SEEN AND HEARD: THE MELVINS, SANNHET, BEYOND MORTAL DREAMS, GIFT OF GODS, GOWL

I’ll be straight with you: I have about 500 new albums I want to review, a few hundred more I’d like to hear, a couple of interviews I said I would do, and instead I’m sitting here surfing the interhole, looking for new things, with so many tabs now open on my computer that it’s too bogged down to stream the music I’m looking for.  Time passes, and I fall farther and farther behind. But I might as well put up a batch things I’ve seen and heard today so I can close some of those tabs. Here you go:

THE MELVINS

I saw an interview, published today, that Buzz Osborne of the Melvins gave to Noisey. He talked about the new Melvins album, Tres Cabrones (three dumbasses), which features the band’s original drummer Mike Dillard returning for the first time since 1983 and the band’s long-time drummer Dale Crover moving over to bass. The interview also included a bunch of other subjects, including these (which made me chuckle):

So you’ve been around for a while, what’s the biggest change in the music industry that’s impacted you as a band?
Nothing’s changed, really. Honestly, I don’t think there’s really any golden era of music. I like about as much new music now as I ever did, which isn’t much.

…

You were talking about new music earlier. At Noisey, we’re constantly dominated by news of Drake and Miley Cyrus. Curious if you had opinions on either.
Well, I don’t know who Drake is, first off.

So Miley Cyrus, me and my wife watched that on YouTube after all this hub bub and I thought I was watching the wrong thing because it didn’t look offensive to me. Maybe I’m just some jaded dumbass but I thought that she was talentless and didn’t really sound any different than Madonna or any of those other Barbie doll-type women singers. Britney Spears-types seem pretty interchangeable to me. And as far as it being outrageous, I’ve seen more outrageous stuff than that on Bourbon Street on a Tuesday during the day. Also, you live in New York, you see weirder shit than that every day in New York. I lived in San Francisco, I lived in Hollywood. Are you kidding? It doesn’t weird me out. I kept waiting for something to happen. Like she was gonna have sex with a Doberman. That’s it? People are upset about this?

Musically, I mean the music is just nothing. There’s nothing there at all. I might as well be listening to the sink drip. Really, it’d be more entertaining. And as far as the rest of it goes, nobody’s fooled by it. There’s no singing or music going on there. That’s clearly obvious. Even rock bands now, I would say a large percentage don’t even play live. So that’s how far down on the scale we’ve come. Now you have to give credit when people actually play. That’s fucked up.

I think this is the first time I’ve posted anything on this site that contained the words “Miley Cyrus”. I’m pretty sure it will be the last.

Along with the interview, Noisey started streaming a song from the new Melvins album. The name is “Dr. Mule”, and those riffs and freaky, spastic guitar workouts made me nod my head, too. It’s an exclusive stream, so if you want to rock on with the mule, you’ll have to go here, because I’m being a good boy and not stealing the stream.

https://www.facebook.com/melvinsarmy

 

SANNHET

She was feverish, unsettled, dreaming, thought she might be losing her mind, or had lost it already and thought she had found sanity. Images of the figure forced themselves upon her, the lines coming out in scrawls on paper, but they weren’t right. She made herself a thing of clay, and that was more like it. She carried it to the edge of the surf, and gave themselves to the deep. Slow ruin…

Those are words that came to mind after I watched and listened to a brand new music video by a Brooklyn post-metal band named Sannhet for a song named “Slow Ruin”.  It’s on their debut album Known Flood, which is available on Bandcamp (here). The video was directed by the band’s bass player AJ Annunziata. It’s one of those marriages of imagery and music that works and works well. Dark, doomed, harrowing, blackened, alien, bleak, bruising: those are words that came to mind as I listened . . . to this:

https://www.facebook.com/sannhet

 

BEYOND MORTAL DREAMS

I saw the artwork you’re now staring it, and thought it was very cool. It’s the cover of a 7″ EP named Lamia that’s coming later this fall from some Australian death metal savages named Beyond Mortal Dreams. The band’s last EP Dreaming Death, which I reviewed here, left me shell-shocked. I thought it was one of the best short releases of 2012. It’s now available for streaming and purchase on Bandcamp. It also has kick-ass cover art.

The new EP will be co-released by Lavadome and Unholy Prophecies. Sadly, I don’t know the name of the artist for Lamia. If/when I find out, I’ll update this post.

UPDATE: I’ve now learned that the cover art was created by vocalist/guitarist Doomsayer of Beyond Mortal Dreams.

 

GIFT OF GODS

About a month ago I wrote about a new solo project named Gift of Gods undertaken by Nocturno Culto, who of course is half Norway’s Darkthrone. Tne debut EP, Receive, will be released by Peaceville Records on October 28 (this is earlier than I previously reported). Today Peaceville began streaming an edited version of a track named “Enlightening Strikes”, which can also be downloaded in return for your e-mail address.

The song can be heard via the player below. There are a lot of old school heavy metal traits in this stripped-down, mid-paced rocker, along with Nocturno Culto’s strangled croaking. At the end — right before the edit stops — it starts taking on even darker, doomier colors. Wish they had made the whole song available, because I’d like to hear what happens to the song next…

 

GOWL

And finally, here’s a little something I found on Bandcamp, though I’ve now forgotten how I first came by the link. It’s an EP named BuzzBox which was self-released last April by a three-man band from Tolland, Connecticut named Gowl. It left me bruised, battered, and bloody, but smiling through my broken teeth.

On Bandcamp, the EP is divided into two tracks, but it sounds like each track is really multiple songs collected as Side A and Side B (since this is a 7″ vinyl release that comes with an immediate digital download).

The music is a howling, destructive blast of death/grind. Heavy on the distortion and liberally sprayed with feedback and massive bass tone, the music alternates between frenzied assaults of meat grinding riffs and bone-cracking percussion and down-tempo, high-mass clobbering, the kind that just pounds and pounds until only the top of your cracked skull is left above ground. And there’s no comfort from the vocalist — he roars from over in the next room like he really wants to feed on your bone marrow after his bandmates have finished breaking all the discs in your spine.

Strange thing is, despite the unremitting volcanic power of the music, it’s packed with huge, gruesome grooves and clever drum fills that will get what’s left of your head nodding. I’m digging this mightily.

P.S. After listening to BuzzBox, I figured out that Gowl have a more recent release that’s also available on Bandcamp. It’s a 10-song demo of all new songs named Raging Like A Heart/Attack. I haven’t yet heard it, but if I don’t stop this post now I won’t get anything else accomplished today. But I’ll at least put up that new album for streaming, right after BuzzBox.

http://gowl.bandcamp.com/album/buzzbox-ep#
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Gowl/190987424251709