SO HIDEOUS - "Motorik Visage"

SO HIDEOUS: NYC post-metal visionaries reveal drum playthrough video for new 11-minute track "Motorik Visage"

Just days away from the release of its new album, None But a Pure Heart Can Sing, New York City post-metal visionaries So Hideous have revealed a new video showing drummer Michael Kadnar playing through "Motorik Visage,"an epic, 11-minute track from the album. The video was shot at Backroom Studios in Rockaway, NJ, by Sean Ageman and Washed Up Media.

So Hideous' first new album is six years, None But a Pure Heart Can Sing will be released December 3rd on Silent Pendulum Records, the label owned by Kadnar himself who, in addition to his role in So Hideous, also occupies the drum throne for The Number Twelve Looks Like You.

Stream the "Motorik Visage" drum playthrough, here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD9-2PkNRhE

None But a Pure Heart Can Sing is the band's first new album since 2015's acclaimed Laurestine, released on Prosthetic Records. Described with words like "stunning" and "haunting," 2015's Laurestine is an album of post-metal tempests, augmented by a 30-piece orchestra. BrooklynVegan hailed the album as "devastating, end-of-the-world type sh*t, putting screamo, post-rock, and atmospheric black metal in a blender and really letting those modern classical influences shine with the orchestral parts." Mass Appeal called it "metal heavily influenced by the sound of film scores... atmospheric bliss."

Still raging as hard as ever, still expressing the extremes of torment and beauty, None But a Pure Heart Can Sing sees So Hideous incorporate new sounds and rhythms into its approach. Composer/guitarist Brandon Cruz describes in detail the new direction the band has taken: "I think we still have the foundation of what we laid before, being influenced largely by Japanese post-metal bands Mono and Envy, and composers such as Arvo Part and Max Richter. We wanted more rhythm this time and we expanded outward to include influences from Fela Kuti and Tony Allen's Afrobeat percussion, James Brown's horn section, and the balladry of Otis Redding and Sam Cooke. It was also nice to finally experiment a bit with more Penderecki-style tone clusters and glissando on the more dissonant sections."

Absolutely thrilling on a musical level, absolutely cathartic on an emotional level, None But a Pure Heart Can Sing is an example of the triumph of art created with open minds and open hearts.

None But a Pure Heart Can Sing was engineered, mixed and mastered by The Dillinger Escape Plan guitarist Kevin Antreassian at Backroom Studios.

Photos by Sean Ageman

CONFINES - "Concrete Club"

CONFINES: new industrial-techno anthem "Concrete Club" now streaming

Confines' new track "Concrete Club" is now streaming via Revolver Magazine.

Stream the track, here: https://www.revolvermag.com/music/hear-confines-new-song-concrete-club

"A seething industrial-techno bad trip driven by a propulsive beat and metal-inflected vocals," in the words of Revolver, "Concrete Club" appears on Confines' new EP, Work Up the Blood, out December 3rd release on the acclaimed Synthicide label.

Pre-order the EP, available in digital and cassette formats, here: https://synthicide.bandcamp.com/album/work-up-the-blood

Confines is the solo project of David Castillo, a pillar of NYC's music scene in 2021 — co-owner of Brooklyn’s Saint Vitus Bar, co-founder of Faktor Music, and vocalist of Primitive Weapons. The sound is a mix of banging rhythms and heavy ambience, referencing the likes of Nitzer Ebb, Depeche Mode, Vatican Shadow, and the Colombian cumbia music that played in Castillo's childhood home. Taking the music to an even higher and more universal level is Castillo’s impassioned vocal approach –– soulful screams and murmurous melodies reflecting his years in metal and hardcore.

"'Concrete Club' was written in isolation from the only home I ever knew in my adult life, New York City," Castillo states. "The fear-mongering around the uprisings, COVID, the supposed 'anarchy' state of the city, etc... The music is written to convey that ominous vibe while longing for NYC nights where I've often solace from the chaos of the world."

Confines is Castillo's most personal project to date and Work Up the Blood is its ultimate representation so far. In Confines, Castillo has created a space where he can exorcise his own demons while also selflessly providing a thumping, cathartic soundtrack by which for others to find their release.

More info: https://thechainworld.blogspot.com/2021/10/confines-work-up-blood.html

Photo by A.F. Cortes

SO HIDEOUS - "Souvenir (Echo)"

SO HIDEOUS: NYC post-metal visionaries reveal opening track "Souvenir (Echo)" from upcoming new album

NYC post-metal visionaries So Hideous have revealed "Souvenir (Echo)," the opening track from upcoming new album None But a Pure Heart Can Sing.

None But a Pure Heart Can Sing will be released December 3rd on Silent Pendulum Records.

Stream the track and pre-order the album, here:
https://silentpendulumrecords.bandcamp.com/album/none-but-a-pure-heart-can-sing

None But a Pure Heart Can Sing is the New York City band's first new album since 2015's acclaimed Laurestine, released on Prosthetic Records. Described with words like "stunning" and "haunting," 2015's Laurestine is an album of post-metal tempests, augmented by a 30-piece orchestra. BrooklynVegan hailed the album as "devastating, end-of-the-world type sh*t, putting screamo, post-rock, and atmospheric black metal in a blender and really letting those modern classical influences shine with the orchestral parts." Mass Appeal called it "metal heavily influenced by the sound of film scores... atmospheric bliss."

Still raging as hard as ever, still expressing the extremes of torment and beauty, None But a Pure Heart Can Sing sees So Hideous incorporate new sounds and rhythms into its approach. The album features the debut of new bassist DJ Scully and drummer Michael Kadnar – the explosive rhythm section of The Number Twelve Looks Like You.

Brandon Cruz describes in detail the new direction the band has taken: "I think we still have the foundation of what we laid before, being influenced largely by Japanese post-metal bands Mono and Envy, and composers such as Arvo Part and Max Richter. We wanted more rhythm this time and we expanded outward to include influences from Fela Kuti and Tony Allen's Afrobeat percussion, James Brown's horn section, and the balladry of Otis Redding and Sam Cooke. It was also nice to finally experiment a bit with more Penderecki-style tone clusters and glissando on the more dissonant sections."

Absolutely thrilling on a musical level, absolutely cathartic on an emotional level, None But a Pure Heart Can Sing is an example of the triumph of art created with open minds and open hearts.

None But a Pure Heart Can Sing was engineered, mixed and mastered by The Dillinger Escape Plan guitarist Kevin Antreassian at Backroom Studios. The vocals were recorded at Atomic Garden West by Jesse Nichols.

Photo by Sean Ageman

HYRROKKIN & MERZBOW - “Spatially Raised, From Seed To Volatility”

"Fans of these unique projects know that what’s about to emerge from their dystopic womb has been worth the long gestation... it’s raw, disturbing, and sonically violent, as we already knew it would be."

-Cvlt Nation

 Experience The Sonic Violence Of HYRROKKIN & MERZBOW “Spatially Raised, From Seed To Volatility,” via Cvlt Nation, here:

https://cvltnation.com/experience-the-sonic-violence-of-hyrrokkin-merzbow-spatially-raised-from-seed-to-volatility/

“Spatially Raised, from Seed to Volatility” is off of their upcoming album, Faltered Pursuit, which will be released via Sleeping Giant Glossolalia on November 5th, 2021. The final album consists of Merzbow's recordings, topped by Hyrrokkin's accompaniments (performed live, but composed in part by computer), laced with additional contributions from various guest musicians. It was then put in the hands of Rob Mazurek for a total "remix," and was mixed by Jason LaFarge (Swans, Nastie Band) at Seizures Palace in Brooklyn and mastered by James Plotkin (Sunn 0))), Gnaw). The artwork was created by Ian Anderson/The Designers Republic (Aphex Twin, Stern). Preorder, here.

With releases by the likes of Gnaw, Couch Slut, and Nastie Band, Sleeping Giant Glossolalia has been leading the pack when it comes to extreme sounds from the fringes of the avant-metal scene. An exercise in controlled chaos, Hyrrokkin & Merzbow's collab raises the bar once again, pushing the concepts of "collaboration" and "remixing" out into the stratosphere.

The project stems from Hyrrokkin's 2013 Inspire Rioting album, for which the band enlisted artists like KK Null (Zeni Geva) and James Plotkin (Khanate) to remix tracks from its Pristine Origin LP. When they contacted Masami Akita, a.k.a. Merzbow, to contribute, he instead sent over a pair of his own new recordings and invited Hyrrokkin to use them as the basis for new compositions – flipping the script on the typical remix, Merzbow put Hyrrokkin in the cockpit and gave the band the power to build something new from a Merzbow foundation. Here now, years later, is the final result: Faltered Pursuit. It is also Hyrrokkin's swan song. Having shared stages with Black Flag, Body/Head, Deerhoof, Bill Orcutt, Mick Barr, and many more, the Yellow Springs, OH band officially ended its run in 2014; the band's spirit lives on in Ed Ricart's current band, Monotrope, an instrumental, avant-rock quartet which Burning Ambulance has described with these words: "Don Caballero quickly jumps to mind... Rodan, Slint, and perhaps even a bit of the Dazzling Killmen... They continually skirt the boundaries between math rock and those much heavier sonic landscapes."

SLEEPING GIANT GLOSSOLALIA Bandcamp

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HYRROKKIN & MERZBOW - Faltered Pursuit

"Hyrrokkin, the now-defunct avant rock trio from Ohio, did not overtly have much in common with the revered Japanese noise experimentalist Merzbow (né Masami Akita)… other than, of course, a shared sense of creative adventurousness sorely lacking from so much modern music. But it’s precisely those sonic differences’ combination with that overlapping willingness to think outside the box that actually makes the two project perfect bedfellows."

- Metal Sucks

Stream Faltered Pursuit in its entirety, via Metal Sucls, here:

https://www.metalsucks.net/2021/11/04/exclusive-album-stream-hyrrokkin-merzbows-faltered-pursuit/

Faltered Pursuit will be released via Sleeping Giant Glossolalia on November 5th, 2021. The final album consists of Merzbow's recordings, topped by Hyrrokkin's accompaniments (performed live, but composed in part by computer), laced with additional contributions from various guest musicians. It was then put in the hands of Rob Mazurek for a total "remix," and was mixed by Jason LaFarge (Swans, Nastie Band) at Seizures Palace in Brooklyn and mastered by James Plotkin (Sunn 0))), Gnaw). The artwork was created by Ian Anderson/The Designers Republic (Aphex Twin, Stern). Preorder, here.

With releases by the likes of Gnaw, Couch Slut, and Nastie Band, Sleeping Giant Glossolalia has been leading the pack when it comes to extreme sounds from the fringes of the avant-metal scene. An exercise in controlled chaos, Hyrrokkin & Merzbow's collab raises the bar once again, pushing the concepts of "collaboration" and "remixing" out into the stratosphere.

The sound of Faltered Pursuit is a glorious, raging onslaught which often overwhelms like seven free-jazz bands playing simultaneously. Yet, there is deep, hypnotic satisfaction lurking here. Hyrrokkin guitarist Ed Ricart explains how the album took shape, and reveals the hidden order behind it:

"Once we had Merzbow's tracks, the process started with a bunch of listening. I wrote down the time code wherever I saw a good opportunity for us to respond to what he was doing. I found some key pitches that worked within these various sections I mapped out. I assigned a numerical value to each of the pitches. I used a random number generator to output sequences, and we used those sequences to determine the order of the pitches I'd selected, and made a bunch of different tone rows that way. I made a giant matrix of these various sequences. I wanted to pay homage to Merzbow's process, giving some control over to the computer, to allow it to influence my own compositional choices. It was fun to approach the composition process as sort of a nod to the genesis of electronic music, serialism, Stockhausen, etc." 

In the summer of 2013, the band recorded the basic tracks for Faltered Pursuit in one afternoon with engineer Bill Skibbe (Protomartyr, Fucked Up, Jack White) at Key Club Recording in Benton Harbor, MI. Pushing the collaborative spirit of the project further, the band invited friends from around the country to contribute new layers to the recording: Jerry Busher (Fugazi, All Scars) tracked additional drums and percussion; Chuck Bettis (Meta-Matics, All Scars, Mossenek) recorded vocals and additional electronics; Andrea Parkins, an integral fixture within NYC's improvised music community and beyond, delivered amplified accordion and electronics. With this part of the project in place, the group then reached out to prolific composer and cornet player Rob Mazurek to completely reimagine their creation for the B-side of the record. Working out of his home in Marfa, TX, Mazurek had free rein to rework the sum total of everything recorded, however he wanted, bringing the entire project full circle to one final layer of long distance reinterpretation. 

"It just seemed outrageous and perfect and somewhat hilarious to put yet another remix on the B-side of this record," says Ricart. 

Faltered Pursuit is an exhilarating example of the possibilities of collaboration, and the interplay of structure and chaos.

Faltered Pursuit Tracklist: 

1. Spatially Raised, From Seed to Volatility 

2. The new economy 'seemed' suddenly to dissipate overnight 

3. Let's All Dance in a Rigorous Line (Rob Mazurek remix)

SLEEPING GIANT GLOSSOLALIA Bandcamp

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