Written by:	RaduP, musclassia, AndyMetalFreak
Published:	October 15, 2023

Wait A Minute! This Isn't Metal! - September 2023
Metal Storm's outlet for nonmetal album reviews





We here at Metal Storm pride ourselves on our thousands of metal reviews and interviews and article; metal is our collective soul and passion, which is why we bother with this junk. That being said, we'd be lying if we stuck to our trve-kvlt guns and claimed that metal is the only thing we ever listen to. Whether we want to admit it or not, we do check out some other stuff from time to time; some of us are more poptimistic than others, but there's a whole world out there aside from Satan-worshiping black metal and dragon-slaying power metal. We do already feature some nonmetal artists on our website and have a few reviews to back them up, but we prefer to limit that aspect of the site to those artists who have been a strong influence on the metal scene or who are in some way connected to it. This article series is the place for those artists who don't matter to metal in the slightest but still warrant some conversation - after all, good music, is good music, and we all know metal isn't the only thing on this planet for any of us.

Down below, you might find some obscure Bandcamp bedroom projects or some Billboard-topping superstar; as long as it ain't metal and the album itself isn't a best-of compilation, it fits. Obviously, we're certain that not everything will be for everybody (you guys can be viciously territorial even when metal is the only thing on the menu, and we're all supposed to like the same things), but we do hope you find at least one thing that you can enjoy, instead of just pointing and screaming in horror "Not metal!" as if that would be an insult.

Here are our previous features:

August 2023
July 2023
June 2023

And now to the music...

---

The prevalence of ‘crescendocore’ post-rock bands in this article series thus far is a testament to the influence of Explosions In The Sky, one of the most notorious purveyors of this style, and particularly albums such as The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place. How fitting it is, then, that Explosions In The Sky themselves finally appear in Wait A Minute! That’s Not Metal! Ominously, the album in question is called End, and the accompanying tour is titled The End Tour; however, the group have claimed that this is not the end, as following their breakthrough role in soundtracking Friday Night Lights, the group are currently producing a score for an undisclosed TV series. Looking at End as another waypoint on the EITS journey rather than the final stop, it’s interesting to reflect on the ways in which the band have changed, and how they’ve stayed the same.

After 6 albums in their first 12 years as a group, End is only their second album in the following dozen years; EITS haven’t necessarily been using that time to overhaul their approach, as there’s still plenty of delicate soundscaping and soft/loud shifting, as “Moving On” and “Peace Or Quiet” serve as testament to. However, the signature tremolos of their earlier albums are less prevalent; instead, synths and keyboards taken on a greater role than on their first few records, particularly on the lively, glitchy, modern-sounding opener “Ten Billion People”. Another quite up-tempo and energetic song is “The Fight”; in general, the shift in tone and intensity from an album such as The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place to End feels relatively similar to how Russian Circles have evolved, albeit obviously softer in comparison. It’s by no means a radical reinvention, but it’s an enjoyable alternative approach from one of post-rock’s biggest names.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia







In the same month as one of instrumental post-rock’s biggest names, Explosions In The Sky, release a very conventional album for the style, Spurv have produced a record that rises above typical post-rock fodder. The Norwegian sextet do not dramatically depart from expectations for instrumental post-rock; a song such as “En Brennende Vogn Over Jordet”, at least in its first half, hits upon a lot of the usual tones and sounds for the style. However, Spurv keep several tools in their arsenal; on this song alone, first the incorporation of violin adds a distinguishing flavour reminiscent of Talons, and then the group push heaviness to levels approaching post-metal.

As a whole, Brefjære, an album inspired by thought of mythical conversations between trees, mountains and the elements, hits upon a variety of different sounds. The fantastic opener “Krokete, Rettskaffen” sounds reminiscent of Cult Of Luna’s “Passing Through” but run through a neofolk filter; at the opposite extreme tonally, "Å Vente Er Å Endre" features some harsh distorted noise alongside Björk-esque singing. Additionally, when Spurv do go ‘full post-rock’, there’s at least some variety in approach; the voluminous tremolo-laden crescendocore of “Som Skyer” is a sharp contrast to the spacious, delicate “Til En Ny Vår” (or at least the first half; the loud tremolos do eventually arrive). Brefjære does a great job of feeling very familiar while exhibiting enough inspiration to evade the effects of post-rock fatigue.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





Midway into the third decade of their existence, Grails have undergone a few line-up changes, with the core of guitarist Alex Hall and drummer Emil Amos (also of Om) currently joined by guitarist Ilyas Ahmed, multi-instrumentalist Jesse Bates, and Zombi’s AE Paterra on synths. The presence of a synth player is keenly felt on Anches En Maat; in contrast to the brash, loud experimentalism of Doomsayer’s Holiday and guitar-focused post-rock of Black Tar Prophecies, Anches En Maat is quainter and more easy-going, with the warm synth tones doing a lot to shape the soundscapes of the record.

Grails have been historically referred to as an experimental rock band; Anches En Maat doesn’t necessarily feel all that experimental, but it straddles a few different genres. The tone and some of the song structures owe themselves to instrumental post-rock, or ‘cinematic’ groups like Nordic Giants or The Cinematic Orchestra, but there’s also aspects that feel more connected to mellow prog or psychedelic rock groups such as Camel or Pink Floyd. Add in the electronic elements, and the end result feels somewhat familiar but still fairly distinctive. Grails never really push the volume here, but the vibe does fluctuate, between the soaring string sounds on “Sad & Illegal”, fuzzy soundscapes of “Viktor’s Night Map” and the cosmic eeriness of “Black Rain”, and then the whole thing is rounded off by the borderline ambient closing 12-minute title track.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia







There's a lot of post-rock that sounds really similar, but then there's bands like Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Swans which often take a more experimental rock approach to create some really dejected massive pieces, hence why albums like F♯A♯∞ or To Be Kind end up among my favorite albums ever. So it's no surprise that creating huge dejected pieces would be a way to my heart. When I first covered Sprain they sounded a bit like a post-metal band without distortion, landing them in a very somber kind of rock music that had emotional weight and switched between heavy and light sounds pretty easily, which was the kind of sound I was hoping to hear more of and see how it develops. Well, it is a bit ironic that none of the two main genre tags I used for As Lost Through Collision are still in the main genre tags I'd use for The Lamb As Effigy, but that's partly because The Lamb As Effigy is such a huge album that it swallowed a lot of genres, including slowcore and post-hardcore.

And when I say huge, part of it is the gargantuan 90 minute runtime, the kind of excess you have to be really really confident in your ability to pull off to even think about doing it. The Lamb As Effigy is perfectly capable of tackling more normal length tracks without making them feel too much like interludes, but it shines more within the more developed ten minute pieces and the two monolithic and 20-something minutes tracks that are comprised of multiple movements and dominate each side of the record. But The Lamb As Effigy is also gargantuan in the sounds it tackles, with the aforementioned two post-rock bands being clean influences, but also taking some of the Slint-isms of their debut, a more manic vocal approach that's a mix between Daughters and Black Country, New Road with some very novel takes on self-loathing in its lyricism, the rock instrumentation often getting some avant-punk loudness that feels like Black Midi, and a slow buildup reminiscent of Corrupted that's filled with dark ambient and neoclassical darkwave and droning modern classical instrumentation whose strings and organ take their time but build such a downtrodden vibe to it all.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





If you thought that Sprain album was long at 90 minutes, check out this 145 minutes long behemoth. Now if you're wondering who this World's End Girlfriend entity is and why they suddenly came out with such a huge record, the main reason why they might be familiar to anyone on this website not already into their music is their collaboration with Mono on 2005's Palmless Prayer / Mass Murder Refrain, arguably Mono's best work too. The World's End Girlfriend catalog is pretty big and I haven't gotten to checking out that much of it aside from 2007's Hurtbreak Wonderland, which fans seem to agree is their opus, and since 2010 most of the music coming from the project was in the form of film scores, so this is in a way a lot of World's End Girlfriend to take in all at once.

It's quite impossible to choose just two genre tags to use for this one, because the sound palette used for this is pretty large and somewhat divided as well. The rock side seems to take more from post-rock, in line with them being a band to have collaborated with Mono, but there's a lot in the record that barely touches rock instrumentation. There's also a lot of orchestral music in this, whether a very brief shout-like sample in a glitch or a very score-like accompaniment to the post-rock that even overshadows it. And the most striking is the use of electronica, mostly in the form of glitches and breakcore that shuffle and ruffle all the other elements to create something that is at times very challenging to listen to but works to create something very marvelous at other times. It's the kind of thing that shouldn't work as well as it does, considering its contradictory palette and its colossal runtime, but it does.

Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





The latest ‘non-metal album on a metal label’ to be featured here comes from Vrajitor’s Tenebrarium, whose debut comes courtesy of Avantgarde Music. The Vrajitor in question is the man behind one-man projects Warmoon Lord and Old Sorcery. Both of these are black metal projects, although the latter also carries the genre tag ‘dungeon synth’ in our database. Perhaps based on this, one might expect a new musical endeavour from the same person to go all-in on the dungeon synth, but while there is a heavy synth presence on E.N.L.D., it is not of the dungeon variety; Vrajitor has simultaneously looked towards horror movies and classic Italian prog acts such as Goblin and Jacula for this synth-heavy instrumental prog rock debut.

The core sound of the album owes a lot to 70s prog rock, with lots of synths and keyboards popping up alongside flute, saxophone and other instruments on these fun and accessible rock cuts, which can be quite boisterous at times (just check out the saxophone solo and surrounding drum workout on “Black Frog”). However, around the bulk of the record pop up little oddities; for example, “Rubedo” leads from a Camel-esque guitar/keyboard duet into a closing half-minute comprised of eerie synths, harpsichord and distant choral sounds to really feed into the intended horror movie vibe. Perhaps the most successful fusion of sounds is delivered on “Volantes Castrum”; the eclectic percussion and saxophone outbursts already cause a slight air of unease, but after shifting through folky acoustics and classic prog soloing, the track takes a darker tone, with dramatic organs and creepy spoken word. While incredibly retro, there’s something about the specific type of retroism on Vrajitor’s Tenebrarium’s first outing that feels somewhat fresh when compared with the Canterbury-heavy prog rock revivalism that many other new acts tend towards.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





Fire, the 2003 debut album from Electric Six, was, well, fire; the group established their anarchic comedy alt rock approach in emphatic style, particularly with breakout hits “Danger! High Voltage” and “Gay Bar”. In the 2 decades since Fire, the group have averaged nearly one album every year, peaking with an 8-album streak between 2015 and 2018. I’m not well acquainted with their post-Fire discography, but based on the one time I saw the group live and had the misfortune of catching a one-off ‘deep cuts’ set, the songs that I have heard don’t really rank up to the consistent quality of that debut album. Turquoise, their 20th album, doesn’t really do much to go against that expectation.

Across 14 songs, there’s quite a bit of variety on Turquoise, from the whimsical indietronica of opening song “Take Me To The Sugar” and synth-punk “Panic! Panic!” through to moody rocker “Child Of Hunger” and singer-songwriter country cut “Units Of Time”. The main issue is that no one song makes much of an impression in terms of memorability or entertainment; the liveliest song, and the one that feels most reminiscent of earlier Electric Six, is the pumped-up “Dr. K”, but the only other track that makes any particular impression is synth-rock closer “The Wheel Finds A Way”. Turquoise makes for an inoffensive listen (which might not be a compliment given how irreverent early Electric Six was), but it’s probably not going to demand much of your attention.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





I do like my fair share of punk, but there are subgenres I prefer over others because of how large of an umbrella term "punk rock" can get. Out of the ones I'm not as fond of there's pop punk and ska punk, which are ironically the genres in which Jeff Rosenstock operates, even in the bands he played in before going solo, like The Arrogant Sons of Bitches and Bomb the Music Industry!. So me finding an artist in these areas of punk that I actually enjoy is pretty rare, and since first listening to 2016's Worry I was along for the ride. The last album was one also released in a ska version, so Hellmode has that to beat.

You can sort of divide two leanings to Hellmode and Jeff's music in general, there's the more pop stuff that might be loud and punky and have a pretty powerful vibe to it, but still take a more singalong approach; and one that's more indie rock that's a bit more mellow and sometimes a bit more experimental. And finding both of these executed pretty nicely is only part of what makes this so fun to listen to, but there's a bit of a simplicity to the lyricism, or rather a directness, that still doesn't make them feel less thought out and compelling. There's just something about shouting about how the future is dumb that really does it for me.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





The problem with genres is how many people cross lines with their understanding of them. Take, for example, the new album from Traindodge, which is described on the album’s Bandcamp page as continuing the band’s post-hardcore dynasty; nothing that I hear on The Alley Parade is comparable to any post-hardcore that I’ve heard. Perhaps they meant post-punk? There’s clearly a punk rock current flowing through parts of The Alley Parade, but arguably as much of it feels connected to post-punk, or alt-rock derivatives that emerged in the 90s.

A good example is “Face Thieves”; it starts off quite heavy and punky, with a fairly meaty guitar tone and shouted vocals, but as it progresses, Traindodge exhibit some more atmospheric and melodic tendencies, and by the end there’s arguably textures emerging that could more commonly be found in psych rock. Changing tack, “Unfinished Secrets” calms down for a mellow, textured, alt anthem, while “Living Proof” has a dash of noise rock hidden in its lively framework (some of the guitar harmonies could have been taken from an Elder record). The post-punk heritage does re-emerge elsewhere, however, on the likes of “The New Low”. Post-hardcore this very much ain’t, but it’s an enjoyable romp through predominantly mellow alt rock styles.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





Frankie And The Witch Fingers are an American psych-garage band based in Los Angeles that formed in 2013, and have built a reputation performing as an opening act for for the likes of ZZ Top and Cheap Trick. The band consists of founding members Dylan Sizemore (vocals/guitar) and Josh Menashe (vocals/guitar/synthesizers), who have since been joined by Nikki Pickle (bass) and Nick Aguilar (drums). They've been busy, as Data Doom represents the band's seventh full album: how does it shape up?

Well, where can I start? How about with the themes: from fascism, military-industrial profit, and erosion of humanity, through to technological dystopia and Miles Davies? This album bizarrely covers it all, it seems. The album also covers a huge array of musical styles, with each musician showcasing their masterful musicianship skills. Perhaps the standout track, "Mild Davis", demonstrates this best; the track is, as you may guess, inspired by the legendary musician Miles Davis, albeit presented in a warped and manic way with early 70s electric work, proggy synths, heavy chunky riffs, and commanding vocals. So come on, what are you waiting for? Get your groovy asses in motion with Frankie And The Witch Fingers's Data Doom!

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by AndyMetalFreak





The rock music of the late 90s and early 00s that had a wave of garage rock and post-punk revival often feels like the last wave of rock bands that actually entered the mainstream consciousness before indie rock became the only one left, with bands like The White Stripes, The Strokes, or Arctic Monkeys. One of the bands that used to be pretty big in the early-to-mid 2000s but never really kept up the momentum were The Hives, a band that is a bit odd contextually because they were formed all the way back in 1993 in Sweden and even sound-wise they felt even punkier in a heavy way compared to their contemporaries. I'm no expert in their discography, but their last two albums, released in 2007 and 2012 respectively (so ages ago) lost a lot of the steam that made their early releases special. Now more than a decade after their last one, life comes out a death.

I'm not familiar enough with the band's lore and narrative to really talk about who this "Randy Fitzsimmons" is and what his death is supposed to mean, but one thing that is pretty clear is that The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons feels like the band expanding both inwards and outwards. Inwards because it recaptures the fun of the punky garage rock sound that they were known for, making it feel more vital than it sounded like on their last couple of albums. And outwards because some of the sounds weren't part of their canon before, injecting a little bit of the post-punk revival sounds they ran concurrent to while also generally being more explosive and quirky in the moments where they deviate. Considering the mellowing of most of their contemporaries, it's nice to hear a band figuring out how to expand their sound while also sounding completely revitalized with energy.

Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP







All the fun of having "Gay" in your album title it taken away by it coming from the name of the airplane that dropped the first atomic bomb in warfare. Somewhat of a weird title for such a melancholic album, and me being not fluent in Spanish means I have no idea how political or socially charged the lyrics of this records are enough to warrant the title, but what I can get is the mood of this album, something that's more melancholic and bittersweet. Chile's Asia Menor have only released a demo prior to this, and you can tell that the sound they have on the debut is still a very raw one, but it's a rawness in performance and especially production that works in their benefit to create a sense of anxiety inducing passion to the vibe of the record. It's loud and melodic in a very specific way that would be lost if the production was more pristine.

And when I say that the performance is raw, I don't mean that the musicianship is unskilled, because the exact opposite is true. There's a strong math rock / prog rock / midwest emo leaning that leaves the instrumentals to have a very intricate noodling structure, sometimes paired with some post-hardcore aggression, sometimes the prog side includes some synth soundscapes, but for the most part it's some very artsy and punky indie rock, steeped in rawness and intricacy. Sure, there are some moments where the raw production does get in the way of the songs having the proper punch, but also it would run in the danger of losing some of its appeal with a production too much cleaner. The album is slightly on the longer side at 51 minutes, and I feel it would've had an even stronger impact if it was about ten minutes shorter.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





Given Spellling's usual one-album-every-two-years schedule, I reckon it was about time we got a new Spellling album, and considering how much I loved the previous album, The Turning Wheel, for how great of an art rock record that was, I was pretty stoked for hearing how that would be followed up. Well, Spellling & the Mystery School starts with the very first Spellling song, meaning that it's a re-recording of Pantheon of Me's opener. That spells not having an actual follow-up but rather a recontextualization of everything that Spellling have done so far, an update to the current sound for all the older songs. Alright, cool, there are very few cases where I feel that is really necessary, since the material from Pantheon of Me and Mazy Fly was pretty good to begin with even if the evolution in sound has been perceptible.

Still, hearing these songs in a new context, one that often feels more well-developed and full compared to their original counterparts just goes to show how the musicianship is even more impressive this time around, and this does create a more homogenous listening experience through the admittedly still limited catalog. This is the kind of thing you'd expect from someone much later in their career, though retrospectives may prove that this is Spellling at her peak. I'm a bit more skeptical about why songs from The Turning Wheel had to be re-recorded as well, since the versions here feel less like upgrades and recontextualizations and more like regular alternative versions of already really great songs.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





Before going into what Eartheater, the project of Alexandra Drewchin, has been up to until this point, I have to inform you that only now did I find out that about ten years ago Alex used to be in an experimental rock band (Guardian Alien) with Greg Fox (Ex Eye, ex-Liturgy). That out of the way, Eartheater is a solo musical project seemingly started after the disillusion of the aforementioned band, and trying to list all the subgenres and sounds tackled by it would be pretty daunting, but let's just say it is the kind of experimental music that still feels approachable, and had various leanings towards art pop, folktronica, and post-industrial, among others.

So immediately the biggest difference about Powders is a smaller emphasis on the folk side of Eartheater's sound, sounding more in line with an art pop album, albeit a very versatile one. There's definitely a dash of both dream pop and alternative R&B in the vocals, with how dreamlike and sensual they are, and that goes hand in hand with the trip-hop elements in the beats. There's still some folk in the form of woodwinds, and I guess the acoustic guitar cover of System Of A Down's "Chop Suey", definitely something I wasn't expecting to hear having not glanced at the tracklist before listening to it.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





Alright, what the hell is with that cover art? What the hell is going on in there? Why does the face look like that? Why does that one "A" look like an amogus?!

Ok, that out of the way, I was definitely a bit put off by that cover art but Roisin's previous album, Róisín Machine, was one of my favorite and most listened to records of 2020 because of just how catchy, danceable, and cool it sounded and how it coincided with a sort of disco revival. A lot of that basically just boiled down to Jessie Ware also participating in that disco revival with another album that ended up as my most-listened to album. But whereas Jessie continued down that trend, Hit Parade is a little bit different from Róisín Machine, but in ways that aren't very strikingly obvious.

Well, it's still an album that takes a lot from disco and house, so there's plenty of continuation of sound. But this one is a collaboration with one DJ Koze, ensuring some consistency in sound, and here the house is overpowering the disco as opposed to its predecessor. And the house sounds here don't feel as overtly danceable and club-worthy, instead living in a more eclectic art pop territory. It goes into territories that are a bit less conventional, with the house music taking cues from various subsubgenres of electronica that veer into more psychedelic or soulful sounds often making the production feel even more impactful than the actual vocal performance. Bit baffling that Koze's name isn't on the actual record.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





There are those kind of albums that feel like they conceptually really ace what they're going for while also creating a sound that feels unique to that concept. Post-humanism and AI are certainly topics that aren't new and are honestly pretty trendy in the wake of the AI art explosion and deep fakes and whatnot, but it was something about Yeule's Glitch Princess that really managed to merge that with some sweet electropop blended with a lot of glitchy experimentation and a side of ambient that created an ambient pop that really felt like it came from the world of an artificial being experiencing the sweetness and bitterness of human emotion. That's not something that was relegated to that record itself, as a lot of that carries into Softscars as well, at least as far as the concept goes. Musically though, there's a bit of a left turn.

Glitch Princess' pop was pretty much purely electronic, and, as the name suggests, glitchy. Here, the pop seems a lot more informed by some 90s nostalgia with the dream pop nuance taking a lot from shoegaze and neo-psychedelia and indie rock, creating an instrumentation that feels a lot more analog compared to the previous digital one. It's still all very very seeped in glitches and a digital feeling, but it's that disconnect that's both this record's strength and weakness. I am a huge fan of the sounds borrowed here, and hearing them in this context does feel very refreshing, but I'm still not convinced that dissonance is something that's bothering me or that I appreciate, since it's hard for me not to be subjective about this. It does seem like the kind of album where you need to let some dust settle and retrospective of whether Yeule will continue and ace this sound or whether this is a one-off detour into indie rock inspired sounds will have some influence on this album's future perception.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





I’ve found a few intriguing jazz ensembles in the past few years, but Japan’s Mouse On The Keys have produced one of the most intriguing in the form of Pointillism. The group’s first major release since founding keyboardist Atsushi Kiyota was replaced by Daisuke Niitome, Pointillism features two pianists/keyboardists, but it is drummer Akira Kawasaki who is arguably the MVP here; that’s not because he delivers a frenetic technical performance, but because the drums add many unusual moments across the album’s concise 25-minute runtime.

Pointillism is peculiar from the outset, opening with industrial clangs on “Pointillism01”. Despite there being two key-based instrumentalists, many of these compositions, such as “Pointillism02”, are very minimalist, with the drums doing the lion’s share of the work. There are livelier compositions where the keys take on a more leading role, like on “Pointillism04”, but then at the opposite end of the spectrum there’s the slow, full-sounding almost tribal percussion on “Pointillism08” that offers a completely different experience. It’s quite a strange approach to writing jazz, so it certainly won’t be for everyone, but there’s something about the tone of the drums that makes this record bizarrely compelling to me.

Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





It's always a bit disheartening to find out about an artist after their death. Jaimie Branch wasn't completely unknown, but her profile was much lower compared to a lot of the most famous contemporary jazz musicians, hence why I hadn't heard of any of the projects she had worked on in her time as a professional trumpeter since 2007, other than a posthumous guest spot on a The Bug album. Her passing in 2022 seemed to have came at a time when her work was getting more and more recognition, but it seemed like the Fly Or Die solo album series she started in 2017 would be unfinished. Well, surprise, a posthumous album to wrap things up.

This is the kind of posthumous album where most if not all the recordings were already done, so there wasn't much of a case of having to record around the deceased's parts. Whatever was left to do created a very cohesive album, one whose jazzy flow moves all throughout the record. Jaimie also performs some keys and percussion and vocals, but with how much of the space is dedicated to it, World War is clearly an album done by a trumpetist. Sometimes it cuts in that clearly avant-garde way, sometimes it takes more of an ambient role that creates a spiritual jazz vibe. And all around it has such cohesion, sometimes more akin to a chamber orchestra, with the flow sounding not to dissimilar to something orchestral or even post/prog rock.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





I'm a pretty big fan on artists going on long running narratives, in this care an album series that weaves together a narrative concept, one that Matana Roberts started in 2011. Over more than a decade she embarked on what is described as a "visionary project exploring African-American history through ancestry, archive and place". In this edition, it is the story of a woman who died following complications from an illegal abortion, and considering awful recent events, it's sadly still a too contemporary issue. And through a combination of spoken word, spiritual jazz, post-rock, and modern classical, that tale is brought to life.

Boasting a pretty big ensemble of musicians that was also supposed to include fellow jazz musician from this very edition, Jaimie Branch, before her passing left her to be credited for her courage, In The Garden flows through spoken word passages and instrumental passages, alternating them to its need, and giving the instrumental especially a very dynamic flow through its large instrumentation and loose structures. Sometimes the orchestral nature gives way to post-rock sounding movements, sometimes Roberts' saxophone cuts so deep alongside said looseness that it feels like free jazz. There are some moments that feel a bit too chaotic as a result, but when they get focused, things take an almost uplifting turn.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





If someone were to collate every example of an extreme metal musician shifting focus and producing a non-metal album, I would have to assume that neofolk/dark folk would be the most frequently occurring non-metal style, at least in recent years; this month alone, we not only have Grift’s Dolt Land, but Thurnin, the distinctly not death/doom project from death/doom multi-instrumentalist Jurre Timmer (I, The Forlorn and Algos), has dropped its second album, Útiseta. Debut album Menhir caught quite a lot of attention back in 2021, racking up over 1 million plays on the In The Woods YouTube channel; early signs suggest that Útiseta may not end up gaining quite the same exposure, but fans of the debut will likely find more of what they are looking for on this sophomore effort.

Given the proximity of their release dates, there’s perhaps a temptation to use Dolt Land as a framing point to explore how different metal multi-instruments go about writing acoustic folk. On that front, Thurnin’s approach feels more fantastical and mystical than Grift; the delicate acoustic guitar arrangements take one’s mind to enchanted forests, as the cover art seems designed to evoke, or otherwise Medieval bards. Two elements are notable in their absence; Timmer opts against a consistent presence of either percussion or vocals, with only some occasional vocal cameos, often droning, representing the latter (and nothing representing the former). One song of note when it comes to vocals is “The Seeress”, on which an uncredited female singer conveys gentle sadness. By clocking in at just under an hour and featuring relatively little variety otherwise, Útiseta does feel more designed to function as background music, but if so, it certainly makes for extremely pleasant background listening.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia







The prolific one-man project Grift started out as a black metal project, but across a number of albums and EPs since, mastermind Erik Gärdefors has frequently meddled with softer sounds, often in the form of blackgaze or atmo-black, but an interest in acoustic folk has been evident for a while, particularly with the all-acoustic EPs Vilsna Andars Boning and Vilsna Andars Utmark. It perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise, then, to see Grift follow in the footsteps of Ulver and several other black metal bands in producing a fully neofolk album, which is what we have in the form of Dolt Land.

While there isn’t any distortion of note on Dolt Land, Gärdefors does leave traces of Grift’s black metal past by contrasting more crooned clean singing with harsher shouts. Instrumentally, an acoustic guitar-based core is fleshed out by tasteful percussion, melodica and glockenspiel; the melodica in particular adds a nice extra dimension to the charming opener “Silverne Stig”. However, Dolt Land is stirring even when just relying on the guitar/vocal core pairing; other instruments do pop up during it, but “Nattens Pilgrim” is very tender and evocative with its sorrowful guitar motifs. Potentially helped by his prior efforts in the style, but Grift’s pivot from black metal to neofolk here is probably one of the more successful ones I’ve come across.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





We're getting a new Mitski record pretty recently after her last one, striking a pace that she hasn't had since she first started getting a bit more mainstream recognition. We're getting to the point where there will be more Mitski records that will have been "the new Mitski record" for me than records she had when I first listened to 2016's Puberty 2, one that still remains my favorite of her sad indie girl albums. For some reason I wasn't able to get as much into 2018's Be the Cowboy and last year's Laurel Hell, with its more synthpopy sound palette.

Having a return to a more indie sound doesn't completely feel like a reverting, because some of what I still liked about those two albums finds its way on The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We. Less stripped back sonically and somewhat more polished than her early work while also relying a lot on dramatic sincerity in its lyricism is a pretty winning formula that might've just found the best of both worlds. Getting bits and pieces of country, chamber pop, indie folk, and maybe even bits of dream pop into it does create a pretty bittersweet and melancholic vibe that goes pretty well with some of the more orchestral tendencies.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





I'm not a really big country fan, and there's a reason why the "I listen to everything except rap and country" meme exists. With how commercialized the genre is and how that absolutely polished any kind of emotional edge it could've had, it's something that it's sometimes best avoided altogether. And yet whenever a country album gets big in the indie music nerd circles it almost always blows me away. Bigger nerds than me can probably tell the difference between country and americana, and maybe that's where the dividing line between what's sanitized and what's not lies, but here we have a country album I actually liked.

With a self-titled I was sort of expecting this to be a debut. It's not, but I'll take it as a good landing point to Zach Bryan's music, at least a more digestible one than the two-hour long album he put out before this one. The instrumentals here are pretty subdued, sometimes taking a bit of a country rock leaning, sometimes more of an indie folk one, but the heavy lifting is mostly done through Zach's lyricism and vocal delivery. There's a shitload of emotional impact in both of them, with a lot of introspective sorrowful meditations on nostalgia and one's place in life. The more lo-fi yet pristine production does create an even more intimate feeling to the record that the raw emotion really benefits from.

Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





According to Bandcamp, Sweden’s The Coffinshakers have been writing ‘horror country’ since 1995; I’m assuming that horror country is categorized by its lyrical content rather than its musical composition, as the group’s third full album Graves, Release Your Dead (no, they’re not the most productive band) feels quite firmly based in outlaw country, compared with music from the likes of Wovenhand that I’ve heard defined as gothic country. Between the band name, album title, and members’ stage names (which include Rob Coffinshaker and Joe Undertaker), the musical theme feels very ‘Misfits’, but musically you’re looking more towards the likes of Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings, with a splash of Ennio Morricone’s Western soundtracks and a bit of surf rock in some of the guitar work.

That’s no bad thing, though; no matter what he’s singing about, Rob Coffinshaker has a lot of gravitas to his vocals, and the songs are consistently fun, whether it’s the more surf rock-oriented “City Off The Dead” or the slight hoedown feel to the violin-accompanied “Wretches”. The Coffinshakers also bring in a couple of guests; “Halls Of Oblivion”, a more mellow roots rock-influenced cut, is one of several songs where a female backing singer adds dramatic harmonies to the main vocals, and those same backing vocals take “Down In Flames” into “The Ecstasy Of Gold” territory at times. I’m by no means a country music connoisseur, but Graves, Release Your Dead is the kind of easy-going, ‘Spaghetti Western vibes’ fun that can make the genre enjoyable to me.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





There’s a lot of artists under the synthwave umbrella who sound awfully similar to one another, and then there’s Gunship. With obvious pop inclinations, and taking as much influence from 80s synthpop/new wave as from any of the dystopian media that most other synthwave artists draw from. This is immediately apparent from the hooky opener “Monster In Paradise”, a guest-heavy track where Gunship vocalist Alex Westaway trades off with Wargasm’s Milkie Way while the likes of Dave Lombardo, Tyler Bates and Tim Cappello also get involved.

Other cameos on Unicorn come from Westaway’s former Fightstar bandmate Charlie Simpson (also Busted), Health, John Carpenter and Carpenter Brut. Westaway and Simpson’s own duet, “Tech Noir 2”, is a bit more laidback and slick than “Monster In Paradise”: perfect for cruising around Vice City to. Perhaps unsurprisingly, “DooM Dance” and “Blood For The Blood God” (featuring Carpenter Brut and Health, respectively) are some of the ‘heavier’/’darker’ cuts here, although those adjectives are relative; the latter is probably the standout cut due to its hooky synth motifs and tasteful use of distortion alongside the 80s synthpop lines. Like many other synthwave albums at the moment, Unicorn is content-heavy at an hour in length, but the combination of the various guests and the variety between songs, plus the more inherent memorability arising from its poppier nature, means that this album does more to justify its runtime than some of its peers.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia







I am a firm enjoyer of techno music, or at least certain forms of it, but while I’ve gone to my fair share of techno nights, I’m not all that well informed when it comes to techno albums. That’s probably why, since I discovered Chile’s Föllakzoid with their 2019 album I, I’ve got quite a lot of replay value out of it. Given that I was my only encounter with Föllakzoid for a long time, I’ve only ever known them as a techno act, but going back in their discography, one can find a couple of psychedelic rock albums early on. It was 2015’s III that saw a change in course, as they teamed up with German electronic producer Atom TM (aka Uwe Schmidt) to flesh out the synths. Since then, the partnership between the two artists has evolved, and for the second album in a row, Föllakzoid have sent isolated instrumental stems and samples to Schmidt, who has then re-assembled these components and crafted first I, and now V.

It's an intriguing concept, and given the stark differences between what appeared on early albums such as II and the self-titled debut compared with these two latest records, one wonders just how much Schmidt dominates the end result compared to Föllakzoid. Regardless of however much of each artist’s contributions can be heard in the end product, the important thing is that both records offer up compelling rave-worthy material: the driving beats, the subtle electronic hooks, the trippy soundscapes, all of them keep you hooked. Whatever guitar and bass stems found their way into these compositions are at best faintly detectable, and for the most part represent individual notes or sounds rather than fleshed out motifs (which is why I ponder how much of Föllakzoid’s initial parts can actually be heard here), but with electronica as great as this, one doesn’t find the lack of presence of these parts to be much of a loss.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





One way of getting a sense of how long this feature has been going on is tracking how many album cycles I got to cover. It's not a surprise that artists covered in the very first editions tend to be ones that stick with you, before the chore-ish nature of compiling this every month settled in, and James Blake's Assume Form back in January 2019 was one of my favorite albums from the very first edition. And in the meantime I also got to cover 2021's Friends That Break Your Heart, an album even more focused on Blake's singer/songwriter side of his sound, and how we got to the point where this feature is old enough to cover three of Blake's album cycles, and Playing Robots Into Heaven kinda turns Blake's discography on its head by acting as the electronica-focused opposite to the singer/songwriter-focused Friends That Break Your Heart.

Now this isn't saying that there's no elements of more singer/songwriter type of music present here, with some songs bringing that to a forefront, and with vocals and lyrics still being a pretty big presence, but in a more repetitive way that's in line with the electronica sounds here. Some of the processing here, especially on the first song, did make me wonder whether I accidentally left the YouTube player on a higher speed but for the most part the core of this sound is made by some really eccentric and pristinely produces beats that go through a bunch of electronica subgenres I'd feel too much of a snob to properly and exhaustively list, but it's really nice to finally hear more throwbacks to Blake's dubstep roots and a recontextualization into a much broader electronica sound with all the more mainstream experience that Blake got since as a producer and singer.

Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





The Chemical Brothers are possibly the first electronic act I ever heard; I have faint memories of a friend’s parent playing one of their albums while driving us around back when I was a young kid. Despite this early exposure, it’s taken me over 2 decades to give them a proper listen; with album 10, For That Beautiful Feeling, receiving ‘universal acclaim’ according to Metacritic, this seems as good a time as any to jump in. I feel like what remains in my head from those early experiences was of a slightly comedic sound, but For That Beautiful Feeling is a serious endeavour, albeit a bright-sounding and life-affirming one too.

The record, whose release is accompanied by that of a career-spanning retrospective book, starts in strong fashion with “Live Again”, a euphoric dancefloor hit featuring guest vocalist Halo Maud. The transitions between songs are seamless, the duo sliding imperceptibly into dance funk (“No Reason”), noisy IDM (“Goodbye”) and hip hop (“The Weight”, which samples South Bronx’s “The Big Throwdown”). The record can be rather quirky and upbeat, but there’s a tenderness to “The Darkness That You Fear” and subdued tone to the closing title track (again featuring Maud), so there’s some depth to what The Chemical Brothers have assembled on For That Beautiful Feeling.

Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





In the field of recent IDM, one of the artists that caught my eye enough to even make one of her previous albums my pick for that edition is Loraine James, with Reflections finding a way to mix vocal-centric songs with instrumental songs to create a dreamlike journey, something of an ethereal glitch that took cues from a lot of experimental EDM subgenres, and that's something that seems to be the case with her works in general, but that one was followed by reimaginings of someone else's work, one that I had a bit of a harder time getting into, and sadly that's the album that Gentle Confrontation sounds most like.

And the main reason why both Building Something Beautiful for Me and Gentle Confrontation are a lot harder to get into are the vocals, most of the time Loraine's vocals themselves, which have a pretty huge gap in quality compared to how well she handles the instrumentals. There are plenty of vocal guest spots on the record, but the processing on those and the way they're integrated on the record still doesn't make the record more seamless, and it makes me with that the gentle vibe of the instrumentals would've been left to exist as is.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP







Unsurprisingly I'm covering another one of the Billy Woods associated records, a man whose releases for the past six years or so have been as prolific as extremely consistent in delivering some of the best conscious and abstract hip-hop out there, even if some OGs might remember albums like 2012's History Will Absolve Me first showing the signs of how this run of releases will go. Alongside his solo run of releases, Billy Woods is also part of the Armand Hammer duo with Elucid, another pretty excellent rapper whose solo record, I Told Bessie, I've also covered, and a huge chunk of the hip-hop I've covered here comes from just these two names and the work they do separately and together. I know, that says a lot about how adventurous I am with the hip-hop I choose to cover (not enough), but it should also be a testament to the quality one expects when such names are associated.

And abstract hip-hop tends to be one of the branches of hip-hop I've been most attracted to and having an album like We Buy Diabetic Test Strips from a band that already worked to define said sound but going even deeper in that direction feels refreshing. The floating beats and sound effects that accompany the rapping create a sort of dreamlike atmosphere that deconstructs the music in a way that I haven't heard since Injury Reserve's By the Time I Get to Phoenix. The production on this thing is as surreal as it can get, some of the credits including JPEGmafia and El-P, truly some of the most abstract I've heard from the latter. It's really a delicate matter creating a vibe this indirect and still manage to somehow ground it with the rapping, cryptic as the lyricism can get, in a way where it doesn't feel like the music's elements contradict each other.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





Another edition another Nas album, or at least that's what it feels like when the literally the last edition had another Nas album. Sure, that's because that one was a leftover from the previous month, but two months apart is still quite the pace. Considering the six years gap between 2012's Life Is Good and 2018's Nasir, the pace since has been pretty insane. A lot of it is due to Nas collaborating with producer Hit-Boy starting with 2020's King's Disease. While I wasn't very welcoming to that album, it was revealed to be part of a trilogy, and each subsequent installment was even more well-developed and hard hitting than its predecessor. In between the second and the third, Nas released a seemingly unrelated album called Magic, one that was even more concise and somehow distilled the quality of the mainline of albums. A couple of months ago, with the release of Magic 2 it was revealed that there would be a "Magic" trilogy too.

Now that both trilogies have concluded and Nas and Hit-Boy have such a great late-career revival of six albums, even if there are pretty significant gaps of quality in between them, and as Magic 3 shows, also between tracks themselves. While the "King's Disease" trilogy concluded with its best installment, the "Magic" one failed to find the magic of the first one, with the second one especially feeling too much like an outtake collection. Magic 3 comparatively is a bit on the longer side, and its place at the very end of this run along with it being released on Nas' 50th birthday makes it feel like more of a victory lap, and some mediocre cuts aside ("Pretty Young Girl" for example) it's a pretty good victory lap. But I'm getting pretty tired of constantly having to figure out how to write these writeups on albums that aren't fundamentally different, so I'm glad I was along for the ride, but unless something Nas does really blows me away, this might be the last time I cover his music.

Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP

---

And that was it. You've made it through still alive. Congrats. See ya next month. Here's a Spotify playlist we compiled out of stuff featured here: