Having recently signed to Church Road Records and celebrating with previous single ‘Dispirit’, Heriot’s momentum shows no sign of slowing down. They’re once more proving just why they’re one of the most exciting metal bands in the UK with latest single ‘Ten Ton Hammer’, their cover of the Machine Head classic. Weaponising their already potent brand of metallic sludge and hardcore, it’s a cover that only dials up the intensity of the original with vocalist Debbie Gough’s piercing vocals and guitars heavy enough to level entire cities. The band comment: “Amidst writing and recording new material earlier this year, this cover came to be. As fans of Machine Head, we thought it would be a great opportunity to honour a band who have not only influenced us, but who have been at the forefront of the scene for many years.” If it doesn’t make you want to run through walls, you aren’t listening loud enough. – Will Marshall
Bridging the gap between this year’s Gushing Interest EP and the LP that’s currently sat in the oven, ‘Lifer Death’ see’s self-confessed grungegazers Timelost sauntering back into the spotlight with rhythmic groove. Featuring Failure’s Kelli Scott on drums, the track is a downtempo yet irresistibly catchy ode to the nature of being a lifer in the world of art that once again see’s the band swimming the mire of reverb that’s also shared by acts such as Nothing, Narrow Head and Hum. “’Lifer Death’ is about the frustrations of being a “lifer” in music, art, whatever”, state the band on the track. “Realizing and accepting that things don’t always work out the way you dreamt upwhen you were young. Even if it kills you, it’s not about “making it” anymore, it’ just who you are and what you do. Life or death.” – Dan Hillier
After a lengthy hiatus, ‘Refuturing’ see’s Maybeshewill reclaiming their place atop the global post-rock hierarchy. The Leicester troupe’s first material since 2014 and the lead single from their forthcoming LP No Feeling Is Final, the single is a lush, beautiful and intricately weaved tapestry of neo-classical marred by post rock that carries volumes of potent emotion despite it’s purely instrumental nature. Much like the rest of their finely attuned discography, the track is toweringly cinematic in scope and swells in intensity and fearless purpose in order to portray the human condition in all it’s problematic and self-destructive nature. “Conceptually, ‘Refuturing’, and the album as a whole, is concerned with the existential dread surrounding the climate crisis”, states guitarist Robin Southbury. “[It’s] how we understand our complicity in the crisis within the confines of our current morality system and ‘refuturing’ – rejecting existing power structures used to subjugate, and reimagining a future built on entirely new systems that are sustainable and beneficial to all.” No Feeling Is Final releases November 19th via the Robot Needs Home Collective, and if this spellbinding single is anything to go by, it’s set to be one of the finest offers to come from the world of post rock this year. – Dan Hillier
If metal on its own is a very insular genre, then death metal is the tiniest doll within the sphere of the headbangers Matryoshka. So when Rolling Stone and Pitchfork take notice, then you’re definitely doing something right. Such was the case for Rochester, New York upstarts Undeath, whose debut full length offering, Lesions of a Different Kind, immediately tossed a gravestone into the putrid pond of the death metal scene, causing ripples to be felt by newcomers and seasoned veterans alike. It’s primal brutality was only matched by its technical prowess, and it’s sense of definite clarity and showcasing of each individual instrument set it apart, and also caught the attention of The Black Dahlia Murder’s Trevor Strnad, who provided guest vocals on the record.
Now, the band is out to prove themselves out in front of live audiences on their first tour post pandemic, and their biggest tour to date. Joining longstanding titans like Carnifex, Rivers of Nihil, and the aforementioned Black Dahlia Murder, Undeath’s guitarist Kyle Beam had some time on the road to catch up and speak about gaming, how the tour has been, and the joy and necessity of collaboration in metal.
Whilst the national scene and genre are often overshadowed by the more popular and approachable sounds within the alternative music echelon, the last five years or so have seen post rock, math rock and their related subgenres swelling in popularity and accessibility. It may be due to the lack of rigid genre regulations within the genre being a tempting force for experimental types, or perhaps the rapid and celebratory success of events such as ArcTanGent, Portals and Bad Pond has spread the sound of the genre far and wide, but regardless, it’s undeniable that recent years have seen a large uptick in bands specialising in genre forming. One such band is the London based Codices.
In the short few years they’ve been active, Codices have already made a strong impression within the scene that birthed them. However, it’s not totally surprising given their eclectic take on the genre. Whilst a responsive hybridisation of the technicality of math rock and the cinematic scope of post rock is what binds their sound together, what makes Codices’ output so engaging is the slew of intricacies hidden in their work. As proven with their initial string of extended plays, within their sound lies a sense of contrastive chemistry that can only come from a band formed of members with varying overlapping tastes. Subtle reminiscences of the haste of hardcore, the dirge of grunge and the wild hedonism of dance swirl and amalgamate in their sound, ultimately throwing back to the wild, carefree and adolescent sound of the genre during it’s 2010 era.
But whilst such as clash of motifs sounds like it could result in an incomprehensible mess, the output of Codices is anything but disordered. Rather, it’s a throughly engaging and personable flurry of experimentalism that’s strikingly accessible, one that’s allowed them to already rub shoulders with the likes of Poly-Math, Mountain Caller, Blanket and more. Yet ultimately, it’s one that’s best articulated with their forthcoming debut LP Vivid.
Releasing October 15th via Beth Shalom Records, Vivid is the full encapsulation of the band’s home-brewed sound and is a record that vibrantly lives up to it’s namesake. Written and recorded as a collective without any external pressures, it’s a record born of playful yet enthusiastic strife that resonates a palpable sense of organic chemistry. Over the course of it’s run time, Vivid twists, pushes, pulls and dives into a slew of stylistics and atmospheres all whilst adhering to an anchoring point that keeps the album coherent and intelligible. But still, it’s an album of elasticity and fluid motion that throughly enjoys both frantic combative riffs alongside moments of evocative emotion and cathartic release in a robust fashion that harkens thoughts of the likes of And So I Watch You From Afar, Alpha Male Tea Party, Town Portal and others that have helped herald the new era of progressive instrumentalism.
With Vivid releasing this Friday, we got in touch with the band to learn more about them.
The band was in the middle of a tour at the time and neither they nor the rest of the world could have imagined how long of a pause it’s going to be. We chatted with vocalist and guitarist Rory about the debut record and their plans to pick up where just they left off.
Thank you very much! Yeah, I’m so excited. It was supposed to be out in the summer originally, but it got pushed back a bit because we were going to be touring; first, at the beginning of the year, then summer, and now the end of the year. Very excited!
Not recorded. I would say 2/3 was written but we didn’t even know actually that we were going to do an album. We just had a load of songs and then when signed to Alcopop Jack (Clothier, founder and manager of Alcopop!) said it would be great to do an album if we could, and we were like ‘Yeah, we are ready for that’. There were a few songs that we wrote just after that but most of it we kind of already had. We’re quite prolific, we just write all the time so we had a lot of them ready to go.
Maybe, that’s a good question. It might have influenced them in a sense of how they were recorded, we did drums in one go and then me and Cami did all the vocals and guitars, but Jim (the bassist) did everything at home pretty much on his own. He did all his vocals in the coffee shack that I work at! So I think it affected how it sounded but not in a covid-negative way. Normally we would have probably spent some time gigging but with these songs, they were brand new and we didn’t get to play them live. The first time we played them is when we recorded it, it’s quite weird but came out alright!
For those ones no, we didn’t. I mean we did for the drums minus Jim but other than that it was all kind of separate, which is a bit weird as we haven’t done it like that before.
Yes, exactly, so it actually was quite good! We had loads of time, all of last year, to do it, so we could really just sit with the songs and get the mixes right, which is really cool!
Amazing, yes! He is the man! It was really nice, me and Cami would go in every morning, we did it for like a week and then came back to do the vocals. It was very sunny, we would have a coffee in his garden, stroke his cat and then go in and get started. It was a really nice time. And Ally is the man!
I think we definitely would, yes! He is amazing so we would always be up for that.
Spearheaded by guitarist and creative director John Bailey, whose day job is a jazz and classical session musician working with the likes of aforementioned Russell Watson and Aled Jones no less, the idea for such a project had its roots in John’s uni days but took fifteen years to come to fruition.
Hailing from Huddersfield originally, John has always been a metalhead. “My first albums were Deftones, Slayer and Slipknot,” he told us. “Then Converge, The Dillinger Escape Plan…then I got into grindcore and played in a grindcore and hardcore band when I was younger. But there came a certain point in my guitar playing, when I was at uni, and I thought ‘man, these guitarists are just way better than me. Why are they so good?’.” He took it upon himself to start studying jazz and classical music so he could “understand the guitar a bit more” and essentially get better at his own instrument. It was a wormhole of self-improvement that led to a whole career.
Entirely self-taught, mostly from books from the Uni library, John describes toiling for “eight hours day for a year at least… just practicing jazz and classical music” and learning how to read sheet music. Clearly such impressive commitment levels were going to lead to something. As well as being inspired to do a masters in jazz, he “set up doing some teaching, then got the gig with Russell (Watson) and Aled (Jones). With Russell to start with. And that’s just been my full time job…doing various kinds of gigs. I did a bit on one of Sting’s shows, writing stuff for film, TV work, whatever it might be.” Now fully embroiled in the jazz world, he spent the next ten years being involved in only jazz and classical, which included putting out his own albums in the genre.
Converge are already metalcore legends and their collaborative Roadburn set as ‘Blood Moon’, with Chelsea Wolfe, Ben Chisholm and Stephen Brodsky, only further cemented that. So when a full collaborative album was announced this year, several years after that fateful tour, it’s safe to say hype levels are high along with expectations. Bloodmoon I will arrive November 19 and, in anticipation, the collective have released the first single ‘Blood Moon’ and – frankly – it’s everything we could hope for. Chelsea Wolfe’s haunting voice entwines with abrasive post-metal and vicious roars from Converge’s Bannon and Cave In’s Brodsky. It’s haunting, emotive and harrowing throughout its near 8 minute runtime. The push and pull of influences could easily tear a project like this apart but here, with the pedigree of the members involved, it’s a towering example of collaborative songwriting and post-metal. – Will Marshall
Returning to the carefree expressionism and creativity that popularised the post/math-rock sound of the late noughties, the latest track from London’s Codices is a colourful and vibrant ode to twisting and pulling nature of experimental instrumentalism. A sure fire hit for anyone with even the passing interest in bands such as Brontide, Alpha Male Tea Party or Enemies, ‘Chat Bot Dialogue’ is a precisely calculated yet simultaneously fluid entanglement of exploring bass lines and sidewinding riffs that skirt through passages both pacifying and threatening. Much like their upcoming record Vivid, this is intentionally sporadic in nature and showcases what can be achieved when math rock and post rock are unionised in the same space. – Dan Hillier
Progressive melodic death metallers Be’lakor have unveiled the second single from their upcoming album Coherence. Showing their knack for brutality and melody in equal measure, the powerful roar of George Kosmas is married with a knack for atmospheric, multi-faceted songs. Clocking in at nearly seven and a half minutes, it packs in multiple twists and turns while ensuring all the while they lose none of their power and reputation for melodeath mastery. On the album, the band had this to say: “we’re excited to share this album after five years of quite intense work on it. It’s pushed us in many ways. Coherence has two of our longest ever songs; it has some really substantial instrumental tracks; it’s heavy and progressive in places, but still full of the melody that drives our work. The album’s lyrics also explore quite different ideas to those of our earlier albums.” – Will Marshall
A bit more of a sombre, relaxed and dare say exotic outing, ‘Drive Me Home’ is a subtropical gleam of warmth from the indie math pop stalwarts Orchards. The second track to be taken from their upcoming Trust Issues EP – out November 26th via Big Scary Monsters – the track further see’s what is commonly refereed to as the “happiest group in math pop” treading down some dark lyrical pathways all whilst sounding musically upbeat and vibrant. Such a contrast isn’t necessarily a new phenomena for Orchards, especially with their debut Lovecore displaying such a brilliant nature at times, but this latest single shows that Trust Issues is set to revolve around a such a polarising dichotomy. Still regardless of it’s subject matter, ‘Drive Me Home’ is a sparkling shot of heat perfect for this coming Autumn.
