Møl - Jord

By Justin C. If you've read anything about Møl's debut album Jord, you've no doubt heard "Deafheaven," "Alcest," and "blackgaze" bandied about. I'll admit, I'm a sucker for that sweet mash up of shoegaze waves of sound and black metal shrieks

By Justin C.


If you've read anything about Møl's debut album Jord, you've no doubt heard "Deafheaven," "Alcest," and "blackgaze" bandied about. I'll admit, I'm a sucker for that sweet mash up of shoegaze waves of sound and black metal shrieks, although I know both the genre tag and some of it's better-known practitioners get people's hackles up. I don't know if Møl is going to change anybody's diehard opinion on that, but before you skip ahead, let me at least tell you how they stand out.

To my ears, Møl pulls influence from music a little bit older than shoegaze. Sure, mentions of Slowdive in the promo materials are apt--I can hear a little bit of that--but Møl's melodic sensibilities come out of 80s pop and goth as much as 90s shoegaze. The clean guitar line that opens the album could have come from The Cure or Depeche Mode, although it doesn't stay in that vein for very long. There’s plenty of heavy here, though. "Vakuum," for example, starts out with some nasty old metal riffs, but keep listening to the chorus of the song, blanketed with prominent synths and poppy melody, and tell me you can't imagine this song on The Breakfast Club soundtrack. Granted, it would have been a much gnarlier movie, one in which Ally Sheedy's character probably would have killed one of the other students, but it would have been a lot more interesting.

Photos by Mariann Libach Burup.

And this is what makes Møl interesting. It's as if they decided to take the most inoffensive synth pop as a basic template and angry it the hell up. Not that there isn't plenty of heavy to be found. "Ligament," probably my favorite track on the album, starts out as heavy as they come, blasting with shrieks and growls before gradually morphing into a sound that I called "shimmery" in my notes, before coming back to full aggression mode. There's even a bit of lovely clean singing later in the song that twists in and out with the shrieks. It's harsh, meditative, and uplifting all at the same time.

Mixing black metal and 80s synth pop shouldn't work, but it does, and it's so damn catchy. It doesn't hurt that Møl cleverly avoids some of the excesses of their peers--there's only one instrumental interlude, "Lambda," and it's lovely, and the tracks are relatively short, much like the pop songs they take influence from. No long, wandering interludes here. The whole album is laser focused and well paced. Even if you think you're done with blackgaze (or never wanted anything to do with it in the first place), Jord is well worth checking out.

Helpless - Debt

By Justin C. I've probably mentioned before, but I'm far from a grind aficionado. It's a subgenre that I can appreciate far more often than I can enjoy, and the bands I do favor, like Fuck the Facts, tend to bring something

By Justin C.


I've probably mentioned before, but I'm far from a grind aficionado. It's a subgenre that I can appreciate far more often than I can enjoy, and the bands I do favor, like Fuck the Facts, tend to bring something a little different to the table. In FtF case, their longer songs make it easier for me to engage with the music.

But there are exceptions to every rule, and now that I have a shorter commute, sometimes it's nice to listen to an entire grind album instead of 7% of one funeral doom song. Enter Helpless with their first full-length, Debt. When I think of grind, I think of hyper-dissonance, densely packed instrumental layers, spastic fury, turn-on-a-dime tempo changes, vocals that go from high-pitched shrieks all the way down to tonsil-vomiting growls, and all of this burned through in a minute or less. Helpless follow some of that, but with variations I find particularly appealing.

For example, the sound is a bit "thinner," for lack of a better description, and I don't mean that as a negative. The guitar riffs have plenty of heft when needed, but they also favor higher chord voicings, dripping with dissonance, over chunkier low-end fare, and that allows the bass to stand out on its own. The separation of instruments in general is excellent, so your ear is better able to peel apart the layers. They do "anti-breakdowns," like early in "Out of Commission," where the music gets lean and quiet, but still just as mean. And some of the songs are just damn catchy. That can be a dirty word, and of course I appreciate a well-executed, ultra-dense freak out as much as the next person, but sometimes it's nice when something sticks in your head, whether it be the repeated growls of "STAY LOW" in "Ceremony of Innocence" or the closing moments of "Moral Bankruptcy" when an inner voice moves up and down inside a slow, steamrolling riff that, at times, almost sound a little hopeful, in spite of the relentlessly bleak-but-insightful lyrical content.**

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the genre-busting length of the album closer, "Denied Sale," a mini-epic that's near the five-minute mark. This would be a perfect place for most bands to dump a bunch of ambient nonsense or screechy feedback, but Helpless see it through, including a particularly affecting (and effective) anti-breakdown that features just a quiet, single-tap rhythm before the band lurches back to sludgier territory, stabbed through with dissonant bites. The closing track does what the entire album does: it takes you on a ride, but never one where you completely lose sight of the music and have to frantically try to catch up, and it's filled with little earworms that will keep you coming back for more.

**There's even an ode to the antidepressant I've personally been taking for almost 20 years, "Sertraline." The song hints at the all-too-real problem some people face, including myself, which is a muted emotional response, a feeling of “existing for existence sake,” as the lyrics say.

Pijn - Floodlit

By Justin C. Pijn (the Dutch word for “pain,” pronounced "pine") is a UK group that's been tagged as "post-metal," even though I've found that to be one of the less-meaningful genre labels going around right now. That said, the closest comparison I might make is to Russian Circles

By Justin C.


Pijn (the Dutch word for “pain,” pronounced "pine") is a UK group that's been tagged as "post-metal," even though I've found that to be one of the less-meaningful genre labels going around right now. That said, the closest comparison I might make is to Russian Circles, another band that's tagged post-metal. The care in melodic lines and songcraft are what's put the Russian Circles comparison in my head--I wouldn't call them soundalikes by any means, especially since Pijn includes some minimal vocals, but I find that Pijn tickles the same parts of my brain that Russian Circles does.

A blurry press photo suggests nine collaborators on their four-track EP, Floodlit, although I've read other sources that say they're basically a trio with seven additional musicians, including but not limited to a violinist, cellist, and sax player. Regardless of exact numbers, they've created something both delicate and heavy at the same time, yet mesmerizing over all.

The band has done something a little unusual, structurally, with Floodlit. The "anchor" songs, "Dumbstruck and Floodlit" and "Lacquer," begin and end the EP, and sandwiched between are two much shorter interludes, although it's a bit unfair to call them that since "interlude" suggests something a bit more ephemeral than what these two short tracks add.

"Dumbstruck and Floodlit" comes in quietly, with some strings and a ringing guitar line. As the song starts to coalesce, you might be fooled into thinking this is a shoegaze throwback, although a very good one. But it's not long before the main riff dives in with a wailing, siren-like guitar line behind it, eventually augmented with some pretty interesting harmonic textures. The song weaves a bit more, but if you need to know the time, it's right around 5:20 when the "real" metal kicks in, with bellowed, sludgy vocals and slashing riffs. There are so many interesting parts to describe, it's hard to tell where to begin and end, but do stick around for some Jørgen Munkeby-style saxophone freakouts toward the end.

And that's just the first track. "Hazel" follows from the opener to a piano line and guitar dancing around each other. For some reason, it puts me in the mind of a seaside carnival. "Cassandra" offers a bit of dissonance and distortion before giving way to another blast of sludgy vocals in the closer, "Lacquer." I could go on about the jagged riffs, rumbling drums, sparse guitar parts, and the like, but suffice it to say that "Lacquer" matches the EP's opener in complexity.

Is this really metal, you might want to ask? Well, that's a tough question. The music is catchy, but it's demanding of the listener at the same time, and those bellowed vocals means you're not going to hear this too much in the mainstream. Maybe "post-metal" really is the best way to describe it, but either way, this is a beautiful bit of music that you should get your paws on, even if you usually prefer straight pummeling.