Whatever you were expecting from a solo album by A Perfect Circle and Zwan collaborator Paz Lenchantin, you won’t be prepared for what you hear when you press play. Read my full review of Lenchantin’s Triste at Veil of Sound, one of Germany’s premiere sources for alternative, experimental and heavy music, with a particular predilection for post-rock, black metal and krautrock.
Strapped for cash but hungry for great music? You won’t have much luck camping out at the grocery store these days; Bandcamp is a way better destination. Here’s a rundown of 10 rad releases, about half of them newly released, that The Bad Penny recently came across on Bandcamp.
(Note: If you do have some green to spare, please show your thanks to these deserving artists and labels.)
1. Rose of the World‘s Heaven Is a Broken Heart (Sad Cactus)
It’s audacious for an NYC hipper-than-thou band to craft its first LP in the style of Sunny Day Real Estate. Those old codgers have not only come and gone but come and gone again, and then a third time. Hell, even most of their protégés have melted away at this point too. To their enormous credit, Rose of the World has pulled off a maneuver worthy of the Olympic Games with this catchy keepsake of a record. Just released on November 12, snag Heaven Is a Broken Heart before those who can make money off realize that palm-against-forehead revelation and start charging 18 bucks for it.
HEAVEN IS A BROKEN HEART by Rose of the World
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Snooper have all the support they need to be taken seriously, with Third Man Records serving as chaperone for the band and its second record, as Jack White’s label did with their first two years ago. That said, the operators of the label appear to have removed the training wheels from Snooper’s bike this time around, letting them embrace their id on the band’s second record in defiance of the dreaded-slash-silly “sophomore curse.” Read my Post-Trash review here.
With Uncrossing the Keys, Wode proved they wanted to make a daring pivot, at risk of alienating black-metal purists, by benching those two trademark qualities of theirs in favor of a far more eclectic listen—an objective at which they succeed handily. On Uncrossing the Keys, Wode finally makes good use of the huge asset of which they didn’t take full advantage in the past: three guitars. Rather than mostly playing in unison, this time around, vocalist M. Czerwoniuk and his fellow axemen—T. Horrocks (who also plays drums and keys) and backing vocalist D. Shaw—engage in intricate interplay for the bulk of the record. The Pittsburgh metalheads’ coal-black alchemy results in an album with more melody than all Wode’s previous albums combined. And that’s really saying something, considering that their debut was one of my favorite albums of 2016. Read my full Treble review.
Not a second is wasted on this essential entry into the collection of every fan of heavy music who doesn’t like Disturbed and Korn. With that notion in mind, it’s no surprise that one of the most persnickety-yet-always-correct individuals in this sludgy underworld, Aaron Turner, gave Erosion his sign of approval by putting out Maximum Suffering seven years ago. Invasive Species comes courtesy of Canadian underground grindcore label Mechanized Apparatus Revolt, and boy did they luck out scoring this release. Get it here and thank us later — if your head hasn’t exploded by the time you’re done listening to it. Here’s my full Post-Trash review.
Agriculture, the self-categorized “ecstatic black metal” outfit, returns with a second album that is called The Spiritual Sound and is just as singular and spectacular as their debut. Read my FLOOD review.
Remastered and padded out with 14 outtakes and demos, this reissue of My Morning Jacket’s fourth LP, Z, celebrates their breakout moment of glorious, cosmos-reaching rock music. Read my FLOOD review.
Vocals from Ulver, Alcest and Author & Punisher help James Kent thrust his darksynth project Perturbator into lightspeed as it comes closer than ever to a full-fledged band’s sound on Age of Aquarius. Read my FLOOD review.
This writer’s interpretation of Bitchin Bajas’ Inland See is that, by using wordplay in its title, the essence of the record is a gentle but assured suggestion to look inside yourself, accept who you are—foibles and all—and arrive at a place of acceptance where the sensation is akin to floating, without moving any of your muscles, above a warm and serene body of water. From there, you re-enter the earthly womb and become reborn: not as an entirely new person, but as the person you are and were always meant to be. Don’t you see? Read my review of Bitchin Bajas’ Inland See on Treble.
Irk are here to remind us of that fact, to pester us with the truth that fear-inducing art forms make us feel alive more than any other varieties. Art can make us laugh, but that reaction quickly dissipates. Art can thrill us, but only the duration of the piece of work ends. Art can make us weep, remind us of what love and sex feel like, but that affecting manipulation ends seconds after the observer of art concludes their experience with it. Read my full review Irk’s Seeing House on Post-Trash.
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