New Metal

Here’s some new stuff in the Headbanger listening station. Come in and check it out!

Pestilence – Doctrine
These Dutch tech death behemoths have been at it a long time. Doctrine is the much anticipated follow up to their 2009 comeback release Resurrection Macabre. Here, we see them changing their style up a bit, notably in the vocal department, where Patrick Mameli explores the extent of what his voice can do. It’s a nice breath of fresh for a band that’s been around 20+ years.

Check this out if you like Immolation, Atheist, and Deicide

STAFF RECOMMENDED

Sepultura – Kairos
A mainstay (or rather, the centerpiece) of the Brazilian metal scene, Sepultura have been making music consistently since 1986, never skipping a beat. Kairos continues where A-Lex left off, but also acts as an exploration into the band’s 25-year history. Fans of any of the band’s eras, from the death metal of the ’80s to Cavalera’s leadership, will find something to enjoy in this one.

Check this out if you like Soulfly, Machine Head, and Pantera

 

Trivium – In Waves
Most metalheads have either a love or hate relationship with Trivium. They are, for all intents and purposes, entry-level metal, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be good. For newbies to the genre, In Waves (and the rest of their catalogue) is a great place to start, but even the experienced listener won’t be totally turned off by this album.

Check this out if you like The Black Dahlia Murder, All That Remains, and Killswitch Engage

New Releases


Eleanor Friedberger – Last Summer
Unlike Matthew’s solo forays, which amplify his compositional idiosyncrasies (see his current Solos series featuring one instrument per album), Eleanor has chosen an immediately pleasant pop/rock mode and found many colors within it. For instance, “Inn of the Seventh Ray” has numerous numerical antecedents in past Friedberger songs “Seven Silver Curses”, “Seventh Loop Highway”, and “Cabaret of the Seven Devils”, but the song stands out within this already impressive run by virtue of its comparative unfussiness. A couple of piano and guitar chords repeat, and are embellished, and longing echoes in the singer’s voice. Three quarters of the way through the song, nearly all of that is scaled way back, and she sings over some background “ooohs” that are surprisingly haunted and affecting. Read the Full Review on Pop Matters


Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter – Marble Son
Throughout this gorgeous collection of music Sykes’ voice crisscrosses the paper-thin rift between deep pain and true bliss, enabling songs to drift into the ether in between. Slower moments build with a creepy, meandering flow before bursts of swirling psychedelic rock attack that would make Comets on Fire proud. This is heavy. Read the full review on Glide Magazine


MellowHype – BlackenedWhite
…even as it nods toward accessibility, BLACKENEDWHITE works as yet another fascinating, bizarre, expectation-defying piece of work from a group of young artists who don’t make anything else. And unlike the others, this one features zero rape threats. For neophytes, Tyler’s Bastard is still the place to start; he’s the group’s figurehead and most talented member, and you really have to confront how fucked up these kids are if you have any interest in engaging them. But BLACKENEDWHITE pushes them closer to humanity without sacrificing the weirdness that’s so central to their appeal. They’re not out of surprises yet, and they probably won’t be for a long time. Read the full Review on Pitchfork

New Releases


Black Lips – Arabia Mountain
In the single “Modern Art,” bassist for the Black Lips, Jared Swilley, sings over a fuzzed out guitar: “K-hole at the Dalí/Seeing the unknown/Well it might have been a molly/’Cause my mind’s being blown. Two things are clear about this band: 1) These hooligans quaff enough drugs that make Charlie Sheen look like he’s been huffing Elmer’s glue out of a brown bag. 2) Its music sounds just like they are: debauched, offensive and slightly criminal, all of which translates into its most recent vinyl pressing.

Famed for its notorious stage antics, such as making out with each other, flinging piss and whipping out their peters as well as their (legally questionable) lifestyle choices, the boys have cleaned up their act for its latest release, Arabia Mountain, on Vice Records. Well, sort of. Read the full review on Seattle PI


Sarah Jarosz – Follow me Down
No one should be surprised that acoustic multi-instrumentalist Sarah Jarosz can pick clean and fast. Jarosz’s first album showcased her ability to take on folk, country, and bluegrass music head on as well as cover rock songs with creative gusto. Jarosz does the same on her latest album, but she has expanded her musical palette and does much more. Follow Me Down, which will be released shortly before her 20th birthday, reveals Jarosz’ considerable growth as singer, songwriter, and player. Her talent at performing everything from slow airs to somewhat avant-garde compositions while keeping the music consistently interesting suggests she is wise beyond her years. Read the full review on Pop Matters


The Japanese Popstars – Controlling Your Allegiance
The best dance songs are those that manage to navigate the pitfalls of the genre. It’s easy to throw a bass beat underneath any old track and put it on in a club; it’s another thing entirely to get away with the same trick on an album. This isn’t an issue for the Japanese Popstars, though. On Controlling Your Allegiance, they don’t limit themselves with repetitive rhythms. Instead, each song crafts a different tone through varied instrumentation, multiple vocalists, and a high-level intensity that will get people moving. Read the full review Consequence of Sound

New Metal (not nu metal)

Devin Townsend Project – Deconstruction

Devin Townsend is most famous for Strapping Young Lad, but said band was dissolved way back in ’06. Since, he’s embarked on many endeavors. Deconstruction is the last in a four-album series which began with 2009’s Ki. There’s lots of craziness, with influences ranging from black metal to industrial metal and even a little carnival waltz in one song.

Check this out if you like Fear Factory, Dimmu Borgir, and Dream Theater

STAFF RECOMMENDED

Origin – Entity
In the tech-death world, Origin are certainly a household name. Coming off the heels of their acclaimed 2008 release Antithesis, we are now getting Entity, yet another excellent album. Keep in mind, though, that this is not light stuff. If you like your lyrics discernible, time signatures straightforward, and guitars in standard tuning, this isn’t for you.

Check this out if you like Necrophagist, Brain Drill, and Decrepit Birth

 

Turbid North – Orogeny

 Alaska never exactly been a haven for metal bands. However, Turbid North, a fresh band out of the tiny city of North Pole, could be spearheading something. With a sound somewhere in between groove thrash, and proggy NWOAHM bands, expect to see these young eskimos gain some ground in the wake of their sophomore release.

Check this out if you like DevilDriver, Evile, and Slayer

New Releases


Brett Dennen – Lover Boy
Eschewing the pointed social commentary of memorable earlier songs like “Ain’t No Reason,” “There Is So Much More” and the zeitgeist-capturing “I Ask When,” Dennen opts to embed a broader humanistic message —“This album is about having fun and letting go,” he writes in his brief liner notes — in sprung rhythms resolving into cascading chorus payoffs. The most immediately sticky tracks are the three sequenced together near the top of the record, on which Dennen gets an assist from co-producer Martin Terefe (who’s done memorable work with Ron Sexsmith, another articulate, single-minded romantic). A pugilistically punchy groove and a guileless “nah-nah-nah” chorus provide “Comeback Kid” with its yin and yang; the balmy, string-laden “Frozen in Slow Motion” evokes the late-morning sun breaking through the marine layer at Paradise Cove; and the handclap-powered falsetto chorus of “Sydney (I’ll Come Running)” trampolines upward from the body of the track in irresistible fashion. Read the full review on Paste Magazine

 

 

Tune-Yards – Whokill
w h o k i l l, Garbus’ second album as tUnE-yArDs, delivers on the promise of her 2009 debut, BiRd-BrAiNs. Unlike that album, which she recorded almost entirely on her own using a digital voice recorder and the sound editing program Audacity, w h o k i l l was mostly made in traditional studios in collaboration with bassist Nate Brenner, engineer Eli Crews, and a handful of other musicians. The music benefits from the increased professionalism, but Garbus has not abandoned her lo-fi aesthetic. As on BiRd-BrAiNs, Garbus layers sound to create a patchwork of contrasting textures. This time around, the greater clarity allows for more exaggerated dynamics. Read the full review on Pitchfork

 

The Ladybug Transistor – Clutching Stems
The Brooklyn indie-pop band is as poppy as ever, playing songs that putter along with twangy guitar, strict tempos, and little blooms of lush orchestration every half-minute or so. But Clutching Stems feels pinned between the open yearning of “Oh Cristina” (in which Olson quotes the titles of other well-known heartbreak songs) and “Caught Don’t Walk” (in which trumpets burst in periodically to push Olson into a higher register), and the more formalist retro-pop of “Breaking Up On The Beat” and “Fallen And Falling,” where the band seems to be trying to wrest control of a bad situation by caging it within a sturdy musical arrangement. Read the full review on AV Club

New Releases


Handsome Furs – Sound Kapital
Opener “When I Get Back” has Boeckner returning to his native land a changed man, for better or for worse, as Perry’s left hand punches out deep grooves and her right hits an almost bubbly synth melody. “Memories of the Future” sees Boeckner disparaging the nostalgia that, arguably, drives this entire project and its wanderlust—“I throw my hands to the sky / I let my memories go.” The track proves that he and Perry can turn a forward-looking outlook into just as much of a jam as a backward-looking one. “Serve the People” could be an indictment of Russian oligarchs and American corporatists alike, and it will get fists in the air in both countries. Early single “What About Us” turns the record’s most club-ready and retro banger into a New Order-esque heart-on-sleeve coda, with Boeckner singing, “Let’s stay in this evil little world / Break my heart” over and over again to somehow comforting, ethereal results. Read the full review on Pop Matters


Fucked Up – David Comes To Life
More than any single Fucked Up record, David Comes to Life is thick with walls of noisy melody. It’s hard to get a handle on just how many guitar tracks are on a given song, and Shane Stoneback deserves a medal for mixing the sheer bulk of the sound into something so clear. But for all the shoegazey textures and blistering sonic assault, David Comes to Life is also direct and immediate. Hooks are piled on top of hooks, bursting through torrents of spacey noise (“I Was There”) and peppy rhythms (“The Recursive Girl”) alike. At points, the primal appeal of the blunt and effective riffing even brings to mind the bar-band rock of the Hold Steady. Read the full Review


Brian Eno & Rick Holland – Drums Between The Bells
A track on Drums Between The Bells like “cloud 4”, with Eno’s multilayered voice modulating between intonation and generous song to deliver gently optimistic, contemplative lyrics over legato organ lines and softly arpeggiated synths, finds itself speaking to Another Day on Earth and the semi-titular track “Just Another Day.” This cluster itself speaks to the instrumental (I dare not say ‘voiceless’) meditations “The Big Ship,” “Sombre Reptiles,” and “Another Green World” that nestle at the center of 1975’s Another Green World. It’s a testament to his maturity and prescience that Eno can maintain a conversation with his past achievements, giving an impression of a sustained meditation on an eclectic bundle of decades-long vibrating strings, and that he remains as happy creating “three-dimensional instantiations” of poetry as he is setting poetry to music, and finding time between to promulgate as many permutations as can be mustered or set in motion. Read the full review

New Releases


Cults – Cults
As the singles testify, the secret to Cults’ success is the way the group takes reference points that have been cited to death by now and breathes new life into them, putting a twisted twist on what only appears to be lovey-dovey girl-group pop through their edgy, inventive compositions and the effed-up romances Follin sings about. Even though Follin and Oblivion seem especially reverent of their influences, they’re also riffing off ‘em in clever and ingenious ways. Like on “You Know What I Mean”, where Follin conveys the cool doo-whoppy sway of the Supremes’ yearning-and-burning vocals as sparkling synths and sound effects play behind her, only to bring her simmering mood to a boil when she shout-sings the chorus. And you might swear you hear the Supremes’ pop symphonies peeking through here and there on “Most Wanted”, with just the right hints of swelling strings and gently tinkling ivories. All in all, Oblivion’s deft orchestration really takes center stage on “Most Wanted”, as a thumping bass line and old-timey blues guitar get across an authentic blast-from-the past feel as they accompany Follin’s honeyed vocals. Read the full review on Pop Matters


Kate Bush – Directors Cut
Her new album, which admittedly took only half as long to make as its predecessor, isn’t actually a new album, despite Bush’s insistence to the contrary: it consists entirely of new versions of songs from 1989’s The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes. In fairness, you can see why she’s chosen to point them up. They tend to be overlooked in her oeuvre, more because they separate her twin masterpieces Hounds of Love and Aerial than because of their content, although The Red Shoes is perhaps more muddled than you might expect, given her legendary perfectionism. Nevertheless, the decision seems to have bamboozled even her diehard fans, whose trepidation was not much mollified by the single Deeper Understanding. Again, you can see why she wants to point it up: its lyric about abandoning social interaction in order to hunch over a computer seems very prescient in the age of Facebook and Twitter. Read the full Review on The Guardian


Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – The Boatman’s Call (Reissue)
More than any other album in this batch of reissues, The Boatman’s Call is greatly enriched by a remaster that amplifies the magnitude of Cave’s loneliness, from the burning-ember ambience of “Lime Tree Arbour” to Ellis’ trembling violin lines on the absolutely devastating “Far From Me”. But even though The Boatman’s Call is Cave’s most confessional, open-hearted album, its sense of sorrow and catharsis transcends a strictly personal interpretation. It speak volumes about the album’s universality that its songs have soundtracked everything from Michael Hutchence’s funeral to Shrek 2. Read the full review on Pitchfork

New Releases


Bon Iver – Bon Iver
If you caught Vernon live after For Emma, you gradually saw him putting more and more emphasis on his band, moving Bon Iver from that solitary project into something that felt more like the work of a group. And Bon Iver, with its rich and layered arrangements, extends that development in a striking direction that’s both logical and surprising. Blending natural instrumentation supplied by recruited players– such as string arranger Rob Moose (Antony and the Johnsons, the National, Arcade Fire) and a horn/woodwind section that includes versatile saxophonist Colin Stetson– with an array of electronic and treated sounds, the album combines varied textures in ways that are ambitious and unusual but often subtle enough to miss on first glance. Read the full review on Pitchfork


Jeff The Brotherhood – We are the Champions
For a raw rock combo that in their early days seemed singularly committed simply to sweet riffs and rousing energy, on Champions JEFF prove themselves through a confident embrace of dynamics — stretching the boundaries of their economical ensemble past the brink, with thrilling results.

Sure, the primal, in-your-face energy is still there and potent as ever — the breakneck, jackhammer hi-hat and pummeling power chords of “Cool Out” will transport you to a Trans Am speeding at 90 mph down the darkest of highways while you pass a spliff to your shotgun-rider and rigor mortis begins to overtake the body in your trunk. “Shredder” relentlessly shells the listener with an assailment of head-bangin’, top-shelf Sabbath and Motörhead riffs that more than befits its name. And that’s almost nothing compared to the will-make-you-start-punching-people-uncontrollably-if-you’re-not-careful stoner-rock tour-de-force “Ripper” that follows a few tracks later. Read the full review on Nashville Scene


Tedeschi Trucks Band – Revelator
Here’s another perfect balance: Susan Tedeschi, whose soulful voice can handle blues and ballads with equal, rich ease, and Derek Trucks, her husband and certainly the best slide guitar player on the scene. Both have been leading separate bands during the first ten years of their marriage. But now the couple has joined forces, writing together and melding their groups into a single, 11-piece all-star band. The first recording by the Tedeschi Trucks Band blends wonderful, natural performances with great songs. Ideal balance. Revelator is outstanding in the extreme. Read the full review on PopMatters

New Releases ! ! !

Try these albums on for size at the listening stations in Pure Pop!

Seapony – Go With Me

A trio of twee-o, Seapony brings us more lo-fi songs for the summer. Go With Me should have a comfy home in your rotating five-disc CD player, right between Best Coast and Vivian Girls – the indie-pop of your boyfriend-loathing dreams. This album has a jangly, Go Sailor vibe, complete with nostalgic lyrics and song titles that are pretty darn simple and to the point (“Dreaming,” “I Never Would,” & “I Really Do” to name a few) – no mind games on Go With Me, just tried and true surf pop for your mindless listening pleasure.

httpv://youtu.be/WHjRltbRzrA

 

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Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

It’s no doubt that Arcade Fire has made some pretty groundbreaking music in the past few years –  Funeral and Neon Bible delivered in a big way, leaving a mark that couldn’t be ignored. The Suburbs, Arcade Fire’s third release, undoubtedly had some huge, preconceived-notion-toting shoes to fill – but they surely succeeded by stuffing their toes into an even bigger pair of tube socks. Childhood memories and nervous (yet hopeful) thoughts of growing old flood the album, leaving listeners with the impression that they are blossoming into the sold-out-seat-selling musicians we always knew they’d be. Check out “Empty Room” and “Ready to Start” for some mind-blowing anthems.

httpv://youtu.be/oJIilmx-wGI

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Times New Viking – Dancer Equired

Columbus, Ohio natives Times New Viking now have a place at Merge’s kitchen table, with their new release Dancer Equired. Notorious for their label-changing habits, TNV have been jumping around from labels like Stillbreeze, to Matador, and now finally to Merge, where they’ve settled in and found their well-deserved niche. Dancer Equired is lo-fi at it’s best – sounds like it was made in no time on some pretty battered equipment, but that’s what fans of the genre go for, right? There are some really nice male/female vocal counterparts throughout the album, and some ephemeral, fading-into-the-distance sounds as well. If you’re worried that Times New Viking will end up being another one of those dime-a-dozen lo-fi bands, then the fact that some crumbs of past Guided by Voices members are sprinkled throughout the band should help ease your mind. Check out “No room to Live” and “It’s a Culture,” for some shining stars.

httpv://youtu.be/aTJHIfiAKzc

What’s New at Pure Pop: Metal

Check out these new releases in our Headbanger listening station!

Tombs – Path of Totality

Third album from these Brooklyn-based behemoths. They wield a deftly constructed combination of black-, sludge-, and post-metal and come across tighter than on any other release with this effort. Expect Path of Totality to breathe a little cold air into our lives when it gets hot this Summer.

Check this out if you like Isis, Kylesa, and Immortal

STAFF RECOMMENDED

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COHNQjtOsaE]

 

 

Portrait – Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae

Recently, with bands like White Wizzard, Ghost, and Cauldron, the metal sound of the ’80s has seen an incredibly renaissance. Portrait, a Swedish quintet, are one of those carrying the torch in this movement. On Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae, a sophomore release, they prove themselves able to walk among the godfathers of metal.

Check this out if you like Mercyful Fate, Judas Priest, and Iron Maiden

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cywlJWyzS-k]

 

 

Scar Symmetry – The Unseen Empire

With several years and four previous albums under their belt, it finally seems like Scar Symmetry are coming unto their own. The Unseen Empire, their fifth release, contains everything you’d expect from the band at this point: down-tuned, Meshuggah-esque guitars, contrasting clean and growled vocals, and the occasional synthesized texture. Don’t expect any surprises, but if you like what the band’s done in the past, you should be satisfied.

Check this out if you like In Flames, Meshuggah, and At the Gates

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArELZEYr444]