Time to get low with LOW PLACES

Do you like your Hardcore rough and out of control? Do you like Sludge as well and do you have an affinity for raw and unpolished Metal? But after all you'd say you listen to Punk? If your answer to at least one of these questions is yes, you should keep an eye open for the new A389 signing LOW PLACES.

Just like their now-labelmates in Full Of Hell LOW PLACES combine wildly everything fucked up and heavy there is and spit it towards you with so much hate and anger you're running the risk of wetting yourself. I've had the chance to listen to a roughmix of their new output Spiritual Treatment and I'm super stoked about it. Imagine Neanderthal having sex with Eyehategod and early Napalm Death is watching the mating through the keyhole. Got the picture? This is how LOW PLACES sounds like.

This is some heavy, mean and aggressive shit, I know you'll love it. And I'm really glad LOW PLACES changed their logo. Just sayin'.

lowplaces.bandcamp.com



PS: This is my 100th post. Wow.

Virgin Witch - s/t 7" (Review)

Here we have a cool Hardcore item on a small label I unfortunatly haven’t heard about until now, Free Cake Records. In Virgin Witch, Dom from Pulling Teeth is filling on the bass and guitar duties, so I knew beforehand that this shit’s gonna rule. So what music can you expect from a one sided 7“ with two songs, the flip side of the record with a silk screened pentagramm on it, and a cover artwork that has everything what’s good (boobs, skulls, devil horns)? Let me say it like this, if the number of the Os in the word doom correlates with the slowness of the music, the first track is definetely a dooooooooooooom song. Sludgy, with nice twin guitar harmonies here and there, and realy slow, mean vocals, you know the deal. Nothing to bring you into an happy mood, though, like Grief when they had a really bad day. The second song is faster, not really super fast but a solid midtempo, a good Hardcore song in the vein of Pulling Teeth (sorry for the unoriginal comparison), and the solo is one of the best Dom has done so far. It could very well be on one of the earyl Angel Witch recordings as well. I love Angel Witch’s solos. Virgin Witch is probably only one of Dom’s many side projects, but a very good one and I hope that there will be more tunes of that band sometime soon.

Virgin Witch on myspace

Free Cake Records

Judas - s/t 7"

Judas is a band from California, thrashing out some of the heaviest Hardcore imaginable. You already know what to expect just looking at the dark, disturbing artwork, which looks really awesome and contributes a quite big part to the overall violent and dark atmosphere. The lyrics get spitten out in short phrases, not unlike bands like Dropdead, but way sicker. "I am here/From the depths of hell/City streets I dwell/Control this world I shall/Judas lives" (Ascension). That's one song. So as you might guess, the songs are rather short, burning out in an explosive mixture between Powerviolence and Sludgecore, taking no prisoners.  

At first I wanted to order this record directly from the label (16 Oh), unfortunately I never received my 7", nor any replies to my e-mails. So I bought months later from a mailorder in Germany, being glad I wasn't a cry baby not buying the record again haha. Because this shit rules. I wonder why there isn't much more rave about this band.

Judas on myspace.com

Eyehategod - Southern Discomfort

October may not be the perfect time for listening to Eyehategod, I mean it's way to cold outside for that. I always think of a dirty, hot, huge city with traffic jams, motorcycle-gangs and drugs when I listen to EHG, not of Münster full of students, bikes, and a nice October sun. Anyway, this morning, around 7:45 AM I was on my way to work (!) on my bike (!!) and it was about 10° C max.(!!!), which is not the situation where I would choose to listen to Sludgecore kings EHG. It's like listening to old Darkthrone while lying on the beach. But today I had my Ipod on shuffle mode, and suddenly Dopesick Jam, a 15 minute monster of a song got pumped into my head, and that gave me such an intense feeling I decided to upload that record. 

Basically "Southern Discomfort" is a collection of rare songs; Tracks 1-6 are demos from the "Take As Needed For Pain" (which is probably my favourite full length by EHG) era that ended up on "Ruptured Heart Theory" 7" and on the two split 7"s with 13. The tracks 7-9 were preserved on tape during the "Dopesick" sessions. Although it's a collection, it's a really good album to listen to, the sound's not very different from track to track, and you get some of EHG's best songs like Depress, Ruptured Heart Theory or the mentioned Dopesick Jam. I guess I don't have to tell anybody how EHG sounds like. If you're into sick, dirty, drug and alcohol fueled, Sabbath-worshipping Sludgecore, you can't go wrong with EHG. Together with Buzzoven and Grief they basically invented that genre. Dopesick.

Boulder - Ripping Christ

This is a best of compilation of a band called Boulder. To be honest, I don't know very much about this band when it comes down to basic facts. Metal Archives tells me that this band played "Heavy Metal", was formed in 1991 and had a shitload of releases. But I've heard that there is a connection between members of Boulder and the early to mid nineties Cleveland Hardcore scene, but again: no hard facts. Musicwise this band has way more in common with Hardcore bands like Iron Age or War Hungry than with your average Heavy Metal band. I mean the vocals are heavily distorted (not unlike Eyehategod) and screamed, and you have tons of grooving parts, and the songwriting is in general more Punk than Metal, means short songs, and most of the time simple structured. The tracks on this compilation that have been originally released on their later records are even a little bit chaotic, maybe like a stoner version of Coalesce. Or something like that. So no more blabla, if you dig bands like the above mentioned and have a certain affinity to Sludgecore in general, you can't go wrong with Boulder.

Crowbar - Existence Is Punishment

If you aren't yet, better get into it.


I gave my heart and soul to you my friend
You let me fall
If you could only see what's in my heart
You'd take my hand
I've lived this life as a man would do
Why's it so hard to find the truth?
My faith is strong within myself
I bleed of pride
Inside
I won't forgive
You can't take it back now
It's too hard to swallow
No words
No conviction
I've found the truth inside myself
But I am still doing time
Opened my eyes to what is real
This world is hard
It's cold
It's agony

Official Crowbar Site
Crowbar on myspace.com

Iron Age - The Sleeping Eye (Review)

Man I've waited for that record for so long, since the release of their first full length "Constant Struggle" to be exact. In between those two LPs Iron Age released only two 7"s, and the first one, the "Burden of Empire" 7" never really made it to Europe I think. The "The Way is narrow" 7" came out like months ago and really made me expecting nothing but the best from the new record, "The Sleeping Eye".
First of all, the record comes in a really thick gatefold cover (at least the US-pressing on Cyclopean Records), as double LP, with all lyrics and a small poster. The artwork itself is quite weird and not exactly "nice". In fact it looks more like done while tripping on LSD or something. Maybe that's not too far from the truth. The good thing is, in this case you can judge a book by its cover.

It still sounds like Iron Age, no doubt about it, but I think they manage the approach they had from the beginning way better than on the first record. What's left is the same unique mixture of Thrash metal, Stoner rock and Hardcore, but whereas some of their earlier songs kind of didn't really know where to go, every single one on "The Sleeping Eye" is perfect. You have really long, slow, even psychadelic parts, fast parts that totally remind me on "Kill em all"-Metallica, and a few but really hard moshparts, which will make your head bang harder then a train approaching you from the behind. The riffs are excellently played, with lots of "twin-tone" harmonies, and Iron Age is one of the few Hardcore bands which are able to play more than 8 riffs in one song without getting boring or causing the impression of bad song writing. As if this wasn't enough for a great record, they implemented some quite unusual stuff (at least in a Hardcore context), like a synth-intro in one song, or what I call a "monk-choir" in another.
The production is quite good as well, I mean it perfectly fits the music. It's warm and "earthy", the record sounds as if they recorded it out in the desert. Which maybe isn't too far from the truth. While sounding that warm, it's still crisp and tight, of course.
The lyrics, in addition to the music, help to build a very epic feeling throughout the whole record. Want to try? "Once below, now beyond/Ascending in time/The Entrance I Seek/Is the hidden devine/Towers of untold height are anchored/In the sin of hell beneath/If I ignore them, they will pass. Dispossessed/by all I used to need" and so on.
My advice: go and get this record, at least if you don't get turned off by songs that are longer than two minutes. This is as heavy as it is beautiful and for sure one of the records 2009.

Iron Age's blog
Iron Age on myspace.com
Cyclopean Records