A 9 out of 10 genre-defying review of Altar Of Plagues' White Tomb was posted on Blabbermouth today.
" These days when I read "post-rock" in an album description, I often roll my eyes and chuck the CD to the side.... Ireland's ALTAR OF PLAGUES on an opus like "White Tomb", I quickly realize that I should stop my bitching and just listen. And what a mistake it would have been to chuck "White Tomb" to the side, as it is a magnificent work of melodic black metal and ISIS-esque shoe-gazing atmospherics that is in league with standard-bearers WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM...." Read full review HERE.
Samothrace
Life's Trade
(20 Buck Spin)
Original Review
Hailing from Lawrence, Kansas, Samothrace (not sure if named after the Greek Island or a race of Emperor guitarists) have come out of nowhere with a stunning debut album that mixes the girth and throb of psychedelic sludge/Post Rock (think Minsk and Rwake) with the utterly rending, layered harmonies and beautiful yet wilting melody of Anathema, Morgion or even the Finnish doom/death scene.
Life’s Tradeis 4 songs and just over 45 minutes of draining, soul crushing music that will leave your heart shattered and spent but with a glimmer of hope gleaming through the shroud of despondency. Seriously, the mix of typically fuzzed out Sanford Parker produced sludge/doom, gruff roars, sprawling ambience and truly evocative, layered guitar work might move you to tears-it almost did me.
Opener “La Llorona’s” (”The Crying lady”-named after a child drowning ghost of Mexican folklore) is a moping, heaving monster of lethargy and a slight Southern drawl mingled with the haunting throes of the subject matter. Then, standout track “Awkward Hearts” renders arguably one of the most moving pieces of music I’ve heard in 2008. While my full time job has rendered my an emotionless prick, music still has the ability to physically affect my emotions and the opening delicate strums and cascading peak of “Awkward Hearts” is that rare piece of music that feels like God reaching into my chest, grabbing my heart, wringing it out, and leaving it a withered husk. Think Anathema’s “Lovelorn Rhapsody” and Morgion’s “Canticle” mixed with the crushing ebbs of Isis or Neurosis. Simply fucking amazing.
“Cacophony”, has a tall order to follow, but manages to keep me enthralled initially a heftier, sludgier repast before gently transitioning into a shimmering, psychedelic mid song trip and tumbling, stoner doom ending climax. Closer “Cruel Awake” gives a fittingly despondent , 13 minute endnote with a crumbling, epic lope littered with layered melodic acoustics and again, a slightly hazy, swampy feel and the closing 3 minutes coming close to recreating the sheer mournfull bliss of “Awkward Hearts”.
Like Deadbird, Samothrace isn’t the biggest name in the genre, but by god have they delivered one of the year’s better albums and like Deadbird’s Twilight Ritual, look for Life’s Trade to flirt with my year end list.
Written by Erik Thomas
October 3rd, 2008
Upcoming live dates:
10/04 New Haven, CT @ Rudy's
10/06 New York, NY @ Lit Lounge
10/07 Rochester, NY @ The Pussy Barrel
10/08 Columbus, OH @ Legion of Doom
10/09 Cincinnati, OH @ The Bluerock Tavern
10/10 Toledo, OH @ Ramalama Records
10/11 Chicago, IL @ Metal Shaker
10/12 Milwaukee, WI @ 319 Garfield
10/16 Fayetteville, AR @ The Grill
10/17 Tulsa, OK @ House show
10/18 Oklahoma City, OK @ Conservatory
10/19 Oklahoma City, OK @ Spinks @ Neil Diamond
10/20 Kansas City, MO @ The Riot Room
10/22 Lawrence, KS @ The Replay
10/23 Denver, CO @ Blast-o-Mat
10/27 Los Angeles, CA @ House show
10/28 Oakland, CA @ Hazmat
10/29 San Francisco, CA @ Thee Parkside
10/30 Chico, CA @ Monstros Pizza
10/31 Portland, OR @ Halloween house show
11/01 Seattle, WA @ Squid and Ink
11/02 Bellingham, WA @ Green Frog Acoustic Room
11/08 Denver, CO @ Curtis St. Bar
11/10 Vermillion, SD @ Arts Center Undergroung
Neurosis' Given To The Rising received a very impressive 8.6 rating from Pitchfork yesterday. The deluxe 180-gram double vinyl triple gatefold version of Given hits the shops next Tuesday. Neurosis will be playing a few Euro dates ending in London at the Shepherd's Bush Empire on June 30th. Sadly this will be the band's last live show for this summer. U.S. dates tba for late 2007.Neurosis
Given to the Rising
[Neurot; 2007]
Rating: 8.6
Online Review
In the hallowed halls of metaldom, the name Neurosis carries some pretty (no pun intended) heavy overtones: they're a staunchly DIY cult band with the most devoted following and a long track record of highly innovative thinking-man's metal. But anyone even vaguely familiar with their oeuvre would wisely not call them a doom band; they're way too varied for such a tag. On these San Franciscan metallurgists' ninth album, Given To the Rising, Neurosis are simply not fucking around. Within the first note you know you're in for a ride: no staple slow-building intros or atmospheric effluvia, just a crushing primordial mid-tempo riff that eventually falls into one of the album's repeating motifs of bendy, long-hanging funereal guitar lines, all braced with plenty of back-to-basics pummeling. The sense of purpose is developed further on "Fear And Sickness", where disjointed yet dissonantly harmonious axe lines dodge and dart in paganistic call-and-response around a swing-like snare and kick drum beat. These two dimly lit apocalypse-summoning tracks shine light on why Given very well may be the best Neurosis album in over a decade-- or at least since 1999's signature Times of Grace.
First a re-cap: It's difficult making a new album when you're a band like Neurosis. Much like the elders on which they were weaned (Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Black Flag, Swans), aspects of their sound have spawned entire micro-genres. Whether it be their kinetic mega-evil tribal drum-and-guitar interplay or their dense layering of creepy samples and textural atmospherics or their melodic instrumental passages that birthed the "metalgaze" school-- see Isis and bands such as Cult of Luna and Mouth of the Architect for starters-- it's hard to stay fresh when everyone's copping your every move. Which is why Given feels so smart and so standing-on-the-throats-of-our-imitators-and-not-giving-a-fuck confident.
All the past doomsday bells-and-whistles are still prevalent, all the progressive guitar mayhem and Steve Von Till's classic Tom Waits-meets-Michael Gira vocals. But unlike their last couple albums-- most notably 2004's introspective and mostly-delicate and majestic The Eye of Every Storm-- the noodley bits are tethered as if in direct response to all the quiet-loud-brood-quiet-loud brooding copycats. And songs like the two previously mentioned openers, as well as the Jesu-like "Hidden Faces" and the Mastodon-like chug-fest "Water is Not Enough", seem to be cribbing notes from the cribbers (as well as the non-copying competition) and then in turn streamlining the turns the cribbers previously cribbed. Such as the way that soundsculptor/keyboardist Noah Landis masterfully blends the dark ambient textures, not just for spooky intros and outros, but for dynamic passages of their own. Or the way that the songs-- most averaging around seven and a half minutes-- keep morphing from thunderous cacophony to desolate soul-searching melodic phrases, but with a mad scientist exactitude regarding all of the subtle, beautiful, and terrifying spaces in between.
Even dynamically adroit acts like Pelican and, once again, Isis have yet to explore these depths of shifting-- and, most importantly, gradual-- peaks and valleys. Neurosis have once again conjured those ominous trance-inducing dark spaces, but they've placed them in canyons even more broad and deep.
-D. Shawn Bosler, June 20, 2007
A 9 out of 10 genre-defying review of Altar Of Plagues' White Tomb was posted on Blabbermouth today.
