Couch Slut - My Life as a Woman

By Matt Hinch. Pardon my French, but My Life as a Woman by NYC’s Couch Slut is one batshit fucking crazy album. And as I tend to feed off the music’s energy as I write, pardon the rest of my French in advance. his is also the part where I kick myself

By Matt Hinch.


Pardon my French, but My Life as a Woman by NYC’s Couch Slut is one batshit fucking crazy album. And as I tend to feed off the music’s energy as I write, pardon the rest of my French in advance. This is also the part where I kick myself in the (soiled) ass for not getting wise to the album until long after I should have. Probably had something to do with that super provocative cover. I believe my wife said something along the lines of “Jesus fuck! Don’t let the kids see that!” It might be a while before I let my girls listen to it too. Such things lead to nightmares.

Couch Slut grab you by the fucking balls (or whatever body part is deemed most painful) and toy with your sense of normalcy like a killer whale tossing around a seal in a steel cage with psychoses wrapped in razor wire laying all over the place. By the time it’s over sanity is but a fleeting memory and your body is left just as broken.

Musically you can’t really pin it down, or hold it down for that matter as it’s a sickening, squirming beast of feral hardcore, sludge and disorienting noise. As if that weren’t enough, Megan O’s horrific screams explode with intensity, often breaking under the pressure.

Every track is worthy of mention as each has the capacity to blow your goddamn mind. But breaking them down like that would be far too structured for this mindfuck of an album. You’ll hear huge breakdowns with the band crushing on one plane while one guitar tattoos the spine with sharp tremolos on another, or repeated, heavy-handed haymakers battling with nerve-wracking, squealing feedback. Just to start.

Elsewhere you get sludgy plodding or wicked mid-paced stomping, raucous cacophonies of aggression and fancy, and Megan’s pseudo-rambling adding to her screams of total and absolute catharsis. You’re subject to painful rawness and shifting momentum throughout, from heavy post-hardcore to sludge to all out noise. The whole time Megan’s territorial pissings frighten away the weak and fragile.

It’s all over the map. It’s weird and uncontrolled. Melody meets distorted reality. Freestyle sax shows up. Doom casts a dark shadow and unpredictability is par for the course. It’s angular, noisy, discordant and seriously fucking mental in all the best ways.

My personal favourite and perhaps the most straightforward track is “Replacement Addiction”. It’s got this speed-punk freakout leading to a highway groove that smashes through walls of insanity in slow motion, eventually breaking into some killer hardcore with Megan tearing out her own lungs because who needs to breathe anyway?

My Life as a Woman is definitely the stuff of nightmares. Not fantastic ones though, real life nightmares. Ones that break down the mind and reform it in twisted new configurations. It’s desperate, unsettling, and wholly physical on one level while mentally scrambling on the other. It’s an exhausting album bound to affect you in indescribable ways.

Crank it up, break some shit and let its insanity become your insanity.

Fuck me, I need a drink.

Oranssi Pazuzu - Värähtelijä

By Karen A. Mann. Finland’s experimental black metalists Oranssi Pazuzu have always reveled in defying genres and expectations. On their fourth album, Värähtelijä, they take their expansive, avant garde creations and send them into the sonic stratosphere

By Karen A. Mann


Finland’s experimental black metalists Oranssi Pazuzu have always reveled in defying genres and expectations. On their fourth album, Värähtelijä, they take their expansive, avant garde creations and send them into the sonic stratosphere. The result is a harrowing and darkly psychedelic journey to the center of your mind.

The first song, “Saturaatio,” is takeoff, beginning with ambient noise and rolling drums that explode into buzzing sound effects, horror show organ and wacky wah guitar. After a frenzy of blackened guitar, you settle in for a steady cruise over a devastated landscape.

Oranssi Pazuzu 2012. Photos by Webzine Chuul.

Each song is like a new, unexplored planet where terrifyingly strange and beautiful noises await, and Oranssi Pazuzu is happy to inject you into a pod and hurtle you off into the atmosphere to experience them.

The album hums along, winding its way -- and often doubling back on itself -- through tribal drumbeats, odd time structures, blackened freak-outs and soothing sounds. Throughout, Singer Jun-His’ trademark angry, inhuman vocal sound especially unholy on Värähtelijä, like a demon who is deeply disturbed by your visit, and is going to hover behind you, wailing and pleading, for the remainder of your journey. The album finally spirals back down to earth on “Valveavaruus,” which ends the album on a quiet, reflective note.

Morast - Demo

By Ulla Roschat. Morast is a pretty young four piece band from NRW/Germany. They introduce themselves with a demo of four songs of blackened death doom with an overall playing time of about 26 minutes. It's dark and evil, heavy and downtuned

By Ulla Roschat


Morast is a pretty young four piece band from NRW/Germany. They introduce themselves with a demo of four songs of blackened death doom with an overall playing time of about 26 minutes. It's dark and evil, heavy and downtuned, like this kind of music ought to be. Unusual though, for this kind of music is the bracingly clear production, which brings a powerful depth to the sound and supports the thick atmosphere and groove rather with crisp drums and bouncy strings than with blurriness.

The riffs, most times, are going more into a midtempo direction than being really slow, still there's a sense of slowness due to their dragging and depressing heavyness. Occasional black metal outbursts and touches of dissonance provide momentum and enhance the already bleak atmosphere. The vocal style ranges somewhere between bellowed and almost spoken, even whispered, but are always dark and menacing.

The four songs, of which the first three have a length of about six minutes, the last one is eight minutes long, share an overall atmosphere of a depressing, bleak darkness, but they all have their own focus in mood. While the first song "Purging" turns from a brooding doom vibe into some blistering black metal ferocity, the second one "Error" has the most overall doomy feel, with a great sense for dramatic twist. The third "Alleingang" sports the most dissonant tunes to create a spine-tingling eeriness, and the last and longest one "The Cold Side of Bliss" with its dynamic and propelling drumwork adds an almost hypnotizing, psychedelic mood.

This demo is a very convincing debut release, which really leaves you wanting for more of this Black 'n' Doom groove.

The song "Alleingang" is featured on The Wicked Lady Show 105