(Andy Synn provides three more recommendations for some home-grown British brutality)
I must apologise for my relative lack of writing/posting over the last couple of weeks – I’ve been pretty busy with a combination of personal, professional, and musical stuff (we’ve got a festival show coming up, for one thing, which will be our first time playing as a three-piece, and then spent all Tuesday this week hanging out at a local brewery and helping out with the creation of a signature beer for the band) which means I haven’t had as much time, or energy, to devote to NCS as usual.
But while I’ve not been able to write very much that hasn’t stopped me from listening… and today’s triptych of album reviews is a product of all that time spent sifting through all the musical chaff to pick out the real diamonds in the rough.
Which may be a mixed metaphor, but I’m running with it all the same.
KUROKUMA – OF AMBER AND SAND
Those of you who’ve been following the site for a while may recognise the name Kurokuma as one we’ve covered before, but if you’re not familiar with the band and their signature brand of hypnotic, hallucinatory Sludge Metal then you’ll be pleased to hear that their second album is a perfect jumping on point.
That being said, existing fans will certainly be pleased by the group’s obvious glow-up too, as it becomes immediately obvious, when the massive riffs of “I Am Forever” come crashing out of the speakers with elemental force, that Kurokuma have clearly been spending a fair bit of time in the metaphorical gym between 2022’s Born of Obsidian and the recent release of Of Amber and Sand.
The fact that the band have packed on some serious metallic mass in the past couple of years isn’t the only big selling point of this album, however, as the group’s love of mescaline-laced melody is also more apparent than ever during the aforementioned opener as it is during the likes of the darker, moodier (and, ultimately, even gnarlier) “Death No More” and the bad-trip vibes of “Fenjaan”.
And while not every aspect of the group’s more experimental approach quite hits the spot – some of the interludes work better than others, for example, and it’s notable that “Neheh” feel like an unfinished draft of something bigger and/or better – the primal power of “Crux Ansata” and the sinister psychedelia of crushing closer “Chronoclasm” both demonstrate that, at their best, Kurokuma remain a force to be reckoned with.
SUNFALL – Les Morts Sont Nés Ici
Deathcore is still a dirty word to some folks around these parts, that’s for sure. And the sort of Nu-Metal influenced Deathcore which Sunfall specalise in – taking their cues equally from the likes of Suicide Silence and Slipknot (although, let’s be honest, the former also took a lot from the latter) – tends to attract even more hate than their more Death Metal and/or Hardcore inspired peers.
But whatever you choose to call a band doesn’t necessarily reflect the quality of their music, and I’m here to tell you that – if you can look past your prejudices – the bone-crushing bounce ‘n’ bludgeon of Les Morts Sont Nés Ici is well worth checking out.
Trust me, if you just want something obnoxiously heavy and in your face, which takes no prisoners and pulls no punches (even if not every blow lands), then you’re going to get a real kick out of tracks like the short, savage “Nothing”, the jerky, jagged-edged “Reapers”, and the aptly-named “Infinite Violent Potential”, all of which treat their instruments as blunt force weapons and the audience as an enemy to be beaten into submission.
That’s not to say the band don’t have a few more subtle tricks up the collective sleeve – the aforementioned “Reapers” incorporates some some suitably eerie, and impressively effective, pseudo-industrial atmospherics, for example, and mid-album two-parter “Pain Inc.” smartly shifts from brooding ambience to nihilistic Nu-Tech-Deathcore chaos over the course of eight minutes, while the closing title-track shows off some of the group’s more melodic ambitions – but my guess is that the audacious impact of songs such as “Blood Moon” and “Down We Go” is what’s likely to leave the biggest, and longest-lasting, impression when all is said and done.
TENDRILS – LONG DEAD
While the UK Hardcore scene has been in rude health over the past several years, I must admit that I haven’t always connected with some of the biggest names who’ve been making the biggest waves – which is no slight on them by any means, it’s simply that, for whatever reason, they just haven’t “clicked” with me.
The more Mathcore-leaning approach of Tendrils on their debut album Long Dead, however, grabbed my attention almost immediately (the absolutely excellent artwork from TrueSpiltMilk Designs didn’t hurt either) with its clever combination of erratic energy and purposefully-focussed power.
The group’s mix of nerve-jangling discordance, frantic, finger-twisting technicality, and beefy low-end groove (the latter being something which, in my opinion at least, a lot of these types of bands tend to lack) strikes a precarious balance between order and chaos during songs like fire-breathing, shrapnel-spitting opener “Mãra”, the angle-grinding aggression of “House of Vultures”, and the anxiety-inducing “Golden, Savage Landscape”, and it’s this tension between the two which makes for such a thrilling ride.
Sure, there’s one or two tracks whose short run-time leaves a little to be desired, but when the band let the songs breathe a little – albeit short, desperate, frantic breaths – you really get a feel for the hidden depths of their songwriting, from the juxtaposition of spiky fury and doomy weight during “The Pessimist” and the slow-grinding gloom of “De-Mapped” to the unexpectedly moody and melodic second half of “Nausea” and the cathartic chug ‘n’ churn of closer “Classless and Revolting”.