Their debut EP, ‘Newshound’, saw Knives burst onto the Bristol alt-punk scene, crafting a sonic palette that nods to the raw energy of Ditz, Black Flag, and IDLES. They delivered punchy urgency laced with a clear experimental edge. Their follow-up release ‘What We See In Their Eyes’ develops on this foundation and sees a band that are building up their confidence within their sonic identity that you would struggle to avert your eyes from. Like a glimmering disco ball in a dingy warehouse, Knives have firmly made their mark in the scene through their electric live shows-blending commanding stage presence, sharp crowd interaction, and the kind of dynamic performance you’d expect from a far more seasoned band; demonstrating a striking level of confidence and cohesion at such an early stage in their journey.
Within its undeniably fun, groove-laden riffs and raucous vocal delivery, GLITTER is a fearless detonation of sound that confronts cultural complacency head-on and pulls up a chair for those too often silenced. The venomous, THE DAGGER, unpacks immigrant scapegoating, opening with disjointed guitar stabs and unfolding into a riot-inducing, crunchy lead riff that sprawls into an almost nu metal-esque mid-section. Jay Schottlander and Izzi Allard’s back and forth vocals are infectiously fun on tracks, ‘RHINESTONE COWBOY‘ and ‘CHROMA’ that additionally utilise restraint through sudden instrumental dropouts and isolated vocal lines that serve to further accentuate the lyrical themes explored and distinctively personal delivery. ‘CHROMA’ is chewed open by jagged distortion, driven by a thick, sinister lead riff that only tightens its grip on each listen.
When a band whose ethics are intense as their own music, it is hard not to sit up and take notice. Carrying messages of decolonisation, anti-racism and justice for indigenous cultures, Divide and Dissolve is one such act that walk a fine line of producing sonically crushing yet equally beautiful material. Citing African-American & Cherokee heritage and residing in Melbourne, Australia, the project’s architect multi-instrumentalist Takiaya Reed has always fought the rights of the marginalised and underrepresented through the body of their work.
Coming to the fifth album of their career and first release on the legendary label Bella Union, they are an act that has carved a career in the darker echelons of post-metal, drone and doom metal blended uniquely.
Japanese group TAMIW have been bringing us strange, poppy, shoe-gazey, R’n’B flavoured electronic noises since 2018. Fronted by vocalist Tami Keem, the four piece produces a sound that’s hard to classify. There’s a little bit of everything in there, a lot of it the sort of music that would show up in one of those YouTube “lo-fi study playlist” videos, with opening track ‘A Silent Letter’ even sounding like it might have escaped from the soundtrack to Danny Boyle’s seminal 28 Days Later.
It’s been a rough road getting to this album, with the band losing not only their previous manager, but one of the founder members in the shape of Tomoaki Taguchi. That’s the kind of thing that leaves a mark and can change profoundly change a band’s trajectory and sound. The band’s three previous releases (not including an album of remixes) have lent a bit more towards the electronic end, while Farewell Party is something a little different, the band’s sound constantly evolving and changing. The record’s tracks often sound more like something you might hear from artists like Yoko Kanno, with both ‘Anthem of Sutra’ and ‘Deep’n’Shallow’ boasting the sort of chunky bass line that often accompanies animated shenanigans in the likes of Cowboy Bebop or Ghost in the Shell.
On their latest album Spinner, Danish chaotic hardcore five-piece EYES approach their latest work as though it were a self-contained original retro anime, where each track equals to a different episode, with its own themes and characters inspired by personal experiences of the band, mostly vocalist and lyricist Victor Kaas.
As Spinner boots up to the sound of a retro opening jingle in Japanese, once the first “proper” track, ‘Better’ kicks off. Listeners are sucked into a ceaselessly churning spiral of chaos for the next twenty-four minutes as EYES shriek, yell, riff and pummel their way through this highly stylized exercise of putting their own impactful personal experiences under the microscope in an attempt to try and make sense of it all.
Heavily inspired by dark, semi-realistic and cynical coming-of-age mangas such as Goodnight Punpun and Dead Dead Demon’s De De De Deconstruction by mangaka Asano Inio, Spinner approaches topics ranging from childhood trauma to coming to grasps with the burden of responsibility growing up and the unforgiving nature of life itself.
EYES had already built a reputation for their high-energy abrasive sound with a slightly deadpan attitude to hammer in the cynical nihilism scattered throughout the various subjects they choose to approach, but Spinner is perhaps the most unrelenting EYES have ever sounded so far, leaving listeners little to no chance to catch a breath and find their bearings.
On the contrary, Confessions of a Traitor spend almost the entirety of This Pain Will Serve You’s runtime staring grief in the face and asking it to shoot its sharpest arrow. It’s as visceral as it is challenging, as vulnerable as it is aggressive. And yet, as you may have identified from its juxtapositional title: it provides hope too.
To their credit, you could remove yourself from the record’s lyrical content completely and still find something to connect to. The feverous low end of ‘Starve’ opens the record in a blazing inferno of Alpha Wolf inspired tech riffs and slicing growls, while ‘Fatal Frame’ offers an outstretched palm of soaring vocal harmonies and hook laden choruses.
However, the inescapable truth that beckons from this record is that to overlook the message is to sell yourself, and therefore the record, short. Sure, ‘Doomsayer’s dual layered chorus is a serviceable slap of modern metalcore that does little to offend, but the philosophical tone to lyrics like “I can’t find peace until I’m ready to accept myself” is where an impact is truly felt. The same cannot be said for ‘Still Haunted’ however, which (at least instrumentally) is the record’s coup de grace. The clean texture added to Jack Darnell’s emotive, sliding riffs add the backbone to a stunning vocal trade off between vocalists Stephen MacConville and Jacob Brand.
Doom is a wide and wonderful subgenre of rock and metal. From its early days, rooted in the proto-metal and psychedelic rock scene, it has spawned into many musical entities which range from the more traditional doom stylings of Pentagram, Saint Vitus, Candlemass and Trouble to the colossally heavy stoner doom titans Electric Wizard and Sleep to the more melodic and expressive stylings of Anathema and My Dying Bride and then the colossally heavy funeral doom stylings of heavyweights Ahab and Esoteric. Of course, all of this would not be possible without the undisputed godfathers; Black Sabbath, whose eponymous song from their eponymous first album laid out the blueprints for the sound.
With a heavy and thicker sound, achieved through the use of gratuitous distortion and fuzz, huge amounts of reverb and tunings which go lower than the minimum wage or a politicians morals and standards when the chance to make money is in the air, doom metal is an uncompromising force and the three-piece Conan, founded in the early stages of the 2000’s in Liverpool have risen to the forefront of the sound and styling in the modern era of this subgenre which is almost as old as metal itself.
Given the description ‘Caveman Battle Doom’, Conan’s slow tempo onslaught of crushingly heavy riffs thick with sludge metal and stoner metal has remained consistent over their existence and their live performances are nothing short of intense when it comes to the wall of sound smashing into your face like a blunt object whose only purpose is to turn your head into paste. Having caught the three piece numerous times over the years, from a small and intimate venue in Liverpool when they supported American instrumental doom heavyweights Bongripper to them performing at festivals like Bloodstock, their quality has been consistent and the overwhelming nature of their music is welcomed as it rattled my very existence, making bones shake and my chest pound with every chord and note.
So when the opening, sludge driven droning of ‘Foeman’s Flesh’ gets the bands 6th studio full-length release underway, the ‘lizard brain’ seemingly takes over, alerting the listener that danger is near. The physiological and psychological changes that happen when this core part of the brain kicks in (a surge in activity and a suspension of higher thinking as the body releases stress hormones and preps it to respond.) and as it cranks up the intensity, you realise that you’re left as a stuttering mess, rendered incapable of higher thoughts and simply reduced to your base instincts. In this case, your base instinct is to surrender to the compulsion to headbang.
