From Corners Unknown

Longtime veterans of the metalcore scene, Norma Jean have spent the last two decades exploring the far reaches of heavy music. Between an ever-rotating cast of contributors and a dedication to pushing the sonic envelope, the musical collective working under the Norma Jean moniker have continually recast their sound with each record, and their latest LP All Hail is no exception.

The eighth full-length to be released by this collective, All Hail is somehow both heavier and prettier than anything the band has written before. Infectious drum grooves and disgustingly low tunings create the gritty, shadow-laden backdrops for Cory Brandan’s searing vocal deliveries. Spacious acoustic snippets and schizophrenia-laced noise collages give the listener short breathers amid a relentless onslaught of crushing guitars, hectic time signature changes and caveman breakdowns. All Hail pays respects to the band’s past iterations while developing its own unique voice, mixing both brutal riffing and melodic elements to create yet another wholly novel Norma Jean listening experience.

On this podcast episode, Ryan, Connor and resident writer/Norma Jean acolyte Ryan Woody break down the intricacies of this monster release. They chart the band’s historical evolution from Christian nu-metal outfit to amorphous chaotic hardcore collective, delve into the clever lyrical and thematic threads woven into the fabric of All Hail, and discuss how the band’s music helped Ryan Woody kick an unhealthy obsession with ska. It’s a deep dive review that brings the very nature of our reality into question, and we sincerely hope you enjoy it.

Beyond the Ghost is a despondent, snow-laden dark ambient project helmed by France denizen Pierre Laplace. At the beginning of September 2019, he made his debut on the Cryo Chamber label with his album You Disappeared. Well before this project of his came to exist, Pierre sharpened his teeth on a variety of other endeavors. For ten years, he helmed the experimental rock band Vera Clouzot, and in years subsequent, he released two solo acoustic albums under the moniker of Kenyon. Additionally, he comprises one half of the atmospheric folk duo, The Sandman’s Orchestra, alongside his niece. This project has existed since about 2011 and it continues to exist, now in tandem with Beyond the Ghost.

Pierre’s musical background is worth noting as You Disappeared exudes an uncanny mosaic of emotions from a glacial dreamworld. Through his previous projects, he has experimented with a plethora of sonic textures and this has been further bolstered by his knack for picking up and learning a medley of instruments. His singing voice, guitar, keyboards, piano, electronic beats, banjo, and kalimba, are but several of many Pierre has imbued within his Sandman Orchestra compositions. And though many of the aforementioned instruments do not make an appearance in You Disappeared, his seasoned approach to composing wonderfully deep soundscapes is felt throughout its duration.

You Disappeared embodies the astral plane of the afterlife. We are in search of a woman unnamed and it is her disappearance that weighs upon our hearts. Guitar melodies percolate and somber piano notes pulsate between windswept spires forever vacant. Frigid drones ceaselessly bite, overwhelming us with isolation. But like a hefty jacket with an abundance of layers tightly wrapping our skin, we sometimes feel warm despite the lacerating winds. Pierre crafts a forlorn expanse that blurs the veil between synthetic and organic. Though what we see is most certainly a shimmer in our dreariest dreams, you can’t help but feel that this unknown city exists, be it sometime in humanity’s past, present, or within ourselves. We had many words to exchange about this poignant dark ambient piece and we sincerely hope you enjoy our discussion of it. Thank you for listening.

SEIZURES is an experimental hardcore outfit from Orange County, California. Though the term experimental is used here as a catch-all descriptor to illustrate the quintet’s boundary bending compositions, the timbres, textures, and fully-fleshed atmosphere seeping from their latest LP, Reverie of the Revolving Diamond, can (mostly) be articulated as gazing at an awe-inspiring sunset from the shores of a foreign planet. Founded a little over a decade ago at the time of this writing, SEIZURES did not originally embark on their journey as an experimental outfit per se. Their debut, Antipathy, gnaws at the confines of chaotic hardcore. It’s littered with angularity, start-stop riffs, and blistering drum patterns. Above all, the berserk energy it promulgates is unfettered and scathing. And this slicing rage has not diminished with the passing of time. Rather, it has evolved and matured into an amorphous brute that cudgels yet simultaneously unveils abstract vistas unseen by human eyes.

Reverie of the Revolving Diamond is as blissful as it is punishing. Many use the descriptor “beach math” or “surfcore” to embody SEIZURES’ sound, and it is quite apt. Present are medlies of lurching riffs and off-kilter licks. Feedback squawks in traditional mathcore flair. However, enmeshed between and within the fabric of these well-trodden constructs there emerges billows of euphoria. As the album artwork indicates, the euphoric expanses harbor the serenity of violet-hued shores resulting from the sun falling beyond the horizon. For any coastal denizen, this verdant setting can be viewed time and time again. But so effortlessly does this album crystallize the alluring palette of moods while gazing upon it. We have a lot of words to say about SEIZURES’ latest effort and we hope you enjoy our dissection of it. Thank you for listening.

Welcome to another iteration of our album reviews podcast where Tim and I dissect four fresh cuts from extreme metal’s underbelly. While we have never set out to follow a distinct theme in each episode, this time around we unintentionally selected three solo projects. Had we realized this theme earlier on in our selection process, we would have opted to round out the body of this episode with a fourth solo endeavor. However, Witch Vomit was originally exhumed as a two-piece, so we think we converged close enough to our thematic throughline (that, and their latest album rips).

Irrespective of the loose thread tying these albums together, the tones contained in each are quite different from one another. ESOCTRILIHUM takes the form of blackened death metal. Chaotic and esoteric, the shrouded figure of Asthâghul conjures unrelenting riffs, cudgeling drums, and a piercing apoplectic aura. Despondent Moon writhes in veins of lo-fi black metal with a biting mist of dungeon synth ensnaring it. And Mizmor trudges across a windswept desert with a blackened doom gait to revolt against the universe’s utter indifference to human life. The genre descriptors for these solo endeavors are relatively apt, but they don’t fully prepare you for the plethora of tones and moods harbored within them. After our discussion of these three projects, we close out with the vile repugnance spewing from Witch Vomit’s latest LP.

Given our accidental stumbling into a vague theme for this episode, we are looking to adhere to consistent ones going forward. At the moment, our plan for the next episode is to review a handful of tongue in cheek bands. Cannabis Corpse’s Nug So Vile is on our list and we wanted to field some insight from you all. So if you have some favorite releases from this year that are tongue in cheek, punny, or sardonic, please feel free to leave those suggestions in the comments down below. We’d love to hear from you.

As we approach the end of another decade, the angular auditory animus from Brooklyn extreme metal quartet, Car Bomb, is unfurled once again. Mordial, Car Bomb’s third LP this decade, marks their perennial evolution. It unveils the broadening of their tonal and textural palette as it expounds upon sounds commonplace in their arsenal whilst simultaneously embracing deeper delvings into atmosphere and melody.

Mordial also marks Car Bomb’s approximate twenty years together as a band. Founded back in 2000, the quartet has been on an endless grind, ceaselessly erecting, filing, re-shaping, and obliterating a plethora of influences that, while not wholly unique in their respective vacuums, are rendered fresh by Car Bomb’s renegade suturing. Jagged, djent-charged grooves slice against mind-boggling drum patterns that seldom provide a cohesive trajectory. Gravelly barks and exasperated shouts rupture, infrequently caving beneath the ethereal weight of uplifting croons. Robotic guitar notes chirp and scamper from the maw of a corrupted Artificial Intelligence. The ground traversed is reminiscent of sounds and dynamics familiar; however, these elements are more fully-realized. There still exists a myriad of clinical, off-kilter timbres, but the focus on scintillating melodies heightens Car Bomb’s latest effort to an emotive plane unreached on previous releases.

As the album artwork suggests, Mordial‘s aesthetic appears to be embracing entropy. Pandemonium fissures across the kaleidoscopic tunnel of polygons, alien shapes, and colors both muted and vibrant. It may sound daunting to throw yourself into, but the innumerable textures percolating from Mordial warrant dozens of listening iterations to fully digest what’s transpiring within its duration. We sincerely hope you enjoy our dissection of this one. Thank you so much for listening.

Gleb Kanasevich is a clarinetist residing in the Bronx, New York. He’s also a composer and an experimental musician who explores the Stygian depths of drone and harsh noise via bass clarinet. His CV of professional clarinet performances dates back as far as 2001 and his earliest compositions date back to 2011. It was in 2012 that Gleb published his first solo album, Refractions, which harbors a classical approach to clarinet performance. And one year later, he released its follow-up, Refractions, Vol. 2. Around this time of his second solo album, Gleb debuted a new project with Billy Pizzaro (of Flag Day Recordings), named un[KNWN] with an album titled waiting room. Though I cannot say with absolute certainty when Gleb began dabbling in bleaker tones, un[KNWN] appears to be his earliest foray into his drone endeavors.

In January 2019, Gleb transmitted two auditory experiments into the gaping cavity of space. Subtraction, a continuous 45-minute musical piece, is a tapestry Gleb weaves to delve into alternative approaches of playing the clarinet. Asleep is another solo album, however, relative to Subtraction, its sound emanates from the blackest umbrages of despondent landscapes long forgotten. It’s not wholly dismal from a tonal perspective, though. In its opening minutes, Asleep shimmers with an incandescent glow. Like the sun’s slow rise over the horizon on a biting dew-drenched morn, Gleb’s bass clarinet lethargically sprawls across the Earth’s vegetation, bearing warmth as beads of light reflect back at the azure. It’s awe-striking and indelibly sublime. And after several minutes of drone meditation are we transported into a blackened expanse that, in some respects, calls to mind the opening dark ambient-style composition heard on David Lynch’s Eraserhead, composed by Alan Splet.

Asleep teeters on noise therapy. It unlatches mental gateways that allow your imagination to run rampant. Its myriad of discordant squeaks, whirrs, and quivers, while chaotic, seep a slicing sense of pensiveness. Both Connor and I had many thoughts to hash out over this record and we hope you enjoy our discussion of it. Thank you so much for listening.

White Ward is a progressive black metal quintet from Odessa, Ukraine. Back in 2012 they originally assembled as a raw and depressive black metal unit, though shortly thereafter, they embarked on a journey to shed the confines of these well-established genres and forge a novel tone. This endeavor culminated in their debut LP, Futility Report, which dropped in May of 2017. An intoxicating blend of blackened hardcore, triumphant post-metal expanses, electronic textures, and ambient soundscapes, all enshrouded by a velvety billow of saxophone, made for a cinematic trek beneath noir shadows of diseased skyscrapers.

Now, a little over two years later, White Ward are back with their second full-length effort, Love Exchange Failure. In it, they continue to promulgate the cinematic qualities etched throughout Futility Report, though this time around they flavor some of their compositions with the hubbub of metropolitan life. Ambulance sirens wail and ricochet off of asphalt architecture from innumerable blocks away. Streams of vapor trickle upward from manhole covers as vehicles sputter by. The diurnal monotony continues to churn and with each passing day, the city corrodes. Love Exchange Failure brings city sprawl to life. Be it post-metal glints that fill our eyes with wonder, throat flaying rasps, or the gentle caress of saxophone, the quintet broaches uncanny depths of city life through their aural explorations. There’s much to dissect in this episode and we sincerely hope you enjoy it. Thank you for listening.

Nasheim is an atmosphere heavy extreme metal project from Sweden denizen E. Grahn. He founded Nasheim nearly twenty years ago when he was in high school with a couple of close friends. However, as time wore on, his friends departed the project one by one, eventually leaving E. to be the sole torchbearer. This was of no issue to him, though. In the project’s formative years, E. was writing every dimension of Nasheim’s sound from notes and riffs to their flow and arrangement. So despite the dwindling ranks, E. began to fully embrace Nasheim as his primary artistic undertaking. And through this process, the lyrics and concepts underlying his compositions matured. Viking-themed black metal in Nasheim’s early days eventually morphed into themes more personal, introspective, and nature-based.

Although Nasheim has existed for nearly two decades up to this point, his first LP, Solens Vemod, did not release until February 2014. Almost exactly five years later his second LP, Jord och aska, dropped. Roughly equivalent to “Soil and ash” in English, Jord och aska grapples with several abstract ideas that, while not adhering to an overarching concept, are thematically linked via the words soil and ash as they recur as lyrics in each of the album’s three tracks.

Melodic, verdant, somber, and sodden in ash, are but a few descriptors to illustrate Nasheim’s tone. And emanating from this aural concoction is a piercing sense of melancholy. This is simultaneously reflected in E.’s lyrics, a poignant example being his desire to forfeit his anatomy to merge with nature. Jord och aska is ripe with despondent yet igneous atmosphere. While the album is the main focus of this podcast episode, E. also expounds upon Nasheim’s early years. He speaks about his writing process, his absence from social media, and the current state of extreme metal. There is much more to unearth in our exchange and we sincerely hope you enjoy it. Thank you so much for listening.

ISON is a Swedish cosmic doom duo from the outskirts of Gothenburg. Founded back in 2015 by Daniel Änghede and Heike Langhans, the cosmonauts set forth on their spacefaring odyssey. In June that same year, the pair dropped their debut EP, Cosmic Drone. And approximately two and half years later their second EP, Andromeda Skyline, materialized. With their near four years of existence together as ISON thus far, and through their seasoned explorations of the stars burning overhead, they have crystallized 61 minutes of their most potent journeys into Inner – Space, their first full-length record.

Inner – Space is an immersive roving across space. Laden in isolating atmosphere, Inner – Space beckons to the mysterious, awe-striking feeling one has when gazing at the star-specked canopy forever hanging above our heads. Beyond the record’s doomy leanings, clouds of synth billow effervescently. Lethargic the duo tends to float through each composition, granting us listeners the time necessary to absorb every brushstroke they used to illustrate worlds and expanses unseen. And these spirited paintings glisten with verdant hues brought forth by Heike’s ethereal crooning. The descriptions here, while pertinent, do not necessarily channel the titanic palette of moods you may experience throughout Inner – Space. It is one that we think requires several delvings. Grab your space suits and prepare your cryo-dried coffee. Thank you so much for listening.

For those entrenched in the extremities of death metal, Cryptopsy needs no introduction, let alone their second album None So Vile. Forged in 1988 originally under the moniker of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, the Quebec outfit soon thereafter underwent a series of name changes. OCD became Necrosis, which lasted about four years. Then they morphed into Gammora in 1992, only to transmogrify to Cryptopsy that same year. Two years later came their debut LP as Cryptopsy, Blasphemy Made Flesh. And in 1994 was None So Vile discharged into the ether.

Considered a death metal landmark by many, None So Vile excels in fusing frenetic technicality with barbarous dynamic shifts. From unfettered guitar leads that manically writhe to blistering blast beats to Lord Worm’s acidic yet spectral spewing, this album embodies venomous spite. It was crafted by Lord Worm (vocals), Flo Mounier (drums), Jon Levasseur (lead guitar), and Eric Langlois (bass). So much has already been said about None So Vile, though we thought it’d be a refreshing change of pace here at From Corners Unknown to travel back in time to exhume this classic and give it a proper dissection. More episodes of this retrospective nature are being planned with another already on the way. Thank you so much for listening.