Like the song from which it takes its name, Nudist‘s fourth album, Bury My Innocence, is a short burst of an offering that sets its core balance between aggression and atmosphere. Its five component tracks draw lines across post-hardcore and sludgy territories, but as a song like “Dead Leaves” shows, the undercurrent is noise rock all the way, and indeed that’s where the Firenze three-piece have their roots. Starting out as instrumental, they’ve been doling out punishment since their self-titled showed up in 2010, and Bury My Innocence marks their debut on Argonauta Records.
They’re a group you want to be as specific as possible when Googling — I did “nudist band italy” with my fingers crossed it wouldn’t cause my laptop to explode and came out of it okay — but if you make your way over to their Bandcamp, all of their releases, including the new one, are available as name-your-price downloads. The CD was issued last month through Argonauta, though, and as it moves through the pummel of “Strengthless” and “Bury My Innocence” into the more ambient finish of “Drift,” the offsetting of punishment with atmospheric immersion would seem to justify the physical presence. That is to say, it makes sense they got picked up for the release.
Call it an EP or an LP if you want, but at 25 minutes, Bury My Innocence brings no shortage of fury to its assault. And I don’t know where the band found the female lead they cast in the video for “Bury My Innocence” below, but yeah, she’s pretty creepy as well.
You can check out the premiere of the new clip followed by more info from the label.
Please enjoy:
Nudist, “Bury My Innocence” official video
The project Nudist born in 2008 as a Noise Instrumental Power Trio and two self-produced albums: “Nudist” and “Appetizer for Monsters”. After formation changes, Gabo and France have found in Lore a worthy travel companion. From there they started an evolution, still in place, of style and sound. With the inclusion of vocals, their third album “See The Light Beyond The Spiral” (2015) have resulted in sounds ranging from post-metal, sludge and post-hardcore.
NUDIST are used to have intense live activity, opening in Italy for acts as Red Fang, Jucifer, ZU, Conan and more, and touring in Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic and Poland. In August 2016 they recorded their new album “Bury my Innocence”. The songs were recorded live in a small theater in Prato, edited by Niccolò Gallio and later mixed and mastered by the expert hands of Eraldo Bernocchi.
Posted in Whathaveyou on November 23rd, 2016 by JJ Koczan
It would seem that the members of Psychedelic Witchcraft work pretty quickly, both as a unit and on their own. Newcomer heavy rockers Magnet feature in their ranks bassist Riccardo Giuffrè of that band — here serving on guitar/vocals — and though the title of the opener from their debut album, Feel the Fire, the rather foreboding “Buried Alive with Thee,” might give one cultish impressions, the only demons Magnet are conjuring would seem to be the demons of boogie. Don’t get me wrong, those are still demons. Just different demons. One assumes in tighter pants, maybe? I don’t know demon fashion.
Anyway, you can dig into the shuffle and Deep Purple-style organ-ics of “Buried Alive with Thee” below. Feel the Fire will be out in Jan. 2017 on Soulseller Records, as the PR wire explains:
MAGNET – Signing with Soulseller Records – Debut Announcement – Song Premiere
Italian rockers MAGNET have signed a deal with Soulseller Records!
The band was founded in the first half of 2016, led by the bassist of Psychedelic Witchcraft, Riccardo Giuffrè, who is taking over guitars and vocals here.
Their debut album “Feel Your Fire” will be released on 27th January 2017 in several formats (digipack-CD, limited gatefold LP, digital) and promises a magical mixture of high energy 70’s blues and rock and roll. With a sound focused on energetic vocals and fast tempos, you will also be thrown in a void of slow and dreamy rhythms. It’s literally like feeling a fire!
The opening track “Buried Alive With Thee” is streaming now.
The band comments: “We’re really excited and proud to become part of the great family of Soulseller’s artists. This signing has been huge surprise for us and we can’t wait for the album to be released! We’re ready to rock!”
Tracklist: 1. Buried Alive With Thee 2. Ouroboros 3. Light 4. Little Moon 5. Drive Me Crazy 6. Feel Your Fire 7. Satan’s Daughter 8. Magnet Caravan
Magnet is: Riccardo Giuffrè Jacopo Fallai Mirko Buia Vanni Fanfani
Posted in Whathaveyou on February 26th, 2016 by JJ Koczan
Italian four-piece Psychedelic Witchcraft, for whom I’ve yet to come up with a more descriptive phrase than their moniker, have set a firm April 29 release date for their debut album on Soulseller Records. The follow-up to their 2015 Black Magic Man EP (review here) has been given the title The Vision, and the artwork and tracklisting has been revealed by the label ahead of preorders, which one can only assume are forthcoming.
Soulseller announced last month it has picked up the band and would release the album, which was news that came after Black Magic Man had been released by both Twin Earth Records in the US and Taxi Driver Records in the band’s native Italy, so if it’s Psychedelic Witchcraft‘s intent to go one label and one country at a time in a quest for world hypnosis/domination, it’s hard to argue they’re not well on their way.
There’s a lyric video out now for “Magic Hour Blues” that you can check out below. The song, as you can see in the tracklisting, will close the record. That’s a big reveal on the part of the band, but I’m sure they’ll have more tricks up their collective sleeve.
From the PR wire:
PSYCHEDELIC WITCHCRAFT – Album details revealed
The debut album of Italian occult-doom-rockers PSYCHEDELIC WITCHCRAFT, entitled “The Vision”, will be released on April 29th 2016 through Soulseller Records on CD, limited vinyl and in digital versions.
A first song is already available – check out the “Magic Hour Blues“ official lyric video at this location: https://youtu.be/gvSDMdmOf5Y
PSYCHEDELIC WITCHCRAFT is a project fronted by an Italian doomstress named Virginia Monti. The band was formed in March 2015, living through the imaginary of occult and witchcraft with psychedelic colors and emotions, inspired by the sounds and the pictures of an almost lost era. The EP “Black Magic Man” was released on vinyl in July and sold out in less than 10 days.
Tracklist: 1. A Creature 2. Witches Arise 3. Demon Liar 4. Wicked Ways 5. The Night 6. The Only One That 7. War 8. Different 9. Magic Hour Blues
Posted in Whathaveyou on January 18th, 2016 by JJ Koczan
Italian cult rocking four-piece Psychedelic Witchcraft have signed a deal to release their debut album, The Vision, this Spring on Soulseller Records. This news follows quickly on the heels of a Taxi Driver Records reissue of their debut EP, Black Magic Man (review here) — also released in the US via Twin Earth Records — that will include a Lemmy tribute cover of “The Dark Lord,” taken from 1969’s Escalator (discussed here) by Sam Gopal, and it also reaffirms the intense backing this still relatively new act has received, which the level of songwriting and cohesiveness of aesthetic would seem to justify for those who take the time to listen.
The upshot? Expect to hear more from and about Psychedelic Witchcraft throughout 2016. They have a new lyric video for “Magic Hour Blues” out now, and you can find it under the PR wire info below.
Dig in:
SOULSELLER RECORDS – New Signings – PSYCHEDELIC WITCHCRAFT
PSYCHEDELIC WITCHCRAFT is a project fronted by an Italian doomstress named Virginia Monti. The band was formed in March 2015, living through the imaginary of occult and witchcraft with psychedelic colors and emotions, inspired by the sounds and the pictures of an almost lost era. The EP “Black Magic Man” was released on vinyl in July and sold out in less than 10 days.
The band’s full-length debut “The Vision” will be released via Soulseller Records in spring 2016. Details will be revealed soon. A first song is already available – check out the “Magic Hour Blues“ official lyric video at this location: https://youtu.be/gvSDMdmOf5Y
The band comments: “We are very happy for the signing with Soulseller Records, We really feel it was the right place for us and they were the ones that shared the most the vision of the band! We can’t wait for the release of the new album!”
Posted in Reviews on January 8th, 2016 by JJ Koczan
Last day. It’s been some week. When I otherwise would’ve been putting these reviews together yesterday? Jury duty. Yup, my civic responsibility. Add that to a busted laptop, a full-time job and a couple busy days for news, and you have a good argument for why with Quarterly Reviews prior I’ve gotten up at six in the morning over the weekend before and started writing to get as much out of the way as possible. Oh wait, I did that this time too. Well, maybe it was seven.
Either way, as it comes to a close, I want to personally express my thanks to you for checking it out and being a part of what’s become a weird seasonal ritual for me. I hope you’ve found something (or find something today) that resonates with you and stays with you for a long time. I’m pretty sure that’s what it’s all about.
Quarterly Review #41-50:
Satan’s Satyrs, Don’t Deliver Us
Virginian riff-turner trio Satan’s Satyrs passed the half-decade mark with their third album, late-2015’s Don’t Deliver Us (on Bad Omen Records), just one year after their sophomore outing, Die Screaming! crawled up from the foggy ’70s ether. In addition to touring the US with Electric Wizard, with whom Satan’s Satyrs shares bassist Clayton Burgess (also vocals), one assumes the trio spent the remainder of the year mining old VHS discount-bin horror to find inspiration and fitting subject matter for quick-turning cuts like “(Won’t You be My) Gravedancer” and “Crimes and Blood,” but whatever they did, it worked. As “Spooky Nuisance” jams out its Hendrix-via-Sabbath vibing and the subsequent “Germanium Bomb” leans into yet another impressive solo by guitarist Jarrett Nettnin complemented by the fills of drummer Stephen Fairfield, there’s an element of performance to what they do, but whether it’s the proto-doom of closer “Round the Bend” or the motor-chug of “Two Hands,” Satan’s Satyrs find that sweet spot wherein they constantly sound like they’re about to fall apart, but never actually do. For sounding so loose, they are enviably tight.
Sometimes you have an idea for a band, and it’s like, “I’m gonna start a band that puts this genre and this genre together.” In the case of Aussie four-piece Wildeornes, it’s stoner and black metal coming together on their second full-length, Erosion of the Self. I’ll give it to them, they pull it off. I’m not sure the “arising” instead of “rising” in “Serpent Arising” or the “So fucking high!” at the end of “The Subject” are really necessary, but hard to ignore the fact that before they get there, they’ve nodded at Pentagram, Crowbar, and Goatsnakeand included a couple measures of blastbeats, or the fact that throughout the album they effectively tilt to one side or the other, riding atmospheric cymbals over a rolling groove in “The Oblivion of Being” only to tap into Nile-brand Egyptology in “Incantation for the Demise of Autumn” only to affect Erosion of the Self‘s biggest chorus on “Winter’s Eve.” Whatever genre tag they, you or I want to give it, their roots are definitely metal, but the juxtaposition they offer within that sphere works for them.
Raw groove is at the core of what Oakland, California’s Blackwülf offer on their second album and Ripple Music debut, Oblivion Cycle. Divided neatly into two sides for an LP, its 10 track hearken to a stripped-down vision of classic metal on “Memories,” Sabbath and Maiden both a factor but not the end of the line when it comes to the four-piece’s influences. Somebody in this band (if not multiple somebodies) is a punker. The two impulses play out in a balance of grand stylization and lean production – to wit, “Wings of Steel” sneers even as it puts a triumphant foot on the stage monitor and gallops off – and if the punk/metal battle isn’t enough of a tip-off, let the umlaut serve as confirmation that these guys are going to miss Lemmy (who isn’t?), but their methods ultimately prove more indebted to Judas Priest than Motörhead by the time they get down to “Never Forget,” which touches on some vocal soaring as it rounds out that feels especially bold as well as well placed as a late gem before the slamming-groove-into-Iommic-flourish of closer “March of the Damned.” As much as Oblivion Cycle has these elements butting heads across its span, that’s not to say Blackwülf lack control or don’t know what they’re doing. Just the opposite. Their pitting ideas against each other is a big part of the appeal, for listeners and likely for the band as well.
Four years after issuing their second album, 2011’s Galaxia (review here), late-2015’s Phantom of an Era finds Connecticut’s VRSA a considerably more crunch-laden entity. They’ve have some lineup changes in the past half-decade, which is fair enough, but guitarist Andrius and guitarist/vocalist Josh remain prominent, leading the rhythm section of bassist/vocalist John and drummer Wes through prog-metal cascades, quiet parts shifting on a dime to full-volume assaults or holding off and making the change more gradual as tension builds. Either way, if the end-goal is heavy, VRSA get there, whether it’s the rolling, chugging and growling of “Grand Bois” or the winding and crashing and thrashing of the later “Marble Orchard,” or how closer “Baron Cimetière” sets up its waltz rhythm subtly in the beginning only to bash the listener’s skull with it as the inevitable crushing begins anew. There’s plenty of it to go around on Phantom of an Era, which keeps a consistent air of brutality even as it veers into clean, progressive or atmospheric forms.
As they get down elsewhere with hard-driving, Steak-style post-Kyuss desertism, Swiss four-piece Marant have just a couple of more laid back trips perfectly placed along the path of their debut album, High Octane Diesel. The first of them, “Smoothie,” follows opener “Kathy’s Trophy,” and like the later “Road 222,” it has its more raucous side as well, but the big tone-wash happens with the languid heavy psych roll of closer “N’BaCon?,” also the longest track at 8:47. The effect that varying their modus has on broadening the scope of more straightforward songs like “Evil Schnaps” and “The Good the Bad and the Trip” isn’t to be understated. Not only does it show a different side of the emerging chemistry between vocalist Jimmy, guitarist Sergio Calabrian Donkey, bassist Aff Lee and drummer Sir Oli with Snake, but it gives High Octane Diesel an atmospheric range beyond the desert and into an expanse no less ripe for exploration. Whichever method they employ, Marant engage fluidly across their first record.
Lot of noise, lot of fuckall, not too many songs. Connecticut trio Grizzlor manage to pack seven songs onto a 7” release called Cycloptic (on Hex Records), most of which hover on either side of 90 seconds apiece. Dissonance, grit and tension pervade the offering front to back, and between “Sundays are Stupid” and “I’m that Asshole,” there’s an edge of experimentation in the vocals and rhythm as well, some starts and stops that add to the songwriting, though the peeled-skin noise rock of “Tommy” and the build-into-mayhem of “Winter Blows” ensure that the business of punkish intensity isn’t left out. Was it a danger to start with? Nah. Closer “Starship Mother Shit” and the earlier “Life’s a Joke” rolls out a sludgy-style groove, but with sneering and shouting overtop and hard-edged percussive punctuation, there’s no question where Grizzlor got all that aggression from. If Grizzlor are playing in the basement, somebody’s gonna call the cops.
Bull-in-a-china-shop’ing their way through nine mostly-blistering tracks in 43 minutes, Seattle trio Mother Crone make their full-length debut with the appropriately titled Awakening, a record that melts doom and thrash together with the best of earliest Mastodon and comes out of it sounding righteous, wildly heavy and solidly in control of their methods. Don’t believe it? First of all, why not? Second, check out the six-minute “Descending the North” – the third track after a beastly opening with the mysteriously JFK-sampling intro “Silt Laden Black” and “Black Sea” – which chugs and twists and stomps through its first half only to drop out to just-guitar ambience and burst to life again with a shredding solo finish that leads to – wait for it – the quiet guitar-and-vocals only spaciousness of “The Dream,” which marks a twist into a more experimental middle quotient of the album, the subsequent “Halocline” and furiously building “Revelation” more experimental in form, before the sludgy “Turning Tides” and raging “Apollyon” make the job of the nine-minute closing title-track even more difficult in summarizing everything that came before it. A task of which that song makes short work. For the momentum they build and the brashness they execute within that, Mother Crone‘s Awakening is indeed bound to stir.
Italian four-piece Psychedelic Witchcraft issued Black Magic Man in mid-2015 as their debut EP, and wound up selling through both its limited 10” vinyl pressings. For the Twin Earth Records CD version, it’s been expanded by two tracks – still EP length at 27 minutes – and given new artwork that underscores the band’s cultish bent, which comes across strong in the vocals of Virginia Monti, very much at the forefront of the group’s presentation on “Angela” and “Lying in Iron,” the opening duo that give way to the desert-toned push of the title-track, also the strongest hook included. Drummer Daniele Parrella leads the march into the grungier “Slave of Grief,” in which the guitar of Jacopo Fallai will take a noisy forward position in the midsection, giving way later to some blown-out singing from Monti given heft by bassist Riccardo Giuffrè, like 1967 time traveling to 1971. The production on the last two cuts, “Wicked Dream” and “Set Me Free” is audibly different (Vanni also plays bass), more modernly-styled, but the band’s core intent of living up to their name remains true.
Philadelphia and New York rarely agree on anything, but Chimpgrinder and Miscegenator, who make their homes respectively in those burgs, have come together at least long enough to share a split 7” between them, though of course what they do with that time is vastly different. Chimpgrinder proliferate a raw kind of sludge on their two tracks, not completely void of melody, but more geared toward groove than expanse, “Gates” taking off on an lengthy solo and deciding it’d rather not come back, ending in feedback fading to abrasive noise. That’s a fitting lead-in for what NY’s Miscegenator are up to on the other side, as “Hate Hate Hate” leads off a six-song set of visceral grind. Shit is raw and mean, and it d-beats its way either into your heart or off your turntable – it’s not the kind of music anyone ever played because they were feeling friendly. Blink and its gone, but the punk-rooted abrasion is like as not to leave a scar as closer “Tony Randall was Right” goes slicing, which is a fair enough answer to the pummel Chimpgrinder made their own a whopping five minutes earlier.
The self-titled, self-released, self-recorded debut EP from London four-piece Oak saves its burliest impression for “Ride with Me,” the third of its four component tracks. That’s not to say that “All Above” and “Queen of this Land” aren’t plenty dudely – the vocals of Andy Wisbey see to that – but “Ride with Me” feels particularly caked in testosterone. Somewhat quizzical that it also finds guitarist/engineer Kevin Germain, bassist Scott Mason and drummer Rob Emms (since replaced by Sergiu, it would seem) vibing out for a bit of quiet desert noodling in the middle and ending with a primo shuffle of the post-Kyuss variety. Maybe it’s a fine line when one considers the body of work of Orange Goblin as an influence, but it gives a different context to the two songs before and certainly to the stonerly bounce of “Dissolve” after to know that Oak have more in their playbook than the standard beer-pounding and chestbeating. Should be interesting to hear how the various impulses play out as they more forward.
