Drug Honkey - Cloak of Skies

By Ulla Roschat. It's been five years now since Drug Honkey released Ghost in the Fire and I remember how it totally blew me away. So I was in eager anticipation of Cloak of Skies from the moment it was announced. And what can I say, yeah, they did it again.

By Ulla Roschat.

Artwork of Paolo Girardi.

It's been five years now since Drug Honkey released Ghost in the Fire and I remember how it totally blew me away. So I was in eager anticipation of Cloak of Skies from the moment it was announced.

And what can I say, yeah, they did it again. Cloak of Skies speaks the language of my dungeoned demons and unleashes them to scare the shit out of me, in the most positive sense.

The four piece band from Chicago/Illinois continues the path of their unique approach to psychedelic Death Doom Metal, with industrial elements and an extreme and extensive usage of sound effects.

This time they keep the underlying structures a bit more recognizable so they don't appear completely unhinged. The songs are definitely rooted in death/doom riffs and groove and are of a minimalistic structure, but don't leave you any less disturbed and terrified, by their nightmarish, dystopian soundscapes they roll out.

And this time they also have two guest appearances, Bruce Lamont (Yakuza, Corrections House) and Justin K. Broadrick (Godflesh, Jesu).

Photos © John Mourlas. All rights reserved.

The first song "Pool of Failure" is like a huge droning engine gets started inviting you to a psychedelic trip... to the deepest, darkest chambers of your soul? ...or to hell? Anyway, this is a slow motion nightmare... an invitation impossible to decline, because it's as compelling as it is insane.

In the following "Sickening Wasteoid" more sorts of distorted sounds are added. Waves of synths like waves of hot, filthy lava push, drag and press you through an atmosphere so thick it's nearly unbreathable and so toxic it hurts your lungs and it fills your brain with nauseating dizziness.

Fast oscillating sounds, staccato like stoically monotonous vocals add a sense of a malfunctioning system and growing insanity in "Outlet of Hatred". Too much of all this filth threatens to leave you just stuck in it.

And despite the climactic build up of "(It's Not) The Way" that creates an intense, ritualistic and hypnotic atmosphere and a torturing insane climax at the end, there's no feel of a cleansing, a turning point or any kind of relief.

"The Oblivion of An Opiate Nod" steers everything into a storm of blazing, blistering pain and paranoia.

Photos © John Mourlas. All rights reserved.

In the title song "Cloak of Skies", finally, things get to the point. The appearance of Lamont's saxophone here, introduces a sense of soberness and sanity with its clean, clear tone, but is placed into the most chaotic, most psychotic song of the entire album and the lonely sound of normality brilliantly clashes with all the madness, pain and filth in a kind of showdown. If it ends in salvation or apocalypse, who knows.

Again Drug Honkey created aural insanity, turned psychosis into sound. Their unique and extensive use of synths, effects and industrial noise elements brings properties to their sound that are essential for the atmosphere the band conjures throughout the 50 minutes of lysergic insanity.

And especially the vocal quality has the most eerie and horrifying effects on me. The extreme modulation and distortion of the human voice, like it's done here, carries a creepy sense of man morphing into monster.

But in the end you come out of this. The last song releases you from the psychedelic nightmare, but, like this is a remix of the first song "Pool of Failure" by Justin Broadrick, you come out with your brain remixed.

The song "Sickening Wasteoid" is featured on The Wicked Lady Show 140

Colosso - Obnoxious

By Justin C. I've been following Colosso from the beginning with Max Tomé's (mostly) one-man show on Abrasive Peace. That was a fantastic modern death metal album right out of the gate

By Justin C.


I've been following Colosso from the beginning with Max Tomé's (mostly) one-man show on Abrasive Peace. That was a fantastic modern death metal album right out of the gate, and I described it as "adventurous and complex," and release after release, the band has grown both in musicality and in number of members. With the band's second proper full-length, Obnoxious, they've added singer André Macedo. He makes a great fit, and he's got one of those great mid-range scream-growls I love to hear in death metal. But what about the rest of the package?

Like Colosso's previous albums, Obnoxious goes by fast. The album clocks in at 36 minutes for 9 songs, and you have to appreciate the band's dedication to keeping it tight. As with their earlier work, Colosso isn't satisfied to just chug-a-chug along, and to avoid that, they add extra texture with different guitar effects, contrasting riffs, and even some judiciously used synths. The variety they pack into the songs helps give them a more expansive feel than a quick glance at the clock might otherwise suggest.

Unfortunately, there is a "but" coming here. On Colosso's previous work, I praised the band's willingness to let their instrumental work shine through, especially since it was so damn good. Heck, Abrasive Peace was even offered as an instrumental-only download, and you don’t do that with music that’s dependent on a vocalist to hold a listener’s interest. However, I don't think Obnoxious would remain as compelling without Macedo's vocal work. Make no mistake--most of these tracks rip, particularly later album cuts (and my personal favorites) "To Purify" and "Sentience"--but I can't help but feel the band may have sacrificed some of what made their earlier work special for the sake of a more streamlined sound.

That said, I'd be willing to bet some listeners won't mind the shift at all. One person's instrumental, semi-proggy goodness is another person's boredom, so a slightly more straightforward approach could gain them a different or even larger audience. And of course, with new personnel just being added, this album may be just a stepping stone to the next stage of Colosso's growth. It's not bad by any means, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss some of the boundary pushing the band did on their previous work.

Colosso - Foregone Semblances

By Justin C. It hasn't been too long since Colosso released Thallium, which was a tasty mix of modern death metal both with and without vocals. True to form, their new 7", Forgone Semblances

By Justin C.


It hasn't been too long since Colosso released Thallium, which was a tasty mix of modern death metal both with and without vocals. True to form, their new 7", Forgone Semblances, has one track with vocals and one instrumental (although with a few "ahhh's" and "ohhh's" added in for texture).

These two tracks would be a great intro to anyone unfamiliar with the band. "Circles of Defeat" is full of chunky, rapid-fire riffs and deep, satisfying gutturals, which are sometimes backed with deep-in-the-mix cleans. The song fades out with spacey atmosphere, then charges directly into the instrumental "Four Edges of Deceit." It's chock full of riffs of every variety, galloping, stomping, ringing, and anything else you can hope for, and it's insanely catchy in a way that a lot of instrumental tracks fail to achieve.

My only complaint is that I want 12 tracks from this band, not two. But the band is describing this 7" as the end of an era, of sorts, and report they're already well into recording a new full length, so I'll just have to try to keep my whining in check and wait impatiently for more.

Drug Honkey - Ghost in the Fire

By Ulla Roschat. When I listen to an album for the first time I do it with headphones, if possible. So I did with Drug Honkey’s album Ghost in the Fire. This was basically my first encounter with this band’s music. It was twice, during this first listen, that I pulled

By Ulla Roschat.


When I listen to an album for the first time I do it with headphones, if possible. So I did with Drug Honkey’s album Ghost in the Fire. This was basically my first encounter with this band’s music. It was twice, during this first listen, that I pulled the headphones from my ears to check if the sensations happening in my head would go away when I do and I even considered shortly to stop listening at all, but I continued (maybe addiction had already set in?).

With “sensations in my head” I don’t mean pictures and thoughts in my brain, but rather in my head as a physical place, so that a strange desire appeared to open my own skull to see if there are “things” in it that had no business there ,things that were able to unleash my carefully dungeoned demons.

Photo © John Mourlas. All rights reserved.

Drug Honkey are a four piece Chicago IL. based band that formed in 1999 and Ghost in the Fire (May 2012) is their fifth album. In terms of genre categorization the music is something like experimental, psychedelic, electronic, industrial, Sludge Doom, but actually it is a sonic mindfuck, psychosis turned into sound, endless torture and pain condensed into a lysergic addictive drug named Ghost in the Fire.

The basic structure of the songs is kind of minimalistic. There’s rarely something you could call melody or a dramatic build up. The songs are somehow crawling, creeping and wavering along, carried by riffs that are stretched and slow and barely recognizable, fuzzy heavy bass lines and an incredibly slow plodding drumming. An almost permanent, slightly varying droning background sound induces an uneasy feel that accumulates into a kind of sickness not unlike a naupathia from the soft but permanent sway on a long time boat trip.

Photo © John Mourlas. All rights reserved.

The multiple layers of electronic effects, distorted sounds, industrial noise create an incredible dense atmosphere, a lysergic hallucinatory disturbing soundscape immersing everything in a boiling thick viscous filth, painfully slow, heavy and dissonant.

The most effective element enhancing the eerie psychotic atmosphere are the vocals. These vocals that appear in nearly every possible form utterable by a human being and often additionally electronically modulated sound strangely humanly unhuman and really freak me out, scare the shit out of me and speak to my unleashed demons.

All of this is put together so carefully and cleverly like a well directed horror movie.

Photo © John Mourlas. All rights reserved.

The first extreme listening effects that caused me to pull off the headphones lessen of course later, which is a good thing... for one thing I have to cope with my demons and get them back in the dungeon, and for another thing I can enjoy this masterpiece of diabolical psychedelic heaviness much better when I’m not scared to death.

Orbweaver - Strange Transmissions From The Neuralnomicon

Written by Kevin Page.

Artwork by Jeannie Saiz

I've never seen an album title and artwork so indicative of the final product on display as we do here.

If Hate Eternal, Gigan, Gorguts, Ulcerate and Obscura had a gangbang on Miami Beach while tripping on acid, this is the love child they would spawn. A trippy psychotic dissonance that grooves and burrows into your brain, grabs hold and makes you think, "how can something so OUT THERE feel so memorable?".

Lead by the twin guitar attack of Randy Piro (ex Hate Eternal/Gigan) & Sally Gates (ex Gigan), this 5 song EP takes you on a 30+ minute space journey you never thought could be so warm and cuddly. Interspersed with just the right amount of intergalactic weirdness (think 1970's sci fi horror), which allows to you catch your breathe and cleanse your palette, I can only hope for more unreal escapes from this outfit in 2014.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

Colosso - Thallium

By Justin C. When we last checked in with Colosso, the band was essentially a one-man show, written and performed by Max Tomé with guest drumming from Dirk Verbeuren.

By Justin C.


When we last checked in with Colosso, the band was essentially a one-man show, written and performed by Max Tomé with guest drumming from Dirk Verbeuren. For their new EP, Thallium, the band has become a four piece. The basic style is the same--a brand of metal that floats somewhere between avant garde death metal and technical death metal--but the sound has broadened with the addition of new personnel, retaining its fierceness but taking on a more organic sound.

The first three songs--"Quadrangular," "Orthogonal Path," and "Prime"--act as a three-part instrumental introduction. At first, I was a little surprised that the EP was so front-loaded with instrumental tracks, but on the other hand, Tomé is happy enough to let the instrumental parts of his songs shine through--as a matter of fact, he offered the whole first album as an instrumental-only download.. The music holds up just fine on its own. Of the three instrumentals on this EP, "Prime" is a real standout. It's moody, dark, and melodic, with a great bass line winding its way through.

"Ecosystem" is the first track with vocals, and it starts off like a proper punch in the face. I used the term "stabbing" in my review of the first album to describe some of the riffing, and that still applies here--they dive up and down the fretboard violently when they're not out-and-out stomping. The final two tracks, "Into Infinity" and "Minus Infinity," provide an epic closing. "Into Infinity" is a quiet, building lead-in, with a steady pulse on top of a deep drone, which then explodes into full roar for "Minus Infinity." "Minus Infinity" could be the soundtrack to a space-themed horror movie, with blasts of fury for all of the interstellar battles and a chiming guitar line floating above it like a distress signal from a drifting, broken ship.

Thallium shows quite a bit of growth for such a new band, but the band has evolved while managing to keep the core of what made Abrasive Peace so enjoyable.

Portal - Vexovoid

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

Cover art by Kriss Hades

Heavy metal, as a genre, embraces and encourages strangeness. Works based upon eldritch, Lovecraft-ian evil are almost commonplace. Profound Lore has set itself apart as a label both by the quality and uniqueness of the releases it has put out. But even in this context, Portal stand out as exceptionally weird. Based in Australia, the band members label their music death metal, but that term does nothing to capture the alien, insectoid nature of their sound. Known for their gripping live shows, which see the band members don face-obscuring costumes, Portal are led by the towering Curator, who's been known to wear everything from a massive clock headpiece to tentacles on his hands, and spidery guitarist Horror Illogium.

Photo by brandi.

Portal are a band that never break character and Vexovoid is their fourth full-length release (along with two demos and two EPs), continuing their well-established theme of creating deep feelings of dread, alienation and confusion in the listener, all through exquisitely made and intelligently deployed aural assaults. The record gives new meaning to the phrase "ear worm" — these are not friendly tunes stuck in your head, but a carnivorous sound burrowing towards your sweet neo-cortex with every shrieking chord and shuddering drum blast. The Curator's voice is a dry, spidery rasp, conjuring the ticking horror of segmented legs. Whatever phobia you nurse — arachnids, snakes or the dark –—whatever the weakest points in your psyche are, Portal will sing a song for that particular broken place in your brain.

[Go to the post to view the Bandcamp player]

Colosso - Abrasive Peace

By Justin C. Colosso's first full-length, Abrasive Peace, floats somewhere on the spectrum between death metal and technical death metal. The songs are adventurous and complex, but they rely less on blazing speed and neck-wrenching shifts and more on the interweaving of different, contrasting layers.

By Justin C.


Colosso's first full-length, Abrasive Peace, floats somewhere on the spectrum between death metal and technical death metal. The songs are adventurous and complex, but they rely less on blazing speed and neck-wrenching shifts and more on the interweaving of different, contrasting layers. If you're worried that it won't be hard hitting enough, though, don't be concerned. Although the album was largely composed and recorded by one man, Max Tomé, he got a guest to handle the drums. And man, what a guest: Dirk Verbeuren (Soilwork, Scarve, many others). Needless to say, the percussion is insane in the best way possible.

The album is available as name-your-price, but a fun bonus for those who pay a non-zero amount is that you get a copy of the lyrics and the rhythm guitar tablatures. The various riffs in the tablature are named things like, "Thrash Riff," "Drone Riff," and "Epic Riff," and those names actually give you a good idea about what you'll hear. The guitars come in waves, both contrasting with and enhancing each other. After a brief bit of electronica, the opening track, "Anthems of Chaos," builds on an angular, stabbing riff that's soon joined by a soaring solo line. All of this is done over thundering drums that are equal amounts intricate, furious, and precise. "Pattern of Disconnection" has one of my favorite pairings, with fast churning riffs alternating with a sustained, drone-like line. Even more interesting are some of the lyrics that get paired with this musical maelstrom. Midway through "Pattern of Disconnection," the droning line helps punctuates the lyrics, "I walk along, walk alone / To find the essence of survival. / But in the end, what really matters / Is inner peace." "The Epiphany" ends with a short spoken-word piece that urges listeners to start creating and follow their passions because "life is short." I don't put a lot of stock in the actual lyrical content of a lot of metal--I'm sure I have songs on my iPod that are about dragons and hobbits--but I'm impressed with the fact that what could devolve into silly motivational platitudes are delivered in a way that isn't preachy or condescending. They come across as genuine, honest pieces of someone else's hopes and philosophies. Of course, it doesn't hurt that they're delivered in a low, back-of-the-throat death metal growl.

And those drums. Those crazy, virtuoso drums. There's a point midway through "Thou Shalt Not Be Benevolent" where Verbeuren does a rhythmic switch that I can't even follow, in spite of being a musician myself, but it's completely hypnotic. The fact that the drums are always well balanced with the other instruments is also a huge plus, since this kind of artillery can easily overwhelm the rest of the music.

Since Abrasive Peace came out, the group has grown to a full-fledged four piece, and they have a new EP called Thallium scheduled for an October 14 release. At the time of this writing, I've been able to listen to a bit of it, and from what I've heard so far, we'll be getting even more of what makes Abrasive Peace so enjoyable.