Finland’s Gangrened aren’t thinking of Ambient Doom Dream so much as a follow-up to 2021’s Deadly Algorithm (review here) as an aside intended to bridge the gap between that LP and the next round of post-doom punishment, whenever that might arrive. The title offers clues to the sound, and while I get that they’d risk corniness if they’d gone with ‘Nightmare’ instead of ‘Dream’ in naming the offering, rest assured that the sense of challenge of the prior album and the current of extremity that ran through it can still be felt in the rumbles and biting guitar feedback drones of the single “Transitional Trance 2,” which reminds of earliest, pre-street cred SunnO))) in its unbridled ceremony of harsh amplification. Underscored with pulses of synth, it is all the more encompassing at high volumes, where the tonal textures seem to take on a life of their own before ending suddenly as though someone walked into the room demanding to know what all the shaking walls and floors were about.

That’s the improvisational nature of the release coming through, of course, and the feel of “Transitional Trance 2” is correspondingly placed in Gangrened‘s rehearsal spot where the exploration of Ambient Doom Dream was captured. The band have gone through a shift in lineup, as well happen, but even just the single shows them continuing to move forward creatively, and elsewhere on the new release they’re also reinterpreting older movements and venturing into unknown spaces. If you didn’t hear Deadly Algorithm (which you can at the link above), “Transitional Trance 2” isn’t necessarily representative of the whole scope of their work, but in its oppressive atmosphere there is certainly consistency of purpose to be had.

They’ve got a private-press CD version coming, and you’ll find more info below. There’s a fair amount of description to work from — always welcome — and I think among the keywords you’ll find, the standout phrase is “Then this happened.” Surely this is the kind of noise that might change your plans for what’s next.

Courtesy of the PR wire:

GANGRENED – “AMBIENT DOOM DREAM” – New limited CD/Digital release. New song advanced and pre-order open

Album preorder: https://gangrened.bandcamp.com/album/ambient-doom-dream

“Transitional Trance 2” on streaming services: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/gangrened/transitional-trance-2

Ambient doom dream is the first long length music release of the current Gangrened line-up leaving aside drums and vocals. It captures an improvised piece of music from their second rehearsal together as Gangrened. This is the story behind this recording: The Friday May 5th 2022 Jon Imbernon, guitarist, and Olli Wikström, synth and sampler, met in Seinajöki (Finland) with Lassi Männikkö, previous Gangrened drummer, to pick up Jon´s guitar gear after the last gigs of previous line up to bring it to the new rehearsal room in Kokkola.

While the trip back to Kokkola and with the first hits of the Finnish summer felt like end of a era and beginning of a new one. This same day when arriving in Kokkola the new line up set up their gear in the new place and started jamming. Jon with his stereo guitar rig placed around the room. Olli with his set up for this occasion consisting of synth and sampler. Amps were properly loud, and Jon brought in a guitar lick which he was noddling with for a while already. The inspiration and excitement was flowing resulting into that they both realized to be able to create solid music in real time while improvising. Then it was decided to come back the day after and record the improvisation and develop the raw idea of jamming around that guitar lick.

Then this happened and it was captured 50 mins of the actual rehearsal/improvisation. The 2 of them improvising around that guitar lick and way way beyond….. The recording sounded specially good considering the minimal recording set up was used, even Jon considers that the guitar tone is more natural and loyal to his guitar sound than the guitar sound in Deadly Algorithm. So it was decided to release what was considered the highlight of the improvisation as a track as a digital single: “Turbulent Times”.

After that came the possibility of releasing the whole thing physically through Clouded Mind Records from Sweden, so the original mix was remixed and mastered by Miguel Souto in Spain putting the whole recording into a next level thanks to Miguel´s work. So here it is, the whole improvisation has been divided in 6 tracks, including “Turbulent Times” remixed and remastered and having as end a revision of the intro of the song “Kuningatar” from Deadly Algorithm recorded the way Jon was playing it live, more spacial, but with synth and sampler and without drums and bass.

“Ambient Doom Dream”, represents a exercise of immersion by Gangrened´s new line up in the more dreamy 90s, think about Kranky Records, or Slowdive’s “Pigmalyon” album blended with blurry heavy fuzzed guitars and droned synths all with a lot of feedback in the key of trance in between. A heavy dreamy experience from beginning to end. Besides “Turbulent Times, another highlight of “Ambient Doom Dream” is “Imbernon VS. Qstaw” second track and another descension into despair like “Harrbåda” from “Deadly Algorithm” was but deeper and heavier sounding, and created 100% on the fly while improvising.

Needs to be mentioned that this is not the second album of Gangrened, this is a evolutionary transitional release between first and second album.

“Ambient Doom Dream” will be released digitally in all streaming platforms and also on a small run of 33 handmade digipack CDs by the Swedish label Clouded Mind Records the Friday 5th May, a year after the recording was made. In the meantime, The 5th track “Transitional trance 2” extracted from this dreamy musical piece is released now (3rd march) in all streaming platforms.

Tracklisting:
1. Intro
2. Imbernon VS Qstaw
3. Transitional Trance 1
4. Turbulent Times
5. Transitional Trance 2
6. Kuningatar Intro (live revision)

Releases May 5, 2023

Mixing and mastering by Miguel Souto.

Jon Imbernon – Guitars and feedback in trance key.
Olli Wikström – Sampler, synth and effects.

http://www.gangrened.org
http://www.facebook.com/Gangrened
https://www.instagram.com/gangrened_band
http://gangrened.bandcamp.com

https://youtube.com/channel/UCWg2OlrPxoucBWu8xpqywpw
https://cloudedmindrecords.bandcamp.com/

Gangrened, Ambient Doom Dream (2023)

Gangrened, Ambient Doom Dream teaser

A record at least three years in the making, Finland’s Gangrened will release their full-length debut, Deadly Algorithm, this Friday through a host of labels including Kohina Records, Domestic System, Noizeland Records, Odio Sonoro, Quebranta Records, Trepanation Recordings, Burial Records and Violence in the Veins. A follow-up to their 2014 We Are Nothing EP (review here), it is a five-song/42-minute run that paints a dark picture of the time and place we’ve come to inhabit. Not so much post- as simply apocalyptic, though plenty dystopian either way in its multifaceted atmospheric sludge onslaught. Pick your societal teardown, I guess, but know that Deadly Algorithm feels more like that teardown happening than its aftermath.

It is a challenging album, and feels purposeful in that. It is not haphazard, but in its spaciousness there is room for the unplanned and the unexpected, the turns it makes throughout its two sides are not as telegraphed as, say, Amenra, and being born out of Finnish noise rock somewhere along the path of its roots, the scope is different, but there’s calculation happening just the same, and even the four-minute “Intro” that leads into “Triptaani” (9:21) and “Hologrammi” (6:45) serves a pointed function in establishing the world in which Deadly Algorithm is taking place. That world should be plenty recognizable, from the anxiousness of decay to capitalist infiltration of social structures to becoming the Orwellian product via social media false celebrity.

These issues are addressed in the lyrics one way or the other, and if you happen to speak Finnish, you’re one up on me, but amid the urgent chug that takes hold quickly in “Triptaani” and the shouts that break through the morass of tone surrounding, the point gets across. The range is broad, however, and as Gangrened embark on this wanton delivery of heft, the ambience set by “Intro” never entirely dissipates. The spaciousness of the mix is such that when “Triptaani” breaks in its second half to set up its lurching conclusion, it feels natural rather than shoehorned in for dynamic effect, and the post-metallic squibbly lead guitar over top of the massive ending is like a melodic lifeline in the chaos.

“Hologrammi” offers little letup. Its rhythm is more of a march, but the shorter runtime carries with it a more forward attack, and the song’s abiding pummel becomes a defining characteristic. There’s tension between parts, shouts interwoven with obscure spoken passages, but the roll is steady until a wash of synth or sample or something else takes hold at around five and a half minutes in, fading gradually but consuming the song just the same and leaving its final crashes to play out with an especially desolate feel, wrapping side A with a rumble en route to the closing duo of “Kungingatar” (11:43) and “Triangeli” (10:23).

True, the second side of Deadly Algorithm is two songs instead of three. True, it’s about two minutes longer than side A. But it feels like Gangrened are pushing well beyond a point of no return even as the integrated intro of “Kuningatar” leads the way into the unfolding of the song itself, building up over its first three minutes to an eventual breakout. Its title translating to “queen” in English, “Kuningatar” is both intense and spacious, its tempo thrust insistent but with echoes reaching out as it heads toward a momentary bass-led midsection break. Airy lead guitar seems to top the bulk of the second half of the track in various forms, but the underlying pummel and drive is never really lost, even as the band crash out at the end and let the drums start “Triangeli” in a way that comes across as purposefully direct, one into the next. That is, whether they were or not, these two songs sound made to be positioned together, such is the ease of the transition between them. Side B is all the more of a monolith for that.

As to what horrors Gangrened unleash in the final statement of their immersive debut, those are noisier, more feedback-laced, slower unraveling and ultimately more unhinged. Again, purposefully. If “Trangeli” (“triangle”) is somehow the culmination of where Deadly Algorithm has been leading all along, its brutality feels earned, to say the least, but like the album from which it results, there is more depth to the finale than simple bludgeoning. It might seem silly to call Gangrened “mindful” on an aesthetic level, with the sort of new-new-agey connotation of the word, but the band is to be commended for not losing sight of their expressive goal even when that goal seems to be ripping the album apart at the end. The final minute-plus of “Trangeli” is dedicated to some final shouts and then residual noise on a long fade, and the atmospheric point that began to be made in “Intro” is highlighted in the album’s last moments — a sense of completion resonant in more than just the gut-wrenching lumber the band have been throwing around all the while.

There is plenty of that, to be sure, but Deadly Algorithm portrays the insidiousness of the age in which we live through its mood and overarching disaffection as well. Even in its critique, it is of its era. One could go on about the forces that would be required for a worldwide shift to, well, anything, but frankly, to do so is overwhelming and sad. That the impulse is there at all should be taken as testament to the thought-provoking nature of Gangrened‘s work across the record’s still-accessible, still-fluid 42-minute span, and though they present their arguments forcefully, they are doing more than screaming into the abyss. As a debut, their doing so is especially notable.

Full album is streaming below ahead of the release Friday.

Good luck, and enjoy:

“Deadly Algorithm” title, cover and concept verses about a subject that was used in the previous release “We are nothing”. how the world economic elites manipulate mass population. In this case, sneaking up, orienting the development of new technologies like algorithms of artificial intelligence for massive data and attention extraction. Persuasive technology to keep users as long as possible connected. Unfortunately, in the rising attention extraction digital economy, and data extraction also, that the new technologies are at the right moment immersed in, a human is worth more when we are depressed, outraged, polarized, and addicted. Parallel to this, is growing a massive surveillance by governments and big companies with the purpose of basically implement what seemed a dystopia till a little while ago: Living in the “1984” novel of George Orwell, or even worse. . . “If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product”.

Deadly Algorithm has been recorded in different sessions between June 2018 and February 2019 by Sami Nortunen at Ylistaro (Finland) and also at Tonehaven studio by Tom Brooke in June/July 2020. Deadly Algorithm has been mixed and mastered during July-September 2020 at Tonehaven studio by Tom Brooke.

Players:
Jon Imbernon – Guitars and effects
Joakim Udd – Electric bass and bass synth
Lassi Männikkö – Drums
Mikko Mannistö – Vocals and effects.

Gangrened on Thee Facebooks

Gangrened on Instagram

Gangrened on Bandcamp

Gangrened website

Violence in the Veins on Thee Facebooks

Kohina Records on Thee Facebooks

Odio Sonoro on Thee Facebooks

Burial Records on Thee Facebooks

Domestic System on Thee Facebooks

Noizeland Records on Thee Facebooks

Quebranta Records on Thee Facebooks

Trepanation Records on Thee Facebooks

The Obelisk Questionnaire is a series of open questions intended to give the answerer an opportunity to explore these ideas and stories from their life as deeply as they choose. Answers can be short or long, and that reveals something in itself, but the most important factor is honesty.

Based on the Proust Questionnaire, the goal over time is to show a diverse range of perspectives as those who take part bring their own points of view to answering the same questions. To see all The Obelisk Questionnaire posts, click here.

Thank you for reading and thanks to all who participate.

The Obelisk Questionnaire: Jon Imbernon of Gangrened

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How do you define what you do and how did you come to do it?

Well, let’s say first my guitar playing: it has been a progression, listening lots of different music. trying, testing things on guitar. Getting to have a deeper knowledge of things and mind openness. I am not talking only about playing heavy, I am also into silence, or noise or really deep experimentation. How we (Gangrened) came with our coming record? Well, at some point I decided to drop, or blend, most of my whole musical background into what we were doing, seemed more interesting and challenging. Made sense also cause was a lot of slow, raw, minimal and heavy things all together anyway.

Describe your first musical memory.

Being in the car with my mother and her boyfriend in 1986 and they bought me for surprise the tape of Europe of The Final Countdown that was a hit on that moment and I was into.

Describe your best musical memory to date.

Touring Europe with a band much more known than my band, on that tour, and playing in medium capacity venues and most of the audience being there for us and actually getting good feedback most of the nights. In this same tour, driving 11 hours after sleeping less than one hour and playing an amazing gig in a boat venue in Paris. Also, promote and witness some specific absolutely mind-blowing gigs for either 5, 100 or 200 people, and sharing the feeling with the audience, and in a specific and funny case, the venue manager, once I got a discount in the rent because the absolutely mind-blowing gig the guy witnessed, true story. Well, also the guy did know I wasn’t making it for the profit, so I guess his heart melted or something.

When was a time when a firmly held belief was tested?

Well, for example some days ago having some political discussion, for a while of it I felt like that.

Where do you feel artistic progression leads?

Well, I hope it leads to something better, always. I told to a friend some days ago, in both society and music, progression is what will make things interesting, either as creative evolution and artistic expression or making a society fairer. You have to risk and push forward to change things. And as what goes for rock music, it’s fine there are bands playing the same record after 15 years but if music would be only that we would be still with Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley.

How do you define success?

Simplest and more accurate definition I think would be to be happy and satisfied with what you do.

What is something you have seen that you wish you hadn’t?

Well, certain disappointments, maybe people that disappoints you and that I wish they hadn´t.

Describe something you haven’t created yet that you’d like to create.

I would like to do some five-minute songs again, I have one cooking heh. But yeah, now the only Gangrened songs that I can come with of that length is a cover or the intro of our coming record.

No, seriously, I would like to compose some musical piece in which all is guitars, even for percussion, developing a way in which you use the electric guitar in a percussive and musical way at same time. Only electric guitar, as is the instrument I play and domain.

What do you believe is the most essential function of art?

I would say it is the poetic delight of the senses and the intellect. Then that’s why depending of your intellect you enjoy this art, or that art, or none.

Something non-musical that you’re looking forward to?

Guess. that, at least, things get normalized with this damn pandemic, and for everyone in the world.

https://www.facebook.com/Gangrened
https://www.instagram.com/gangrened_band/
https://gangrened.bandcamp.com/
http://www.gangrened.org/
https://www.facebook.com/violenceintheveins/
https://www.facebook.com/kohinarecords/
https://www.facebook.com/Odio-Sonoro-255423944500267/
https://www.facebook.com/Burial-Records-100574988598784/
https://www.facebook.com/domestic.system.01/
https://www.facebook.com/NoizelandRecords/
https://www.facebook.com/QuebrantaRecords/
https://www.facebook.com/TrepRec/

Gangrened, Deadly Algorithm (2021)

Whatever, it’s my show. I can throw 16 Horsepower in between Genghis Tron and Yawning Sons if I want. I can start with a 19-minute West Coast jam from Terry Gross, followed by a 12-minute Swedish jam from CB3 followed by a 15-minute jam from Croatian bizarros The Freak Folk of Mangrovia followed by nine minutes of pummeling noise from Gangrened. You don’t care. Don’t pretend you do. The weirder this show gets the better it gets as far as I’m concerned.

So yeah, there’s some Ulcerate after Coma Wall. Maybe incongruity is fun sometimes. I think so, and again, even if you’re reading this, you don’t give a crap. You’ll either listen or you won’t. My show’s on after the artist-hosted stretches, which is primo positioning as far as Friday goes — frickin’ drive-time, if such a thing still exists — and most of what I hear from people is that The Pecan sounds cute. Well, he is cute. I’m pretty sure that’s how children don’t get abandoned in the woods more often. They’re cute.

What were we talking about? The show. Right. Whatever. It’s fucking awesome. Yeah, I hope you dig it. Okay. You got me. It matters to me. Fine.

Thanks for listening and/or reading.

The Obelisk Show airs 5PM Eastern today on the Gimme app or at http://gimmemetal.com

Full playlist:

The Obelisk Show – 02.05.20

The Obelisk Show on Gimme Metal airs every Friday 5PM Eastern, with replays Sunday at 7PM Eastern. Next new episode is Feb. 19 (subject to change). Thanks for listening if you do.

Gimme Metal website

The Obelisk on Thee Facebooks

Noise and doom converge throughout Deadly Algorithm, the awaited full-length debut from Finnish atmospheric crushers Gangrened. The follow-up to their 2014 EP, We Are Nothing (review here), is set to issue on April 9 through an entire squadron of record labels, among them Trepanation Records and Odio Sonoro, and though art and a tracklisting don’t appear here, you can check out copious descriptive info on the record below. If you’d like me to save you the trouble, it is fucking massive and fucking heavy. Yes, the lyrics are in Finnish. Rest assured, they get the point across in any language.

April 9 is the release date, and since audio is starting to come out from the record, I assume preorders will begin in short order through one or 50 of the imprints involved. Keep an eye on the ol’ social media and hope, somewhat ironically, that the algorithm lets you find the information with ease.

The band sent this through the PR wire:

GANGRENED releases “Deadly Algorithm” on 9th April through different labels across Europe

Gangrened returns with their first full length finally after a hiatus that started precisely right after a bunch of dates around Finland with Bongzilla in 2015. The process of composing and recording has been extremely long but this circumstance unexpectedly has contributed to extend the palette of sounds included in the album to an extend that it became the rendering of a wide 20+ years musical background into the record showing a more restless creative flow than the average in these genres. Making it, this way, an album that is deeper than ever before and goes beyond the genres the band fitted just right in in previous releases. This is not a straight up sludge record, not at all. heaviness is there, but in many ways and along genres like noise rock, drone, noise no-wave, psyched out sounds or even ambient, converging through the record. The album process was finalized (mixed and mastered) by Tom Brooke (Oranssi Pazuzu, Hebosagil, Throat) in summer of 2020 at Tonehaven studios close to Jyväskylä in Finland.

“Deadly Algorithm” kicks off with “Harrbåda” as a quiet intro, where chords as beautiful as dark are dropped through the song. Then comes “Triptaani”, with its kind of Unsane-ish mean riffing blending heavyness and noise rock at the beginning of the song to end really atmospheric, intense and filthy at same time. “Hologrammi” is an old song from first Gangrened´s release that deserved to be taken back and get the right studio treatment. Next is “Kuningatar”, after an epic intro definitely goes into an acid trip through heaviness, darkness and psyched out and noisy sounds. Last is “Triangeli”, with its heavy repetitive and obsessive bass line/riff, and maybe the most eclectic song of the album, heaviness gets into noise-no wave territory with a bass synth under, for ending the song, and the album, fading into pure ambient sounds.

Vocals deserve a separate mention, all lyrics are in Finnish and the output of putting a vampire-like goth musical background to work on the vocals for this record has been extremely interesting and creative, do not expect dry regular growling cause there is no much of that, better expect for example, to hear things like how a really raw vocal line can have a a little bit hip-hop oriented and be laid down over a obsessive heavy riffing, like happens in “Triangeli” or the really mind bending sounding vocals in the middle part of “Kuningatar”, for example.

“Deadly Algorithm” title, cover and concept verses about a subject that was used in the previous release “We are nothing”. how the world economic elites manipulate mass population. In this case, sneaking up, orienting the development of new technologies like algorithms of artificial intelligence for massive data and attention extraction. Persuasive technology to keep users as long as possible connected. Unfortunately, in the rising attention extraction digital economy, and data extraction also, that the new technologies are at the right moment immersed in, a human is worth more when we are depressed, outraged, polarized, and addicted. Parallel to this, is growing a massive surveillance by governments and big companies with the purpose of basically implement what seemed a dystopia till a little while ago: Living in the “1984” novel of George Orwell, or even worse. . . “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product”.

“Deadly Algorithm” is coming out the next 9th April in one single LP through the following labels: Violence In The Veins (Spain), Kohina Records (Finland) Odio Sonoro (Spain), Burial Records (Spain), Domestic System (Spain), Noizeland Records (Spain) and Quebranta Records (Spain). The CD edition will come out through Trepanation records from U.K.

LPs will be black (200 copies) and transparent (100 copies), CDs will be a 6 pannels digipack (50 copies). Soon we will publish info about pre-orders.

https://www.facebook.com/Gangrened
https://www.instagram.com/gangrened_band/
https://gangrened.bandcamp.com/
http://www.gangrened.org/
https://www.facebook.com/violenceintheveins/
https://www.facebook.com/kohinarecords/
https://www.facebook.com/Odio-Sonoro-255423944500267/
https://www.facebook.com/Burial-Records-100574988598784/
https://www.facebook.com/domestic.system.01/
https://www.facebook.com/NoizelandRecords/
https://www.facebook.com/QuebrantaRecords/
https://www.facebook.com/TrepRec/

Gangrened, Deadly Algorithm (2021)

Gangrened, We are Nothing (2014)

I’ve been listening to The Obelisk Radio a lot this week, particularly while starting to put together my top albums of 2014 list, so it seemed only appropriate to get a new round of adds up to the server. As we come to the end of the year, there’s always a slowdown in terms of releases, but if I had to put a number to it, I’d call it a 10, maybe 20 percent drop at most. If it was running water and you were looking at it, you’d notice no difference. A flood is still a flood.

As such, 14 records joined the server today. Some are recently reviewed, some aren’t out yet, some have been out for a little bit. It’s a solid batch of stuff, and if you haven’t yet had enough of lists — more to come, believe me — it’s worth a look at the Playlist and Updates Page. The amount of stuff on there is staggering. It’s a wonder the radio stream manages to fit in so much Clutch at all.

Let’s get to it.

The Obelisk Radio Adds for Dec. 19, 2014:

Mugstar & The Cosmic Dead, Split LP

Two sides, one song from each band, each a massive slab of a jam. Glasgow’s The Cosmic Dead and Liverpool’s Mugstar make a solid pairing, and by solid I definitely mean liquid, and by liquid I mean that’s what your brains will be by the time Mugstar‘s “Breathing Mirror” (18:42) and The Cosmic Dead‘s “Fukahyoocastulah” (25:51) are done. Instrumental in their entirety and jammed out on a subspace frequency that I only imagine they can already hear in the Delta Quadrant — and no doubt they’re wondering what the title of The Cosmic Dead‘s contribution means exactly — both cuts share an affinity for progressive heavy psych exploration, kosmiche and krautrock alike, but with a fresh take on the classic idea of we’re-gonna-get-in-a-room-and-this-is-what-happens that runs through, whether it’s in the drone midsection of “Breathing Mirror” after the jam has died down and before its resurgence, or the later reaches of “Fukayoocastulah,” which rest on the nigh-eternal bassline that’s steady enough to hold the course despite the various effects freakouts, slow swirls and experiments happening around it. About 45 minutes solid of primo heavy jamming? Sign me up. Mugstar’s website, on Bandcamp, The Cosmic Dead on Thee Faceboks, on Bandcamp.

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Goya, Satan’s Fire

Eleven-minute opener “Malediction and Death” makes its primary impression in its consuming tonality — a harsh but encompassing low end that emerges out of the initial cavalcade of feedback starting the song. The first three minutes of “Malediction and Death” are noise before Phoenix’s Goya kick in their riff, drums and vocals, sounding as huge on the Satan’s Fire EP as on their preceding split with Wounded Giant (review here) but perhaps even more malevolent as they continue to find their place within wizard doom, marked out by the two-at-once solo shredding of guitarist/vocalist Jeff Owens, the lurching rhythm behind him and the swing of drummer Nick Lose, whose snare punctuates “Malediction and Death” like a life-preserver tossed into the abyss. Unsurprisingly, they end noisy. “Symbols” picks up with two minutes of sparse, atmospheric drumming, and the title-track (5:58) finishes with a tale of antichristianity, dropping out of life, and watching the world fall apart. Doom? Yes. Perhaps not as patient as “Malediction and Death,” “Satan’s Fire” itself offers suitable heat, and delivered through amps that likewise sound about ready to melt, provides a memorable impression even beyond its Oborn-style hook. Goya on Thee Facebooks, on Bandcamp.

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Attalla, Attalla

Somewhere between classic doom and more aggressive, hardcore punk-derived noise, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, four-piece Attalla are the kind of band who could probably release nothing but 7″ singles for the next five years and still make a go of it. As it stands, their self-titled debut offers a stirring rawness in the dual guitars that reminds there’s more ways to make an impact tonally than just with volume or fuzz. Their roots are in punk, and that’s plain enough to hear in lead guitarist Cody Stieg‘s vocals on songs like “Light” and “Lust,” but “Haze” nestles into a stoner groove late that suits Attalla well, and the later “Veil” offers charged propulsion in the drums of Aaron Kunde, whose snare sound is tinny but fitting with the sans-frills stylings of Stieg, rhythm guitarist Brian Hinckley and bassist Bryan Kunde. Some variation in tempo throughout changes things up, but a particularly triumphant moment comes with the raw Slayer-esque foreboding (think slow Slayer) that begins “Doom,” a fitting closer to Attalla‘s Attalla with its subtly complex stylistic blend and relatively barebones presentation. I’m not sure where Attalla go from here in terms of developing their sound, but the debut offers reason enough to want to find out. Attalla on Thee Facebooks, on Bandcamp.

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TarLung, TarLung

If you played me TarLung‘s TarLung debut full-length and told me the trio were from North Carolina, I’d undoubtedly believe you. In fact, they hail from Vienna, Austria, but just so happen to have the Southern sludge ideology nailed down on their first offering. Roots in Crowbar and Eyehategod and Sourvein can be heard throughout, big nod, harsh vocals, weighted plod. The guitars of Rotten and Phillipp “Five“ Seiler (the latter also vocals) brings in some of that Pepper Keenan-style Southern riffing, on “Last Breath” particularly, but the bulk of what they and drummer Marian Waibl get up to on these seven tracks is rawer and nastier, the album’s last three cuts — “Apeplanet,” “Black Forest” and “Space Caravan” — providing the best glimpse at TarLung‘s effective aesthetic interpretation. Tonally and methodologically sound, what remains for them to do is hone a more individualized approach, but particularly for a self-released first album, the crisp harshness they convey on the centerpiece “C2” — a kind of maddening high pitch running throughout — satisfies when taken on its own level, and among the three-piece’s assets, their lack of pretense will no doubt serve them well moving forward. TarLung on Thee Facebooks, on Bandcamp.

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Gangrened, We are Nothing

Proffering lurching, aggressive sludge over three tracks arranged longest to shortest, Finnish trio Gangrened conjure sweeping chaos on We are Nothing, blatantly contradicting the title of the release despite whatever riff-laden nihilism might be at work philosophically. Among the most telling moments on the release — which follows a split tape from the four piece of  vocalist Ollijuhani Kujansivu, guitarist/bassist Andreas Österlund, guitarist Jon Imbernon and drummer Owe Inborr, who’ve since traded out their rhythm section — is the opening sample of “Them” in which a man in a Southern US accent rants in paranoid rage about helicopters flying over his property, indicative of some conspiracy or other. In both their influence and their execution, that fits Gangrened‘s overall portrayal well, but both the 12-minute opener “Lung Remover” and closing semi-Black Flag cover “Kontti” (translated “24 Pack” and a feedback-soaked, sludged-up play on “Six Pack”) are pissed off enough to warrant the attention they seem to be demanding in their noisy charge, snail-paced and malevolent as it is. Gangrened on Thee Facebooks, on Bandcamp.

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As always, this is just a fraction of what was added to The Obelisk Radio today. If you get the chance to check any of this stuff out, I hope you dig it, and if you decide to launch the player, I hope whatever’s playing is awesome.

Thanks for reading and listening.