”. They deliver a spirited version of the track but its presence in the middle of the LP is jarring and disrupts its breakneck flow.

While Dead Cross don’t quite deliver the all-out face-melting insanity you may expect from their constituent parts, this debut is still an exhilarating burst of queasy punk rock mayhem that reminds most young pretenders who’s in charge.

“Dead Cross”is available here

Band info: facebook || bandcamp

ALBUM REVIEW: Melvins - "A Walk With Love & Death"

By: Ben Fitts

Album Type: Full Length (Double)

Date Released: 07/07/2017

Label: Ipecac Recordings

 

On “A Walk with Love and Death”, the Melvins do both things that their cultish fans love about them, and do them both damn well.

“A Walk With Love & Death” CD//DD//LP track listing:

“Love”

1. Aim High
2. Queen Powder Party
3. Street Level St. Paul
4. The Hidden Joice
5. Give It to Me
6. Chicken Butt
7. Eat Yourself Out
8. Scooba
9. Halfway to the Bakersfield Mall
10. Pacoima Normal
11. Park Head
12. T-Burg
13. Track Star
14. The Asshole Bastard

“Death”

1. Black Hearth
2. Sober-delic (acid only)
3. Euthanasia
4. What’s Wrong with You
5. Edgar the Elephant
6. Christ Hammer
7. Flaming Creature
8. Cactus Party
9. Cardboro Negro

The Review:

Thirty-four years into their career, the Washington trio Melvins have established themselves as one of the most important groups of weirdos in the history of recorded music. They pioneered the very foundations of both sludge and grunge, were the first to fully utilize the uses of drop tunings and were a major influence on seemingly every metal band at least bordering doom on this side of 1990. It is impossible to view a new work of theirs without the context of their back catalogue. And that back catalogue is vast, but amazingly contains scarcely a forgettable record. Each new Melvins release finds a new personality and/or territory and their newest full-length, “A Walk With Love & Death” does both. Twice.

At twenty-three songs (with a total runtime of eighty-nine minutes), “A Walk With Love & Death” is the Melvins’ first double-album, and they embrace the concept. While many albums spread themselves between two disc because there was simply too much material to be contained on just one, on “A Walk With Love &  Death”, the Melvins create two distinct, separate albums (the first titled “Death”, the second titled “Love”) and package them together as one cohesive unit.

“Death”, the first disc, is by far the more accessible of the two discs and is rank with breezy, blues based grooves. “Death” opens the swampy “Black Health”, which, while still clearly the Melvins, is oddly reminiscent of Creedence Clearwater Revival or Tony Joe White. Intensity builds over the darker, grungier track “Sober-Deli (Acid Only)” before the arrival of “Euthanasia”, a rumbling, groove based sludge metal song (the kind of sound that many think of first when they think of the Melvins).

These moods represented by these first three tracks, bluesy and breezy, grungy and sulky and classic Melvins sludge, more or less define the remaining six songs on the “Death” side of “A Walk with Love and Death”. They are mixed differently and to different proportions, from the stomping bluesy rock and roll of “What’s Wrong With You” and “Cactus Party” to the menacing, propulsive sludge of “Flaming Creature”, the latter of which possibly takes the cake for the best track to be found anywhere on the “Death” side of the album and incorporates some of the funnest, most rifftastic and straightforward music that the Melvins have ever recorded. However, this is balanced out by the following disc, “Love”. That is where things get weird.    

After the buzzing, white instrument noise that ends “Cardboa Negro”, the track that closes “Death”, “Love” introduces itself with ambient street noise on the track “Aim High”. Snippets of casual conversation, the clacks of high-heeled feet and the drone of wind striking a mic set up to introduce the second disc of “A Walk With Love & Death”. “Love”is not all tape collage, and at nearly thirty seconds into “Aim High”, a synthesizer, playing actual tonal notes, can be heard struggling over the din of human background noise, a battle that it eventually loses. “Aim High” sets the precedent for the rest of the second disc.

 “Love” is a constant back and forth between tonal music, made by instruments, and ambient, collected sounds. Both ingredients get chances to shine, in varying amounts, throughout “Love”. The tracks on “Love” to feature the most music (as it is traditionally understood) are punk-infused, avant-garde jazz piece “Scooba”, which even features singing vocals (albeit sampled, and somewhat comical ones) and “Give It To Me”, which sounds like a Chicago blues band caught in the midst of interdimensional travel, and sounds less and less like Chicago and more like that other dimension as the song progresses. Conversely, tracks such as “The Hidden Joice” and “Chicken Butt” are built around studio altered spoken samples, with only a backdrop of dissonant synthesizers (with some sparse guitar playing on “The Hidden Joice”). The other ten tracks on “Love” explore seemingly every midpoint one can imagine, from the white noise feedback and out of focus guitar shredding of “Street Level St. Paul” to the casual street noise set to an electronic background of “T-Burg”.

It wasn’t enough for the Melvins to just make a double album. If they were going to do it, they were going to do it in a way that displayed the duality of their nature, taking both ends to their extreme. “Death”is upbeat, groove-based, energetic, punk derived rock and roll that teeters into metal, grunge and blues as they see fit. It is quite possibly the most conventional, accessible collection of music that the band was ever released, even more so than classic major label efforts such as “Houdini” or “Stoner Witch”. And it’s wonderfully enjoyable. The second disc, “Love”, is some of the band’s most obtusely difficult music, on par with 1994’s infamous display of weirdness, “Prick”. And it’s wonderfully challenging. On “A Walk With Love & Death”, the Melvins do both things that their cultish fans love about them, and do them both damn well.   

 “A Walk with Love and Death” is available here

Band info:  bandcamp|| facebook

ALBUM REVIEW: Crystal Fairy - "Crystal Fairy"

By: Victor Van Ommen


Album Type: Full Length
Date Released: 24/02/2017
Label: Ipecac Recordings

Very much the sum of their parts, Crystal Fairy stares down the listener with psychotic energy, what you get are 11 songs of screeching, high intensity riffs, hooks that are both jagged an accessible and a chemistry within that makes these tunes jump out of the speakers.

“Crystal Fair” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1). Chiseler

2). Drugs on the Bus

3). Necklace of Divorce

4). Moth Tongue

5). Crystal Fairy

6). Secret Agent Rat

7). Under Trouble

8). Bent Teeth

9). Posesión

10). Sweet Self

11). Vampire X-Mas

The Review:

Considering Crystal Fairy’s lineup, it’s no wonder that the band brings tunes with a high riff-factor on their self-titled debut. Starring King Buzzo and Dale Crover, the fold is further filled out with Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (At The Drive In) and Teri Gender Bender of Le Butcherettes. The album consists of 11 songs, each one dives deeper into a bizarre pit of screeching, high intensity riffs.

Very much the sum of their parts, Crystal Fairy stares down the listener with psychotic energy. It’s Dale’s job to lay down the law, which he does most notably in “Bent Teeth.” Rodriguez-Lopez helps bridge the gap between Dale’s intense push and Buzzo’s guitar, but the star of the show here is Terri Gender Bender. Whether she’s owning the title track with her gnarly snarl or spitting out the Spanish language lyrics in “Secret Agent Rat,” it’s her voice that’s keeping the Crystal Fairy boat afloat. It’s her voice that’s front and center. And it’s her voice that makes this band unfuckwithable.

Ignore the label “supergroup” in this case and instead take in Crystal Fairy for what they are; a tight unit delivering tight, quirky rock songs. Sure, the tunes are filled with hooks that are both jagged and accessible – which is what we should expect from a band that’s half Melvins – but there’s something about the chemistry in Crystal Fairy that makes these tunes jump out of the speakers.

“Crystal Fairy” is available to preorder/buy here

Band info: bandcamp|| facebook