ninehertz

A round up of nine recent releases in bitesize review form...

My two most listened to tracks of the last fortnight have been a migraine and muscular spasm inducing jazzgrind smear of noise and a floral proto doom beauty. It's the yin and yang of life in doom and the extremes that keeps the metal life exciting I suppose.

The former is provided by Byonoisegenerator, a Russian band on the imperious Transcending Obscurity label, with the catchily titled, riff-drenched song 4-HO-DMTNzambiKult, on the album Subnormal Dives . Obviously, with them self-describing to a genre of jazzgrind, this is technical, but the revelation is that the jazz element of that bastardised genre splicing holds true, and not short hand for "madcap". The whole album combines bone crunching grind, coarse riffs and passages of loungey jazz. It works too, the move from one extreme to the other not jarring, but instead the free and wild ethos of both sides prove natural bedfellows. There's much for Candiria and Meshuggah fans within, and it is startling throughout.

The latter comes from old favourites Electric Citizen, returning on Heavy Psych Sounds with new album EC4. As the title alludes, this is their fourth album, a strong catalogue of work behind them, and here as good as they've been. It has a midsummer sun festival of a few hundred years ago mood about it, a soundtrack to simpler times, frolics through the flowers and maybe a hint towards olde magick. The track that has captivated me is Static Vision, a breezy, nice, proto doom affair that is like a more pastoral and rural early Witchcraft record.

Which neatly leads on to a record (and band) I've only just come across, called Gain from the Peak District, the national park that I've neighboured in one town or another for the majority of my life. Entitled High Peak, Low Life., they self describe as "fear and loathing in rural England" and have a stamp of approval from none other than Ben Ward, comparing them to an appetising concoction of Kyuss, Hawkwind and Nebula. This is psychedelic tinged stoner rock with the spirit and spirits of the dark peaks in its very essence, and has a cool, rolling free vibe and fuzz tone running through that confirms that Nebula reference in particular.

Crossing the Pennines, at the eastern end of the Snake Pass, the return of Sheffield's Ba'al is rightly being heralded. There have been few better at finding the most fertile ground in the whole atmospheric black metal modern movement than Ba'al, and The Fine Line Between Heaven and Here, out on Road to Masochist, is their best self captured. It's in the balance - grandiose, epic and long tracks yes, but using that to be adventurous not boring. Post-metal influenced, but not forgetting its black metal roots, with a bite ever present. It's in a genre I'm not actually keen on - if it were I'd have lots more reference points for a fuller review - but the fact that even I'm in awe of the album says plenty.

Louisana's Dhyana are back - of course they are, this being their fifteenth album in just over 4 years (and less than 3 months since Mozhao), their last, and once again I'm pulled in to this mesmeric ray of Buddhist drone. This album is entitled Arahant, and is at the heavier end of their catalogue, more in the Sunn O))) worlds than the usual Om and Earth comparisons. It's powerful, as always - I've compared them to the experience of being at a gong bath before, but here there's an aural equivalent with the shaking amps and the sensation it provides. On Visuddhimagga it's as pure a doom sound as I can remember from Dhyana.

Heading back to the UK, there have been a slew of stoner/doom releases catching my ear. Sleeping Mountain are one, with a self-titled, self-released album taking me by surprise. London and proggy stoner is becoming its own little scene, a mini-offshoot-genre of its own, and all the power to it, I blame the lingering influence of the mighty Elephant Tree on our capital... and Sleeping Mountain follow on quickly from my discovery of similarly genre-tagged Kunubu. There's a fairy godmother spirit of Elder pervading what otherwise is stoner rock with pugnacious riffs, while the prog element is present and playful without going full Genesis. It's a promising introduction.

Heading north, past Hadrian's Wall to Glasgow finds Nëwsün and a record entitled Demonpsych. It lives up to its title - proto-doom and stoner rock, with all the fuzz and retro vibes that you'd imagine would reside there are liberally spread, all with this slight occult doom overhanging atmosphere. There are plenty of bands, in the European mainlands in particular, plying this vein of doom, but Nëwsün have as good a chance as any of standing out and above because of the songs - this isn't merely that proto gothic aesthetic, there's retro goodness in the writing that shines through.

And lets end by moving away from doom for a couple of noteworthy releases. Thoughtseize came to my attention due to being on the evergreen Eggy Tapes label, and then when you see it contains members of various bands of note I was always going to give it a go. Most noticeably amongst its membership, for me at least, is the one half of Monolithian involved, one of my favourite doom duos. But this self titled cassette is something different - crusty death metal that sounds like listening simultaneously to Entombed out of the left speaker and Discharge through the right. It is a messy, chaotic and fulfilling noisy beast of sound.

Finally, lets have a blast of political punk from Eastern Europe (exact location unknown) in the guise of Nervy. Their four track EP Nechci mlčet, ale nemám slov is an oppresive crust call to "stand with the oppressed", which, especially on the almost skramz-levels energy driven Ukrajina a my concocts blackened hardcore and crust into utterly vital punk that is impossible to resist.