Written by:	RaduP, musclassia, X-Ray Rod, F3ynman
Published:	October 14, 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:

August 2024
July 2024
June 2024

And now to the music...

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One of my fondest pandemic musical discoveries came about courtesy of this article series, when a fellow staff member reported on a fascinating new debut album from Norway. Not only have I given The Line a multitude of replays over the subsequent years, I have also seen Kalandra perform live on multiple occasions. Considering that the band’s use of guitar distortion is confined to a slim fraction of their material, one thing that has struck me about each performance is how heavy Kalandra sound live; when I first listened to the long-awaited sophomore album A Frame Of Mind, I wondered if this may have been a prelude to a surprising evolution of their sound, but ultimately the album is as genre-fluid and remarkable as its predecessor.

In brief, I would evaluate the sound of The Line as a mesh of folk, rock and art pop with ambient touches; the first song on A Frame Of Mind, “I Am”, follows firmly in this vein, but although its acoustic opening, charming vocals from Katrine Stenbekk and use of strings aren’t surprising, the density and loudness of the distortion in the second half of the song certainly is, leaning towards metal in a way that nothing from them prior to this point has (perhaps touring with bands such as Leprous and Monuments has had an influence on the group). This ends up being a bit of a red herring, however; while there is heaviness to be encountered on other songs, such as the brooding, twisting “Are You Ready?”, A Frame Of Mind still leans more towards gentler, daintier sounds, like on the dreamy piano quasi-ballad “The State Of The World” and stirringly spiritual folk rocker “A Life Worth Living”. The group are arguably at their best when every facet of their sound comes together; “Bardaginn” is a spiritual neofolk song, but at times is upbeat and dancy, and other times darker and brooding, with wonderful texturing of strings, keys, acoustic guitar and thick distortion. Time will tell whether A Frame Of Mind has the ultimate enduring appeal of The Line, but it is an excellently crafted follow-up effort that embraces the strengths of their prior material while also bringing new facets to the table.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia







Out of all the albums from this edition, guess which one my father listened to?

Well, part of it is that both my parents are Pink Floyd fans and we just took our biggest trip as a family to see David Gilmour in Rome. But that's a story for another time. Regardless, this is an album I grew very familiar to because I heard most of it performed live. I liked both 2006's On An Island and 2015's Rattle That Lock in their very cozy pleasantness, and I think that if it wasn't for the concert context, Luck And Strange would've occupied a similar place, albeit slightly more special because it would've been the first Pink Floyd-adjacent release I would've covered. I can't objectively say that Luck And Strange is better or worse than either of those two, but I'm very content with this being the David Gilmour album I got to have a strong connection to.

There's very little actual prog rock in the sound, instead opting for a even more cozy version of the art rock sound of the latter Pink Floyd era, with a lot of the focus being on Gilmour's warm guitar sound, especially evident within the intro track. There's a stronger blues influence in tracks like the elegant orchestration of "The Piper's Call" and especially the surprisingly energetic "Dark And Velvet Nights". But there are two parts of Luck And Strange that really remain my highlights. First some songs have David's daughter Romany providing backing vocals, but there are two where she gets the proper stage. "Yes I Have Ghosts" is sort of a bonus track, previously released in 2020, but "Between Two Points" is the weirdest happening, having David's daughter play all the vocals on a cover of an obscure British indie pop act from the 90s, and yet it works really beautifully. Second, the solo in "Scattered" is such an absurdly high highlight, even if the way it felt live is better thousandfold, it manages to perfectly encapsulate what makes David's guitar playing so intensely emotional.

Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





Hello, Boil Brain is the debut full album from Bristol’s Sans Froid, although at just under 30 minutes, they test the limits of ‘full album’ as an accurate term. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the group’s sound is the key role that vocalist Aisling Rhiannon’s piano arrangements play, but there is a general off-kilter vibe to the rhythmically complex, at-times dissonant experimental art rock found on this album. Having said that, Sans Froid aren’t beholden to chaos, and are perfectly willing to explore more muted and emotionally bare concepts during Hello, Boil Brain.

The album, in line with its title, begins with “Hello” and ends with “Boilbrain”; the former is a brief, eerie vocal-driven introductory piece that reveals a similarity between Rhiannon’s vocal style and Björk, and the latter is a dark, brooding, understated piano ballad that reprises “Hello” in its closing stages to bring the record full circle. In between, Sans Froid let loose with an array of sounds that range from prog rock and math rock, to indie, to heavier tones; “Planket” has jagged riffs beneath the panicky piano, and a tour de force performance from Rhiannon that shows off signs of Mike Patton on top of the Björkisms. The conscious decision to typically place the guitars below the piano in the mix even when the former is aiming for heaviness produces some intriguing sounds, as if the piano itself is unleashing such heaviness itself, although the fun math rock leads on “Split In Two” are given their chance to shine. It’s a swift listen jampacked with ideas, and an impressive addition to the output of one of the UK’s most interesting heavy music scenes.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





I mostly remember Floral Tattoo because they made it very easy for me to find them by releasing their previous album, You Can Never Have a Long Enough Head Start on the 3rd of January of 2020, meaning that when I was searching for releases from the then new year I had a pretty small pool to choose from. But impressions remained even past me conveniently finding it and covering it, because of how it sounded like a version of Loveless that was injected with pop punk and midwest emo. By contrast, The Circus Egotistica is more inconvenient, not only being released in a much busier period of the year, but also having the album's full title be The Circus Egotistica; or, How I Spent Most of my Life as a Lost Cause, having a nearly 80 minute runtime, and having song titles that are ridiculously longer than the album's long title.

But that's just presentation and context, the music on the album itself is a progression on the sound of You Can Never Have a Long Enough Head Start, still blending pop punk and emo and noise pop, but this time branching things even further. The synths are even brighter and more spacey, the production is even denser and more psychedelic, making The Circus Egotistica sound like an even wilder dream. Elements of the mix end up muddied together, leaving the synths and the vocals, both screamed and sung, to be the elements that are the easier to cling to, but The Circus Egotistica makes that journey worthwhile by being almost prog-like in how it structures its sequences.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





"Foxing" is a band name I swear I've heard before. But I check their profile on a website like RYM, all of the album titles and covers are just slightly familiar but in a way that I couldn't be certain I've seen them before. They have quite a lot of ratings, at least relatively, and they're in genres I usually like to explore, so it's very possible I stumbled upon them in the past. But as it is, Foxing was to be my first conscious first contact with the band, knowing that if a band puts out a self-titled at this point in their career it's gotta be something to pay attention to. I knew they were an indie rock band, so when the very clearly indie rock vocals came along alongside a very mellow backdrop, I was prepared for something kinda lukewarm. Imagine my surprise.

You might've also noticed the "noise rock" tag I added. Well, I somehow missed that when I first clicked "Play". When the indie rock suddenly exploded with screamo/post-hardcore vocals and some of the densest soundscape I've heard in a rock song I genuinely reverberated. It was a left-turn that "Secret History" did that I still haven't properly gotten accustomed to even after the album's hourlong runtime, but it's that contrast between its dramatic mellowness and its dense explosiveness that feels so refreshing, and how it makes you feel like you can never stay too comfortably in your seat. There's more to Foxing than how shocking the contrast is, a lot of its highlights coming from how genuine it feels even within said contrast.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





It isn't that unusual for slowcore and indie rock to take from folk music. It also isn't that unusual for its longer structures to resemble the crescendocore of post-rock. But having those two things together is much rarer. And especially if the folk music that the band is taking from is not from the Anglosphere. Here we have Ramper, who hail from Granada, Spain, and thus the folk music that they take from is a tad different and more specific to their region (or so I would assume, I haven't heard a lot of Spanish folk), but not so wildly different that it evokes no familiarity, since a lot of it still boils down to acoustic guitar plus voice.

Solo postres (Spanish for "Only desserts") is a somber slow-building dirge. "Doom metal" is one of the tags on Bandcamp, and while it is not a metal album, I can definitely feel the common ground in the gravitas of the emotions and in the occasional guitar distortion, albeit one whose part in the long-form feels closer to heavy post-rock, with only one song being shorter than eight minutes. Alongside orchestration like horns, flutes, and strings that do emphasize the somber tones of the record towards something even more dramatic, working in tandem with the soft folky vocals, and a production that lets each element be clearly audible while still maintaining an ethereal vibe.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





Bergen, Norway is a city most strongly associated in a musical sense with black metal, Bergen Wave and the composer Edvard Grieg; Slomosa go in an altogether different direction. While their sophomore album is titled Tundra Rock, it stylistically has much more in common with warmer climes, specifically Palm Desert and the stoner rock scene. Having said that, opening song “Afghansk Rev” opts not for a driving rocking tempo, but for languid revelling in slow fuzzy riffs and bluesy guitar licks, in a way not too dissimilar to bands like early Weedpecker.

In namedropping that band, it might be worth mentioning that there is a heaviness to Slomosa’s tone that at times pushes them towards a more metallic sound, although most outlets I’ve found tend to refer to them exclusively as a stoner rock act. Second song “Rice” is more rock-inclined, with a fun groove and rhythm to it, and the smooth instrumentals are nicely accompanied by a lead vocal style from Benjamin Berdous that, while pushing towards a louder shout in the choruses, has a certain warm gentleness to it. Co-vocalist Marie Moe nicely complements Berdous as a backing singer, but she is given the limelight on other songs, such as the calm verses of the psychedelia-tinged “Red Thundra”. Although promotional blurbs for Tundra Rock try to portray the album as a bit of a hybrid of rock genres, to my ears it falls firmly into the stoner rock category; however, it’s certainly some of the strongest and most charming new music of its kind that I’ve heard in the past few years, particularly in the first half of the tracklist.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia





Self-described as "Music to grow your hairline back to", of course all typed in all caps, Fat Dog are a London band whose style is a bit hard to properly categorize or to make heads or tails of, other than it being clear that they take having fun very seriously. Woof is the debut, dog themed as it obviously can be, even though thankfully that's not a gimmick that takes up too much space on the record other than poking at the animalistic part of human nature. As should most self-respecting conceptual punk acts. Now that I uttered the word "punk", I guess that is the best first indicator of what this one is about.

Even though it is fun and energetic and somewhat upbeat, it isn't really pop punk, but rather something closer to the dance-punk and its new rave counterpart, all merged with some gothic industrial darkwave, taking from both the 80s-ish style of EBM and from more modern synthwave sounds, maybe even some dance sounds that are quite close to EDM, but all blended in a way that sounds exciting and quite eclectic. Throbbing synths alongside a very dramatic vocal performance really does make for a blood pumping listen, a short and sweet deal that gets the best of how energetic all styles involved can be.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





Well, this is quite a weird and oddly specific release to cover, because it is technically Maruja's first full length. The band has been releasing EPs for a pretty long while, debuting in 2016, but they've only properly picked up steam and attention last year with the Knocknarea EP, and building on it with this year's Connla's Well EP, both being really great jazzy post-rock/punk releases that I wish I was aware of and covered when they got released. And now The Vault is quite a hefty release compared to the line of EPs that preceded it, reaching nearly 90 minutes of material. But there's a catch.

First, these songs are not professionally recorded, instead they're all recorded using a phone placed in the middle of the room while the band performed, so the jump from how Connla's Well and how The Vault sounds is quite jarring. Secondly, there's a lot of improvisational jam involved in the songwriting, which explains why the opening track alone is 25 minutes in length. Thus, The Vault is not an easy listen, something that doesn't feel like it should be a first contact with Maruja, but also something that does reward people looking past its surface, revealing a band taking the post-punk sound of the past decade and stretching it into improvisational avant-garde and crescendo-building post-rock, creating something quite beautiful and daring, both in spite of and because of how raw and unpolished The Vault is.

Bandcamp

by RaduP





This is one of those albums that from the very first minute I understood I needed in my life. The premise itself was enough to cause excitement. Menace Ruine has been for many years one of my favorite drone metal projects. With its mystical dark folk undertones, the duo of Geneviève Beaulieu and S. de La Moth tapped into an unique sound. Now Geneviève takes full command and releases a solo album of impeccable, dark yet life-affirming neofolk. I feel I’m not doing the album full justice by comparing it to Menace Ruine’s albums but it does help explain Augury’s sound and themes. The songs are all carried by Geneviève’s faithful acoustic guitar. Her playing shines true throughout the whole album. Tranquil melodies that can go from heavenly to moody in such a seamless way. Such songwriting is astonishing as the instrumentation is minimalistic but the sound is so full. Only some background strings and synths can be heard from time to time but it is the guitar that is the centrepiece here.

And of course, the vocals. Just as Geneviève’s voice is one of the defining characteristics of Menace Ruine, the same goes with her solo work. Now there is no distorsion to back her up. The nakedness presented here makes Augury a really strong album. I always felt Geneviève’s voice sounded as ancient as nature itself. I can’t stress enough how much I adore her voice. Her timbre is easily recognisable and oh so charming. It is soothing and relaxing on the mind and body. I can feel the cold yet comforting winds of autumn along with the smell of a campfire grace my face as I hear her sing on the melancholic yet addictive opener “La Chanson De Coyote”.

"I've mistaken water for fire
And I invited the winds
So you name a boat
To help me travel away
From this world I had dreamt
Without boundaries
Where we were nothing but free
Where Coyote was me"

If one were to tell me this album was in fact a collection of folk songs from the medieval ages I would have believed that. The timeless effect on this album is like a spell that holds me tight. It is my hope that Geneviève releases the lyrics online because listening to Augury while reading the lyrics truly elevated my first experience with it. Her words match the music and atmosphere perfectly as they too seem inexplicably old. “Severed Head”, a song that touches on the myth of Medusa, is both unnerving and intriguing as Geneviève warns "I may bleed yet not die. I may kill you with my eyes". Luckily for us, "Severed Head" got a lovely lyric video so that song can be fully appreciated. But other tracks like the foreboding “Sink My Own Boat” or the poetic "Ephemerals" really reach another level when one can follow along with the lyrics. For an album that runs barely for half an hour, I sure came up with a long review. This is due to Augury’s very high replay value. If you let it happen, these melodies and vocals will follow your autumns from now to the day you meet the soil. I'm most confident this is true for me.

Bandcamp

by X-Ray Rod





Another month passes by, and Cryo Crypt welcomes back attentive listeners to their reliably entrancing soundscapes. This time, the ambient label's flagship project Mountain Realm have joined forces with Tales Under The Oak in a Tribal Alliance. Tales Under The Oak, hailing from Germany, typically specialize in telling stories of toads and frogs within a medieval folklore setting. Sometimes they even present their tales in audiobook fashion with pleasant narration, but, here on Tribal Alliance, they follow Mountain Realm’s lead in presenting a purely instrumental album.

Descending from the frost-covered, fog-shrouded Mountain Realm come ominous and mysterious melodies, heralding the arrival of the northern tribes. From the south come the Toadfolk, bearing gifts of delicate and light-hearted tunes to brighten the sullen, echoing caverns into which their journey leads. Thus is the premise of Tribal Alliance: the meeting of north and south, cold and warmth, two shades of ambience that fuse so naturally into arguably Cryo Crypt’s best release to date. Highly recommended for those who wish to delve into a dark fantasy setting, rich with both soothing and unnerving synth-work that's surprisingly addictive.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by F3ynman





The saxophone has somewhat became synonymous with "jazz", in the sense that adding a saxophone to a track will suddenly turn it at least influenced by jazz. Sometime the saxophone is more a wild cutting storm in an avant-garde jazz way, sometimes it's more atmospheric and doomish, but it always feels at least a bit jazz. When Colin Stetson had his metal project with Ex Eye, that felt jazzy. But also he's done a myriad of work, a bunch of it more inspired by ambient or by modern classical music, which explains Colin's proficiency in doing soundtracks. Which is all to say that The Love It Took To Leave You is a saxophone focused album that doesn't feel inherently jazzy.

Instead here the saxophone is a driving part of a soundscape, one that often feels closer to a movie score with how it follows tension and release, being very lively for a release that is basically ambient leaning. There are a lot of elements like horns and percussion that work alongside it, but it's generally the way that the saxophone is used to create a living breathing space is what makes a Colin Stetson album feel so vital, and even though a lot of it feels like things that Colin has done before, the skill on display in both the shorter tracks and in the album's 20 minute centerpiece feels insane. Rarely do drones sound so harrowing and yet feel imbued with such a palpable tension.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





One of the most disheartening moments of last year was Sprain breaking up the same year they released what I hoped to be their breakthrough album, The Lamb As Effigy, one of the most groundbreaking experimental rock albums I've heard all decade, but considering that similar trajectories have befallen Black Midi and Black Country, New Road just as they reached the zeitgeist of experimental rock, I guess that there's now a curse associated with the genre. Frontman Alexander Gregory Kent has since started other projects like Shearling and Big Brown Cow that have yet to properly put out any releases, and instead it seems like a solo project with his name on it will be the first proper release since Sprain's demise.

Teaches Dust To Reason does have some common DNA with Sprain, in that both have a skeleton of post-rock of the more long-winding Swans/GY!BE-ish kind, one that was already imbued with drone and ambient, but while Sprain leaned towards the rock side, Alexander Gregory Kent leans into the drone ambient side. Teaches Dust To Reason is made up of two 25+ minutes long tracks that create an atmosphere that feels desolate but also strangely sacred, a sense of bliss and bleakness combined, all through alternating harsh and soft elements in the soundscape.

Bandcamp | Spotify

by RaduP





The dark folk/neofolk trend across the past couple of decades has naturally centered around the Nordic countries and Northern Europe in general, not least due to the success of Wardruna and Vikings, but its influence has expanded beyond the confines of this region. Despite its name, Eldrvak is an American one-man project, serving as the vehicle of multi-instrumentalist Cody Shaffer. Eldrvak had some fairly major success in 2022 with the song “...And The Sky Turned Black”, racking up over 3 millions listens on YouTube. The project’s second album, Transcendence, didn’t manage to capture the same reach, so good luck to Shaffer this time around with album number three, Shadows And Ash.

Eldrvak is self-described by Shaffer as Celtic rather than Nordic in its influence, and the important role for melodic pipes and hurdy-gurdy on opening track “Dawn’s Embrace” reveal the music to not have as much of an ambient focus as some other dark folk acts. With only 2 tracks below 5 minutes in length, Shadows And Ash is a lengthy affair, and going from one song to the next, while the overall vibe of each track is very pleasant (“Ephemeral” in particular is a charming affair), there aren’t substantial changes in approach within or between songs; one exception to this is ”Serpentine”, which exhibits influence from Arabian music. The mood does also fluctuate, as there’s a darkness to “Through Shadows And Ash” that contrasts with the relatively uplifting “Waltz Of The Waning Sun”, and Eldrvak is similarly adept at both approaches. Without being a standout addition to the scene, Eldrvak’s latest is more than effective enough to work nicely for any fans of revivalist epic folk music such as this.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia







Sam Shephard (the man behind Floating Points) has been rather musically explorative over the past few years; probably his most eye-catching output has been Promises, the ambient/jazz/modern classical collaboration with Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra that received acclaim and award nominations, but subsequent unreleased anime and ballet scores further distanced him from already unconventional electronic dance origins (releases such as Elaenia effortlessly reached into other genres such as jazz and soul). However, Shephard was not inclined to leave this scene behind altogether, and ultimately found himself inspired to follow in the dancefloor-oriented rave footsteps of 2019’s Crush, resulting in a more ‘traditional’ Floating Points release in the form of Cascade.

That the opening track “Vocoder”, originally released in 2022, is afforded the ‘Club Mix’ tag in its name makes the mission objective of Cascade clear; rampant techno beats, vocal samples and occasional synth pulse outbursts make this track destined for club raves. The album is relatively single-minded in its vision, but there are fluctuations in approach; despite its relentless pounding beat, “Key103” is almost melancholic at times with some of the IDM textures and synths woven into it, while in contrast, “Birth4000” goes all out with the fat, pulsing synths. Other tracks deviate even further, most notably “Ocotillo”, which begins with scattered, twinkling electronics that resemble new age music before gradually descending into a mania of sporadic glitches and breakneck rhythms, but the album is also afforded an understated denouement courtesy of shimmering ambient closer “Ablaze”. While Shephard’s ambition and versatility as a producer is remarkable, his aptitude for this kind of pure electronic dance music is fully evident on Cascade.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by musclassia







My first encounter with Nala Sinephro was three years ago when I covered her debut, Space 1.8, a jazz album I thoroughly praised for its forward-thinking-ness, but mostly for being an album unto which you can slap the "avant-garde" label without it being a challenging listen. Instead it was more of an airy, spacey, and synth-heavy affair that felt like a cosmic version of nu jazz, and it ended up as one of my favorite recent jazz albums. A follow-up to it would have a lot to live up to, but Endlessness delivers on its predecessor's promise while preserving what made it great in the first place.

Endlessness feels less avant-garde than Space 1.8. One one hand that might be because the surprise of the sound doesn't work the same way the second time around, but also because some of its elements have been toned down. For example, the electronic component feels less inspired by IDM and more from space ambient and old school progressive electronic, something that feel like it gels better with the spiritual jazz fusion at the expense of sounding more familiar. But because it feels more familiar it gets to more easily swoon you into its soundscapes, and you'll rarely find a jazz album that is this masterful at building soundscapes and letting you get lost in them.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





Considering that I covered the collaboration between Jaubi and EABS, and then I covered the album that EABS made afterwards, it's also fair to cover the album that Jaubi made afterwards. Well, Jaubi originally hail from Pakistan, and part of their cultural legacy being felt in their music is what made 2021's Nafs at Peace such an exhilarating spiritual jazz record. There was obviously more to it than just how it was steeped in Hindustani musical traditions, and the band proved on the aforementioned collaboration that the spiritual jazz backbone can serve as a common ground with pretty much any jazz fusion band.

And now A Sound Heart delivers more on that jazz fusion side, toning down some of the Hindustani elements to create something that sounds smoother and groovier while still keeping the instrumental palette. It's pretty neat to hear such groovy jazz fusion with instruments like "tabla" and "sarangi" integrated within the more casual jazz instruments. The two sides have some differences in sound, with each attempting to capture one side of "love", the first side being more lively in a yearning way, and the second side being more contemplative in a devoted way, both of them coming together to create a beautiful fusion of sounds.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP





Does it count as having listened to some international hip-hop if it's only the band that is from someplace that's not in the Anglosphere, while the guest rappers are all from the US? Like it's no secret that most of the hip-hop that gets traction, and that I listen to and cover is from the US, and occasionally from the UK or Canada. Other than that one time I covered a German rapper that's pretty much it. Well, ØKSE hail from Norway. And while hip-hop is an important part of ØKSE the album, I wouldn't necessarily call ØKSE the band a hip-hop one considering that all of the rapping is done by guest rappers.

Instead, ØKSE is a jazz band. Jazz and hip-hop have been a very fruitful combination, with jazz usually taking the form of samples, but the band + rapper combo is one that's been trier way too rarely. Here, ØKSE recruit Elucid, Billy Woods, Maassai, and Cavalier to deliver verses on some of the songs on the album. Just enough to make hip-hop a defining characteristic of the record while not really being a hip-hop record, as there are just as many tracks without any guests, where ØKSE get to showcase their avant-garde jazz muscles, and it's no surprise that it is the most abstract of rappers whose flows get to match its vibe.

Bandcamp | Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP







It's a bit of a shock knowing that Ka has been rapping since before I was born, having been part of various groups since the early 90s before his first solo record in 2008. Does make sense why he felt wise beyond his years, and I think it takes that kind of experience and of resolve to stay underground that leads to albums like this. This isn't the first time I've covered Ka, even though there have been three other albums released since 2020's Descendants Of Cain, two of them released on the same day, but it makes sense that a return to the biblical themes would be in line for Ka.

The style here is a very intimate and introspective one, with the delivery being spoken at such a low volume as if Ka is making sure that the listener only can hear him, while the beats are devoid of any rhythmic percussive elements, relying on the repetition of the soul and gospel and jazz samples to have a semblance of rhythm. The understated delivery makes it easier to take the lyricism and its dissection of Christianity in. That in tandem with the dreamlike production works pretty smoothly, and the abstract lane of hip-hop is one where Ka still manages to feel unique in that makes it feel inherently philosophical.

Apple Music | Spotify

by RaduP

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While publishing this article I stumbled upon the news of Ka's death, thus this edition is dedicated to their memory.