Elif Yalvaç is the genius visionary behind this experimental drone-metal project, doing it in conjunction with her buddy Jordan Muscatello; Elif is a Turkish composer and was inspired to start playing guitar by various metal genres and sub-genres which she figured she could blend with ambient, electronics, noise and amplification, leading to microtonal results with weird frequencies and thick, jammy sludge seeping from speakers. The duo met and bonded at a Keiji Haino concert – how fitting – as they compared wounds and gouges suffered from the claws of that Japanese tiger. The album’s titles and themes sometimes overlap with folk-ish cultures from Turkey, Scotland, and Iceland – besides the Welsh strain already noted. Plus the whole album was made with bass guitars, admittedly with added effects and some synth, computer touchettes, and field recording gumbo, but it’s that “twin bass attack” that Diaries of Destruction might be working to establish as their signature sound.

Yes, the results are slow and dreary, but filled with ominous atmospheres and sensations of imminent dread. It’s not really about the performances – no distinguished bass playing moves on offer – more about the sound they make, and its burnished surfaces created by audio software. There’s more air and space than you get on any given Sunn O))) project with its over-clotted layers, qualifying this band as genuinely “experimental metal”. Added spookster bonus: they released it on Halloween 2024! (15/10/2024)

CORRECTION 16/02/2026 from Elif Yalvaç: Jordan is not my buddy. He is now my husband/partner :)) I really like that they use the phrase “genius visionary” but can please request correction as follows: “Elif Yalvaç is the genius visionary behind this experimental drone-metal project, doing in conjunction with her partner Jordan Muscatello”?

Certainly enjoying the brevity of some of these two-minute marvels – certain colleagues I know are still trying to come to terms with Napalm Death, which makes me long to give them a blast or five from this cassette – but also loving the way that very precise tunes and compositions are emerging from what most infidels and acolytes might mistakenly see as little more than a churning lump of very deep bass notes. Yep, very low frequencies are still the order of the day. For those who joined the party late, Dan Peck blows the tuba and Tom Blancarte operates the double bass, and with drummer Brian Osborne they serve up music which combines energetic free improvisation with as much doom metal as they have an appetite to swallow, simply doing it for the love of playing. With extra side detours into gothic sinister chamber music and spooked organ on ‘Xenobites’, and a sampled scream from a horror movie on ‘Meat Baby’, the listener is guaranteed a supernatural gore-fest aptly aligned with the stark and potent imagery of the great Matt Minter on the cover artworks.

The Gate aim to bring us “more introspective and heavier” experiences on the B side, in the form of such desolate gems as ‘Inside Poems’ – more samples here, this time probably lifted from a sci-fi end-of-the-world flick, used as a prelude to a stern and unforgiving doom-march hymn that’s as sober as a Puritan sermon (wouldn’t it be great to see the trio wearing pilgrim hats on stage?) – and of course ‘Stump Dweller’, emerging as a fan fave from the few listeners enlightened enough to hear this tape. This stubby gnome of a piece, a true brute among brutes, lurches confidently from its forest lair ten times as large and capable as any black bear, notwithstanding its grotesque and ugly visage. And while the closing piece ‘Troll Junkies’ might lead the unsuspecting listener to expect a root of bitterness torn from the minds of Nick Cave and Lou Reed in a bad mood, in fact it’s a beautiful dark hymn, melodic intervals played on the organ to confound Satan, and subtle shifting time-signatures to wrong-foot the horned one as he leads us sinners up the garden path.

The cumulative effect of this tape is remarkable, instilling doubts and profound gloom among the enemy as surely as it rouses the martial spirit of true believers. The achievement of Peck and his compadres, transmuting their musical skills and passions into palpable manifestations as real as any Frankenstein monster loosed from a laboratory, is considerable enough, but amazingly – on the strength of this bone-cruncher – they keep finding ways to do it better. Essential! (22/12/2023)

Besides the band-mates Zawadzki, Dziemski and Aranguren (drums, gtr and vox respectively), this release is supplemented by a number of guest recruits drawn from the world-wide “dark army” of underworld doom-rocksters and industrial death merchants, notably Attila Csihar who has wailed about the futility of the universe in the company of Sunn O))), plus one member of Imperial Triumphant, one from Senyawa, a crazy vibraphone player Tomasz Herisz, and an equally demented sax player Aleksader Papierz who screams alarmingly through his metal python whenever he’s let out of his box. Leaving A Dream (ZOHARUM ZOHAR 300-2 / OLD TEMPLE OLD.209) lurches across a plethora of genres and splinter genres, sometimes including very experimental sound-scaping in among the more conventional goth-tinged, semi-operatic rock dirges with their hideous vocal parts, songs which trudge reluctantly through Hell while dragging the twin stones of Wrath and Hatred.

It’s tempting to think Kielbasa is attempting a Stephen O’Malley-styled studio extravaganza with this monster, except he’s more steeped in Eastern European culture, frequently expressing the history of political oppression through musical metaphors, and lamenting about it in a very desolate way as expressively as any pack of full-throated wolves in search of their next meal. Unlike O’Malley, this record doesn’t do much to emulate the richness of Miles Davis or Alice Coltrane records either, despite liner notes’ assurance of same, referring to a long shopping list of “references” which includes “jazz”. The emotional intensity is heavy going for sure, amounting to a bludgeoning of the mind with metal hammers, not made any easier by the general lack of cohesion and form in Whalesong’s sprawling churn of sound. Maybe he spends so long overdubbing all the instruments, he forgets to make a composition. On the other hand, I found slightly more experimentation, subtlety and sheer strangeness on the second disc, which includes longer pieces such as ‘From The Ashes’, a harrowing vision torn from the slough of despond where the writhing tortured voices do much of the heavy lifting; and ‘She Kissed Me With Her Venomous Lips’, where the excesses and high volume antics of the first disc have been peeled away, leaving us with a bedrock of pure, seething, evil.

Jointly released with the Old Temple label, another Polish enterprise which has spawned many records of Black Metal, Death Metal, and Doom Metal. This record dares to pose the age-old question, “What happens to the dream when the dreamer disappears?” and was premiered with a special concert at the “Castle Party” festival – never attended it, but I expect it involves being clapped in shackles and shoved in a dark cell. We’ve heard previous horrors from Kielbasa, such as his remorseless Nothing Has Changed release from 2021, and Harmony Of Struggle, a nasty piece of power electronics from 2022. But if you want to swallow the full deep-dish experience, listen to this. From 6th September 2023.

Kollaps does produce songs of a sort, albeit they’re more like chants and declamations delivered in a shouty manner through a distorted microphone with plenty of studio echo, and the lyrical themes are far from pleasant or uplifting, as Black seems intent on purging his inner soul and exorcising many demons that beset his internal core. Alongside the vocals we have a remorseless barrage of very “metal” sounds, distortion, feedback, and factory-styled blows from the mallet of despair. We’re informed in some detail about the choice of non-musical objects in the Kollaps arsenal, including metal grates, cylinders, and a hoist (all rusted up of course – his aesthetic seems to require frequent raids on junkyards and disused industrial sites), plus there’s a self-built metal coil, an apparatus by now quite “notorious” with the fans when he takes it on tour and assaults the stages of the Antipodes and certain parts of Europe.

By this point I expect listeners will have little trouble positioning Kollaps alongside well-known metal-hammering types of the 1980s, such as Neubaten and Test Dept, but it’s fair to say that Kollaps is taking the ideas in his own personal direction, the better to express his own dark themes; it might be suitable to think of him as a tortured romantic poet along the lines of Mallarme or Baudelaire, except he is far more pessimistic and goes a lot further into the hidden reaches of the human heart. As with many artists who adopt a depressive mantle, they can’t help believing the rest of the world is as depraved or debauched as they, and many of the songs here make plain Wade Black’s contempt for the human race, assuming that everyone is equally motivated by base self-interest. For evidence, I direct you to such tunes as ‘I Believe in the Closed Fist’ or ‘Hate is Forever’. The ‘Closed Fist’ one appears to be his own litany of violence, a personal creed which he recites in hateful tones, including an inversion or parody of Catholic liturgy – a trope which might seem a bit well-worn now after decades of blasphemous Black Metal albums, but there it is. Meanwhile ‘Hate is Forever’ is a pretty effective sonic portrait of an oppressive Hell, filled with pain and negativity, the vocalist’s snarl buried under a ton of metallic clank and groanage. I shan’t say every track is propelled by the same overpowering and bloodthirsty noise, as there are quieter moments such as the synth drones on ‘Closed Fist’, although even these manage to emanate menace like clouds of poison gas, and the acoustic guitar on the title track, a self-pitying dirge that is firmly in the Nick Cave mode and set in a grisly minor key.

My other reservation concerns the way all of these questionable ideas are turned into rather noble-sounding abstractions, labelled using terms such as “condemnation, redemption, romanticism, atonement, passion, compulsion, determination”. Admittedly these words come from the press release and reviewers, not from Wade Black himself, but this type of verbiage does lend a veneer of respectability to the enterprise that might not have been completely earned. Thomas Ekelund did the cover artworks. We heard Kollaps previously on their Mechanical Christ record from 2019, when they were still a trio. From 25th July 2022.

Düsseldorf running Amok on their CD (ZOHAR 269-2) of same name…despite their German name this duo are all-Polish, but they do pay homage to a strain of Berlin electronic music with their sound, which is admittedly somewhat “cleaner” than many of the murkoid specimens which inhabit this label. Apparently the experts classify this as “EBM”, i.e. electronic body music, a sub-genre which splices together elements of industrial noise with synth-punk of the late 1970s and modern dance music. Amok ends up pretty percussion heavy, and when the drummer is let loose he can’t seem to stop filling up the cracks between the brickwork with his patented brand of aural cement. The multiple synth lines and macabre melodies are also working like steam engines, and the cumulative effect is quite melodramatic. All played by Tom Axer (synths, voices) and Jacek Sokołowski (drums), although Adam Radecki seems to be the original mastermind behind this project, active since 1989 on a sporadic series of cassettes for Odd Records.

Yutani are the somewhat mysterious trio from Warsaw with nine tunes on Not Much Of A Talker (ZOHAR 257-2). I like the title here, reminding me of when I once stormed out from a party of colleagues in a bar without saying goodnight, and later one of them told me there was no need to apologise for making a “Polish Exit”. Since then I’ve assumed that a sullen, uncommunicative mode might be a character trait of this noble race. Yutani don’t exactly manifest it here though, and this combination of bass guitar, electronics and drums is clearly the product of a threesome who have quite a lot to tell us, even if it might project a vaguely aggressive and dissatisfied air. Yutani seem keen to tick a lot of genre boxes (electronic, dark, psychedelic, chillout, industrial), unless that’s just the press department working itself into a tizzy. Some nice moments here, and full marks for telling us that the bass and drum parts were “recorded in dirty basement rooms of a building that no longer exists”, and having a drummer named Inutile Carcasse, but the musicians could benefit from developing a lighter touch.

Popsysze are another combo departing from the usual Zoharum aesthetic, and on their Emisja (ZOHAR 258-2) album deliver seven tracks of very competent and crisp gtr-bass-drums trio music, occasionally adding lyrics. If you’ve ever craved an Eastern Europe rethink of Firehose or Meat Puppets, this would be a good place to start. Apparently the producer Michal Mielnik and mixing by Michal Kupicz accounts for the “light touch” in the sound, since it seems on their previous Kopalino album the trio couldn’t help inclining towards their dark masters, such as the cocoa bean. The lyrics are sung in Polish natch, but they allude to imminent environmental disasters threatening the globe, not that you’d know given the equivocal and even-tempered timbre of the vocalists Jarosław Marciszewski and Jakub Świątek, who might as well be singing about an unsuccessful trip to the laundrette for all the emotional passion they muster. Still, I suppose that cover graphic could be read as an indicator of the growing global warming problem…

Back to more grisly territory now with Tearing Your Mind To Pieces (ZOHAR 267-2), a remorseless power electronics album from Harmony Of Struggle. It’s certainly very “retro”, what with the digipak covered with unpleasant photos of wartime atrocities and injured men, harking back to Throbbing Gristle and other shocking nasties from the industrial past, although the front image (no less unpleasant) has a combination of sexual and violent imagery which could be mistaken for a more extreme take on Surrealism. HOS have the hubris to name themselves after a release by Clandestine Blaze, the Finnish Black Metal solo act whose espousal of National Socialist Black Metal themes in their oeuvre have resulted in several sales being blocked and banned by the Discogs site. Plus you’ve got track titles here like ‘Shock Tactics’ and ‘In Control’, in a tracklist which reads like the Heinrich Himmler instruction manual. So far, so horrible. HOS is Neithan who might be Michal Kielbasa, also behind such projects as Whalesong, Lifeless Gaze, Grave Of Love and Nothing Has Changed – with this smorgasbord of depressing acts, he covers Black Metal, Doom, and Industrial genres. Plenty of horrifying themes on this release, and even the sound itself is deliberately made into something extremely ugly by excessive layering, distortion, and sound manipulation, with results accurately described as “deformed”. Jointly released by the hateful Polish underground label, Old Temple. Strong meat warning – approach this record at your own risk.

Reformed Faction comprises three ex-members of famed minimal droners Zoviet France, i.e. Andy Eardley, Mark Spybey, and Robin Storey, who in a moment of rapprochement joined forces again in 2005 and released Vota (ZOHAR 262-2) followed by a string of records for several years thereafter. I think Eardley may have walked away from the group at some point, but I haven’t looked into the tale too closely. The Zoharum label evidently revere Zoviet France, given their comprehensive reissue programme of Storey and his Rapoon albums, so one can see why they’d be keen to put this one out, although Klanggalerie already did a very good job of it in 2006. Even so, today’s version has been remastered, and the cover design has been slightly tweaked, with no expense spared on the spot-varnish on the digipak panels. I’ll admit I’m not the world’s foremost collector of Zoviet France, but this Vota album is winning me over with its subtleties. I like the understated, suggested melodies and moods, indicative of larger forms lurking below the surface of a misted-over pool. If it’s done through live group performances, as I assume a lot of it is, it’s all the more impressive for this mastery of many diverse elements – instruments, tapes, loops, and electronic effects blended like ingredients in the world’s largest and sweetest layer cake.

Lastly we have Groth (ZOHAR 268-2) by Groth, which is about one of the worst records we’ve heard this year. Utterly undistinguished and obnoxious metal music from this Polish foursome, of which the most nauseating aspect is the histrionic vocalist who seems to have affected an American accent and throws in plenty of outdated rockist cliches, perhaps in some misguided bid by the band to gain wider commercial acceptance. When the singer finally manages to shut his yap, you can hear how truly mediocre are the gtr-bass-drums trio manufacturing this clumsy, misbegotten mess. Still, the label seem to think they’re onto something, praising the “lurking ambient-psychedelic connectors” in between the sickening riffage and poundage. Yuck.

Eolian Dawn (SR-18 CD) is performed by the duo of Imbernon and Mikel Vega. So happens we just heard from Jon Imbernon making an ungodly noise with Xedh on that vicious, gashing CD, reminding us that he’s also the guitarists with Gangrened – a Finnish sludge-doom metal act. Fellow guitarist Vega comes to us from Killerkume and Orbain Unit, both of whom we enjoyed, and he played on that brutal Black Earth cassette that still plagues my nightmares, not to mention his fine solo tape Powndak Improv.

So far, a pretty noisy and wild backstory to both our string-shredding gents, but today’s record of free-form slicery is aiming for something slower and minimal, and is not afraid to be labelled “ambient textures”. Fortunately for me, this doesn’t mean a complete cessation of audio violence, and these long-form tunes are full of exciting moments of colossal blastage and metal mayhem – it’s just that the events strike very slowly ans last a bit longer, somewhat like a train-wreck in slow motion followed by the force of an atom bomb blast spread out over several days. To put it another way, I like the implied end-of-world scenario mapped out in ‘Awrastee’, not so keen on the wispy musings of ‘Eolian Empire’. But then we have a fine workout called ‘World Is Run By Mass Persuasion’, which isn’t especially “metal” but indicates both our men are making use of digital delay FX and other knob-twisters to extend their globby, oat-like statements of pulsation and swipe, letting the FX carry their howl across a thousand chasms or at least to other side of a vast lake. If I was in the sort of mood where I was impatient for results, I’d mark down old Imbers and Veggie for taking too long to get to the point, but for those moments where you’re happy to be carried along on the back of a silver dirigible balloon steering through polluted skies, this track fits the bill like a silken hat. I also happen to like the paranoia of the title, its “mass persuasion” theme suggesting that there’s no such thing as objective reality, only our shared fictions and myths.

After that it’s just 17 more minutes to wade through, including the sludgy river of ‘Nosommar’ with its filthy water, and the bleak whited-out scapes of ‘Idyllic’ where the bass strings and amplifier hum are doing much of the heavy lifting. Recorded in Finland and issued with a “weathery” cover image, this is something of a monotonous, unvarying album, but it does persist gamely in seeking that rare elusive mood and will stain the listener with blue splotches to the face and neck.

Meanwhile Sputnik Trio’s Time Hunt (SR-15 CD) is pretty straight-ahead jazz blowing from saxman Ricardo Tejero and his sidemen, Marco Serrato (bass) and Borja Diaz (drums). They’re certainly a very co-ordinated unit, and if you click on ‘Will Be Back’ you’ll hear all three of them attaining the hoped-for “lockstep” state where all three instruments negotiate their way around a rather tricky composition and time signature, pulling it off with assurance. Such moments on the album induce a certain excitement, more so than when Tejero solos away and the band feel like they’re coasting to no apparent end. I keep waiting for the promised emotional build-up, but our altoman is content to stay pretty much in the same register for several minutes at a time; even when he goes into over-blowing mode, it fails to spark the tune into life. Great band name, the music is not unpleasant, and the players are highly competent, but the album lacks fire.

Good record of dismal and dark drone by these two Dutch (I think) performers, sent to us from Berlin, and stamped with a red certification that validates its “drone” credentials…this might be the first time these two have collaborated, and they tell us it more or less came about by accident thanks to a stray email. I have to assume they met up at some stage as there is some photographic evidence of them standing in the same garden surrounded by a bunch of commonplace objects, and yet still managing to foster an aura of menace and strangeness, born 20 years too late to audition for a part in The Midwich Cuckoos.

Autaar is Mark Lindhout, 404 is the alias of Joost van Ophem, and I can’t find much trace of previous musical outings of either, although Lindhout may have done the graphic design for a Dutch heavy metal band called Judgement Day. As it happens, heavy metal is their common ground – the duo aren’t averse to a bit of amped-up heavy metal riffage, as can be heard on the short blast of monstrous churnage ‘Living Together, Apart’, where evil twisted guitars slug it out with horrifying choruses of doomed souls. It would be too convenient to think they’re aiming for their own take on Sunn O))) or other forms of art-drone-metal, since almost every track is different on this album, whose title translates from Dutch into “Nipped In The Bud”. After kicking off with two instances of thickened, clotted over-rich swamp-filth, we eventually reach the centrepiece of bleak horror that is ‘Finely Tuned Abandonment’, where the duo reveal a talent for nuance and detail compared to the bludgeoning terror-mode wodges that preceded it. Guitar lines and odd synth passages aren’t so much woven together on a loom as grown together like tendrils or twisting ivy vines, vines several miles long and gradually taking over the planet. It’s a grim realisation of inner desolation, and the sense of alienation is quite palpable…with these taut, restrained performances the pair manage to sustain a good mood of tension, one that is never quite resolved.

There’s also ‘Van Henk moest ik crypto kopen’, a track referring to the contemporary problem of crypto-currency in some way, but is itself another instance of nauseating, unsettling music performed with a dreadful calm; each element (bass guitar, electronics, guitars) clearly presented within the frame of a dreadfully convincing argument about the futility of everything. You’re probably cottoning onto the “theme” of In De Kiem Gesmoord by now, and yes – it turns out to be another pandemic album, as the artistes claim to offer “a reflection of working as an artist during [the pandemic’s] accompanying limitations”, which I take to mean a lament of frustration about becoming a virtual shut-in, which may account for the intense sense of claustrophobia evoked by these airless tracks, drones, non-tunes, and guitar blasts. The duo have their own ideas though, and compiled a webpage where they muse about their work using free-form prose outbursts wrenched from the inner corners of their fervid lobes.

In all, maybe a tad hit-or-miss in places, but I like the have-a-go spirit of these two semi-avant metalsters, and there’s something heartfelt and personal about this record that is endearing. From 24 June 2022.

Now for one by IWKC, another Moscow band who also like to have their blintzes buttered on both sides…by which I mean they aim to cover multiple stylistic modes and reach for a degree of excellence in an assortment of rock-related categories, decamping from the sunlit extremes of psychedelic free-form jams by way of heavy, stoner pummelling. Along the way, this caravan of nomads manage to turn in instrumental workouts that will appeal to fans who’ve been following American underground rock and math rock for the last 20 years, such as Pelican or Old Man Gloom… ‘Samadhi’ for instance isn’t too far away from a lost Earth track, though it’s also cross-planted with quasi-eastern melodies and half-note intervals on the keyboards. The basic quartet is supplemented on this Hladikarna album by a number of guest vocalists and singers, and even a tabla player for another note of exotic spice in the mix. The foursome are a crack team of “muscular” players who don’t blink for a second and sloppy notes are not tolerated in their perfectionist, airless music – very reminiscent of Isis in places. Guitar, keys and bass are mighty proficient, but Nikita Samarin (the drummer) might be the leader of sorts – his high-precision work on the tubs is evidently keeping the other players in line with the force of an iron grid. (Not to be confused with the talented Nick Samarin, who recorded the disc.) If you’re seeking modern heavy guitar music, but tempered with melodic keyboard work, good studio sound, and impressive dynamics, these Russian clonksters will satisfy your cravings on many levels. Fave track for me is the title track, but I’m a sucker for that organ sound (even if it’s probably faked by a digital keyboard). Despite the sunny moments, the IWKC continue to favour a music of aggression with many dark and menacing undercurrents. Witness the cover art, a nice tapestry in psychedelic colourful which might turn out to depict an atomic bomb blast. Far out.

From Yegoryevsk (on the right bank of the Guslitsa River in Moscow Oblast), we have the duo Old Sea And Mother Serpent, who between them turn in a fine epic of sludge on their Plutonian album. Created with conventional rock setup plus added keys, plus remorseless groany vocals, this is squarely in the genres of doom metal / death metal / sludge metal, and it’s about as turgid as three- month-old porridge and as interminable as an MCU movie. In addition to enduring the sensations of walking bodily through deep pools of wet cement, the listener will endeavour to listen to the lyrics and thus decode the “story” promised by the track titles on these four long tracks, most of them clubbing their way through the door at over 20 mins a time…I can’t help discerning a coherent narrative here when faced with songs like ‘The Scrag Temple’ and references to the “serpent masters…highest creatures”, but it’s a Gothic sword-and-sorcery epic gone horribly wrong, mixed with darker supernatural and Lovecraftian tropes, and even the cover paintings promise us an endless journey across a menacing mountain range that would even unnerve the most devoted Tolkien reader. Another major characteristic of these Sea-Serpent boys is their horrifyingly slow pace…they steel themselves for yet another deathly trudge over treacherous terrain each time the axes are plugged in, and if anything the album gets even slower and sludgier as it plods on. By the time we get to ‘Subterranean Solstice’, you’re so far down that you’ll need to be rescued by a deep-sea diver wearing lead boots in a bathysphere. True “crawlmetal” if ever there was.

More doom and sludge from Thy Grave, another Moscow band using two guitars, bass and drums to pound it out “old style” on their album Filth. Thy Grave certainly aren’t attempting any clever cross-genre moves, nope sir – “heavy as a tombstone with huge cast-iron nails hammered into it” is what they offer, and after six of these ghastly tracks your ears, head, and body will admit defeat as surely as if you’d been crushed beneath a granite boulder. Along with the torturous music, Thy Grave incline towards an extremely pessimistic view of humanity, offering us zero hope or solace with titles like ‘Devil from the Void’, ‘The Depth Devourer’, or ‘Approach to Suffering’. “Each opus is a reflection on all that surrounds us,” is their stated philosophy. “Degradation of the flesh has become a brand, and Hell has become the meaning of life,” they continue, confirming that this oppressive misery and doom, mingled with physical decay, is all they can see as they survey the world. The remarkable cover art, drawn by GodLikeIkons, not only endorses this perception of reality, it positively builds on it – conjuring up nightmarish, extremely twisted apparitions of death, mutation, degradation, and corruption. No tier of humankind, be they emperor, peasant, religious, adult or child, is safe from this catastrophic doom, according to the mighty pen of GodLikeIkons.

Further heavy metal and doom from Remote on their album whose title translates as Smoke. Compared to others heard in this bundle, this band from Kaluga are a shade more accessible and eschew the conventions of slowness and distortion in favour of an energised, enriched form of Black Sabbath. The “enriched” dimension comes from the added synths and phased-type pedal effects, which sustain every riff and carry it forward into a ghastly, layered, drone form. They do however share the taste for extreme-metal shouted and shrieked vocals, which tends to skew what is otherwise a fairly listenable album, albeit one still served by a chain-mailed fist by angry hostiles. The band formed around 2012 and have a respectable back catalogue; this might be their first record where all the lyrics are in Russian. I do respect a tough-minded attitude where a band refuses to compromise their vision in the vain hopes of pleasing an American audience or making global sales. Remote aren’t much of a song band in any case, but when the lyrics appear – sometimes sung, or chanted like hysterical headlines by guest voices – they make an unforgettable impact. My fave here is the 6-minute ‘P’epel’, almost pure meandering noise and no attempt at playing a tune; it slithers like a gigantic, malevolent python. But it’s atypical of the rest of the album. Hideous album cover art depicting a Hell populated with dragons, flames, and giant skulls, while horned demons commit depraved sexual acts. Note the almost-symmetrical designs of this artwork, aspiring towards the condition of Black Metal.

What’s noticeable from the get-go is his love of effects pedals – the opening track ‘Ziztua / Galara’ has a bizarre surface sound, almost unrecognisable as an electric guitar, and his excessive use of reverb to add that tasty garage-band twang-and-thunk is particularly commendable. Elsewhere he achieves the fluid over-amped sound that Snakefinger managed to deliver for The Residents when called upon. These effects aren’t just a prop for him to lean on, but an integrated part of his set-up and his approach to free playing; he’s pretty much developing the piece in real time, while you listen, and exploring the potential of the effects with as much gusto as the very notes that he plays. This practice continues with even more unholy relish on ‘High Lilith’, undoubtedly his “heavy metal” moment where mad loud-volume swipes and riffs served up at a deathly-cold pace indicate he dreams of joining Sunn O))) on stage one day.

For ‘Anai’ he picks up an acoustic (I think), but it’s so closed-miked we can practically see the windings on his steel strings, and without the benefit of effects we can clearly hear his sadistic approach to guitar-mangling; an angry, attacking technique, but done with the deliberation of a cruel torturer. Meanwhile the musical inventions here are quite wonderful, refusing conventional chord shapes and melodies in favour of an astringent, jarring combination of notes. Back to the electric axe for ‘Bosgarren Geruza’, which ends the tape and exhibits perhaps his most far-out alien sounds yet, at times resembling the outpourings of a demented computer-driven chord organ from Planet Mars. Along with the glorpy effects and menacing skeletal riffs creating dark Hellish jazz, he makes occasional use of a looping pedal to produce insane reams of edible gibberish. Fellow Spaniards join him to collaborate on Track 3, which is ‘Methagaarborg’ – Fernando Ulzión adds saxophone, and all-rounder Miguel A García adds electronics. This one’s a bit of an outlier on the cassette – a lengthy 12:41 mins workout which is coming from a place of pure lunacy and dementia. Almost nothing sounds like it’s supposed to, the saxophone is both angry and vengeful, and the grumbly synths of García exhibit his characteristic frowny moods. Good to hear some interaction with others, and there are many moments of wildness on this cut, but they seem to lose the thread more than once. It tends to disrupt the flow of the rest of the album which I was coming to regard as something of a masterpiece of introverted emotions from the brain of a lonely psychopath, seething with venom.

We heard Vega before as one half of Killerkume, and I evidently enjoyed their excellent Industrial Sunbath LP enormously. He’s also a member of Black Earth, and appeared on A Cryptic Howl Of Morbid Truth, the intense tape which we heard in 2016. There’s also the noise-improv group Orbain Unit (with Fernando Ulzión, and others), Loan, and Conteiner. Many thanks to Mikel for sending this fine tape. From 13th October 2021.

Ciolkowska call their album Psychedelia (NONAME666 740) and release it with cover art which looks like what would have happened if Kandinsky hadn’t discovered abstract art and instead went to America to paint covers for Weird Tales magazine. This four-piece from St Petersburg play songs and instrumentals ins a mode described as “space rock” by other online reviewers, and there’s evidence that the record has found favour with many proggy diehard listeners. They have a good line in twisty song dynamics and melodic lead lines, courtesy of the leader Egor Svysokihgor who plays lead guitar and sings, plus they have a ukulele as a featured instrument, played by Alesya Izlesa, lending a quirky touch which I wish they would emphasise a bit more on an album of what is otherwise merely competent and conventional rock music. Like Pree Tone below, they suffer from weak lead vocals, and though Egor strains hard you can’t really feel enough force or conviction in his words. I also wish I could find the elusive space-rock vibe that others are digging, but Ciolkowska just aren’t freaky enough to fly with space captains such as Hawkwind, Gong, or even Magnog.

Wayward songs from Pree Tone from the Ukraine on their Brekka (NONAME666 756) album. Last heard in 2018 with their Kiddy album. This guitar-bass-drum trio are evolving their own distinctive voice and starting to take steps outside their indie-rock influenced comfort zone. Also they’re learning how to make their songs punchier, more concise, such that this 5-song item never outstays its welcome. Their “big sound” production lends a sheen of energy to those moments when the band shift into overdrive, hammering home key points in the song by use of over-zealous drumming and layered guitars. Nice to hear some actual songs here, but the singer needs to beef up their vocal muscles a bit; he sounds like a tired guest singer failing the audition for a Rain Parade album.

Crust are firmly in the genre of contemporary doom and death metal and their album Stoic (NONAME666 752) certainly looks the part – black cover background, elaborate artwork redolent of death and decay, plus they have their own logo drawn more or less in a Black Metal style. Vlad Tatarsky plays guitar, Arthur Filenko the bassist also provides the usual screaming throaty vocal that is demanded of those who play in this mode…enjoying the grim and grandiose sound of this one which delivers the hoped-for sensations of lurching through concrete, but sometimes feel let down by the very conventional heavy-metal guitar solos which cut through the general churning racket and tend to ruin the mood. Plenty of oppressive themes in the song lyrics, referring to pain, death, madness, dreams, and the “pitch black darkness of delusions” on songs with titles such as ‘Plague’, ‘Anhedonia’, and ‘A Blind Man in Darkness’. Like many hardcore straight-edge types, Crust seem to have developed a very unforgiving stance as they express their terminal disappointment with the lamentable state of the human race, seeing everything as stark either-or choices. Was also reviewed in more detail by Jen.

Metal fans will also enjoy The Moon Mistress, whose Silent Voice Inside (NONAME666 747) plainly owes a huge debt to Black Sabbath – the guitar sound, the rhythms, the remorseless riffing, and even the vocals bear no small resemblance to the best work of The Sabs. This is the only album made by the trio of Garish Cyborg, Memphis, and Mitya DHS, and it originally came out in 2012 on the Pestis Insaniae label. Along with the usual deathly and bloodthirsty tropes, plenty of supernatural and semi-satanic themes on songs like ‘Cremation Meditation’, ‘Cease To Exist’, ‘Invocation to Hecate’ and ‘The Wicker Man’. I’m finding this item one of the more enjoyable records in today’s batch – the band have a real attack and focus, serving crushing heaviness with a good deal of conviction and strength and economy, and are preferable to latterday Sabs copyists like Cathedral or Electric Wizard, even. This CD version includes two bonus cuts ‘Heavy Sun’ and ‘Mindlock’ not present on the original album.

The Grand Astoria are another St Petersburg band…hard to categorise From The Great Beyond (NONAME666 770), a six-track item of songs and instrumentals written and performed by Kamille Sharapodinov and made with the help of a large crew of collaborators and performers. In just six songs they touch on many musical styles, one moment wallowing in heavy-metal guitar histrionics like Slayer, the next moment soaring away on multi-layered space-prog epic voyages, with tasteful keyboard flourishes and flute-drive interludes. Sharapodinov may turn out to be a man with a vision equal to that of Richard Pinhas crossed with Jon Anderson, and this album may grow on you if you can get past its rather self-important tone, its overwrought and melodramatic presentation, and its restless genre-hopping.