Plankton Waves – Songs Of Endings

“In all of our songs, we’re looking for a kind of beauty, and every beauty has a certain melancholy and gloom inside.” Plankton Waves pretty much knew into which direction the output for their debut EP would go when we had the pleasure to interview them last summer. Listening to Songs of Endings in this light, endings may be the beginning of something new. The musical experience throughout these 20 minutes of electronic music made in Luxembourg is hypnotic and leaves enough space for the listener to define what endings, beauty and melancholy could mean.

The overall repertoire has been broadened, the vocals still have that Indian-like feeling, nature merges into electronic worlds, sometimes dark, sometimes lucid, sometimes both and nothing at all.

Synthesizers and beats often leave place for experimentation and psychedelic parts, but they always just appear for a very short flash before arranging into straight forward and progressing tracks. A kind of 80s sound is still very present, even though not that obvious compared to their appetiser single Cloud Caravan, released last year. French and German lyrics are missing on Songs Of Endings, the mysterious vocals were chosen to be in English only this time. The overall psychedelic feeling rounds up the nature of the EP; it could be described as a poppish and experimental electro experience in the end, for those listeners who choose to put music into words. The rest may just want to give it a try and hear if the electronic Armageddon takes place or not.

The EP will officially be released on February 22nd (click here), accompanied with the release of a new video.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR5bVUM42Is]

Trash Monday LVI

Hammerfall helped the Swedish national curling team to prepare for the great battle in 2006, also known as the XX Olympic Winter Games which were held in Turin. Having this video up the sleeve it is completely logical that the Swedish women won the gold medal and curling eclipsed ice hockey and figure skating during these games. HAIL Hammerfall! HAIL Curling!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAtBVRFD_Zg]

HATE CRIME

Independent filmmaker James Cullen Bressack‘s latest movie HATE CRIME was quite difficult to review for me. To be straightforward with you, James and his movie want to provoke, which sometimes works really well but unfortunately also fails quite a few times. To give you an idea of what we are talking about here: HATE CRIME is a point of view found footage movie mixed with moderate french violence porn insanity and the aim of pointing to racial prejudices still existing in our modern societies.

The story and especially the idea/conversion of the portrayed pschological and physical abuse loosely remind me of Haneke‘s psycho epos Funny Games (1997) and Stanley Kubricks’s masterpiece Clockwork Orange (1971) with a pinch of neo-nazi. James, of course, has adapted the violence to the 21st century, so everything is a bit more brutal than you may expect. In short: a family is celebrating their son’s birthday when all of a sudden the party gets crashed by hate-filled nazis who resolve to torture the family in every imaginable way.

If you are into no-budget hardcore and exploitation, this movie could be interesting for you, but there are also a few things which bothered me. I won’t go into details now as I do not want to spoil the film for you. The family cast is quite decent but I had my share of problems with the villains. The neo-nazi scene is omnipresent in Europe and it is very important that we do not close our eyes and fight this bullshit, but in the end, they were not credible enough and behaved quite artificially.

The dialogues are mostly based on nazi stereotypes and seemed fittled or even improvised. As I already pointed out, the nazi subject is very weighty and just like the exploitation and especially rape and revenge movies from the 70s, James wants to focus on this theme by exaggerated violence and excessive shocking elements.

Personally, I think that the scenery and acting are too faked and seem to be uncoordinated or even improvised. All in all, if you can overlook these negative aspects and are familiar with bizarre independent flicks, you can give HATE CRIME a try.

I am looking forward to what young independent filmmaker James Cullen Bressack has in store for us in the future.

Capture The Crown – Til Death

In the couple of years that I’ve been listening to metalcore and similar music I’ve seldom seen one band receive as much hate as Capture The Crown. The reason for all this malice is that people argued that they blatantly copied Asking Alexandria‘s style from their Stand Up And Scream era. This includes: the way they dress, their musical style, their lyrical content and so on. I have to admit that back when I heard their first single You Call That A Knife? This Is A Knife! I had the same impression and opinion…but since I usually don’t judge a band after a single song I decided to wait for their first full length. In late 2012 they announced that their debut Til Death would be released in December 2012 via Sumerian Records, which wasn’t really a surprise since they have also signed AA. But enough back story, let’s get down to business.

Already during the intro you’ll know what direction this record is taking: metalcore infused with electronic elements. The guitars come at you with great ferocity and even though the main riffs are pretty generic, there are a lot of tasty licks to keep it from being monotonous. And, as you may or may not know, even though I usually have a hard time to hear the bass lines, there is absolutely no problem here, they are clearly distinguishable.

The drums throughout the fourteen songs are nothing awe-inducing but they do exactly what they are supposed to do: keep the beat and rhythm. So no complaints there. The vocals vary between deep growls, high screeches and clean singing and are altogether very well executed. The lyrics are laden with curse words but if you’re not too much of a wimp when it comes to that it shouldn’t bother you.

There’s only one small gripe during this forty-eight minute album: the “dubstep” song Storm In A Tea Cup is just awful, especially with the auto-tuned vocals…but I’m not a big fan of stuff like that to begin with. But since it’s easily skipped it doesn’t bother me much when I listen to the entire record.

All in all, I’d say that CTC have managed to make a respectable first step into the scene and that they’re definitely worth checking out, especially if you liked the above mentioned Asking Alexandria album. I’m eager to follow their evolution and I hope that people will at one point look past the prejudices and just accept the band’s style, be it original or not. Check out their Facebook page and listen to the song below!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zC9ru4LLNHU]

Fights And Fires – We Could All Be Dead Tomorrow

Fights and Fires remain true to themselves, not without refining their rock soup with some nice little ingredients. If spring won’t come in the next months then this will melt the snow just at the right time to start the festival season.

Starting with what remained the same, let’s talk about the very beginning of We Could All Be Dead Tomorrow, or should I say with the first few songs that again won’t give you any chance to breathe? Just like on the debut album Proof That Ghosts Exist, the four Britons tackle you out of nothing, and don’t you expect any pity: 11 powerful punches right into your face, all tracks rarely longer than 3 minutes, yum-yum! Admirers of the dirtier post-core sound of the debut will find a cleaner production, but fortunately not overproduced.

Pop punk as well as a few 90s metalish head banger parts are a bit more present, pushing the rough hardcore air of the debut a bit aside, but those are just bits and bobs. In the end, Fights and Fires have taken one more step forward, sounding more mature overall, which isn’t a bad thing as long as the lightheartedness won’t get lost. Thankfully, there’s no reason to worry about that, given that the boys still take you to corners of the dance floor you probably have never seen. The darker side of the typical Fights and Fires sound also found its place on We Could All Be Dead Tomorrow, arranged in a very powerful trilogy (If I’m The Forrest Then You’re Jenny, Rats and Vultures and Cat’s Lives) towards the middle of the album before it’s fast-tracking again after a nice transition to Mother’s Advice.

We Could All Be Dead Tomorrow surely is a very strong and worthy successor of the 2011 debut. Put on your dancing shoes!

Recommendations: Chase The Blues, Back Bone, If I’m The Forrest Then You’re Jenny, Bff… For Now

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d3yc4luUD8]

The LP will be out on February 22nd, you can pre-order it in the format of your choice or immediately download the digital album here.

TUB

Hey guys, did you ever wonder what happens when your girlfriend isn’t in the mood for sex and the only way to release pressure is to fap in your bath tub? Director Bobby Miller has the answer: “Paul jerked off in the shower. Paul just impregnated his bath tub.” Yes you heard right, today’s short movie (+/-12 minutes) is about a bath tub and a man (who is already in a relationship with a real woman) becoming parents of an „alien-like“ child.

After I watched the TUB I came along Miller’s influences and I wasn’t, at any moment, surprised that he listed directors like David Cronenberg, Lynch, Terry Gilliam and co. because TUB can best be described as an expirimental drama combined with grotesque black humor and adorable body horror elements.

As an (independent) filmaker you always walk a thin line when it comes to experimental movies and in the end, this is exactly what I like about them. TUB, which world premiered at Sundance 2010, does not follow the typical “how do I make a billion dollar hollywod shit movie without having an idea of what I am doing here” rules based on shallowed social stereotypes. Miller takes risks and there are surely people who don’t like it but in the end it is a nice, well-made short which certainly will not change your life but maybe will make your day.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1H40oOp0pzY]
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SunnO))) live at Astra Kulturhaus Berlin

I was looking forward to attending a SunnO))) gig for the past three years now. Last Sunday I got the opportunity to see them again as they were the closing act for the Transmediale festival in Berlin and they did not disappoint me. In fact, SunnO))) is the single best live act who has ever walked the Earth (see what I did there?).

But first things first, as I was pretty late for the gig I missed the opening band but let’s be honest, I attended a drone doom concert and was not in the mood to hear/feel anything else.

The SunnO))) stage looked as always. The huge backline of amplifiers, just as the musicians, in their typical monk robes and the crowd itself, were completely embedded in exposured fog. When it comes to SunnO))) the performance is very important and always raises the tone of the ensemble.

Talking about the music, it was, as usual, very diffcult to distinguish different songs and I would rather describe SunnO)))’s act as a 3 segmented ritualistic performance. The first half hour consisted of instrumental, extremely loud drone feedbacks coupled with hypnotic oscillating pulsing riffs. At some point during these 30 minutes the band nearly managed to create something which could be defined as a toting percussive feel.

The transition to the second part was kind of surprising. Attila Csihar entered the stage and boosted the ritualistic performance to a new level. The atmospheric sound images eclipsed and supported Atilla’s vocal performance from the background while he was crying, mumbling, whispering and roaring like a dying man in pain. During his last prayers the whole band joined him to evoke an insane arrhythmic noise-apocalypse.

At first I wasn’t sure if the middle part would fit into the performance but after I witnessed the extreme discrepant and dissonant atmospheric last segment, I am pretty sure that it worked that well because of the middle part. The ending of the performance outshined everything heard before.

SunnO))) are able to create an atmosphere and soundscapes which slowly turn my body and mind in some kind of hypnotic state which leaves me unable to control myself. At the end I was completely dazed by this overwhelming, destructive beauty.

(Pictures were taken from here)

Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!

Postrock is dead! Deal with it. The only thing that sucks more is to revive a defunct post hardcore band from the late 90’s and play at Loolapallooza or Rock Am Ring.

Honestly, I really don’t know where to start here. Godspeed You! Black Emperor are one of my all-time favourite postrock bands and they have been on an indefinite hiatus since 2002. With Yanqui U.X.O. (released in 2002) , they disappointed their fans and did not meet the expectations after they set the bar to an unattainable height with their legendary record Lift your skinny fists like antennas to heaven, so going on hiatus or disbanding would have been the logical consequence, as GY!BE achieved everything there was to achieve and said everything there was to say, as a monumental political band.

Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! is not that bad, though. The first song Mladic contains every known ingredient in GY!BE’s songwriting but lacks any big surprises. It starts with wiry samples of a radio conversation, gets over to what I call uninspired riff rocking hence the rhythm and aggressiveness and ends in an epical orchestral climax in best GY!BE manner. As far as I recall Mladic used to be Albanian and We drift like worried fire used to be Gamelan, 2 songs from their live repertoire back in the past.

There’s not much to add to Their Helicopters Sing and Strung Like Lights At Thee Printemps Erable. 2 tormenting interludes between 2 tracks that last for 20 minutes is nothing new here.

We drift like worried fire is my personal highlight. It’s got the melancholia I know from older songs like Sleep from Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven and a lot of variation. It’s chaos and control in every single aspect though the only thing missing is the big bang, the moment that gives you shivers down your spine. We drift like worried fire is a good GY!BE song, don’t get me wrong, Godspeed You! Black Emperor dominate the loud / quiet game unlike any other band but the song is too cranky to arouse deep emotions.

All in all, Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! is an okay record, not the best but also not the worst. It saddens me to see one of my all time favourite bands coming back, trying to give a sign of life even though their momentum and zenith has been over 10 years ago and post rock has been over used for longer than Michael Jackson’s demise, especially when both main tracks are re-interpretations from former live tracks. Next!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wP6-wlhviKw]