Before we get to the Baked Beans or anything else, this is Beasts, this is from the debut album The Shearing, Beasts is Antoine Romeo (ex of Belgium hardcore post punk band Run Sofa). More soon we expect…

On with the crossing of the letter i and the dotting of the t and the clear the decks before the year ends and next one piles in on us and we go around in circles again and up the sides of the architecture again, here’s some Oranssi Pazuzu

Oranssi Pazuzu – Muuntautuja (Nuclear Assault) – Another Oranssi Pazuzu album and the Finnish band are shapeshifting in a rather impressive way once again, the rather adventurous now rather avant band are well beyond black metal now, they kind of took on space rock in an extreme metal kind of way for a bit back there, and now another left turn and well where are they now? This is their sixth album, apparently the title is Finnish for ‘shapeshifter’ and they’re mixing slabs of genuinely progressive challenge, rhythms that throb, flight paths that contradict, as they do indeed shift the shape of things. Oranssi Pazuzu are wider now, stranger, positively so, there is still extreme metal in there underpinning it all, there is an urgency at times, restraint where needed, intensity throughout, sometimes subtle intensity, intensity all the same. There are electronic details, stranger this time though, that dark moody bit there is almost touching on Black Dog period Gazelle Twin heading towards something darkly industrial. If this is still extreme metal, then it only just is and really this is pushing beyond the safety nets that extreme metal bands almost always need these days. This is intoxicating, at times blistering aggression, at times dark and subdued, a sense of anxiety and very much a recommended album. That’s almost a nice bit of tingling grand piano as that electronic throb builds up again and then those dark voices and…    

Bandcamp

Buñuel – Mansuetude (SkinGraft/Overdrive) – I mean don’t be asking us about the cheese, whatever kind of flavour yer man Eugene S. Robinson was on about just then, Cheddar? Some kind of cheese, cheese unlike baked beans comes in all kinds of ways, and this? Well this just might just be blue baked beans. This rocks, of course it does and don’t be blaming us for being later that we should be with the review, no one at the label was on the case with us, they must think we just like the weird shit left field prog shit they put out, don’t they know how many times I’ve seen Saxon! My back was embroidered and down to the front, this is metal, blue baked bean type metal, we’ve been waiting for those blue baked beans and finally here they are!

We once did an interview with a band, Blue Blud, they were opening for someone or other at the Wardour Street Marquee, might even have been Faith No More’s firse ever dates over here, whoever it was Blue Blud were pissed off about having to open for some new kids on the block band from the USA. Blue Blud were actually Trespass trying to re-invent themselves and getting rather p’ed off with people like me dow nthe front shouting for their old nwobhm classics like the mighty Stormchild, afterwards they explained they were going for a simpler sound and that was the excuse for the name change and well “heavy metal’s like baked beans and no one wants blue baked beans do they?” Buñuel are making intensely blue baked bean style forward looking heavy metal here and the toast they’re putting it on is serious bulky, none of your medium slice from the supermarket to go under these beans! Trespass played in the heavy metal bar over the road a couple of weeks ago, I couldn’t be arsed with walking over there, this though, this latest Buñuel album, is seriously worth walking a lot further than just over the road for. 

Buñuel are seriously in it, on it, over the top of it this time around and if your man at the label had of been then we’d have been shouting loudly up front about it. Hey what can’t be fixed can’t be fixed and a million other things landed and demanded time and here we are doing the end of year catch up thing again, the things we should have covered already. This is Eugene S. Robinson laced, this is indeed “Unforgiving. Merciless. Beautiful”, this came out at the end of October, we watched the social media posts about  the review is other places, 

“Unforgiving. Merciless. Beautiful. Buñuel are heavy. A literal supergroup of global significance, Buñuel boasts the singular vocals and razor sharp lyrics of Eugene S. Robinson (Oxbow) and a powerhouse Italian trio comprised of guitarist Xabier Iriondo (Afterhours, A Short Apnea), bassist Andrea Lombardini (The Framers) and drummer Franz Valente (Il Teatro Delgi Orrori)”. 

Eugene S. Robinson is a wordsmith, a poet, a writer, he’s a lot more than just a frontman and the record is, in Eugene’s words “extreme but articulate”. This is almost certainly the best Buñuel album yet and well now Bandcamp are telling us it is “the time has come to open thy heart/wallet and to buy this album to directly support Buñuel”. Hey, we’ve been directly supporting everyone for years and years (and years) and getting next to no support or respect back, and that includes Buñuel as well as Bandblooooooodycamp and all those millions of links at the end of every damn review ever, go place thy wallet where the ducks put their bills, doing all this has left us more than broke and nobody misses me, nobody, that nobody bit was Eugene not me and those are some brutal riffs, not mindlessly so though. Mansuetude is a serious album, this is serious metal, never that obvious, not orange baked bean metal like all the other metal and not brutal either – heavy, intense, not brutal, they’re too good to just be brutal, extreme but articulate is about the length of it and those riffs are swooping now. here comes this bit about cheese again, it was like cheddar, the punches and landing, not quite predictable enough the read and avoid, no weaving away here. A crucial album, the best metal album we’ve heard in a good few years, and yes, a balancing act performed for and by the unbalanced, but hey, you know, fourth day, five day marathon, we’ve got places to be, we should have hit this Organ on the head ages ago, there’s paint that needs to flow, ditches to be dug, you need this album, you probably don’t need us to say so, that bit half way through Movement No. 201 is probably the best bit of heavy metal ever (well besides Lautrec’s Mean Gasoline which, as we’ve said many times before, is peak heavy metal). I’m out of here, be good to each other now, here it is on Bandcamp, you don’t need a review from us…   

Meanwhile, peak Heavy Metal happened years and years ago in Bristol…

And this Blue Blud when they were Trespass and when they were good, before they got busy with baked beans (we didn’t bother publishing the interview by the way), one of the very few times that happened.

Orange baked beans….

Further listening, no Blue Blud….