Before the Internet existed many like-minded music lovers out there relied on gigs, magazines, fanzines, word-of-mouth and the mighty John Peel for more information about new or breaking bands. But it seems that within today’s self-facilitating media environment, getting one step ahead in promoting your own music via social networking sites and/or your own little place on the web, a band should aim for either a distinguishable name or even just a blatant google-whack. This London based four-piece would be the first to admit that having their name synonymous with photo copying technology doesn’t really help prospective fans who go on a web hunt for them.

Despite being based in England, Scanners have had more success elsewhere – such as there place at SXSW 2008, but they seem content in admitting they are “doing ok” over here. And it isn’t surprising that Submarine was released upon the American market around this time last year, which does knock the wind out of the sails for any hear-it-first scoop. Not that I really mind; the more people that get to hear this the better.

This album is reminiscent of their intimate local gig a good few years ago. Scanners had my complete attention throughout their set and I was transfixed on just how melodic they sounded compared to the other “art-noise” bands on the night.

Indeed, melody is what this band excels at. Submarine is awash with glorious hooks and emotive crescendos, with each instrument suitably put through its paces to create a spatial and rich layered tracks. The predominantly more up-tempo 80s-thinking-00s-Brit indie sound on tracks such as ‘A Girl Like You’ and ‘‘Goodbye’ stand out amongst the slower, enchanting versus of tracks such as ‘Jesus Saves’, ‘Baby Blue’, ‘Salvation’, and ‘Sleepwalking Life’. On these occasions there is a bluesy element, but also a real 60s influence from folk to psychedelia, from Bob Dylan to The Beatles.

The album’s lyrical content mixes emotions from the downright macabre to more positive personal issues. There are also acoustic moments and vocals reminiscent of Stories From The City-era PJ Harvey, but essentially the band put this eclectic mix of sounds together and create something to truly call their own.

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[Review originally appeared on TLOBF]

Beans is a bit of a strange chap. No, strange is too strong a word. Perhaps individual is better, in the sense that he avoids styles of hip-hop with the trappings of glitz, glamour, and the hustle of some New York rap. Instead, being more of a modern day beat-poet, his work with Antipop Consortium bordered as much on inventiveness as it did near insanity. I still regret putting on Arrhythmia for some friends after a heavy night out: the ping-pong balls and abstract sounds really didn’t help some with the hangovers.

Somewhat terminally titled End It All, this is Beans’ fourth solo album, and also marks a break from the reunion of Antipop Consortium and their 2009 release Fluorescent Black. I had lost track of what both Beans and Antipop Consortium had been up to in recent years, and what drew me to this was the focus on guest producers such as Four Tet, Clark, and Tobacco. These collaborators create a wealth of different platforms to which Beans and his unmistakable vocal delivery can skip around, from the fizzing sounds of ‘Glass Coffins’, the aggressive overdriven beats of ‘Blue Movie’ to the mechanical and melodic ‘Mellow You Out’. Melody is sparsely investigated in an album that could be looked at as slightly intimidating or aggressive, especially on ‘Anvil Falling’ and the stripped down ‘Hardliner’.

This is perhaps due to End It All being a brief album. At around 33 minutes it can feel hurried and disjointed. On some tracks such as ‘Air Is Free’, Beans’ vocals sound detached from the music below him, and on others his rhymes to drift above or around the music. In this minor way it can feel off-putting, but then I would expect nothing less from the man who often strays from the norm, and it doesn’t detract from an album that although is decent enough, it is just crying out for a few more tracks.

[Originally published on TLOBF]

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If you have any inkling of the depths of the harder side of groove metal and the bands that emerged during the 10-or-so years that it was most prominent, then you will be able to get some kind of kick out of Betzefer’s Freedom To The Slave Makers. If, however, you spent your teens skipping the arse end of nu-metal and instead listen to the more “extreme” bands of recent years, those with guitarists that challenge your ears more, then you will probably give this a miss in the long run. There is very little in this album that hasn’t been tried before by the likes of Byzantine and Throwdown, and obviously pioneers such as Sepultura, Pantera et al. Any current band that has attempted to rewrite or improve on this type of metal hasn’t really succeeded in pushing it into a new direction. But then again, if the average sounding Five Finger Death Punch can make it work, then there is no reason why Betzefer can’t. All they need is more tattoos and wacky hair, and they are set to go.

The band themselves have been around for a decade now, and were first signed to Roadrunner Records, who at the time had Sepultura, Soulfly, Machine Head, Coal Chamber, and Vision Of Disorder on their books. Time has taken its toll on most of those bands, and Roadrunner have “moved on” to other areas. But of those bands who are left, how many of those are doing something a little different?

This album crosses so many different territories in sounds, from the thin and one-dimensional vocals of the kind that Chester Bennington continues to pump out, or the guttural heavy vocals championed by the likes of Phil Anselmo – and countless imitators. The production sounds thick and tight, which is no surprise considering it was tweaked by Down producer Warren Riker. The riffs are sharp and locked with the drums in the same way rhythm kings Mark Morton and Andreas Kisser do for their respective bands, but this Israeli band just lack that sparkle, the nimbleness, inventiveness or total aggression of those two. This band just doesn’t get stuck in enough, and this is the main issue with the album – it all sounds a little lacklustre, and sometimes hideously clichéd. Time and time again I feel that I have heard it all before, and sadly there are only rare moments of genuine progression.

[Originally published on Onemetal]

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You may have heard of Tommy Rogers, the lead vocalist/keyboardist for metallers Between The Buried And Me (BTBAM), but this is his second solo album and his first under the moniker Thomas Giles. I am not totally clued up on the inner workings of BTBAM, but from listening to Pulse I have this certain image of his relationship with the music he creates. I get the feeling that Giles/Rogers (okay, Giles from now on) is one of those musicians who is constantly bouncing ideas around, not only within his band, but on the move between shows/rehearsals – and possibly first thing in the morning. I bet he absolutely loves tinkering and experimenting with new technology, and is very open to different sounds. This is the feeling I get.

With that in mind, listening to Pulse is certainly a journey into this man’s very open mind. It is eclectic to say the least; full of technology, samples, synths, screams, shouts and riffs, all entwined around an abundance of instruments. It could be a real eye-opener not only for fans of BTBAM, but also those who may have heard of the band in a negative way – as the case was for me.

So essentially you get a sound that is similar to other personality focused bands, from Porcupine Tree to Muse – and a little in between from the post-rock scene. This is certainly the case on first track ‘Sleep Shake’ and its follow up ‘Reverb Island’. Both tracks contain a melancholic feel and melody, with the sparse tremolo guitar on the former and the driving acoustic lines on the later, but with a sparkling synth and keyboard sections during the choruses.

Giles takes you through a more electro sound on ‘Catch & Release’. It sounds like a strange remix that should be on the Spawn soundtrack, yet these beats and production are part of his persona, and fortunately they are not as hard and driven as some of the songs on his previous solo album. The same could be said with ‘Reject Falicon’, where drum loops are cut up and spliced around a stready piano/drum beat. These two tracks showcase Giles’ more experimental side, and are not off-putting in the slightest. The constant changes in direction are not only the way in which Giles wished to approach the recording, but they are a collection of ideas pencilled down over a good period of time. In essence, this is a musical diary for the frontman. But isn’t all rock and electro; there are some very stripped down and bare moments such as the acoustic ‘Scared’ and ‘Armchair Travel’ which in a sense are moments which reinforce this very personal album.

[Originally published on Onemetal]

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A few years ago a bought a smattering of CD’s from a distro up-North, and although I can’t recall the exact details, what I do remember that I was lovingly given a couple of freebies. At the time I almost totally disregarded them — I thought that if they were good enough to be given away with no explanation they probably weren’t worth listening to. They have been sitting on my shelves ever since, one is still shrink wrapped and the other I did actually listen to. That release was by Humanfly and their album A God Among Insects. I could quite easily listen to it now and again, but it really isn’t one I could recommend to people, it’s just a little too erratic.

However, I would suggest checking out their latest release Darker Later. This is the third studio album from the Leeds based band that features ex-members of hardcore act Canvas — though it has been so long that it is nearly irrelevant. Whereas you could hear a lot more intensively delivered sounds on A God Among Insects, Darker Later is riddled with heavily riff-orientated, and sometimes surprisingly ambient moments. Only ‘Stew for the Murder Minded’ hints to that rarely listened to album. For a band now in their 10th year, I wouldn’t really expect anything less.

It also has some psych/sludge influences, from the dynamic power riffs and accompanying octave strummed melody on the opener ‘This Is Where Your Parents Fucked’ to the warped sounds and strained and growling vocals on ‘The Enemy of my Enemy is Me’ — the latter sounds as if vocalist/guitarist John Sutcliffe is chewing on his microphone. It isn’t sludgy in the sense of the guitar tone though. It really does bite compared to other bands’ treble-less brain-numbing drones. For Humanfly, It is all about power.

The band has developed in perhaps a similar way that Taint has done over the past few years, by diversifying their sound and transcending different areas of heaviness. The band are now more progressive in nature, and furthermore explore a stripped down sound on acoustic track ‘Darker Later’ and the 17min opus ‘Heavy Black Snow’. This track is a weird one to say the least, and changes the balance of the record — considering the other 5 tracks are relatively short — and would deservedly fit a whole side of an LP. I’m not sure I’m convinced with Rose Kemp’s contribution on here; if it’s meant to be disorientating then it certainly works. Her spoken words drift in and out but don’t seem to work for me. The track is an ambient/atmospheric collaboration that has glistening guitars and warbling picked riffs, and also has hints of post-rock/metal band Pelican in there as well. It certainly is a strange ending to an album that gradually changes from dark to light sounding compositions.

[Buy from: Amazon / iTunes]

[Originally published on thelineofbestfit]

I am absolutely loving Southern Lord’s recent emphasis on filthy and crusty hardcore. Over the past few months the label dropped the lethal sounding Heavy Breathing LP by Black Breath and re-released Nails’ Unsilent Death LP. The former mixed an Entombed sounding death drone amongst a chunk of aggressive metal and hardcore whilst the latter was simply an excellent 14 minute blast-a-thon. But It isn’t really a coincidence that The Secret’s’ Solve Et Coagula should fit in so well with Black Breath, Nails, Cursed et al as they all had the Kurt Ballou treatment; and it is fair to say that you could put on a bunch of recent tough sounding records and pick out those that have first passed through the ears of the Converge guitarist.

Ballou has often said that his recording and production techniques were designed to take his mind back to those small hardcore shows of his youth, where the dingy and volume filled shows would fill the room the a huge amount of energy. I have no idea what he does to make these records sound so raw, so brutal, and more importantly away from today’s polished extreme metal albums. At the same time he also manages to pinpoint a certain aspect or specific influence within the core of each band, and push it to the forefront of production. In this case The Secret sound more of a mix of diy lo-fi crust from the outer reaches of an isolated black metal scene.

The combination of volume, feedback, and guitar creates an almost a droning church organ sound for opener ‘Cross Builder’ and introduces the rest of album in which aesthetically has a lot in common with the blackened side of extreme metal. Solve Et Coagula is a lot noisier than most, giving too much high end to the mix, especially when the screaming and sometimes monotonous vocals of Marco Bertoldini seem to get lost within thick cloud of raw anger. It is definitely heading towards the more black metal side of things that’s for sure, and where the majority of this album really sits.

For those up with their Latin, you would already know that Solve Et Coagula means seperate, and join together (or “dissolve and coagulate”). The Secret have taken apart the broken sectors and divisions of Italian religion, society, and Berlusconi’s glossy governing media brigade, and created an album full of lyrics that speak of what to them is an almost failed state. According to the band on this album, the current situation in Italy isn’t looking good, but hopefully the nadir has been reached. Only their fourth album will be able to tell us.

[Buy from: Southern / Amazon / iTunes]

[Originally published on thelineofbestfit]