A new single from Californian post-punk trio, Black Market Heart has crashed landed, and it is also the title of their soon to be released new album. Spencer Robinson (guitar, vocals), Tina Brugnoletti (bass, vocals) and Shawn Medina (drums) are going to tell you about “What Happens In The Dark.”
You know you are in for a good time when you start with guitar feedback and it just never lets up from there. The drums set a cracking pace, that the guitars are more than happy to keep up with. There are lyrics about how the darkness is the vampiric happy place and boo hiss at that abysmal burning fireball we call the sun, with the vocals taking equal delight in boisterously telling you all about it.
There is something genuinely joyous in this single and in top punk form, it doesn’t quite make the two minute mark, which just means you get to play it again for good measure. I imagine this is what the band sounds like live, and even this recording has that ambiance of all members being in the studio at the same time. There is definitely strong echoes of The Jesus and Mary Chain in the noisy reverb, the vocals and the nicely left in iconic amp buzzing. There is no fear in the shadows, for as Black Market Heart know, “What Happens In TheDark,” stays in the dark, and what a great track to kick off an album!.
Here at Onyx, we love weird arse stuff, especially when it is really well put together, and so we present the Expedient Self and their new experimental noise album called At The MRI Scanner. Out on the attenuation circuit label in Germany, Expedient Self is based in the United Kingdom, and I bet you can’t guess what inspired this eight track journey, which is done completely on guitar.
You won’t have to remember pesky song titles, as they are neatly documented in Roman numerals, unless of course you missed that day at school and never quite got a hold of those weird Vs and I’s.
Not going to lie, it really is like being in an MRI scanner, with all those weird rhythms going off, that would actually be very enjoyable in a metronome kind of way, if you didn’t have to worry about moving. There are the intense bursts of magnetic pulses between the regular ticking. Occasionally the guitar increases in voracity, exposing you to the claustrophobic condition in the tube. Apart from the ticking, the other consistency from the beginning of each track, comes in the form of a female voice telling you to stay still for three minutes.
The whole album is a really interesting concept. For those that like experimental noise, especially noise that uses regular instruments, which then the musician wrings the most abnormal sounds, then this is most likely for you. It puts you in someone else’s shoes, or takes you back to a time and place where you were in this situation, just like Expedient Self. Is it strange that for myself it is both hypnotic and yet uncomfortable at the same time? All I can say dancing At The MRI Scanner could be a thing, however, as Self Expedient can attest, this will not be endorsed by medical staff
Fascists, regimes and state sponsored genocide and it isn’t even 1939. 2025 is currently in a scary place and it has been mentally draining for most of us that are watching this all going down. Music has been a salvation and politically charged tracks an anathema to throw our ire and rage into. SchkeuditzerKreuz have released the single “Sirens Of Death” from the new album Swan Grinder that drops at the end of August.
Photo by PHOTOYUNIST
Beware the dogs of war and if you don’t like harsh rhythms and screaming electronics, only matched by the vociferous bald man, KierenHills, then maybe sit this one out. The beats are the rattling of the machine guns and the klaxons herald in the injustice of conflict on huge scales. ‘We have always been at war‘ is the observation, which is carried through in the amazing video, that over the last hundred years the world has seen so much unrest and the cycle is continuing.
For those that say music should not be political, you can renounce any alternative ties you have and then fuck off with the Nazi scum. There is no middle ground and this world needs voices of dissent. Hills is one of those genuine people that feels everything and in true punk style, tells it like it is. Previous Schkeuditzer Kreuz music has been more like blunt force trauma, but this single is more like cold fuelled angst, funnelled into a controlled tsunami… powerful and undeniable in its fury. “Sirens Of Death” is the industrial synth d-beat we need and Schkeuditzer Kreuz delivers.
I think JeremyMoore is a man who cannot sit still and is constantly looking for the next musical high. We last saw him in post-punk project Zabus, on SaccharineUnderground, a label Moore runs himself in Washington DC. He has turned his hand to creating experimental, avant garde dark music, melding it with a myriad of genres, in the guise of BellBarrow, culminating in the album “CoreCorePulp.” Made up of twelve instrumental tracks, Moore plays all instruments as well as being the composer.
You are set about the road with the first track “An Eye On The Future,” with quasar pulsating like waves, repeating on loop, stretching into a pained infinity across time and space. Whirring and high-pitched extrusions pierce your ears until they become a conglomeration of psychedelic noise, married to a now existing drum.
Noise inspired jazz can be the only way to describe “CoffinText” with both the free form of the music and drumming triplets. The main guitar is heavy and cumbersome in comparison, while there is another guitar, with possibly a plectrum being dragged down the strings in similar fashion as heard on Bauhaus‘ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.”
The guitar is the main voice in “Peace Field Autopsy,” grinding and dark, hanging ominously in the air, daring you to deny its black metal pall. There is free-flowing feedback looped back in creating a cacophony, which is over far too soon, giving way to a more ambient tone.
There is something utterly compelling about the last track “From Hunter To Remains,” with an eeriness that is both unsettling in its discordant drone and impossible to ignore the sweeping void as the instruments join in the decay.
The artwork for the tracks is mind bending, because the more you try to make sense of the picture, the less it makes, and in a way this perfectly encapsulates CoreCorePulp, which could be the name an avant garde noise album, but it becomes apparent there is so much going on below the surface. I have chosen four tracks to showcase how BellBarrow is using different styles of music, not in a cohesive manner, but rather to create abrasion and discord, battering the listener into submission if they fight the jarring flow. The use of extreme experimentation with black metal, jazz, prog rock, etcetera, melds the instrumentals into sonic scapes for your imagination to run rampant. The base interpretation is about life and death, though for myself, it is about this flesh we call home. The fragility, what can be achieved with the spirit, and, perhaps, the futility of it all. Bleak and yet a beauty in that ultimate desecration called death.
November has seen the release of the split single from SchkeuditzerKreuz (Aust) and DecideToday (USA), with the vinyl on Nambour label Bad Habit Records, in the wilds of the Sunshine Coast, North of Brisbane.
“Last year, mid-winter, I did a quick tour run up to Bellingen and Lismore (NSW, Australia). The Lismore gig was something we booked in a Hall out of town and was kind of a make-up gig for one that got scuttled by the plague a couple years earlier. On the bill was Sniffer Dog and Toecutter – someone I had met in Melbourne when he played with Dark Horse, and someone I was keen to make noise with again. At that gig he said to me “you have to meet my friend Robert – your music, your attitude, your touring all match each other so well” and he gave me the contact. So, I reached out and Robert jumped straight in.” – Kieren Hills/Schkeuditzer Kreuz
Schkeuditzer Kreuz
Decide Today
The one track from d-beat, synth-crust master, Schkeuditzer Kreuz, is the cloying “Choke,” and this slower track feels like the air is being dragged out of your lungs. It lurches zombie like at times, and then becomes full of rage and destructive conviction as Hills lets us into his head and what clinical depression can be like when it isn’t a good day.
Decide Today has two tracks, with the first being “Revolutionary Reason (WorldwideIntifada),” and you can smell the sweat in the swarming mosh pit as the beats come in thick and furious. The indignation is palpable with a whole bunch of cleverly cut sound clips strung together, culminating in the powerful hushed tones that the genocide of the Palestinian people is wrong. The second track “The Shit Punx Hate” hits you full throttle, making you start, and then you are serenaded by the list of things that punks dislike such as racism, authoritarians and Nazis, while the rhythms have nail bombed into your psyche and pierced your head.
“Toecutter must have met Kieren and insisted we start talking. Our common ground in music, and the culture surrounding it, was immediately evident. Earlier this year Kieren proposed the split 7” via Bad Habit, which of course I had to say yes to such circumstances, and I mentioned also wanting to get back to Australia at some point. The next day Kieren asked if I was for real, and started planning the tour. I am incredibly thankful to my new friend, Borg at Bad Habit, and Dave (Toecutter) for getting us connected.” – Robert Inhuman/Decide Today
Baron Von Borg is the bloke that runs Bad Habit Records, who is a punk, a punk musician and a connoisseur of music from the top of his head, to the tips of his toes and someone I have a lot of time for. It isn’t surprising that he is in the middle of this whirlwind.
This is a marriage of ferocious punk attitude, punching with a fist full of electronics.
Somewhere in Victoria, Canada, you can imagine there are bears and elk but if in the woods, you might be jumped by the Skull Cultist, also known as Steve Saunders, man of rocking industrial beats. His latest album is named HardcoreRituals.
The first track, “ChwibanMarwolaeth” sets the scene of something tribal and ancient, yet with the encroaching modern music bearing down. This is the lead up for you to drop into the title track “Hardcore Ritual,” and the magical mythos of a bygone era reverberate through the vocals and electronic tones. It builds and breaks down over and again. The cyberpunk influenced “Rivethammer” pounds and loops, revelling in the violence of the hammer. It is probably me, but I keep thinking I hear ‘timber‘ being yelled over and over again.
“Mover” features the crystalline vocals of Gaby Gustafson, who is also know as Eva X along side Saunders, as the music strikes up a rapid pace, while the electronics rattle and throb to keep up. She is the angelic in comparison to his demonic, crying ‘die, die, die.’ Nicole Turner of Orthokeras is the guest vocalist on the “Floor Sadist,” and does anyone have to ask when or where we assume the position?! This track is a mixture of rhythmic noise and dark sexual overtones, which is instantly captivating and bewitching. The last track of the album, “Duskfall,” also features Turner’s vocals, which feels expansive and sounds futuristic
Hardcore Rituals has a grand total of eleven tracks and Skull Cultist keeps you guessing what style he is going to use next, though I like to think the main style is rhythmic industrial. Having the two ladies guest on tracks is a really nice additional, taking things up a notch and I have to say that I really did like “Floor Sadist.” Maybe it is that skull crushing crunchiness but it is very satisfying. In the end, there is a primordial brooding throughout, married to something that lurks within the shadows.
We are going to touch the dark musical mire that is the harsh, ambient electronics of German based VERFÜHRERVERGELTER, in the new EP From the Void: Silicon Signals to a Dead Brain.
“Aschewüste” is the ash desert and that wasteland is present in your ears. Abrasive and sand blasted by storms, echoing with the past where something abominable happened. The looping electronics grate and gouge at your psyche. Next is the lurking “Deathpile,” which slowly consumes the will to live and the Reaper could be knocking on that door. The music vibrates and rolls with the death throes, in anticipation of a painful cellular end. Starting to to get saggy skin due to a lack of collagen? No worries for there is a “Siliciumsale,” and in truth I involuntarily shivered a little as it has a sharp cruelty to the tone. Behold the unbridled electric guitar as it brings you into the “Untitled Abstract Void.” Shards of light try to penetrate but this is pure darkness that will break the mind of the strongest if you ponder it too long. A yawning abyss of terror echoing the fear endlessly. Maybe there is nothing more terrifying than the thought of never reaching a weekend, perpetual groundhog day for the whole week, over and over again. “Bonus: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Monday Tuesday…..” drones on without joy or meaning, only with the intense ticking letting you know that there is no rest.
What does it all mean? Hmmm, I might take a guess that this could be about a body on life support. The brain no longer present but the nerves keep trying to contact central control with no response. VERFÜHRERVERGELTER has unleashed another release of infernal doom that can drag its cold fingers and nails across your soul and make you ponder From the Void: Silicon Signals to a Dead Brain.
The label Cioran Records, has released the experimental album Les Couleurs d’une Fièvre, by French group Flagorne. Maquerelle (vocals, lyrics, synthesizers, samplers) and Afga06l (additional voices, computer, digital instruments) make up the group which combines industrial noise with black metal.
And so the decent into Hell begins with “Salutations,” brutally assaulting your ears. Salut à vous! or hello to everyone, though this welcome is full of bad tidings for the listener. Drawn taut and extruded, the music and vocals speak of pain before there is a pause, when the voice expresses how all this is a fever dream in the aftermath of a holocaust. Candaule(s), a king of Lydia in the 7th century BC, was mentioned by Herodotus as a ruler of great depravity, and in the track “Adresses,” the line ‘On sera Candaule de tout un empire/We will be Candaule of an entire empire,’ hints at wonton wickedness. The music is spurred on by an explosive rhythmic momentum, swirling in its majestic inferno.
From the depths you can hear the shaman of a bygone era chanting their ritual in “Dévore,” before the electronic clicks and clanks kick in with the vehement whispers and discontented screams, that retreat and flood forth again, which is understandable when one is being devoured. The rise of empires also brings about destruction and this is the angst of “De rien de bien,” where you can almost feel the blood pumping freely from wounds of the tortured souls, as the mechanised world continues to smash on without any emotion. The final track is “Comme plusieurs,” that begins subtly, as I strain my ears to adjust to the bleeping programming, until the vocals take us by surprise, like a call to prayers through a megaphone, and there is a gravity to the austere tone. Maybe a judgement.
Les Couleurs d’une Fièvre basically translates to The Colours of a Fever, and indeed the album does feel like a delirious nightmare, visceral and haunting, as if you were unfortunate enough to enter the circles of hell and yet you know that this is all earth bound. And maybe that is the crux of it all, that man makes his own hell on earth. Flagorne will not disappoint.
On the day of his birthday, SebastianSünkler released the single “Bohdi” with his main industrial project, STAHLSCHLAG. The German noise master never fails to amaze with how productive he is, and before we know it, the new full-length album will be upon us.
Become one with the drone of “Bohdi” as STAHLSCHLAG take you into another realm, outside of your being, to where celestial souls transverse the stars, god like, as the rhythms continuously make you aware of your own heartbeat. The combination of luminous and mystical vocals with noise is perfection. The second track, “SriStuti,” continues this journey, with more purpose, demanding your attention be completely focused on the fragging beats while a winding synth line wanders though.
The maestro of power noise keeps his sound fresh whilst plumbing the depth of your spiritual psyche, pulling on ancient tendrils within our genetics. With the brilliance of “Bohdi,” we await the album and wish Sünkler another wonderful year making music around the sun.
As sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, SebastianSunkler will probably release a few more things before the year is out. So, November was the release for the new double sided single for STAHLSCHLAG, called Abhinivesha. “Om Mani Padme Hum” and “Ong NamoGuru Dev Namo” will both be on the new album Amrita, which is slated to come out in 2024.
“Om Mani Padme Hum” starts with the charming chimes of temple bells, before the clever combination of harsher electronics and beats are injected into the track, becoming ever more demanding to be heard in the transcendental mirage of the universe.
The second track, “Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo,” has a much darker edge to it, forbidding and sharp. It echoes with the waiting ghosts of past, cavernous sounding, pounding and primitive, only promising enlightenment to those whom dare to cross those boundaries.
As always, STAHLSCHLAG have pulled something unique out of the basket yet again, combining rhythmic noise with accents of that which is ancient and otherworldly, creating a fantasy soundscape to lose yourself in.
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