Canadian Audiophile’s Mishaps and Misadventures

Amidst cascading walls of noise and remorseless choruses of sound, a sort of ailing splendour lurks below the black metal of Withered. Formed in 2003, the Atlanta four-piece is an incorporation of sludge, grindcore, death metal, and every other flaming thing between.

Their latest, Folie Circulaire, is on the aptly-named Prosthetic Records. You may wind up missing a limb after listening to this one.

With vocals channelled from the depths of Niflheimr (that’s a Norse concept for the underworld) and guitars that whirl around like vampire bats out for blood, the sound of Withered is rather easy to peg. To all intents and purposes, it’s the devil’s music.

The cavernous mire and dirt is mined from the depths of the Dark Lord’s mind and the anomalous harmonious portions seem placed purely as a counterfeit reprieve for the castigation of weighty bass and drums that saturate the whole thing like a beat driving someone to ruin.

I mean that in a good way!

The fatal mauling of Folie Circulaire blares through the sonic doom attack of the “The Fated Breath,” which is led by Napalm Death’s Barney Greenway. It’s as though Death has warmed over and is reaching through the stereo speakers for another participator.

Withered’s bloody assault keeps tearing away with its claws, imposing its sadistic spirit with textbook death metal on tracks like “Gnosis Unveils.” With a beautifully sick melody serving as a prologue, “Gnosis Unveils” quickly turns into a pit of horror and swallows up anything in its wake.

Truly epic shit.

Folie Circulaire even contains an elegy (maybe) to John McCain (“Purification of Ignorance”) and a cover of Necrophobic’s “Into Armageddon” to close things off.

Withered’s second album is a fierce follow-up to Memento Mori and should grant the quartet a spot in the annals of extreme music. It is a vicious record worthy of many spins for lovers of lethal and shadowy metal. The band’s attention to detail proves gratifying, as the swirling guitars and thundering vocal beating fuse for one of the best metal albums of the year.

8/10

The fusion of genres is an art form. Reliant entirely on the inventiveness of music journalists and fans with too much time on their hands, genre fusion is a wordsmith’s orgiastic feast. With no moderation and very few rules, words are created that help sum up the various changes in the nuances of music. The official name for this fusion of two words is portmanteau.

For our purposes, we’ll use one such portmanteau to describe ferocious Alaskan group 36 Crazyfists: metalcore.

The band’s first release on Ferret Music and fifth album overall, The Tide and Its Takers is a courageous record to follow up the critically-acclaimed Rest Inside the Flames from 2006.

With metalcore as the halfway house between metal and hardcore punk music, it’s easy to see how 36 Crazyfists live up to their billing. Screaming and yelling is bolstered by unusually saccharine melodies throughout The Tide and Its Takers, making the album a near-schizophrenic stew of styles.

Vocalist Brock Lindow leads the way and cuts a lethal swath of devastation through songs like “Clear the Coast.” “When we fall from grace, we must rise from the dead,” he shouts in defiance over frantic guitars and vocal accompaniment from Adam Jackson of Ohio rockers Twelve Tribes.

Mick Whitney’s bass and Thomas Noonan’s drums provide an efficacious underpinning, but it’s Steve Holt – Arrested Development fans? – who serves as the cement for the band. His guitar rips through outstanding riffs and solid support segments with meticulousness, serving as the ideal companion to Lindow. Holt also provides some backing vocals.

The Tide and Its Takers really displays the band’s range. Explosive riffs give way to Lindow’s multiple personalities and Noonan’s stellar drums beat a pattern across the Alaskan wilderness, making this a record that will surely shatter some windows and break some ground.

The utter viciousness of tracks like “The All Night Lights” and “Vast and Vague” paint the guys as a cruel and unruly assembly of metalcore seekers of reality, unpacking absolute brutal exactness with scrupulous attention to detail. Whether it’s Noonan’s relentless drums, Whitney’s solid bass, or Holt’s sick guitar, 36 Crazyfists will beat your stereo into submission.

Taken as a whole, this is a well-played and well-produced album. The Tide and Its Takers is a solid look at a talented and seasoned metalcore band whose fearless approach has made them trustworthy players on the scene.

7/10

For deeply introspective and powerful instrumental post-rock/metal, Russian Circles are tough to beat. Alternating cogently between jarring slow passages and thundering heavy metal textures, the Chicago-based trio formed in 2004 and has since been releasing expansive soundscapes with incredible consistency.

Station marks the group’s second full-length album. It is constructed with intense care and attention to detail. Each note unfolds like a petal on a dark rose, adding mood and ambience to the profoundly engaging compositions.

Fans of Russian Circles will likely find less heaviness on Station, which may be disappointing for fans who know what they want. Some may even find the record to be somewhat underwhelming. With expectations of mammoth metal violence, the light and calculated guitar found throughout Station will be unexpected.

The intensity of the compositions should not so easily be cast aside, however. This is one hell of a great record. Station is filled with enormous levels of texture, with some songs sounding like classic Tool and others flowing more like symphonic arrangements.

Regardless of the possible influences, Russian Circles have composed a series of seven masterpieces.

Station expands with steady intention and dispenses with “thundering for thundering’s sake” type metallurgy. Instead, the trio builds songs appropriately and efficiently.

The heavy metal bursts arrive as the innate expansion of dominant construction and not simply as an expected emblem of the band’s sound. When guitars rip through the shell, it’s because they belong there as a natural element and not because they simply exist in the genre as an accepted part of the madness.

It will certainly be said that there’s a bit too much substance here to go around and that will be a suitable appraisal for those who enjoy their music in certain containers. For the rest of us, however, the eagerness to follow the rabbit hole is a gratifying journey.

Russian Circles play with ambience and electronic pieces here, adding cement to tracks like the excellent “Youngblood” without sacrificing the essence. The turbulent guitar rips through the surface to provide an inconceivable experience.

Other tracks rise and crash down like massive waves, such as the ill-omened “Harper Lewis” or the Tool-esque “Station,” both of which hurtle and collide as though in the midst of a violent tempest.

That tempest controls Station, pushing and pulling the music in multiple directions for a serious sonic attack. The seven-song-squall is a post-rock lovers’ dream, a hazardous kaleidoscope of might and madness, and a damn good rock record worthy of several spins with speakers gutsy enough to handle it.

9/10

Kayo Dot’s Blue Lambency Downward isn’t really a collection of songs insomuch as it is a single composition. Sure, the music is divided into tracks (I prefer to suggest they’ve divided the music into movements), but the overall sense of this 2008 recording from the masters of experimental psychedelic metal is that it demands to be heard as one inclusive work.

To say that Kayo Dot bridges the gaps between genres is quite accurate, as defining one tangible sound to slip the Boston band into is a awkward proposition at best and a fruitless operation at least. Hell, when their 2003 debut record is released on John Zorn’s label, you know there’s going to be trouble at the henhouse when it comes to traditional genre placements.

Fast-forward to 2008 and Kayo Dot hasn’t compromised a damn thing. Using instrumentations related to classical music and improvisational jazz, Toby Driver and Mia Matsumiya have upped the ante with Blue Lambency Downward.

Now signed to juggernaut Hydra Head Records out of Los Angeles, Kayo Dot’s multi-instrumental saturation bombing conjures up musical influences from just about every corner of the globe and channels them into one gratifying wall of sound.

To provide an indication as to the sound of Blue Lambency Downward, a quick list of the personnel on the record should do. Driver plays acoustic, electric, 12-string, baritone, and bass guitars. He also plays soprano clarinet, piano, organ, gamelan, analog synth, and toys with a laptop mellotron. Matsumiya wonderful violin is present, of course, but she also plays synth bass and mellotron.

Adding to the standard players, Blue Lambency Downward features the services of Charlie Zeleny on drums, Skerik on tenor and baritone sax, Hans Teuber on alto sax as well as soprano and bass clarinets and flute, and Dave Abramson on gamelan and additional percussion.

This orchestral line-up uses every inch of every instrument, providing a winding and complex work that pins five shorter pieces between two ten minute bookends to formulate a complete work of art. The shifting time signatures and elegant song structure used here is often very bizarre, but ultimately very satisfying.

There are moments of psychosis to Blue Lambency Downward, just as there are moments of reflective harmony and serenity. Compositions erupt into bedlam (“The Awkward Wind Wheel”) and fall apart into unusual waltzes (“Right Hand is the One I Want”). Others play with tempered noise and deep guitars (“Blue Lambency Downward”) while some (“Clelia Walking”) stroll through crisp guitar terrain using clarinets and Mia’s lovely violin as a guide.

This is a complicated, needy record. It demands several listens to explore the dark corners of the music and requires a vigilant ear to determine everything that is occurring within this monstrous composition. At the conclusion of several listens, however, it becomes evident that Kayo Dot has constructed something beautiful, haunting, delicate, and extraordinarily exquisite.

Call it a forward-thinking masterwork. Call it ahead of its time. Call it an unclassifiable tour de force. Call it Blue Lambency Downward.

10/10