From Corners Unknown

Tempel is a hard rock quartet from Vestfold, Norway that seeps a sundry of other genres into their electrifying sonic fabric. Founded originally by the drummer from Kvelertak, his two brothers, and a close childhood friend, the quartet sought to cauterize a sound that pays homage to classic rock outfits whilst infusing frenetic tendrils of thrash and black metal malice, all held together by throat ripping hardcore-style vocalizations.

Despite some of the dreary tones and themes Tempel promulgates, there is a candid sense of liveliness and joviality that pierces their compositions. Many passages on this record are pure ecstasy. Groovy riffs pockmark the sodden soil Tempel traverses as they port listeners to moments in time ancient and forgotten, lit only by flickering torch flame. Though between these naturalistic soundscapes Tempel paints, the band effortlessly transitions into unfettered ferocity. Black metal blast beats erupt and rollick. It’s as if they are channeling the feeling of achieving break-neck speeds on horseback as we, the listeners, duck beneath tangles of vines and bark, holding on for dear life. And what’s particularly striking is the way Tempel straddles these clashing tones so fervently. Much of the record leaves an impression of that hard/classic rock aesthetic, however, the way they dig their heels into metallic qualities, carried by vociferous rasps, makes the album feel retro and simultaneously progressive. Tempel is certainly a record not worth glossing over. Thank you so much for listening.

Suldusk is the solo blackened dark folk project of guitarist/vocalist Emily Highfield. Her debut was marked via the release of an acoustic EP titled To A Vestige of Purest Light in December of 2017. And recently, in April of 2019, she cast her first full-length, Lunar Falls, into the auditory ether.

Be it through her tantalizing and delicate acoustic melodies, her graceful vocalizations, or at times, her vociferous blackened howls, Emily strikes a magnificent balance that plants one foot in despondency and another in otherworldly. She sings of abstract landscapes, gently gilding their peaks with fog-dampened rays of glistening light. Elegiac are her compositions as she effortlessly floats from warm guitar passages to forlorn bogs of blackened malice. Amidst her transitional wafts, she often caresses listeners with witch-like whispers. And in flashes of ember-tinged light, she glides upward, transcending her auditory structures into feverishly blissful twinkles of awe. Lunar Falls leaves quite an indelible impression on the mind and the intricate layers lurking beneath each track’s surface warrants several immersions. Thank you so much for listening.

Adam is the drummer and a vocalist in the sludgy, blues-imbued hardcore duo, Crowfeeder. He also owns and operates the Constant Disappointment Record label. Crowfeeder has existed for close to a decade now, though Adam and guitarist/vocalist/bassist Derek did not settle on the name until about six years ago. From there, the duo began forging songs that would eventually culminate into their debut LP, No Flowers, which released back in March 2017. The time to piece this album together took close to five years. And when the tracks were completed and the vinyl layout began to take shape, Adam knew he wanted to associate their album with a label, even if that label did not exist. This led to him penning the sentence “This is CONSTANT DISAPPOINTMENT RECORDS number 01” on the No Flowers vinyl insert—a homage to a band Adam cherishes, Unloved.

Selecting this label initially served, in Adam’s mind, as a name to release all future Crowfeeder records under. But about one year later, some good friends of his in the band Knock Over City were preparing to release a new album titled it’s bad, dude. Though Adam did not have much semblance regarding the intricacies of running a label, he reached out and asked if they would like Constant Disappointment to publish it for them. And from there, the label transitioned from merely a name to one with a nascent, albeit soon to tumefy discography.

2019 marks a year of EPs from the label. With last year’s LP Everything Is Pornography If You’ve Got An Imagination from the grindy outsider hardcore outfit Intercourse and February’s LP AWARENESS from the power slop quintet Aneurysm, Constant Disappointment is focusing on several briefer releases for the remaining months of this year. Intercourse is tying the threads together on a new EP, Heavy Meta—a chunky, math-laden metallic quartet—marked their debut with their self-titled EP, and Bystander—a gloomy, noisy post-hardcore outfit—recently dropped their EP, Nothing Matters. Additionally, no promises have been made at this time, but it is possible that some new Crowfeeder tracks will see the light of day this year.

In this conversation, Adam speaks in-depth about Crowfeeder, its formation, No Flowers, as well as their song writing process. He then expands upon Crowfeeder to illuminate the genesis of Constant Disappointment Records. How he selects the bands he brings under the label’s wings and the aesthetic he seeks to strike is also expounded upon. There’s a good deal more I could type out here about what we discussed in this podcast, but I’ll leave the remaining morsels of insight for you to digest. Thank you so much for listening.

Death Tape Super Bass is the solo experimental sound endeavor of Alex S. A Chicago resident, Alex founded Death Tape Super Bass as a moniker to incubate and harbor the multitude of synthesizer-driven sound experiments swirling about in his mind. The name pays homage to retro exploitation movies. Though it does not refer to a specific one, Alex describes the project title as a cheesy name he could envision being used in the form of a marketing gimmick for one of these flicks. This is not to say, however, that there exists a thematic semblance across his body of work. Alex notes that he does not prescribe himself to a specific style or aesthetic as he is always seeking new sounds, timbres, and textures to augment his auditory palette. What he revels in is exploring concatentations of sound that surprise the listener.

This desire to surprise is evident in his discography, both across albums and even inside of some. Short Film Sounds Volume One (embedded below) encapsulates a sundry of unnerving compositional bites from snarling harsh noise to wispy night sky ambience to primitive electronic beats. And his album Kicking In is an expansive moodboard of retro, dystopian-tinged dance beats constructed of synth. It would deaden the impact and surprise to describe each style he embraces and explores. But let it be known that there exists an absurd quantity of experimentation to immerse yourself in and dissect within his rapidly expanding discography; it is worth the plunge.

In this conversation, Alex discusses the formative years of Death Tape Super Bass. He explains his reasoning for not adhering to a specific style of sound, the process by which he produces a track, his innate desire to unearth new sounds to broaden his soundboard, and a good deal more. After the conversation concludes, Alex leaves us with an improvised cut, showcasing his knack for blending sounds that, on the surface and individually, don’t appear to fit together. Thank you so much for listening.

Mans Best Friend is a droning, experimental harsh noise artist from the fibers of Orange, Australia resident, Rowan. After catching a live show whilst touring Japan between Friendship, The Body, and Full of Hell, Rowan swiftly acquired some baseline hardware to begin constructing monoliths of noise inspired by the bludgeoning bands he witnessed. He possessed no technical know-how of piecing tracks together, however, through unrelenting experimentation across a myriad of diurnal cycles, he eventually struck the tone fizzling in his skull.

At the outset, Rowan’s work was quite improvisational and it continues to harbor this luster. His debut release, Dog EP, shores up abstract industrial soundscapes as his roommate mulls about his day in the background of the dense, yet relaxing reverberations crafted by Rowan’s hands. From his auditory experiments, a keen sense of candidness also percolates. And amidst what sounds like unbridled chaos and static froth curdling on the surface, the baritone drones undulating underfoot lull you into a trance-like state. His latest split with Dead Twin is a testament to this quality. Monolithic in both tone and length, Rowan’s 25-minute piece strikes a nerve of solace. It’s one that caresses you in abrasive tones, yet ultimately cracks a disheveled window for you to view a despondent landscape of Rowan’s construction and reflect.

In this conversation, Rowan discusses the formulation of Mans Best Friend. He delves into his noise production process and expounds upon an intriguing concept for a full-length album he is currently pouring over: deus ex machina, where human technology is perceived as god as we turn to our phones and other devices for guidance and reassurance in our lives. Thank you so much for listening.

Welcome to a new, semi-frequent podcast series where myself and Tim Harbour (who also writes reviews for From Corners Unknown) provide brief reviews of albums we’ve discovered across the vast Bandcamp landscape. This series is intended to be a counterpart to the in-depth album reviews Connor and I host here on the site. Given Connor’s generally hectic schedule and my unquenchable thirst for discussing litanies of new albums, I figured this brief album review series would be a pleasant excursion from the in-depth reviews and provide some extra album recommendations we enjoy making here at From Corners Unknown. Album reviews between Connor and myself will continue to trickle out. This series is merely intended to offer you all a couple of extra releases to sink your teeth into.

Tim possesses quite a vibrant background. He writes riffs, lyrics, and plays guitar in the South African doom band, Mad God, and he also crafts lo-fi videogame tunes under the moniker Jump Ship. Beyond these projects, his day job entails teaching music and for his thesis, he analyzed the nature of interactive videogame soundtracks in indie games, specifically Journey, Fez, and Braid, which you will learn a bit about in the introduction of this episode.

Though we do not have an established frequency of publication for this podcast, the intent is to provide some relatively brief insights into albums we feel compelled to illuminate. We spend somewhere between 10 to 20 minutes on each record, highlight qualities we enjoyed as well as qualities we were not necessarily fond of. With this being said, we have provided links to each of the albums we discuss in order of appearance. The time code following each artist name and album title indicates the approximate time our discussion begins of said album. We sincerely hope you enjoy this series. Thank you so much for listening.

The Bay Area band Zombie Holocaust is a whirlwind of thrash metal mixed with the delectable twist of hardcore, death metal, punk and what I like to call party metal! Melodic guitars jam out with an old school thrash inspiration. Vocals yell and chant comedic lyrics of drinking, smoking and having a radical time. Bass and drums break out to the forefront and take you on grooves of intensity Each member takes inspiration from their favorite genres and incorporates them into the band flawlessly.

Forming in 2006 the five-piece band released the crushing thrash album Strike Force in 2009. With tracks consisting of warfare, zombies and even Boba Fett. In the year 2013, their second full-length album Entitled to Enlightenment was brought to this world. An enthusiastic rambunctious album full of positivity, bravery and once again having a great time!

In this conversation, I talk to Nicolas Gomez the vocalist of Zombie Holocaust. Nick is also a friend of mine and a fellow man of the film lighting world. We talk about the founding of the band, the writing process and dive into some of the stand out tracks. Nicolas is also chock-full of personal tales involving members of Bay Area metal legends from such acts as Slayer, Vio-lence, Testament and more. We talk in great length about his hero/inspiration the bass legend Cliff Burton (Metallica) who shared the same hometown of Castro Valley with Nick. He also talks about his involvement with Cliff Burton Day, Slaughter by the Water Festival and a random Machine Head music video he worked on and ended up acting in.

Due to my audio ignorance, I had some technical difficulties when recording this episode. This resulted in a good chunk of my audio being unusable. I had to rerecord in my own audio to the conversation. If anything sounds off, that would be why!

Noxious Insect is a harsh noise artist residing in Melbourne, Australia. His experimentations in noise began close to one year ago, though he did not begin publishing compositions until April 2019. What’s rather intriguing about his brand of noise is that it does not tread themes or concepts typically associated with noise. Where many artists articulate personal anguish, themes of sex and violence, politics, and a litany of human-specific struggles, Noxious Insect embraces the natural world harboring us.

On his debut release, Holometabolism, Noxious Insect explores the birth and evolution of flies. Though at this moment he does not make use of field recordings to craft his sound, he strives to create textures that sound familiar amidst his seething walls of harsh noise. It sincerely is a novel approach as he channels frequencies we regularly hear whilst walking about nature or shuffling across the asphalt architecture of human design. Beyond this immediate realization, however, his noise presents us with a reflection on the micro-biology us humans typically do not contemplate. It offers listeners a microscopic analysis of the natural world and this quality stirs genuine wonder.

In this interview, Noxious Insect offers us a glimpse into his noise production. He expounds upon his intrigue with nature and discusses the reasons that compelled him to explore the beauty of Earth and what makes it tick, even if on the surface it looks grotesque. Thank you so much for listening.

Allegaeon is a melodic, technical death metal quintet from Denver, Colorado. They formed back in 2007 and since congealing, they have produced five full-length albums plus a couple of singles. Though they have undergone several line-up changes since establishing themselves, the primary guitarist, Greg Burgess, has been the brigade’s constant and persistent member. Their latest release, Apoptosis, is the second album with their relatively new vocalist, Riley McShane (Son of Aurelias).

Apoptosis is quite the album to marvel at. It is breathtaking in its technicality, uplifting in its melodies, and expansive in scope as it effortlessly incorporates tinges of orchestral flair. Synth movements ensconce the instruments in delicate shrouds of grandiose, albeit sublime textures that propel the album to vistas awestriking and indelible. And while the brutality is, for the most part, unrelenting as the brigade seamlessly sutures together break-neck riffs with delectable melody, they pockmark their science-fiction journey with tantalizing acoustics as seen in “Color of the Currents”. Through repeat listens, themes of humanity’s inevitable demise come to light. But Apoptosis is not wholly drenched in undiluted melancholy. Rather, positive declarations are sung, particularly near the album’s conclusion. Despite the quagmire of rampant instrumentation Allegaeon drags us across, tendrils of hope streak overhead, giving us ideas to reflect upon when the album eventually terminates. This is an album worthy of repeat listens and we sincerely hope you enjoy our dissection of this masterfully crafted opus. Thank you so much for listening.

Inter Arma (Latin for “In War”) is a monolithic, progressive doom brigade from Richmond, Virginia. Established back in 2006, they unleashed their debut LP, Sundown, in 2010. Nine years later, Inter Arma are on their fourth LP, Sulphur English, which is out via Relapse Records.

Sulphur English congeals a sundry of influences atop a corrosive, concrete bedrock of hefty doom. Black metal, death metal, psychedelic, sludge metal, and a bevy of other genres seep into Inter Arma’s foundation. Though what is most uncanny about their sound is their atmosphere. Primordial riffs beckon us toward ancient gateways locked within our chests. And as biting passages of tectonic-rumbling thrums percolate, ceaseless they bulldoze the chains preventing us from understanding the genuine nature us humans have long forgotten. Moments of pensiveness strike the sun-gilded peaks of this despondent landscape. However, Sulphur English is mostly a lonesome wayfaring across bubonic-tinged soil pockmarked with tombstones of charred tree husks and detritus. This album is utterly sullen and crushing, yet simultaneously intoxicating, triumphant, and revitalizing. It latches onto an ancient strand of DNA residing in each of us. And it strives to ignite a smoldering flame to illuminate an ancient path we have strayed. Thank you so much for listening.