Matt Hinch's Top 5 (or 10) Canadian Releases of 2014

Written by Matt Hinch.

When I was first tasked with selecting my favourite Canadian releases of 2014 I thought it was a weak year. But as I dug through my Oh Canada! 2014 playlist it didn't seem that weak at all. Picking my top 10 was hard enough let alone top 5. But I did and I must say, this is one helluva collection of releases! So, I present my favourite Canadian releases of 2014!

10. Thantifaxath – Sacred White Noise

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9. Begrime Exemious – Primeval Satellite

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8. Morgue of Saints - Monolith

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7. Northumbria – Bring Down the Sky

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6. Harangue – By the Strength of the Mighty Atlas

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5. Olde – I

It took all of about 11 seconds for me to know that this album was right up my alley. That first riff is the kind of fuzzed out heavy stoner riff that directs blood flow to my nether regions. Looking deeper into the band I found that it comprises members of “local” stoner legends Sons of Otis, as well as Moneen, Cunter, Grift, Five Knuckle Chuckle and Jaww. And is for fans of High on Fire, Sleep, Sabbath and Saint Vitus. What more could you ask for? You've got the tone of Sleep/Vitus, the groove of Sabbath, and the heavy-fucking-riffage of High on Fire et al. But Olde sound like they're having a lot more fun than any of those bands. Bleary-eyed stoner sensibilities, groove to spare and whiskey-throated vocals make it feel more in line with the likes of Weedeater or Black Tusk on cough syrup. Lump them in with whatever bedfellows you want but all that matters is how hard they riff. And hard do they riff. Sludgy, doomed, fat-bottomed stoner metal rolling around in a pile of riffs and tone makes I a calculated assault on sobriety and reason. Plus there's a (somewhat androgynous) person riding a bear on the cover!

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4. Astrakhan – A Tapestry of Scabs and Skin

Artwork by Nick Patterson

These guys really impressed me with The Pillarist EP. For this EP they've added two new songs to the two on The Pillarist to create twice as much awesome. Spawned from the same scene that brought us Bison and Anciients, Astrakhan play some serious prog-inflected sludge. Even that descriptor doesn't seem accurate. They've got the massive riffs and heavy tone of sludge but the guitar work is incredibly nuanced. Sublimely crafted songs reflect the talents of a band not afraid to grasp at the grandest of scope. Astrakhan can run rough shot with the best and then blast off in a cloud of kaleidoscopic guitars ripping out complicated rhythms and solos that will inspire even the most lumpish of metalheads. My favourite aspect of the band and EP is the vocals. Trading off hollers full of emotion and passion, they fully engage with the listener. They're not always gruff, in fact sometimes the cleaner, the better, but they aren't half-assing anything. “The Pillarist” itself illustrates the band's best points quite well. Excellent vocals, an assembly line of sweet riffs, sinuous groove, meaningful solos and tremendous flow. Two songs really impressed me. Four songs blew me away and kept getting better the more I listened to them. When Astrakhan puts out a full length who knows what kind of musically induced coma it's gonna put me in. I can't wait!

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3. Archspire – The Lucid Collective

Artwork by Ken Sarafin

This one surprised the hell out of me. I'm not usually one for over the top technicality. Origin, Obscura and the like. But Archspire? Oh fuck yeah, bud! I can't exactly pin down what makes these West Coasters different but I kept coming back to this album over and over. The technical prowess on display here is outrageously spectacular. Yet, I never felt like they just pasted together a bunch of self-congratulatory shit and called it a song. The songs have flow and logical shifts from breakneck speed to mind-mangling technicality to head-caving brutality. Say what you want but this is technical death metal of THE highest order. I suppose a big part of what makes Archspire so appealing to me is how bassist Jaron Evil makes his bass go interstellar WITH FRETS. It's a personal thing but what keeps me away from equally talented bands like fellow Canucks Beyond Creation is that fretless bass sound. So with Archspire and The Lucid Collective you get next-level technicality fused to tangible death metal and awesome vocals on par with death metal's most inventive. Break your neck, brain and fingers all at the same time.

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2. Auroch – Taman Shud

Artwork by Antithesis

I referred to this album earlier in the year as the only death metal album you need to buy in 2014. That may not exactly be true (see above) but if I had to pick the most impressive death metal album of 2014 it would be this one. The Vancouver group puts together a potent arsenal for attacking the modern death metal landscape. Guitarist/vocalist Sebastian Montesi's slavering growl seems like it comes straight from the Lovecraftian tales that inspire their work. Back his fiendish vocals up with top quality blistering death and Auroch is unstoppable. They blend technical flair with bludgeoning brutality and a horrific atmosphere created naturally through swirling riffs. They never let the listener get totally comfortable, and the vocal diversity, from guttural to whisper and plain angry yelling keeps things from getting stagnant in that department. Taman Shud blows away much of the competition through their obvious skill and well executed vision. No death metal album in 2014 was able to dazzle and destroy quite the way Taman Shud did. It's well rounded violence equally suited to impress through technicality as it is through brutality.

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1. Culted – Oblique to All Paths

One could make an argument that Culted aren't exactly Canadian since vocalist Daniel Jansson lives in Sweden. However, they qualified as Canadian for the Juno Awards (basically the Canadian Grammy Awards) so that's good enough for me. Released back in January of 2014 Oblique to All Paths stuck around on my playlist almost the whole year. Their brand of doom is like no other. Slow and brooding obviously but the atmosphere they create is wholly unsettling. Droning noise and creeping synths create a darkness most foul as Jansson's snarling, hateful, throaty growl raises the hair on the back of your neck. For all the doom and gloom surrounding their sound, they can flat out bring the heavy when they want. “Illuminati” features a fierce doom riff that smashes it's way into your brain and refuses to be ignored. I could listen to that chord progression for days. Oblique is all about creating a mood but it's not the same mood throughout. Disconsolate, vengeful, sorrowful, and more. It's over an hour of heaving, depressing yet surprisingly uplifting at times blackened doom. The noise, synths and industrial touches put Culted a unique place in the doom world. One thing is for certain, Oblique is massive, encapsulating and as I wrote in a 9/10 review elsewhere, “painfully affecting” and the best thing to come out of Canada (and Sweden) last year.

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The Sustained Low 'C' of Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra" - Lime/Meat

Written by Matt Hinch.


Those who know me know I have a bit of a man-crush on Toronto blackened doomcrustcore titans, uh, Titan. Their 2012 album Burn landed at #1 on my EOY list. Part of what I find so endearing about them is the vocals of James M. There's a raw, feral quality to them and with James you know the words behind the screams are intelligent. Luckily we don't have to wait for another Titan record to hear them. Enter The Sustained Low 'C' of Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (TSLCORSASZ) and Lime/Meat. In addition to James (also in Gates) the band features a number of Torontonian cohorts in guitarist Joel (Fires of Mammon), bassist John (Gates) and drummer Spencer (Eating Glass, Rising Crust).

"Lime" is blistering black metal with the bass rumbling away, confidently guiding the ship amidst the torrents of relentless percussion and searing USBM-style tremolos. James' rage is palpable as the Krallice-like wall of insanity swirls to soaring heights, building and building with trepidation. It all reaches for escape, reaches for peace. Intricate guitar work and emotional solos carry through the catharsis. The density of the track deflates more than explodes at its apex but it's far from a letdown. It's a release.

"Meat" is no less oppressive despite taking a different approach. Where "Lime" used breakneck speed to engage the listener, "Meat" takes a slower, more measured path. James still screams like legs are being cut off with a rusty butter knife while battery acid drips into the wound, but "Meat" is a doomy, heaving beast (with accompanying growled vocals). Its lumbering cadence condenses and expands moment to moment. As the pressure builds and the mood becomes more immediate, "post" guitar lines become prominent, perhaps symbolizing a fragility beneath the rage and hurt.

Lime/Meat may only be less than a quarter hour of music but that doesn't lessen its impact. TSLCORSASZ pack a dense array of doom and black metal into these two tracks. It's monstrously heavy and emotionally taxing. Repeated listens only make the experience more pleasurable. I'm not really sure what the name is supposed to mean either but that's inconsequential when the music is this good.

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Ramlord - Crippled Minds, Sundered Wisdom

By Craig Hayes. Life is a struggle, whatever your situation. It is complicated and often disheartening, and it can become wholly precarious in the blink of an eye. Seven days a week you haul yourself out of bed and brace yourself for another day.

By Craig Hayes.

Artwork by Aeron Alfrey.

Life is a struggle, whatever your situation. It is complicated and often disheartening, and it can become wholly precarious in the blink of an eye. Seven days a week you haul yourself out of bed and brace yourself for another day. You stare at grey polluted cityscapes filled with the detritus of capitalism’s crumbling facade and wonder if you’re any different to those forgotten souls huddled on street corners begging for change. We’re all, in one form or another, victims of the cold indifference of modernity.

This is why you must listen to Ramlord.

The New Hampshire trio are not going to solve your problems, let's be honest about that, but then, that's not in Ramlord's gamut. Jan ("usurper tongue and nihil resonance"), Ben ("blastphemous degradation of the human spirit") and Mike ("low souled grinder of the underbelly") make music to lean on when life gets hard, providing a means to spit those feelings of frustration, antipathy and revulsion back into society's face.

Ramlord dispense the best kind of music for venting rage and outrage--blackened d-beat. Punk and black metal (the perfect combination of hostility and militancy) are wrapped around Ramlord's grinding, stench-ridden swamps of sludge, crust and powerviolence. The band make inflammatory battering noise, and have a number of Bandcamp releases, including their powerful 2011 debut full-length, Stench of Fallacy, along with splits with Condensed Flesh and Cara Neir. The trio have recently released their new album, Crippled Minds, Sundered Wisdom, which comprises 11 putrid screeds of bile and belligerence, providing all the ammunition you need to stock your armory of enmity-driven convictions.

Like the best crust-slathered bands of yore (see Discharge, Hellbastard etc) Ramlord waste no time on ambiguity. Crippled Minds, Sundered Wisdom opens with the bitterly churning "Nihil Fucking Lifeblood" and "Weakness", before tearing through a triple dose of 30-second breakneck tracks of toxic metallized clangor. The bass-heavy sludge trawls of "Retrospect Dissonance" and "Dependency" rumble forth with strength that’s both crushing and macerating, while "Extinction of Clairvoyance (Part Two)" drops fuzzy noise-rock into the mix, although it’s very quickly smothered by virulent blackness.

Crippled Minds, Sundered Wisdom is exactly what's needed to strengthen your resolve against attacks from our contemporary world. It's ugly, as are the problems we face daily. It's as chaotic as our feelings and as bleak as the futures we face. And it's primal, just like those base instincts we need to survive.

However, in rendering the harshness of life (both external and internal) into 40-or-more minutes of sweltering sonic filth, Ramlord don't just highlight issues, they offer deep-rooted solace. The world is an uncaring and callous place, delivering never-ending streams of tragedy, but albums like Crippled Minds, Sundered Wisdom allow us to cope. In the album's frenetic velocity there's a sense that you’re not alone. When Ramlord roars, they roar for you. The band take our shared fears and frustrations and channel them into a sound just as discomforting as anything we see on the news, but in doing so, they provide us with exactly what we seek: catharsis.

Ramlord make malformed and monstrous noise, but the reality they represent is not distorted in any way. Crippled Minds, Sundered Wisdom is the truth. It may well be harrowing and rotten to the core, but even on our best days we know what lurks over our shoulders. Like the best crust bands (past and present) Ramlord don't just provide us with the ordnance we need to bolster our defense, they stand there alongside us, howling defiantly at the world.

Titan - Burn

By Natalie Zina Walschots. Toronto, ON-based metal/hardcore monsters Titan, after releasing a couple EPs over the past several years, have finally released their first full-length record, in the form of Burn. Titan have just embarked upon

By Natalie Zina Walschots. Originally published by Exclaim.


Toronto, ON-based metal/hardcore monsters Titan, after releasing a couple EPs over the past several years, have finally released their first full-length record, in the form of Burn. Titan have just embarked upon an ambitions European tour to support the record, which will be released by React with Protest overseas, though the domestic release will be on Titan's label, Hypaethral.

While Titan have for years busied themselves creating the sounds of the apocalypse, with Burn they have settled on a more specified and refined end: fire. It is as if Gozer the Gozerian asked them to conjure the form of their destruction and when they cleared their minds all they could see were flames. As well as their longest and most comprehensive composition, Burn is also their most precise. The guitar work is nimble and flexible ― even on the broader strokes, the fattest riffs, the leads recall the bright heat of a samurai's blade.

What smoulders at the core of Burn, though, is destruction with a very specific motive: this is fire that wants to purify, heat that wants to cauterize. There is a deeply generative, productive energy that informs this album, and as much as Titan are bent on setting the world aflame, I can't help but feel it's because they want to see what flowers dare grow in the ashes.