Written by:	RaduP, musclassia, F3ynman, X-Ray Rod
Published:	September 15, 2024

Wait A Minute! This Isn't Metal! - August 2024
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:

July 2024
June 2024
May 2024

And now to the music...

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The Smashing Pumpkins’s level of importance in the annals of alternative rock is rivalled only by the size of Billy Corgan’s ego; still, with Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness’ 30th anniversary dangerously close on the horizon, and even the relatively well received Oceania distant in the rear view mirror, it’s been a while since the band have had a widely regarded hit to their name. Still, it’s never too late for any band to achieve a measure of redemption, and Aghori Mhori Mei has been heralded as something of a return to form; who knew that a tight 45-minute rock album with a bit of bite to it would go down better than a 140-minute rock opera?

Despite claims to the contrary elsewhere, Aghori Mhori Mei is not really a metal album, but there’s a surprising amount of gnarliness and heaviness to some of the writing, such as the stoner rock drive and fuzz heard on album opener “Edin”; the energy, texturing, groove and melodicism of this song is a very welcome surprise upon first pressing play on the record. In its wake come the stop-start and prog-tinged “Pentagrams”, crunchy radio rocker “Sighommi” and rampant “War Dreams Of Itself”, among other highlights, while the band’s synth inclinations are satiated on the dreamy, uplifting indie cut “Pentecost”. How well Corgan’s inimitable (for better and worse), nasal vocal delivery fits with some of the album’s heavier moments in 2024 may be up for some debate, but it’s honestly just refreshing to hear The Smashing Pumpkins putting out an album with this amount of bite to it at this stage of their career.

Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





Jack White made his name as one half of the White Stripes duo, and I'd be hard pressed to find a more relevant garage rock revival band. Even outside of that one song that everyone knows, they just were one of the biggest bands in rock music's last decade of relevancy. What they were doing worked. Then, after the band's dissolution, Jack White started his solo career, and Blunderbuss was a pretty important album for me at the time for teenage me who usually mostly listened to old music. But there was a specific quirkiness to that album that does kinda sour with time, and that was most obvious with its follow-up not really being my thing. Ever since there's been stuff from Jack that's been more experimental or more rocking or more stripped back, and even though some of it managed to recapture his appeal, none did quite like No Name.

First, it's so odd to have such a weird album release for something that's clearly one's most appealing album in a long while. From its title, to it's minimalist packaging, to it first only being released on vinyl for a pretty long while before coming to streaming, to it originally having no tracklist, to there having been no advance singles. But No Name captures what worked with White Stripes. It's loud and quirky. Loud guitars and loud drums. A lot of bombast. No fat to trim, no bullshit. In fact it doesn't even need much of a tracklist because it is so packed with bangers that it doesn't feel like there's any need for any standouts. I wish "playing it safe" always resulted in albums that are just this rewarding to listen to.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





Early last year, Fucked Up released One Day, an album that was (fitting with its name) conceived and recorded within the course of a single day, although the span of sounds heard on it (encompassing post-hardcore, indie and alt rock) was far greater than one might expect such a time-constrained project to result in. The implausibly busy Toronto outfit have released an array of splits, EPs and mixtapes in the subsequent 18 months, but their next full-length follow-up, Another Day follows conceptually in the footsteps of its predecessor. The instrumentals on Another Day were actually recorded several months before the release of One Day (which itself was recorded over 3 years before its release), but after the addition of vocals in late 2023, the spiritual successor has finally been released unto the world.

Like on One Day, the 10 songs comprising Another Day are brief and varied. Opening track “Face” is an initial onslaught of indie-tinged post-hardcore driven by pounding drums and ripping vocals despite the euphoric aura of the other instrumentation. “Stimming” calms down both the percussion and Damian Abraham’s vocal approach (with a whole backing choir to match), but in contrast the guitarwork is more overtly rock, with a grand array of flashy guitar licks and arpeggios. Another Day is perhaps more consistently up-tempo and rowdy than its predecessor, and the persistent harsh style of Abraham ensures that the album never surrenders too much levity (even if the vocals could perhaps be a tad lower in the mix), but those looking for a gentler sound might be inclined towards the jangly and gazey “More” or melody-heavy “The One To Break It”, and the one-time lead vocals of guitarist Mike Haliechuk offer a welcome softer, cleaner touch to this lively, vibrant cut.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





Things can often turn out in an ironic way. See, I have covered Deep Purple before, and Whoosh! was an album of theirs that is showing a band quite comfortable in their age, with a bit more in terms of blues and boogie instead of trying to emulate the sound of their old sound. So it was the kind of thing that I respect them for finding their own sound that fitted them for where they were in their career. I was won over by it but I can't say that it had much staying power. And that was the album that got a main page review, while the heavier album gets written about here.

=1 instead is the band's first album since the departure of guitarist Steve Morse, who was with the band for nearly 30 years, and since the addition of guitarist Simon McBride. And here Simon McBride sounds like Ritchie Blackmore, and there are also a lot of bits where Don Airey sounds like Jon Lord. If it wasn't for the 79 year old Ian Gillan's clear wear and tear in the vocals, you could be fooled that these songs come from the classic era, and it's pretty easy to be impressed by how energized the band sound here. It doesn't feel as adventurous as they used to be, most songs taking a pretty standard hard rock approach of 3-5 minutes songs, with the one closest to being an exception being the 6 minutes closer "Bleeding Obvious", a song that feels like the result of a feedback loop, like it was influenced by the metal bands that Deep Purple first influenced. I have to be impressed by how well Gillan sounds for his age, but I also have to admit that his vocals fitted better when the band acted their age.

Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP







The Norwegian brother/sister duo-led progressive pop/rock octet Meer are back with another grandiose, sophisticated and intricate effort in the form of their third album, Wheels Within Wheels. The cavalcade of vocals, guitars, strings, keys and percussion (with guest flute and vibraphone for added measure) on the album combine in sumptuous fashion to craft evocative, rich and entertaining tracks that meet at the crossroads between prog rock, art pop and indie folk, in a way not dissimilar to the more recent Act albums from The Dear Hunter; opening track “Chain Of Changes” in particular would not have sounded overly out of place on Act IV: Rebirth And Reprise.

‘Progressive rock’ tags aren’t thrown around loosely; Meer dabble plenty in the use of unorthodox time signatures, and the average song length of over 5 minutes offers plenty of time for explorative writing. Yet at the same time, catchiness is at the centre of Johanne and Knut Kippersund Nesdal’s vocal arrangements and trade-offs with one another, whether it’s on the more bombastic “Behave” or the bubbly, folkish strings-heavy “Golden Circle”. Wheels Within Wheels isn’t an especially heavy album, but there is a fair amount of distortion on the likes of “To What End” and “Something In The Water”; to counter that are the strings/piano-oriented ballads like “Today Tonight Tomorrow” and “Mother”. Capping everything off is the aptly named 9-minute closer “This Is The End”, which spans Meer’s heavier, catchier, proggier and symphonic components in fine style.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





I do feel guilty in a way for covering this album here instead of giving it a main page review, especially considering that I reviewed their previous albums twice. One part of that decision is having a lot of main page reviews on my plate already because the number of new releases every week is insaaane, and a shorter writeup here is easier. But the other part of that decision is that Twenty Pills Without Water is the first Bent Knee album where I kinda questioned its presence on a metal website. It's not like any of the previous releases were metal, especially not the hyperpop-infused Frosting, but they were mainly rock albums that were just "prog metal coded" enough to pass along.

Twenty Pills Without Water does feel more middle of the road in terms of how much of it is more rock oriented and how much of it is pop oriented. Up until Frosting it felt like they were more the former than the latter, on Frosting they were clearly very much the latter, but on Twenty Pills Without Water it's a pretty clean balance. There's also a lot of it that is quite atmospheric and laid back, with enough moments where the guitars take a second place, and even in the more lively moments a lot of it is filled with electronic grooves. Most often it is the vocals that take center stage, and when the vocals are as insanely versatile and a joy to listen to as Courtney Swain's, I'm reminded of why Bent Knee are as amazing as they are.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP







Delving is the solo project of Elder’s Nick DiSalvo, and 2021’s debut album Hirschbrunnen suggested that his musical interests at the time were already being fairly strongly represented in the output from his main band, as the album’s contents sounded very much like 2019-2020 Elder with a slightly lighter touch (and no vocals). It was an album rooted in a very similar style of mellow, explorative psychedelic and progressive rock, and on certain tracks even ventured towards some of the heaviness heard on Omens. Three years later, DiSalvo aims to demonstrate divergence in Delving’s sound on All Paths Diverge, but at its core, the album is very much a continuation of its predecessor.

Opening track “Sentinel” perhaps distinguishes itself in the manner that it uses synths as a key, bouncing element in the mix, but the slick drumming, psychedelic guitar work and proggy rhythms and structuring will feel familiar to listeners of The Gold & Silver Sessions. A song that is perhaps a bit less expected in sound is “Omnipresence”, at least in the first half, as the heavy synth/keyboard presence, mellow soundscapes and evocative lead guitar lines bear some resemblance to the solo work of Steve Rothery (or at least what I know of it from The Ghosts Of Pripyat). It is the increased importance of synths, keyboards and electronics (particularly of note on “New Meridian”, which eschews all other instruments in its opening minutes in favour of ambient electronic soundscaping), as well as the overall lighter feel to the record and its textures, that ultimately distinguish it from Hirschbrunnen and Elder, but the firmly recognizable tone of DiSalvo’s songwriting is fully intact here, and All Paths Diverge will very likely appeal to anyone who’s enjoyed the recent output from any of his projects.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





If you know anything about the Great Emu War, then you know that these birds are a force to be reckoned with. And this Emu is no exception: a trio from Australia's Sunshine Coast, Emu play the purest example of groovy and entrancing rock ‘n’ roll that I've heard all year. The warm, invigorating riffs roam freely, interweaving in a progressive rock style, enveloping the listener in a captivating web of addictive musicianship. The expressive wailing of the vocalist adds another fun layer to this retro approach, sounding nostalgic but also very fresh. Whether you want to chill to the psychedelic instrumentation or bob your head to the catchy groove, Emu have got exactly what you need, providing both soothing ambience on songs like “The Hatching” and irresistible energy on tracks like “Desert Phoenix”. The inexhaustible supply of melodies is truly awe-inspiring, crafting a super satisfying, 44-minute-long journey of lively, mesmerizing rock ‘n’ roll that I can't recommend enough.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by F3ynman




As sure as the sun rises in the sky each morning, there’s a new King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard album out. In fairness, 2024 is poised to be the band’s quietist year since 2020 unless there’s more releases set to follow Flight b741 (the whopping 5 albums in 2022 may have spoilt some fans). What’s more, after a fairly experimental 2023 that saw ventures back into metal and subsequently progressive electronica, the Australians are in somewhat more familiar territory on this latest release, although its particular spin on retro rock is more indebted to the music of 60s/70s American country rock than the psychedelic garage of some of their other works.

“Mirage City” in particular harks back to the 70s blues rock of acts such as The Allman Brothers or The Grateful Dead, with the twangy guitars and soothing gospel-esque vocal harmonies, not to mention a lively harmonica cameo in the final minutes. While the band’s affinity for improvisation laid the foundations for the album’s songs, this time King Gizzard restrain themselves to brevity, with only one song crossing the 5-minute mark, and they place an unusually heavy emphasis on catchiness in their songwriting; the likes of “Antarctica” and the title track make for prime sing-along fare. There’s still quirkiness that comes through, particularly on the wacky, rampant “Hog Calling Contest”, and the 8-minute closer “Daily Blues” is very pleasant in its more expansive venturing. Flight b741 is proof that King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard can pull off almost anything they set their mind to, and that they will set their mind to almost anything; 70s nostalgists will find this to be an aural feast.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





Last time out on Jettison, And So I Watch You From Afar gravitated towards their lighter, more serene sounds, with their mathier tendencies dialled down. It’s all change this time around for the Belfast post-rock ensemble, who debut on Pelagic Records with Megafauna, a pandemic-born tribute to their collective hometowns in Northern Ireland that was performed in full one week after its release at their spiritual home of ArcTanGent. Where Jettison was a mature, ambitious multimedia project, Megafauna is a fun romp through noisy math rock and post-rock territory.

“North Coast Megafauna” strikes a good balance between the styles; there’s some cute guitar noodling and rhythmic experimentation, and also a bunch of dynamic shifts, with ASIWYFA unleashing genuine crunching heavy distortion on more than one occasion, despite there being an overall bubbly vibe to the song’s melodicism. That heaviness is sustained into subsequent songs, with “Do Mór” delivering a real visceral punch in moments alongside the exuberant guitar soloing and the jazzy drumming in the song’s latter half. Still, the group haven’t abandoned the virtues of gentler sounds; “Mother Belfast (Part 1)” is serene and mellow in its keyboard-driven soundscaping for a lot of its duration before an eventual eruption and intensification, while “Years Ago” is a fun, meandering math rock venture that revels in delicate clean guitar noodling. While Jettison was certainly mature and adventurous, I did find it to be a tad unfulfilling; in contrast, Megafauna is a rowdy and fun jolt of enthusiasm.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia







The last time State Faults appeared on Metal Storm, this article series was still using its primitive initial layout; the Californian post-hardcore outfit have come as far in the intervening years as we have. Clairvoyant was very typical in its sound (melodic aggression and dreamy post-rock passages), and also its brief songwriting; five years on, the group still retain these elements, but the short, flurries of aggression on the likes of “Blood Moon” and “Heat Death” have been joined by longer, more ambitious efforts, for an album that almost twice the length of its predecessor.

Children Of The Moon is still very recognizably post-hardcore/screamo, although with an augmentation from the use of euphoric strings/keys on top of the stirring riffs and lead guitar parts (the solos on this album are consistently excellent). Even in its brief runtime, “Blood Moon” takes listeners up to the heavens, and then longer tracks like “Leviathan” deftly balance State Faults’s aggressive tendencies with a focus on warmth and texture. The true standout moments for the band arguably come, however, on the album’s two epics around the 10-minute mark. “No Gospel” is a genre-spanning effort that balances the dark and the light, and injects its vocals (harsh and clean alike) with a mountain of emotion, and that’s before it takes listeners into its tender post-rock second half. “Bodega Head” is for long stretches an acoustic sing-along, and the way in which it gradually evolves, intensifies and soars highlights just how far State Faults have come to be this accomplished a band within their genre.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia







Alright, before I stumbled upon this I had no idea who Monty Cime was, though seeing that the only other album under this name is titled "The Independence of Central America Remains an Unfinished Experiment" did make me very interested, and the current album's title also felt appropriately intriguing and aggrandizing. Well, as expected, The Cime Interdisciplinary Music Ensemble is some very challenging music, if the "avant" in the tags didn't already make that clear. Usually seeing that tag leads me to think that it will sound like King Crimson or Black Midi, so color me surprised when the album finds a new way to be outside the box.

One of the ways is by being unapologetically Latino. Well, its lyrics are still in English, but a lot of the jazz fusion underneath is so brashly showing its latin roots, undiluted by the punk and rock that lie on top of it. And its progness comes from how much of it just feels like a manic jam session, both insanely groovy but never in a way that is conventionally comfortable to the listener, more akin to Mr. Bungle or The Mars Volta if they played long revelatory and introspective songs, grand in scale, grand in emotion, and not in a way that music usually described as "emotional" is. Really great to come across an album that genuinely feels like not all ways to make music have been done yet.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





Tigran Hamasyan is a fascinating voice within the modern jazz scene, and one whose genre-hopping is primed to appeal to metal fans more than most of his contemporaries. Not only does the Armenian-born musician’s integration of folk influences from his lineage bring a compelling dimension to the table, but the array of synths and keyboards that the pianists brings to the table on top of his virtuosic piano skills delivers an extra quirkiness. On top of that is an unexpected polyrhythmic heaviness to certain songs that has caused the reasonable drawing of parallels to acts such as Meshuggah. Hamasyan has pulled out all the stops on his latest album The Bird Of A Thousand Voices, a 90-minute, 24-track transmedia odyssey is to be accompanied by art installations, films and even a video game.

The collaboration between Hamasyan and Dutch visual artist Ruben Van Leer is inspired by the Armenian folk tale Hazaran Blbul, and the vocals (provided by a range of guest musicians) often exhibit folk music hints, along with some of the array of instruments brought to the table, but the writing can owe as much to ambient music and pop, even without factoring in the heavy jazz foundation to a lot of the musicianship. The variety of keyboard tones may not work for everyone, particularly in the more garish moments of the frantic opening track “The Kingdom”, but the trade-off between synths and piano is just one of the fascinating components of the shockingly heavy and polyrhyhmic “The Curse”, which thunders away with a fierce bass tone and drum display. The sheer variety and scope of this album is difficult to begin summarizing within just 2 paragraphs, but those with an adventurous taste in music will find The Bird Of A Thousand Voices to be a remarkably fluid, sprawling yet cohesive fusion of sounds and styles.

Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





Remix albums are a format that often don't get a lot of attention, since you're often also gonna find remixes instead used as bonus tracks on extended versions of albums, and also because of their compilation-like nature they're often unlikely to be revisited again in full. That's also gonna be the case with Undone, which even though it is an EP of six songs, does feel quite uneven in replay quality. It does make sense why this album was chosen as the one to have a remix album associated with it. Most of her previous stuff did have a strong electronic component, but She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She felt like it went deeper into that while also being the least rock-oriented of them.

The first remix done by ††† (Crosses) adds a drum and bass quality to the percussion along with a darker trip-hop vibe to the bassy instrumental that goes well with the darkwave of the original "Tunnel Lights". Boy Harsher do give "House Of Self-Undoing" a nocturnal quality with the synthpop. Forest Swords distill "Whisper In The Echo Chamber" towards something more ambiental and post-industrial. Ash Koosha's remix of "Dusk" also has a bit of a drum & bass quality, but it's much more noisy and glitchy. Full Of Hell also takes "Eyes Like Nightshade" in a noisier direction, adding their own harsh vocals to the throbbing industrial sound. Finally, Justin K. Broadrick turns "Everything Turns Blue" into a darker dub version of itself. While it's the Boy Harsher and Justin Broadrick ones I like most, most of them suffer from feeling like they had to be written around to accommodate an existing Chelsea Wolfe vocal line, creating a bit of disjoint that's kind of part of them being remixes.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





I discovered Whispering Sons in the most ideal way: With a blind concert with no previous knowledge of the band. While I was on vacation with Radu, he dragged my ass to a festival in Hungary. We only managed to catch 3 bands and Whispering Sons is the band that impressed me the most that night. And one of the other two was freaking Enslaved. When a performance of a band unknown to you leaves such a lasting impression, you know it means something.

Whispering Sons is a belgian group that dives headfirst into the murky waters of darkwave and post-punk. They have a solid foot in the traditional sound of the genre with monotonous but unbelievable catchy beats and basslines along with super catchy guitar leads and atmospheric synths to glue everything together. It is dark, brooding and deliciously addictive. While preparing myself for this review, I listened to their previous two albums, Image and Several Others. They are great albums in their own right and I would definitely recommend them for those seeking music along those genres. But I felt that they were starting to get a bit too predictable in their songwriting and mood.

The Great Calm felt like a much needed upgrade as new sounds and vibes were introduced. It is still darkwave / post-punk though. The drums are incredibly solid in their consistent and powerful beat. It was something I felt both live and in the studio to the point that I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t a drum machine. The bass is clean and with a thicc tone that really brings down the groove while the guitars are light and dreamy in that characteristic post-punk or goth rock way. Whispering Sons has a secret weapon though. And that is Fenne Kuppens, the vocalist. There is so much personality in her voice and it instantly makes the band stick out among the other acts in the scene. Her tone is very, VERY deep. Right now I can not recall too many women with a tone like hers. Perhaps Nico, Jarboe or Diamanda Galas are the only ones that could match or surpass Fenne’s deep tone. Despite this constant bassy sound coming from her pipes, her voice is not monotonous or boring. On the contrary, she is capable of matching all the different moods I get from The Great Calm. From the quirky and almost festive “The Talker” to the punchy and punky “Walking, Flying” and “Loose Ends”. But some of the vocal performances that stood out for me the most were on the slower, more pensive songs like on “Still, Disappearing” where the jazzy, dark instrumentation reminded me of the great late records of Oxbow. There is also “Poor Girl” that starts innocently enough with quiet guitar melodies until it turns into a really heavy, powerful noise rock song that could have been the soundtrack to one hell of a thriller. I really enjoy how Whispering Sons is capable of changing from slow, desolate and depressive vibes to faster, violent and really engaging darkwave that easily entrances the listener to dance the night away.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by X-Ray Rod





I've covered a lot of bands from the post-punk explosion of the 2010s, and Fontaines D.C. were initially a band I was quite skeptical about. 2019's Dogrel being a debut arrived quite late to the party, and even if the music on it was pretty good, I wonder what staying power the band would have at the tail end of a decade in which a lot of similar bands sprung up. I continued to be skeptical towards 2020's A Hero's Death, even if I liked the goth rock touches, but it was 2022's Skinty Fia that really won me over, with how it enhanced both the goth rock touches present on its predecessor, while also bringing up more of the indie rock that laid dormant within their sound as far back as their debut.

Well, Romance brings that indie rock even closer to the surface, to the point where the post-punk sound they got birthed in takes a backseat. There's a lot more in terms of 90s alt rock, particularly in the balladry of fellow edition colleagues Smashing Pumpkins, albeit with a different vocal tone. The songwriting here is pretty catchy, from the pumping chorus with its gasp/stop elements in "Starburst", to how nostalgic "In The Modern World", to The Cranberries touches in a song like "Bug", to just a little bit of Dinosaur Jr in closer "Favorite". There's a lot more to Romance than just the parallels I can trace to other bands, because it's also that I felt instantly familiar with these songs on second listen, and Grian Chatten's vocals continue to be the biggest hook for the band's music.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





I'll start off by saying that this is the kind of album that needs to be taken within its context and shouldn't be someone's first Nick Cave album. Go listen to Tender Prey and Let Love In first, at the very least. His discography, both the stuff with The Bad Seeds, the collabs (often of soundtrack nature) with Warren Ellis, the old post-punk of The Birthday Party, or the punk blues of Grinderman are vastly spanning in genres, moods, themes, and there's plenty to discover. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds's material for the past ten years, while superb, feels like it is more therapeutic in nature, and its introspection might not make much sense or feel too musically exciting without the context of loss that they came from.

In 2015, Nick Cave's 15 year old son died after falling off a cliff. 2016's dark Skeleton Tree and 2019's ethereal Ghosteen reflected a man working through that loss. In 2022, Nick Cave's 31 year old son also passed away. You can't put an expiration date on grief, let alone when life gives you more to process. It's understandable that Wild God continues to be music that deals with that. And now that Nick himself is older, he has his own mortality to deal with. Even aside from the title and the presence of a track like "Conversion", there's a sizeable musical influence from gospel, with gorgeous choirs being present much more often this time around. Aside from that, there's theatrical string sections and sombre moments, but also, more so than on any of his albums in the last decade, there's some underlying feeling of hope.

Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP







Is there any album whose weirdness just seeps into your mind and doesn't leave it? I first considered Sentir que no sabes for the June edition, and then for the July edition, and rather than leave it to rest like a bajillion other albums that I listen to but don't end up covering, there's something about it that it does very specifically that I couldn't just leave. I already knew Mabe Fratti from her work in Titanic, Vidrio also being such a beautifully weird album that bordered more on the jazz/classical/post-rock field, but Sentir Que No Sabes is... both more conventional and less conventional.

On the most surface level it's a pop album simply because Mabe Fratti's vocals, gorgeous as they are, are still conventional and you could expect to hear them on anything with that level of accessibility. And there are songs on Sentir Que No Sabes that do follow pop conventions, albeit more of an art pop kind considering the cello and piano focused instrumentation, but there's always something slightly... off... about them. The instrumentals are layered in a way that would be more befitting of an ambient album, and the blend of jazz and folk instrumentation working with just the right amount of dissonance can really throw someone off. It's like listening to this album massages my brain in a way that isn't completely comfortable.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





There’s something very admirable about a new music project that starts out with a high level of ambition evidently on display. i Häxa, the collaboration between Anavae’s Rebecca Need-Menear and multi-instrumentalist Peter Miles (who has Architects’ The Classic Symptoms Of A Broken Spirit on his CV, among other albums), will be releasing a self-titled debut full-length album in November that represents the culmination of a 4-EP journey across the rest of the year. August saw the release of Part Three, perhaps the darkest and heaviest of the releases from the duo thus far.

i Häxa’s style is difficult to exactly pinpoint; there’s a major electronic basis, albeit one with a slight dark ambient leaning, but there’s also a certain prog-tinged rock heaviness, as well as moments that veer towards folk, trip-hop and other sounds. The opening song on Part Three is geared mainly towards the former of those sounds, as moody electronic noises and layers form a subdued backdrop to Need-Menear’s enticing, sinister, hushed vocal delivery. Her tone initially turns more upbeat and quirky on “Dryland”, somewhat Kate Bush-esque, but the song eventually takes a turn towards heaviness with dramatic string arrangements and drums; at its climax, the song is almost willing to burst out the speakers. Guest drummer Tim Langsford also appears on closing song “Destroy Everything”, but while “Dryland” feels like it could be an audition for a Bond Theme gig, this final track has an aggressive electronic set-up and drum energy more reminiscent of The Prodigy, and Need-Menear responds in kind by injecting some distortion into her more intense delivery. With how much range is covered in just these four songs, it will be fascinating to see the whole project come together on i Häxa in November.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





Simon Heath, the mastermind behind the dark ambient labels Cryo Chamber and Cryo Crypt, has released a follow-up album to Frostfall (which I covered in the April 2024 issue of WAMTIM!). This new installment of his Mountain Realm project, Shadowlorn, is more of the same approach, offering soothing synth soundscapes within a medieval frame.

As with most ambient music, there are no vocals. Thus, to understand what this album's all about, you can either read Simon Heath's envisioned narrative, which is inscribed in the Bandcamp description. Or, you can choose to close your eyes, succumb to the mesmerizing atmosphere, and interpret the sensations that greet you. This is the option that I have chosen. As I lie here in the dark, listening to the subtle keyboard playing, I sense an aura of mystery and allure. I have a desire to uncover the secrets that lurk within ancient dungeons and mist-shrouded forests. There's also a feeling of melancholy, as if the melodies are reminiscing the bygone glory days of a fallen kingdom. Somehow, despite the minimalistic musicianship, Mountain Realm manage to craft a sonic world that seems to welcome further exploration, inviting listeners to let their imagination roam amidst the mysteries of the Mountain Realm.

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by F3ynman





The first time I encountered the "Kuggur" name, it was only used as the photography alias of Guðmundur Óli Pálmason, who I was already familiar with for his musical contributions. Those who don't remember my two part interview with him might still be familiar with the Sólstafir, Potentiam, and most recently Katla. albums that he performed drums on. Later, the name "Kuggur" began appearing on dark ambient releases of his, though some of the older ones I covered appear to have been scrapped from the internet, and I admit that there were a few releases I've missed in the meantime.

Grimmt Er Gu​ð​s Hjarta does come as a bit of a surprise stylistically. It still mostly operates in a dark ambient space the way that all previous Kuggur albums did, and just like those it does take take another sound and puts it through a dark ambient field. If previous releases did that with Arabic folk or dark jazz, this one is built around pulsating beats and sparsely layered melodies that create quite an ambient techno soundscape. The synth melodies do have a bit of that cold Icelandic sensibility, often accompanied by some piano melodies as well, and it's minimal enough that its darkness never becomes overwhelming, but more akin to a tension that's always there when you're alone at night.

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by RaduP





Jon Hopkins’ brand of electronica has always had an inclination towards sparsity and spaciousness; even his more overtly techno/IDM-oriented tracks, such as “Open Eye Signal”, have had a high degree of subtlety to them. His music is inspired by and geared towards chemically-altered experiences, and his previous album Music For Psychedelic Therapy was particularly overt about this. His new release Ritual was also conceived as a sonic companion to a psychedelic experience, but in this case, it was as the soundtrack for an exhibition centered around Brion Gysin’s Dreamachine; the shorter composition used as this soundtrack was expanded upon to create the 41-minute uninterrupted journey that is Ritual.

Similar to Music For Psychedelic Therapy, Ritual is firmly in ambient electronic territory; the first couple of tracks are built largely upon ambient synths, with concrete rhythms only emerging partway into “Part II – Palace / Illusion”. The album gradually fleshes out as it progresses, with subtle pulses providing beats beneath the euphoric sheen, until finally by “Part V – Evocation”, additional motifs and layers add depth and impetus, and an oscillating two-tone churning distorted element that emerges towards the end of this track serves as a platform upon which the mix reaches a peak in the following movement. It is a real slow burn, and may test the patience for some, but the climax of Parts V and VI (particularly with the faint vocals in the latter) just about provides sufficiently satisfying payoff to make the journey ultimately worth it.

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by musclassia





Likely best known for being one part of the long-running noise rock duo Lightning Bolt, Brian Gibson is also a video game developer, with a key emphasis on the importance of music within games; after a lengthy stint working for Harmonix on the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series, he has worked as an indie developer at the companies he co-founded, Drool and Puddle. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Gibson has composed the music for these studios’ output, including first Thumper and now Thrasher. Thrasher differs from these previous releases in not being a rhythm game, and the soundtrack distinguishes itself in kind.

Thrasher is an electronic album, but rhythmically is quite loose in a number of places; tracks such as “Magenta Machine” and “Monolith” de-emphasize or exclude beats beneath the dazzling synth layers in prolonged sections, and even a track with persistent beats like “Timekeepers” opts for quite a muted soundscape, the repetitive central rhythm given only the lightest of synth flourishes. In contrast, the livelier “Mica” seems more suitable for arcade action, driven forward by a fast, pulsating rhythm and lightened up by melodic phaser sounds. Out of any of the electronic styles that I’m somewhat familiar with, Thrasher perhaps feels closest to IDM, but in a somewhat muted manner; it makes for a stark contrast to the lively, brash, distorted sounds of Thumper.

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by musclassia





For the most part the formula of hip-hop is: a producer/DJ does beats from samples, and a rapper does verses over it. You'd think that's a pretty rigid formula, and technically what JPEG does here is that, even though he is both rapper and producer, but he pretty much breaks all the rules, and even in the past, even on albums like Black Ben Carson or All My Heroes Are Cornballs, which did sometimes adhere to more conventional rules, they'd only do so on occasion and instead still showcase a tendency to look outside the box. And that's even more so the case for I Lay Down My Life For You.

Metalheads are quite likely to appreciate I Lay Down My Life For You because of how often these samples are guitar centric or distorted in a way that doesn't feel like those "nu trap metal" blends but instead work with JPEG's often punkier vocals. My favorite moment is "JPEGULTRA!", which starts with the "You think you know me" sample from Alter Bridge's "Metalingus" (also known for being wrestler Edge's theme), followed by Denzel Curry's guest verse (the two also did a collab album right before this one, Scaring The Hoes) and the verse ends with "Ayy, Peggy, let me talk to 'em one time, hold up" which is so ironic to have as a rapper's last line. Having soul samples alongside these distorted samples, punky vocals alongside more conventional rapping alongside something almost R&B inspired shouldn't work as well as it does, but I Lay Down My Life For You isn't as disjointed as it should be based on its structure.

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by RaduP





Country music is one of the genres that suffers from the biggest amounts of gatekeeping, almost enough to rival metal, and that's something that's easy to notice even without being that big of a fan of the genre. As long as someone isn't part of the archetype and doesn't get the Nashville stamp of approval, good luck. So it's even more cathartic seeing someone who doesn't fit the archetype and who was seemingly barred entry still make it big due to making it big in an indie way. Orville Peck, being both openly queer and not born in the US is not someone who you would expect to be a success story in such a gatekept genre, and before Stampede I'd have had to be convinced by some statistics, but the guest-filled Stampede can't be read as anything but a communal show of support.

Of course, you also have to look at the guest-filled Stampede from the perspective of it basically being an album of duets, where original material lies alongside variations and covers, and as such one where each track kinda stands for itself. Not all of it gels well within the context of the album, and sometimes Orville and the guest don't really get either. So, yeah, Stampede is uneven and disjointed. That said, there's very little on it I'd call outright bad, and there's more tracks that work than ones that don't. I won't go through each of them, but Willie Nelson and Margo Price make "Cowboys Are Frequently Secretly Fond of Each Other" and "You're an Asshole, I Can't Stand You (And I Want a Divorce)" such hilarious cuts, and hilarious in a way that still feel earnest instead of being a parody. Even if not all tracks work, it's nice knowing there are now tracks with both Peck and Beck, Elton John, and Kylie Minogue on them.

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by RaduP





When I was slowly warming up to country and figuring out there's more worthwhile acts than Johnny Cash or Merle Haggard, Sturgill Simpson was one of the first acts that showcased an earnest love of the genre while also showing willingness to push it forward. It was clear that this was a more indie move, considering that I found Metamodern Sounds in Country Music and A Sailor's Guide To Earth through those circles rather than through specifically searching for country, but it did feel like what I heard from him since didn't really live up to those two albums. Well, now it's a new name, and music that's slightly different in appeal.

It does make a bit of sense why Sturgill Simpson felt the need to adopt a moniker for this record, as Passage du Desir is a bit of a departure from the sound. At its core it's still a country album, but a lot of it takes from rock music, albeit mostly of the soft rock (or yacht rock as it's sometimes called) in a way that works really well with the balladry here. There are moments that feel as sundrenched and twangy as a country song should sound, a lot of it that feels more bittersweet and romantic. The clear highlight is the nearly ten minutes long closer, "One For The Road", a song that feels equally somber and electrifying.

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by RaduP





Noise can be emotional. Maybe not by itself. There's a lot in Parannoul's music that is intensely emotional, from the vocals to the piano melodies, yet all of it is wrapped in a lot of noise, and yet that doesn't hinder the emotional appeal. Might actually have the opposite effect, because of how something being noisy does equate it being very intense. How else could it be perceived then but it also being intensely emotional? Parannoul seem to get that on a very primal level, with their brand of noisy shoegaze being very evocative in terms of nostalgia and bittersweet melancholy, but in a way that's extremely intense.

Out of the three bands that I first discovered through the Downfall of the Neon Youth split album, Asian Glow put the project to rest, and sonhos tomam conta continuously experimented with genres. It is Parannoul that feel like they're left to push for this intense brand of noisy shoegaze (though experiments like the recent glitchy collab with Fax Gang do show some branching out). Sky Hundred, on most levels, is a continuation of what To See The Next Part Of The Dream and After The Magic were doing, but it also shows a commitment to being and sounding lo-fi, and by extension, noisy. I can see why that might feel like a detriment, but for me it works.

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by RaduP







Magdalena Bay is my favorite pop band to come out in the past couple of years. Not "one of my". Maybe some solo artists I prefer more, but considering how much partnerships like this are getting rarer in the pop field, they're still my go to. Mercurial World got a shitload of listens from me, and a lot of that album's songs still get to be regular listens for me, and what works about it is a very humorous and slightly alien appeal they have as kind of pop outsiders doing synthpop that doesn't feel like anything else, while also having some of the best and most conceptual videos around, with something that's very appealing to very online people. I was super curious to see how they would follow that one up, and not counting the third in a series of mixtapes they dropped since, Imaginal Disk is the proper follow-up.

First, this is a more ambitious record having almost 10 minutes more runtime than its predecessor, but also the songwriting and production somehow feels even more quirky and alien. The basis of it is still pop of the synthpop variety, and considering how easily the songs got stuck in my head I consider it a success on that front, but also there's a stronger psychedelic feeling on the album, some of it seeming closer to what the two were doing in their previous prog rock band, Tabula Rasa, with the trippy rock section in "Tunnel Vision" being a prime example of that. Psychedelic touches appear even outside of a rock aspect, with some alternative dance and disco and indietronica also feeling quite hypnotic. Did I mention it's full of dorky bangers?

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by RaduP





Including this release here is a bit tricky. If you go by Bandcamp and Metal-Archives and RateYourMusic, these red cover art songs that Ulver have released since Grieghallen 20180528 are all singles, some of them having two songs on each release, but they're not announced as advance singles for an upcoming album, at least not yet. There's a chance that in the future, there will be an album with all these songs and others, in which case that will get a separate review. But on Apple Music and Spotify, "Hollywood Babylon" appears as an EP that compiles all the songs released on these four separate releases. So, just to be clear, that is what I'm reviewing here.

It's a bit odd to have "Hollywood Babylon" as the title track for this, considering that it is the silliest song of the bunch. It's very tongue in cheek but it's still quite off-putting to hear Rygg sing "Don't fuck with America". Trumpetist Nils Petter Molvær gives "Forgive Us" a nice dark jazz touch, and "Nocturne #1" sounds like something that would've been on an EP or soundtrack that the band would've made in the mid 2000s. "A City In The Sky" is the best song of the bunch, sounding like a more jammy and groovy song that would fit on The Assassination Of Julius Caesar, while "Ghost Entry" is the most futuristic of the bunch, with some of the most unique sounding synths, even coming with its own Autechre remix, that turns it into something ghostly that would fit on Perdition City. If it's not a new album on the horizon that these singles precede, then these are the last recordings of Tore Ylwizaker. May he rest in peace.

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by RaduP

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This edition is dedicated to Tore Ylwizaker.