Crown - Psychurgy

Review by Justin C.


A friend of mine recently took me through the playlist he likes to use when he runs. It was mostly hip-hop and radio-friendly guitar rock, but he said his main criteria was to pick tracks that were consistently up-tempo and aggressive. I think Crown's first full-length, Psychurgy, achieves that kind of focus of purpose, but this isn't music you would listen to while running or lifting weights. If your workout routine involves slowly and methodically punching boulders into pieces, then Crown has the playlist for you.

Aside from two interstitial pieces ("Kynesyk I and II"), the album is unrelentingly thundering and heavy. They have a song called "We Will Crush the Open Sky," and I don't think that's a metaphor. The music is a mix of doom, industrial, and drone that would be perfectly at home on a playlist with Jesu. The band's two members are both guitarists, leaving the drumming to a capably programmed drum machine, but the real draw is the melodic-yet-glacial melodies they create. The music sounds like it was composed to pull down mountains, but there are still stick-in-your-head melodic hooks, like the mournful figure that weaves through the track "Serpents and Fire." Vocals come as satisfying growls and "cleans," at least of a sort. The vocals are often treated with different electronic effects, adding a nice bit of variety, although in a couple of places, I found the vocal effects to be a bit too heavy-handed. The otherwise excellent track "We Will Crush the Open Sky" gets off to a rocky start with vocals that are so flattened and altered that they sound a bit like Stephen Hawking's vocal synthesizer, but this is a rare misstep on an otherwise fantastic album.

The fact that the duo have only been a band since 2011, and the fact that they've released an EP, a split, and a full-length of such high quality in such a short time makes me very excited to hear what they'll do in the future.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

Taake - Noregs Vaapen

Review by Natalie Zina Walschots. Originally published here by Exclaim.


Infamous Norwegian black metal band Taake emerge from a cloud of scandal and imprisonment to triumphantly release Noregs Vaapen, their best record to date. Taake is an old Norwegian word for mist or fog. The band belie this name with an incredibly clear, concise artistic vision characterized by icicle-bright guitar work. Noregs Vaapen can be interpreted as a response to the dissatisfaction in the black metal community; it is a reflective, celebratory, anthemic album hearkening back to the finest classical black metal.

The tracks on Noregs Vaapen all have very linear song structures, as opposed to the circular compositions on a great deal of contemporary black metal. The vocals hiss and ooze like poisonous fumes, somehow both splinter-thin and complex. There's even an extraordinary banjo solo in "Myr," which is a battle lusty as it is twangy. Taake have a few stylistic surprises tucked into this brilliantly executed, classical structure. This is as smart as it is slavering and vicious.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

Sunn O))) Monoliths and Opinions: Part IV - White1

Review by Craig Hayes.

Self-proclaimed 'power ambient' duo Sunn O))) was formed by guitarist Stephen O’Malley and bassist Greg Anderson in the mid 90s, and since then, the band have explored the possibilities of sonic and emotional reward via thundering and increasingly more adventurous drones. Recently, Sunn O))) put their entire catalogue up on Bandcamp, and over the next few months I'm going to look at every release. Call it my 'Sunn O))) Monoliths and Opinions' project, or call it a fan biting off far more than he can chew. Whatever the case, here we go... unto the breach my friends; I hope to see you on the other side.

Play your gloom axe Stephen O'Malley
Sub bass clinging to the sides of the valley
Sub bass ringing in each last ditch and combe
Greg Anderson purvey a sonic doom.
― Julian Cope + Sunn O))): "My Wall"

Obviously there's a multitude of reasons why an album sits on your list of favorites, but one of the prime reasons is likely to be because it’s how you first encountered a band. 2003's White1 was where I first stumbled across Sunn O))), or, more to the point, it was where I first heard the album's opening track, "My Wall", which features Julian Cope's madcap poetry (see above). I was sold on Sunn O))) from that moment on.

White1 continues the sub-sonic explorations of previous album Flight of the Behemoth, but where that album brought the droning noise courtesy of collaborator Merzbow, White1's collaborations bring the droning mysticism. Along with the aforementioned 20 minutes of druidic lyricism of "My Wall", White1 also features "The Gates of Ballard", which contains Norwegian folk poem "Håvard Hedde", recited in Norwegian over a distorted stoner rock bass riff by Runhild Gammelsæter--O'Malley and Anderson's compatriot from Thorr's Hammer .

"A Shaving of the Horn that Speared You" follows an even more skewed trail, with abstract flickers of electro-acoustics and sonorous breaths rising from, and falling into, a chilling ambient void to construct a deeply buried nightmare set to haunt in the wee small hours. "CUTWOODeD" also features on the Bandcamp version of White1, seeing Sunn O))) collaborating with Ulver--a match made in ambient heaven (or hell). Accordingly, "CUTWOODeD" is a steep plummet into atmospheric doom, with the menace therein coming not from any prominent riffing but from foreboding electronics riding atop some tail-end feedback, with a fantastic and fantastical vintage sci-fi/horror vibe cradling all.

White1 is as ruminative and doom-laden as any Sunn O))) release, but simultaneously, it's a huge departure from what came before. Sunn O))), of course, always provide unconventional routes into darkness, and White1 is an idiosyncratic and gloomy commentary on a range of topics outside the norm, thanks to contributions from Ulver, Gammelsæter and Cope. White1 barely stalks the borders of its more metallic predecessors, but while the mammoth rumbling riffs are scarce--and thick atmospheres and the blanketing of textures are the key means of purveying the mood--what White1 lacks in brute, upfront force is more than made up for by providing four distinctly different and compelling tracks.

Sunn O)))'s sinister feedback is evident on White1, but it’s the band’s least sludgy, and least overtly crushing album. The band’s decision to experiment with a more multifaceted sound (de-tuning, muted aggression, distorted acoustics etc) means that White1 is less of an immense wall of sound. However, like all Sunn O)))'s work, if taken in large doses, emotional injury is guaranteed.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

Sunn O))) Monoliths and Opinions.

1. The Grimmrobe Demos (1999).
2. ØØ Void (2000).
3. Flight of the Behemoth (2002).
4. White1 (2003).