Posted in Whathaveyou on March 26th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
Shit yeah, new Insect Ark. Admittedly, such a level of insight is hardly befitting for the band founded and spearheaded by the experimentalist craft of Dana Schechter that has come to incorporate no less than Tim Wyskida of Khanate on drums, but I’m just telling you how I honestly feel. And as the former’s vocals guide through the dark reaches of advance-track “Youth Body Swayed” with the punctuating roll of the latter cast amid spaces alternately open and full, the June 7 release of Raw Blood Singing can hardly get here fast enough. This will be the first Insect Ark LP with the Schechter/Wyskida lineup, first for Debemur Morti after releasing 2020’s The Vanishing (review here) on Profound Lore, and I haven’t heard it yet so I’m not going to sit here and pretend I know anything about it.
Accordingly, “shit yeah” is where I land on the subject. Truth be told, I had a whole paragraph here going on about the air eating itself and the world being made across the seven minutes of “Youth Body Swayed,” but it just felt fucking dumb and off-base for where the song actually goes. Maybe by the time the record arrives I’ll have half a coherent thought to share, but, you know, don’t hold your breath.
The PR wire as life preserver:
INSECT ARK, FEATURING DANA SCHECTER OF SWANS AND TIM WYSKIDA OF KHANATE, RELEASE RAW BLOOD SINGING ON JUNE 7 VIA DEBEMUR MORTI PRODUCTIONS
Insect Ark, featuring Dana Schechter (Swans) and Tim Wyskida (Khanate), release their new album, Raw Blood Singing, on June 7 via Debemur Morti Productions.
The pair, who deconstructed and re-imagined Insect Ark in the lead-up to the new album, released a preview of Raw Blood Singing this morning, with the arrival of “Youth Body Swayed.” A notable shift for the band is the decision to add Schechter’s vocals to their music, with previous Insect Ark releases having been instrumental.
“Embracing evolution and fearless exploration are the core instincts of Insect Ark,” Schechter shares. “Writing the album ignited an awakening. It was in this inspired environment that I tried singing again, after a 10-year break. Encouraged by Tim, and after recording vocals on Swans ‘The Beggar’ – to my surprise, it felt great to sing again. I felt like I was creeping out of a deep cave after hibernation, blinking awkwardly into the bright and uncomfortable light of springtime.”
Wyskida explains how he came to join Schechter, permanently, in Insect Ark: “Shortly after Dana asked me to play shows with Insect Ark in 2022, she asked if I’d like to play on the new album. I expected to mostly replicate pre-existing ideas. We started digging in and it turned into a full on collaboration, with most of the original ideas and arrangements being completely reworked. We spent the better part of a year working on the music, daily. To my ear, the result is incredibly potent.”
Over the eight-songs, Insect Ark weaves a lush, bleak, vast and expansive landscape as they move from whispers of synth to a monstrous wall-of-sound via Schechter’s blistering lap steel playing, diabolical bass-work and the mammoth, searing power of Wyskida’s drums.
Raw Blood Singing is available for pre-order (https://bfan.link/raw-blood-singing), with the collection available on multiple limited-edition vinyl variants, as well as CD and digitally.
Raw Blood Singing track list: 1. Birth of a Black Diamond 2. The Frozen Lake 3. Youth Body Swayed 4. Cleaven Hearted 5. The Hands 6. Psychological Jackal 7. Inverted Whirlpool 8. Ascension
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 16th, 2024 by JJ Koczan
This news came out I think last week, and I’ll admit I was kind of hoping an album announcement would follow quickly behind. As I haven’t seen word of a new Insect Ark yet, I figured better late than never to get word up that the two-piece of Dana Schechter (known for her work in Swans and The Angels of Light as well as Gnaw, and of course Bee and Flower back when) and Tim Wyskida (for whom Khanate would be enough pedigree on its own were he not also part of Blind Idiot God) had inked a new deal with Debemur Morti Productions to issue said release sometime in the bellypart of 2024.
That probably makes it a summer arrival, which further makes it early to see anything substantive about what to expect from the first Insect Ark LP to see release since Schechter relocated the band to Berlin, Germany. 2020’s The Vanishing (review here) came out on Profound Lore, while the next year’s Future Fossils EP compilation (review here) was through Consouling Sounds in Belgium, and both were killer, but to think Schechter is going to repeat herself is laughable. Since the project’s outset, Insect Ark has maintained its experimentalist crux even as The Vanishing seemed to bring structure to the anti-genre atmospheric malevolence.
Expect more of that, I guess, if expecting such a thing is possible. The news below is little more than an Instagram post I cut and pasted. Sign of the times. Minimal though it is, here it is, with a hope of more to follow soon:
We are excited to announce that INSECT ARK signed to Debemur Morti Productions.
Insect Ark is the Berlin-based duo of American artists Dana Schechter (@swans_official) and Tim Wyskida (@officialkhanate).
With a shared obsession for innovation and distillation, the group created a new album which will be released mid-2024, offering a sonic landscape which vacillates between sensory overload and isolation in a seething void.
Posted in Whathaveyou on April 26th, 2022 by JJ Koczan
Ukrainian progressive black metallers White Ward announce the June release of their third album, False Light, through Debemur Morti Productions. The record is the follow-up to 2019’s righteous Love Exchange Failure (listed here), and the 13-minute opener and first single “Leviathan” has more scope than most bands’ careers. And no, I’m not just saying that because there’s sax and clean singing.
At what is no doubt the beginning of a longer journey, the Odessa five-piece pair squibblies, screams and angular turns with atmospherics more in line with post-metal than charred rippers. Then they have charred rippers too. It is extreme in its purpose but no less driven toward individualism than ferocity. I haven’t heard the full thing yet, but if the rest of the record follows suit — or maybe better, if it doesn’t — it will be a noteworthy realization of who they are as a group. In any case, heads up.
We are excited to announce our new album called “False Light” which will be released on June 17!
This full-length record is our most important release at this point. It took more than two years to complete this solid piece. And despite everything that is happening now in our country and beyond, we decided to share it with the world. We believe that music helps people in difficult times. We know how powerful its healing abilities are. That’s why we can wait no longer. “False Light” will be released via Debemur Morti Productions on various formats, including CD, Vinyl, Tape, and Digital.
You can already listen to the first single named “Leviathan” on Youtube and Bandcamp!
You can find it here: https://linktr.ee/whiteward
The album is already available for preorders! Bandcamp: https://whiteward.bandcamp.com/ EU Webstore: bit.ly/whitewardEU US Webstore: bit.ly/whitewardUS
The ever-inventive Ukrainian Black Metal band WHITE WARD unleash their defining third full-length “False Light”, a grand work of exploratory depth and a remarkable expansion upon all that made 2019’s acclaimed “Love Exchange Failure” such a triumph.
Always surprising and never less than captivating, from a base of rhythmically creative, furiously melodic Black and Death Metal the band shape-shift through a vivid suite of songs-as-journeys: seamlessly utilising hues of brass-led darkjazz and stately post-rock, foregrounding the evocative contributions of guesting clean vocalists in passages redolent of gothic Americana/post-punk and integrating virtuosic guitar leads, textural electronics and atmospheric sample-work.
Heavily conceptual and rich with meaning, the 8 dystopian tracks use overarching inspiration from “Intermezzo”, a 1908 impressionistic novel by the Ukrainian author Mykhailo Kotsubinsky – in addition to works by Beat-writer Jack Kerouac and psychoanalyst Carl Jung – to explore government-sanctioned murders, imminent environmental catastrophes, police brutality, domestic abuse, the psychic emptiness of cities, falsity of modern mainstream culture and ill-effects of overconsumption.
“False Light” is a multi-layered success story – perfectly balancing tension and traction, restraint and resurgence, fatalism and focus into an indispensable record from a stunning band at the top of their game.
Posted in Reviews on October 9th, 2020 by JJ Koczan
Today is what would be the last day of the Fall 2020 Quarterly Review, except, you know, it’s not. Monday is. I know it’s been a messed up time for everybody and everything, but there’s a lot of music coming out, so if you’re craving some sense of normalcy — and hey, fair enough — it’s right there. Today’s an all-over-the-place day but there’s some killer stuff in here right from the start, so jump in and good luck.
And don’t forget — back on Monday with the last 10 records. Thanks for reading.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
Mrs. Piss, Self-Surgery
If “Nobody Wants to Party with Us” as the alternately ambient/industrial-punk fuckall of that song posits, most likely that’s because they’re way too intimidated to even drop a text to invite Mrs. Piss over. The duo comprised of vocalist/guitarist Chelsea Wolfe and guitarist/bassist/drummer/programmer Jess Gowrie issue Self-Surgery as an act of sheer confrontation. The screams of “You Took Everything.” The chugging self-loathing largesse of “Knelt.” The fuzzed mania of ‘M.B.O.T.W.O.,” which, yes, stands for “Mega Babes of the Wild Order.” The unmitigated punk of “Downer Surrounded by Uppers” and the twisted careen-and-crash of the title-track. The declaration of purpose in the lines, “In the shit/I’m sacrosanct/I’m Mrs. Piss” in the eponymous closer. Rage against self, rage against other, rage and righteousness. Among the great many injustices this year has wrought, that Wolfe and Gowrie aren’t touring this material, playing 20-something-minute sets and destroying every stage they hit has to be right up there. It’s like rock and roll to disintegrate every tired dude cliché the genre has. Yes. Fuck. Do it.
As progressive/technical death metal enjoys a stylistic renaissance, New Zealand’s Ulcerate put out their sixth full-length, Stare into Death and Be Still and seem right in line with the moment despite having been around for nearly 20 years. So be it. What distinguishes Stare into Death and Be Still amid the speed-demon wizardry of a swath of other death metallers is the sense of atmosphere across the release and the fact that, while every note, every guitar squibbly, every sharpened turn the 58-minute album’s eight tracks make is important and serves a purpose, the band don’t simply rely on dry delivery to make an impression. To hear the cavernous echoes of the title-track or “Inversion” later on, Ulcerate seem willing to let some of the clarity go in favor of establishing a mood beyond extremity. In the penultimate “Drawn into the Next Void,” their doing so results in a triumphant build and consuming fade in a way that much of their genre simply couldn’t accomplish. There’s still plenty of blast to be found, but also a depth that would seem to evoke the central intention of the album. Don’t stare too long.
Nine songs running an utterly digestible 38 minutes of fuzz-riffed groove with samples, smooth tempos and an unabashed love for ’90s-style stoner rock, Shroom Eater‘s debut album, Ad.Inventum feels ripe for pickup by this or that heavy rock label for a physical release. LP, CD and tape. I know it’s tough economic times, but none of this vinyl-only stuff. The Indonesian five-piece not only have their riffs and tones and methods so well in place — that is, they’re schooled in the style they’re creating; the genre-converted preaching to the genre-converted, and nothing wrong with that — but there are flashes of burgeoning cultural point of view in the lead guitar of “God Isn’t One Eyed” or the lyrics of “Arogant” (sic) and the right-on riffed “Traffic Hunter” that fit well right alongside the skateboarding ode “Ride” or flourish of psychedelia in the rolling “Perspective” earlier on. Closing with “Dragon and Tiger” and “Friend in the High Places,” Ad.Inventum feels like the work of a band actively engaged in finding their sound and developing their take on fuzz, and the potential they show alongside their already memorable songwriting is significant.
I’m not usually one to think bands should be aggrandizing their initial releases. It can be a disservice to call a demo a “debut EP” or album if it’s not, since you only get one shot at having an actual first record and sometimes a demo doesn’t represent a band’s sound as much as the actual, subsequent album does, leading to later regret. In the case of Cork, Ireland’s Astralist, it’s the opposite. 2020 (Demo) is no toss-off, recorded-in-the-rehearsal-space-to-put-something-on-Bandcamp outing. Or if it is, it doesn’t sound like it. Comprised of three massive slabs of atmospheric and sometimes-extreme doom, plus an intro, in scope and production value both, the 36-minute release carries the feel and the weight of a full-length album, earning its themes of cosmic destruction and shifting back and forth between melodic progressivism and death-doom or blackened onslaught. In “The Outlier,” “Entheogen” and “Zuhal, Rise” they establish a breadth and an immediate control thereof, and their will to cross genre lines gives their work a fervently individualized feel. Album or demo doesn’t ultimately matter, but what they say about Astralist‘s intentions does.
Lost in the narrative of initial singles released ahead of its actual arrival is the psychedelic reach Dortmund trio Daily Thompson bring to their fourth album, Oumuamua. Yes, “She’s So Cold” turns in its second half to a more straightforward heavy-blues-fuzz push, but the mellow unfurling that takes place at the outset continues to inform the proceedings from there, and even through “Sad Frank” (video posted here) and “On My Mind” (video posted here), and album-centerpiece “Slow Me Down,” the vibe remains affect by it. Side B has its own stretch in the 12-minute “Cosmic Cigar (Oumuamua),” and sandwiched between the three-minute stomper “Half Thompson” and the acoustic, harmonized grunge-blues closer “River of a Ghost,” it seems that what Daily Thompson held back about the LP is no less powerful than what they revealed. It’s still a party, it’s just a party where every room has something different happening.
Following up 2018’s Touch Taste Destroy (review here), Ontario’s The White Swan present their fourth EP in Nocturnal Transmission. That’s four EPs, in a row, from 2016-2020. If the trio — which, yes, includes Kittie‘s Mercedes Lander on vocals, drums, guitar and keys — were waiting to figure out their sound before putting out a first full-length, they were there two years ago, if not before. One is left to assume that the focus on short releases is — at least for now — an aesthetic choice. Like its predecessor, Nocturnal Transmission offers three circa-five-minute big-riffers topped with Lander‘s floating melodic vocals. The highlight here is “Purple,” and unlike any of the other The White Swan EPs, this one includes a fourth track in a cover of Tracy Bonham‘s “Tell it to the Sky,” given likewise heft and largesse. I don’t know what’s stopping this band from putting out an album, but I’ll take another EP in the meantime, sure.
A quarantine project of Dmitri Mavra from Skunk and Slow Phase, Dungeon Weed is dug-in stoner idolatry, pure and simple. Mavra, joined by drummer Chris McGrew and backing vocalist Thia Moonbrook, metes out riff after feedback-soaked, march-ready, nod-ready, dirt-toned riff, and it doesn’t matter if it’s the doomier tolling bell of “Sorcerer with the Skull Face” or the tongue-in-cheek hook of “Beholder Gonna Fuck You Up” or the brash sludge that ensues across the aptly-named “Lumbering Hell,” all layered solos and whatnot, the important thing is that by the time “Mind Palace” comes around, you’re either out or you’re in, and once you make that choice there’s no going back on it. Opener “Orcus Immortalis/Vox Mysterium” tells the tale (or part of it, as regards the overarching narrative), and if ever there was a band that could and would make a song called “Black Pudding” sound heavy, well, there’s Dungeon Weed for you. Dungeon Weed, man. Don’t overthink it.
The challenge of rendering songcraft in the nude can be a daunting one for someone in a heavy band doing a solo/acoustic release, but it’s a challenge Thomas V. Jäger of Monolord meets with ease on the home-recorded A Solitary Plan, his solo debut. Those familiar with his work in Monolord will recognize some of the effects used on his vocals, but in the much, much quieter context of the seven-song/29-minute solo release — Jäger plays everything except the Mellotron on the leadoff title-track — they lend not only a spaciousness but a feeling of acid folk serenity to “Creature of the Deep” and “It’s Alright,” which follows. Mixed/mastered by Kalle Lilja of Långfinger, A Solitary Plan is ultimately an exploration on Jäger‘s part of working in this form, but it succeeds in both its most minimal stretches and in the electric-inclusive “The Drone” and “Goodbye” ahead of the buzzing synth-laced closer “The Bitter End.” It would be a surprise if this is the only solo release Jäger ever does, since so much of what takes place throughout feels like a foundation for future work.
Change has been the modus operandi of Cavern for a while now. They still show some semblance of their post-hardcore roots on their new full-length, Powdered, but having brought in bassist/vocalist Rose Heater in 2018 and sometime between then and now let out of Baltimore for Morgantown, West Virginia, their sonic allegiance to a heavier-ended post-rock comes through more than ever before. Guitarist/synthesist Zach Harkins winds lead lines around Heater‘s bass on “Grey,” and Stephen Schrock‘s drums emphasize tension to coincide, but the fluidity across the 24-minute LP is of a kind that’s genuinely new to the band, and the soul in Heater‘s vocals carries the material to someplace else entirely. A song like “Dove” presents a tonal fullness that the title-track seems just to hint at, but the emphasis here is on dynamic, not on doing one thing only or locking their approach into a single mindset. As Heater‘s debut with them, Powdered finds them refreshed and renewed of purpose.
Droneroom is the solo vehicle of guitarist Blake Edward Conley and with …The Other Doesn’t, experiments of varying length and degree of severity are brought to bear. The abiding feel is spacious, lonely and cinematic as one might expect for such guitar-based soundscaping, but “Casual-Lethal Narcissism” and “The Last Time Someone Speaks Your Name” do have some measure of peace to go with their foreboding and troubling atmospherics. An obvious focal point is the 15-minute dronefest “This Circle of Ribs,” which feels more forward and striking than someone of Droneroom‘s surrounding material, but it’s all on a relative scale, and across the board Conley remains a safe social distance away from structural traditionalist. Recorded during Summer 2020, it is an album that conveys the anxiety and paranoia of this year, and while that can be a daunting thing to face in such a way or to let oneself really engage with as a listener — shit, it’s hard enough just living through — one of the functions of good art is to challenge perceptions of what it can be. Worth keeping in mind for “Home Can Be a Frightening Place.”
