Four more albums as the cherry picking goes on (and on and on), this is a non-stop operation and there is no time for an editorial at the top of the page, we have places to be, paint to throw, holes to dig, more music to listen to. Last Friday, an ordinary day around here, saw 176 pieces of music submitted by bands, labels and their PR people. We do listen to everything, we do cherry pick though, and well sometimes question things, we could actually do a lot more of that if there was time…
Karla Kvlt – Thunderhunter (Exile on Mainstream) – Markus E. Lipka, the driving force behind Eisenvater with his moody doomy new band, Karla Kvlt, a band that also features Lipka’s son Johann Wientjes on drums and his daughter-in-law, Teresa Matilda Curtens on bass and vocals – both also in Melting Palms. The trio deliver a monolithic brooding slow-moving atmospheric slab of an album, a kind of Swans-like Post-Rock meets doom metal thing that’s kind of Alternative in an almost gothy drone-rock kind of way (how many pigeonholes can we push them into at once?).
And now for a half stolen bit of history for there were so many layers to the alternative music scene back in the 1990s as the tribes gave way, as things crossed over in so many ways and traditional listening approaches were cast aside with the uniforms. Bands like Melvins, Unsane, Swans, and Cop Shoot Cop were over there and over here on the European side, amongst many others, there was Eisenvater (and the guitar-based orchestra Rossburger Report that evolved from it). “Eisenvater’s live shows remain legendary, transcending gatherings”, a band for those who hunted the extremes has and probably still do have have a cult status and well, without ever sounding dated, this album Thunderhunter could well be a highlight from those days.
Teresa Matilda Curtens adds so much with a voice that sits so well both in terms of where it dwells in the mix and how it fits as part of the brooding churning colour of the music, as part of the tense drone and swirl of doom, sludge and positive noise. This is a post-rock monolithic hypnotic beast of an album (the album artwork by by Teresa Matilda Curtens fits well), a big album, a powerful piece of rewarding work. Mun Kvlta is a massive track, it almost feels church-like, elsewhere things bite, Hekate certainly has a metallic bite, while the title track closes things in a treacle-thick doom laden kind of way before we swing around to the slow moving mood of Karma of the start again for this really is an album to (loudly) have on repeat…
Bandcamp / Exile on Mainstream / Instagram
Sopraterra – Seven Dances To Embrace The Hollow (Präsens Editionen/La Becque Editions) – Polish composer Magda Drozd and Italian artist Nicola Genovese, together known as Sopraterra have a rather radiant debut album, a rather warm set of transcendent pieces, baroque electronic music that kind of has you from the rather Gazelle Twin flavoured first ten seconds, opening piece The Second Before Slipping really does have a haunted Gazelle Twin feel to it and if it is electronic then it feels rather organic to these feasting ears. An beguiling odyssey reimagining, rather convincingly, the timbres of the saxophone and violin in a sublime manner that is both ancient and very much now. Some of it haunting, some of it sound tracking something wicked this way coming maybe? But then it could be something heartening this way comes and this week has just been a black one as Vice President Trump and his puppet master plunge us towards end times and you’re looking for brief salvation or at least a release through art. hey, look, seven compositions which, as they unhurriedly flow into each other, and as they have it, mark potential entry points to discover what might be lying underneath. By choosing Sopraterra, which translates to ‘above the earth’ in Italian, as their shared project’s name, Magda Drozd and Nicola Genovese “indicate their own position in this archaeological-looking endeavour, hinting at the potential for sonic explorations to produce deeply submerged discoveries” and you are left with them painting ideas of what they might be sound tracking as you ponder elegance and the beauty of that start of the whole thing again. Shame about Nicola Genovese‘s album artwork, it looks like an afterhought at best, she’s a far more intertesting visual artist than that cover would have you think…
Bandcamp / Präesens Editionen – Releases March 14, 2025
Bonnie Trash – Mourning You (Hand Drawn Dracula) – Well they do bite, words that bite, riffs that more than do the same, they’re from Ontario, Canada, they inform us that this is “an album about death. Not death in the macabre, violent, or outrageous sense, but death as you or I might know it. A spectre lurking around the corner. Capricious, indiscriminate, and unexpected. Ordinary and all the more terrifying for it. Real. Fear in the eyes of a loved one about to die, and the fear in your eyes – staring back”. It is, on the surface, a sometimes crunching, sometimes moody goth-flavoured metal thing (or as they put it; “wedding post-punk’s steely-eyed austerity to goth rock’s brooding grandeur”). Bonnie Trash is the project of twins Emmalia (they/them) and Sarafina Bortolon-Vettor (she/her), it really really is a goth thing, not a tired hackneyed goth thing though and this builds positively on last year’s extended band line up and the My Love Remains the Same EP that saw the two emboldened by the addition of Emma Howarth-Withers on bass and Dana Bellamy on drums.
“This is sorrow not as a lingering bruise, but a gushing wound” and that line does kind of go some way to telling it how it is in terms of feel. Sarafina, the band’s singer and lyricist, has described the album as being about “losing someone you love. It’s about the horrors of grief, haunting you every day.” Inspired, largely, by the passing of Nonna Maria – who provided interstitial narration across the band’s early work – it is these shared intimate details that render Mourning You‘s songs so personal as they explore “love and grief as kindred spirits. Grief as love with nowhere to go. Love determined by the fear of its loss. A blood pact. A life for a life”.
There’s something about the gnarled claw of remorse gripping you in twilight’s terror or something along those lines – “I see you in my dreams every night,” Sarafina intones on Hellmouth. And yes, too much press release cut’n paste but there are places to be and paint to throw and time is of the essence and the music does the talking and this is just the bowing down. They’re good at it, it being forward looking goth flavoured metal…
Release Date: February 28th 2025
Bonnie Trash have featured a few times on these pages in recent times, expect more… Album details on Bandcamp
Scare – In The End, Was It Worth It? (self release) – It started off with a decent enough metal riff, then he started yelling like a small dog who wanted his tea and he wanted it right now” And how many of these tediously same as all the other yappy dog singers do with have to put up with and more importantly where is my wood glue? I need to fix this stretcher and revive this canvas and why don’t I make a cup of tea? Maybe a strawberry jam sandwich? Québec City-based metallic hardcore/sludge metal quartet SCARE (they write their band name in capitals so we better take them seriously!) prepare to release their impending second LP, In The End, Was It Worth It? The answer is no. I mean if we hadn’t heard 4,723 bands like this already (or was its 4720? I might have exaggerated a tiny bit just then. It kind of sounds like he’s constipated, like he’s really straining to get it out, like he needs some help? Has he finished? Have we made it to the end? “For fans of Cursed, Mi Amore, Buried Inside, Trigger Effect, From Ashes Rise, Pulling Teeth, Baptists, Xibalba, Cult Leader, Doomriders” says the press release, yeah, okay. Thrash Melrose is the standout track, they at least attempted to do something just a tiny bit different in the middle of that one and yes, Doomynation was shaping up rather positively with that restraint and a hint of a different colour until constipation yappy dog came back from the toilet and started his tantrum throwing again. Is that a piano at the start of Jeanne Dark? Oh hang on they chickened out again and reached for the extreme hardcore metal rule book while tantrum boy screams and yells for his mommy (as those North Americans misspell it) and well somewhere underneath it all there’s a half decent band trying to break out or we wouln’t have bothered. Hey, come on, throw away the rule book, stop trying to sound like all the others, stop conforming, grow some musical balls and let us hear what you really want to do, there’s a decent hardcore metal band in here somewhere…. Bandcamp
previously…
ORGAN THING: Elliot Galvin’s new album is something that really needs investigating properly…
And more about this video that just past by later, for now…
Speculum Bunny – “Hell’s Teeth by Speculum Bunny is the lead track on her album Hell’s Teeth. This video is released on Imbolc 2025. Hail all witches! Hail all lovers of this and other worlds! This is experimental electronic music with a nod to industrial music, noise music and devotional sound!” More from us soon, here for now here’s a Bandcamp link…
THE ORGAN 