Phantom Winter - Sundown Pleasures

By Ulla Roschat. Sundown Pleasures is Phantom Winter's second album that follows up their debut Cvlt they released last year. The title track doesn't only open the album, it also opens a door to a world of bleak, cold darkness. The extremely extreme ear-piercing vocals, shrieks and growls, totally got me right from the start.

By Ulla Roschat


Sundown Pleasures is Phantom Winter's second album that follows up their debut Cvlt they released last year.

The title track doesn't only open the album, it also opens a door to a world of bleak, cold darkness. The extremely extreme ear-piercing vocals, shrieks and growls, totally got me right from the start. They are very dominant throughout the album and are pretty much responsible for the scary eeriness and slightly surreal, uncanny feel.

Add depressive heavy Sludge Doom riffs, hypnotic mantric rhythms , climactic build-ups, terrifying loud low dynamics, distorted chaotic noise, well placed word samples.... and the demons are summoned. Suddenly, they are everywhere, hunt and haunt you and drive you to the verge of insanity and chaos, constantly threatening to push you over the edge, into the black void.
And even the beautiful quiet guitar melodies that are woven into all the nastiness, don't offer any relief or rest from the torture, they, instead, add a sense of mournful hopelessness to the atmosphere and another layer to the musical structures and textures.


The six songs are like chapters of a story. Apart from their own individual build ups there's one that encompasses the entire album. As I said above, the first song opens the door to darkness, it's like a wall of illusions that hides a disrupted inner and outer world begins to crack and crumble and the demons are released. And each following track awakens more of them and they hunt you down to the edge of the black void, to the album's fifth track "Black Hole Scum". This song is constantly morphing without any structural stability you could cling to and save you from being absorbed by the apocalyptic chaos.

The album could stop here, but no, there's still one song left "Black Space", the album's longest song (10:53), with a slowly evolving and expanding mournful gloomy atmosphere, a post apocalyptic tristesse and hopelessness, with beautiful melancholic melodies. At the same time it is the essence of the album, showcasing its stylistic variety and the band's rather extraordinary approach to extreme music.

Phantom Winter's individual hybrid of Doom, Post HC, Sludge, Black Metal, Drone and Noise elements and those prominent vocals are indeed an exciting and satisfying listening experience.

Take Over and Destroy - Take Over and Destroy

By Andy Osborn. It’s always fun when you can’t peg a band’s sound and influences. For three years now I’ve been listening to Take Over and Destroy and I still haven’t quite figured theirs out. Sometimes it’s frustrating, because listening to something recognizable and traceable is always easier, familiar.

By Andy Osborn.


It’s always fun when you can’t peg a band’s sound and influences. For three years now I’ve been listening to Take Over and Destroy and I still haven’t quite figured theirs out. Sometimes it’s frustrating, because listening to something recognizable and traceable is always easier, familiar. But other times it’s exhilarating when you want something entirely different that keeps you guessing.

Their self-titled album doesn’t make make describing them any easier, but it’s so insanely fun that the necessary repeat listens have forced it into my regular rotation since its release. Like an American Kvelertak, they fuse black metal and old school rock with a painfully addictive result. A tinge of sludge mixed with Andy Labarbera’s sometimes-growl, sometimes-goth vocals are what push the Arizona crew into territory all their own. The upbeat, almost danceable dueling guitars are just the icing on the cake with almost too many ingredients, but they pull off the delicate recipe easily to claim territory in their own unique world.

Catchy riffs and horror movie lyrics, along with the occasional piano that has just the right tone to avoid the ironic synth-based bandwagon, TOAD write lean, interesting songs. They have just enough chorus heft and structure variability to be memorable while balancing that fine line of intensity and melody. “Bring Me The Rope” is the perfect example as it’s almost joyful in its depression; and ode to both suicide and the best that the 80s have to offer.

Blasts and double-kicks are rare, but Take Over and Destroy throw in just enough metal to tide over fans of the extreme while retaining enough badass rock ‘n’ roll that it’s a shock the Pitchfork crew hasn’t cast them as the hip flavor of the week. That may or may not be fortunate, but they certainly do deserve a wider audience. Eight years and three full-lengths into their career, it’s hard to imagine the band can do much more to set themselves apart. They’ve invented, nurtured, and perfected a sound all their own and although it won't appeal to all audiences, it's undoubtedly a unclassifiable gem.

Hierophant - Mass Grave

By Craig Hayes. I first encountered Hierophant around the time they released their second full-length, 2013’s Great Mother: Holy Monster. That LP was released by noted US punk label Bridge Nine, and it was an aptly skull-cracking riot of über-incensed metallic hardcore. Hierophant’s 2014 album, Peste

By Craig Hayes.

Artwork by Paolo Girardi

I first encountered Hierophant around the time they released their second full-length, 2013’s Great Mother: Holy Monster. That LP was released by noted US punk label Bridge Nine, and it was an aptly skull-cracking riot of über-incensed metallic hardcore. Hierophant’s 2014 album, Peste, was also released by Bridge Nine, and it delivered more of the same ultra-nihilistic noise. But the band’s latest album, Mass Grave, is being released by famed metal label Season of Mist, and it sees Hierophant slather their crusty hardcore with more sludge, black metal, grindcore and death metal than ever before.

No question, Mass Grave is Hierophant’s most extreme metal album yet. Punk still looms large, especially in Hierophant’s attitude, but Mass Grave’s savage ordnance is delivered with more of metal's bludgeon than hardcore’s bite. It’s a subtle shift in sound for the band, which may seem a little incongruent given Hierophant’s music is so ear-splitting and confrontational, but that change in Hierophant’s approach means Mass Grave does feature more multifaceted musicality.

Photos by Pedro Roque.

Don’t get me wrong, Hierophant haven't gone prog or decided adding post-anything elements is a good idea. Like their phenominally talented punk/metal labelmates, This Gift is a Curse, Hierophant have simply added more steel-edged armour to their sound for their first Season of Mist release. The band is still making wrathful music for the impending apocalypse, it’s just that when tracks like "Execution of Mankind", "Forever Crucified", "Crematorium" and "The Great Hoax" come hurling out the gate, it's death metal and grindcore leading the charge. If the band’s previous predilection for situating filthy hardcore upfront was what drew you to Hierophant, then maybe all that metal leading the audio assault will feel a little different. But there’s no lessening of intensity or anger on Hierophant’s behalf, and Mass Grave is certainly the band’s heaviest release to date.

Ultimately, closing Mass Grave with 7-minutes of feedback as the trampling HM2 overload of "Eternal Void" winds down is a superb exit strategy that explains everything here. It hammers home that parts of Hierophant's sound have changed, but it also reafirms that their desire to do things their own way remains as punk rock as it ever was. (Note: make sure to also check out Mass Grave's fantastic cover art courtesy of Paolo Girardi.)

FFO: Nails, Trap Them, Black Breath, All Pigs Must Die, and Baptists.