New Spins: 8th March 2021
This week's New Spins features three very different albums, both musically and thematically, and the only thread I can really find to put between them is, quite simply, that are all seriously good!
Black Knife - Murder Season
The thing that first attracted me to black metal wasn't actually the atmospheres and melodics which I now adore, but the incorporation of Discharge style riffs and speed. As a teenage hardcore kid with some interest in metal, it was Darkthrone's late 2000s albums which opened up black metal to me. It's also why Kentucky trio Black Knife intrigued me too, as it's this bridge between black metal and punk which they sit squarely on. Murder Season, their second full-length album, is a relentless race through blackened hardcore and crust punk with an energy that is totally addictive. They write some really catchy tunes too, and the likes of Bloodbath Orgy and World Of Piss get stuck in your head almost immediately. In a way I'd almost forgotten about this style of black metal, but I'm really glad that Black Knife have brought it to my attention again.
Caskets Open - Concrete Realms Of Pain
Not often does a combination of styles surprise and delight me as much as Concrete Realms Of Pain. Recently re-released physically by Wise Blood Records and Seeing Red Records, the fourth album from Finnish band Caskets Open (a band I really wish I had discovered earlier) is a pulverising mix of styles. The opening track Four Shrines alone jumps from slow and sombre doom and sludge to visceral crossover thrash and speedcore, and across the album the band hammer these sounds together brilliantly. Not only do the band perform both styles impressively well, but they manage to combine them into something which doesn't sound anywhere near as disparate as it might seem on paper. In fact, the band take things to further extremes throughout the album, incorporating funeral doom and post-hardcore elements in a way I couldn't imagine working before I heard this. It's a phenomenal record, and with three previous albums in their discography I'm looking forward to diving deeper into Caskets Open's material.
Divide & Disolve - Gas Lit
Sometimes you can separate the themes of an album from the music, and sometimes you just can't. Gas Lit is an example of the latter, and by taking it's message of anti-colonialism, indigenous rights and anti-oppression as a social theme as well as a political one, it allows for an acute understanding of how much the music is wrapped up in the passion of its creators. Gas Lit is a quite stunning album which really gives a definition to drone metal as a genre separate from doom. The riffs aren't always doomy, but they are elongated and noisy, and the drums feel like they're offering more of a rhythm and emphasis than they a beat per se. Divide & Dissolve have created a completely engrossing and genuinely unique record, and rarely have I heard an instrumental album with such an inherently forthright message. It isn't just released by the incredible spoken word piece Did You Have Something To Do With It, but it's also realised in the sublimely soulful heaviness of the music.
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