The Apparatus

 Tuesday, 07 October 2008 Swarrrm are truly among the most unique grindcore bands ever in existence. For years they have been able to keep grindcore fresh with every album they put out. Their previous full-length efforts were all brilliant, but in my opinion their latest album, Black Bong, is their magnum opus. Though I'm sure many will easily dismiss this album entirely.

It's a very difficult album to listen to at first, especially if you've never heard Swarrrm before. The album has shit production, everything sounds really noisy and way too loud. In reality though, the sound quality mirrors the tone of the album perfectly. While the music is sort of floating in a pool of distortion, you can hear every single instrument playing every note. The bass is even significantly prominent for a grind release. There just seems to be a wall of noise hiding the notes when it's merely accentuating them.

Swarrrm are notorious for their constant changes in vocalists. This year Hatada joined Swarrrm and delivered a fucking immense vocal performance. I don't even think this band has lyrics but the passion that this man screams with is scary. It sounds like the whole band locked Hatada in a dark room while they physically and psychologically tortured him until finally he broke down and just recorded it. For 34 minutes he is constantly screaming his lungs out, growling ferociously, talking like a drunk and desperate man or simply crying into the microphone. Some people laugh at that when I tell them, but to me that's goddamn inspirational. He has thrown so much of himself into the music he actually cries. With another vocalist, the album would not be nearly as good. Hatada is like the Daniel Day-Lewis of Japanese grindcore vocalists.

The band edge has not dulled in the slightest, they have been getting better and better with each release. Black Bong is an album I could easily call epic with a straight face. This album contains some of the most beautiful riffs I've ever heard, not only in grindcore but in music in general. The bass lines are equally impressive, something you don't hear often in most grind album. The bassist's fingers move up and down frets as gracefully as the guitarists and the drummer's spastic and slightly jazz-influenced playing breathes fresh air into grindcore drumming. The music gives off an atmosphere of despair, anger and hope throughout and manages to evoke emotion without the use of lyrics.

In my book, this is a grindcore masterpiece. The scale of the album alone is enough to warrant multiple listens. If you don't like this album, it really is your loss.

 Sunday, 28 September 2008 This album makes me feel like I'm being kidnapped in the middle of nowhere and held captive for days. This album is dark. This album is frightening. This album is abrasive. This album is also one of the finest and most intelligent full-length debuts I've heard.

Gaza should be proud. They've made an album of completely uncompromising music that might even walk on the edge of what's considered "listenable" (the opening riff of the title track, for example). Every note and syllable is raw from beginning to end and all performances on the album are razor sharp and they stay that way until the CD stops spinning. The vocalist is seriously scary. He roars with the ferocity of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, so much so that whenever I play this in my car I feel like the metal is about to dent. The guitarists play with the nonchalance of a much older band without fear of alienating listeners with harsh noisy riffs and stomach-imploding walls of droning heaviness. The admirably controlled spastic drumming hardly gives you a chance to get used to a rhythm as he's constantly changing with the music or adding different ride accents(he is pissed at that thing) or simply blasting away with the carelessness of an old construction worker. All of these together become a harrowing experience that will demand your attention, and it might even enlighten you.

This band should have shot to the front lines of the extreme music scene with this release, why they haven't is a mystery. "I Don't Care Where I Go When I Die" has more than earned a spot in your CD collection(the ones you bought). It's not every day an album like this comes along so I suggest if you like your music to be ferociously intense, I suggest you give this a shot.

 Thursday, 31 July 2008 If you don't know who Jon Chang is, you have some serious catching up to do. Most of us know him as the insane front man of one of the greatest grind bands of all time, Discordance Axis (who are also, in my opinion the best thing to come out of New Jersey). Ever since the demise of Discordance Axis, any hint of activity from Chang is worthy of excitement as he has since focused on his video game design career rather than his music, typically churning out new projects and material whenever he feels like it and this year, we were given the debut full-length of Chang's new project, GridLink and it's goddamned glorious.

Eleven songs in under 12 minutes may sound unfulfilling to some, but when those few minutes are up, you'll feel like you were hit by a train while running a triathlon across Siberia. The album is packed with more blast beats, intensive riffing and ferocious shrieking than most new wave grind bands produce during their entire careers. Well, okay, that maybe be a slight exaggeration, but the amount of material on the amount of time the record runs for is truly astounding. "Amber Gray" starts off like a machine gun massacre, complete with painful screams and unrelenting snare. The level of intensity achieved within the first few seconds of the title track does not ever regress. It's as if the most pissed off bum on the streets has grabbed you violently by your shirt and is just yelling and screaming his complete disgust and contempt for you and the rest of the world right at your face with such hatred that you feel like you have somehow been corrupted just by listening.

"Amber Gray" is without a doubt the best grind release of the year thus far, and it's going to be a hard one to top.

If you still don't believe, I'll say this. I downloaded the album, and when I first listened to it I was so amazed by what I heard that I placed an order for the CD before the album had even finished playing and if that's not a good endorsement, then you can fuck off. But seriously, listen to "Amber Gray" and prepare to have your ears abused, and I mean that in the best way possible.

 Thursday, 31 July 2008 To me, it seems like this album came out 4 years too late. I'm sure if it came out with the Unhallowed's and the Frail Words Collapse's of the world, this album would be regarded as a classic. Unfortunately that isn't the case. Neuraxis was 4 years late and the result is an album that sounds 4 years old. "The Thin Line Between" is a typical death metal release. It has all the melody, riffing, blast beating you could wish for in the best metalcore record but not one note clearly stands out in my mind. It's a shame because I'm sure there are some good ideas in there, small riffs lost amongst the rest of the 'tech-death' that fills the album, I just don't feel like digging around for them.

I remember seeing Neuraxis a few years ago with a few local bands. I was not impressed then, and I can't say I'll be raving about them now. Back then they used to play pretty standard death/grind, now I guess they matured, playing mediocre technical death metal. It seems like every riff on this album I've heard somewhere else, in fact when I popped this in for the first time, I thought I was going crazy because a lot of it sounded so familiar.

Now, I know Neuraxis have a good reputation amongst the metal community, and yes as far as death metal goes, this album is pretty solid. But that's just the thing, who really wants to listen to solid death metal when there's so much more out there?

 Thursday, 31 July 2008 First things first, Eternal Kingdom has probably the best cover artwork I've seen this year so far. If the album inside wasn't great, I would have been severely disappointed at an utter waste of great art. Fortunately for all of us, Eternal Kingdom is indeed a great album and most certainly worthy of the artwork. Now that that's out of the way, we can discuss the music.

It all starts with a dissonant chord, which then makes way for incredibly heavy riffs and possibly the slowest blast beat(sort of) ever. From this moment on, Cult of Luna have you by the throat. In all honestly I am not very familiar with Cult of Luna's work, I've heard their previous release "Somewhere Along the Highway" before, but it never really struck a chord with me the way this album does. "Eternal Kingdom" is a much darker release than "Somewhere", and certainly more aggressive. Klas Rydberg's vocals sound like an anguished roar at all times and it perfectly compliments the music whether it's heavy as fuck or melodic, slow and beautiful. The lyrics are cryptically mystical, as they are all taken from the journal of Holger Nilsson, a man charged with drowning his wife and committed to a mental institution. Nilsson painted an elaborate portrait detailing the events surrounding his wife's murder, creating a world where Owlmen and Trees walk the earth and where he is not guilty of murdering his wife. Now with Cult of Luna's music put to it, the album resonates an eerie atmosphere that sounds both archaic and prophetic at the same time.

This may have something to do with the many minds behind the music. With an 8 person line-up, you can certainly expect a certain level of intensity, or at least hope for it. For some (excluding The Ocean), 8 people in a band might be overkill, but it does truly show in Cult of Luna's music. Eternal Kingdom has so many different layers, different patterns and ideas going on at once on various different instruments that it demands multiple listens. This album may have no chance in the Apparatus Album of the Year competition, but I am confident in saying that not only is this the heaviest album I have heard this year so far, it is also the most beautifully composed. From the light xylophone breaks to the wailing saxophones in "The Lure" to the keyboards or even a simple drum accent, no member of the band has their talents wasted. It's obvious the band has a unique approach to writing music. Unlike many of these doom influenced post- metal bands, Cult of Luna don't simply play a heavy riff over and over and over again. The best way I can put it is this; Cult of Luna write songs that live. Possibly the best example I can think of is my personal favorite track on the album, "Ghost Trail". It's starts off slow as molasses with a simple drum beat and repeating guitar riff, and eventually the angry yells of a madman raving about his own Eternal Kingdom as the song crescendos on, and on and on for 10 minutes until the crushing ending. Throughout those 11 minutes the song lasts for, no ideas or concepts seem to repeat, the whole song seems to evolve right before your ears and it's a marvel to behold.

I really did not expect to be blown away by this album, because for some reason post-whatever bands without the name Isis or Neurosis don't really stick out to anyone, including myself, I don't know why that is because Cult of Luna are certainly worthy of being noted alongside or even in place of any of those bands. After only one listen to this album, I can honestly say I have fallen in love with Cult of Luna. I cannot praise this release enough, it will certainly be in my rotation for quite a while to come, and I'm sure I'll keep coming back to it.