From Corners Unknown

Salutations, folks! We hope you’re all well. This episode marks a slight change in pace from our usual output insofar that the conversation is much more off-the-cuff. Of principal importance, however, Derek makes his return to the vacant hellscapes where Connor and I often ramble.

You may recall a stint of episodes where the three of us attempted to review roughly six tracks per installment. That fizzled out mid-October of 2020, with Derek taking a hiatus shortly after our review of Corey Taylor’s debut LP, CMFT, in December 2020—honestly, who could blame him after that sanity drain? Now, we have, more or less, decided to resuscitate that series, but pivot the coverage from six tracks to three EPs, where each “reviewer” brings an EP to the table for the group to discuss.

We have yet to establish a firm release schedule frequency, but we’re tentatively gauging it at one episode per four to six weeks (don’t hold us to it). To inaugurate this new series, we settled on the following EPs: Hold On To Yourself from Friendship Commanders, I Have Tried to Speak Through the Soil in My Mouth from Apostle, and Extended Play for My Sweet Mary Thyme by Ghostbound. They are spoken about in that order. Friendship Commanders blends impassioned melodies with fuzz-drenched stoner rock that plods with a sludgy momentum. Apostle berates with excoriating chaotic hardcore, splotching their succinct salvos with experimental sprawls of post-hardcore and black metal. And Ghostbound unfurls a seafaring sojourn peppered with post-punk atmosphere, buoyant crooning, and elegiac musings.

That being said, we hope you enjoy the rambles contained herein. Thank you all so much for tuning in!

‘Sup sluddites! As promised a couple of weeks back, we have for you a review of what is tentatively one of our favorite records of the year; tentative because who the hell knows what gems lurk in the remaining months of 2021.

During one of my regular sifts of the dregs of Bandcamp’s recent releases section in early April, my eyes immediately locked onto the slurry of vibrant colors exuding from the artwork of Famine, Putrid and Fucking Endless, the debut LP from London’s Atvm. A robot getting its dome sliced off, a gangrenous totem wincing as it appears to sink into a maroon substance, or the Master Hand-like mitts making peculiar gestures. It didn’t scream death metal at me, but once the twanging bassline protruded from “Picture of Decay” (the sample track available at the time) and then crumpled under the incursion of trem-flaying barbs, I knew this was one to circle back to. And wouldn’t you know it, the entirety of this 56-minute mammoth of an opus continues to enthrall me all of these months later.

You could generally typify Atvm as progressive death metal, but I often find “progressive” to be too broad of a catch-all descriptor to aptly articulate what you will experience. Their debut is outlandish and strays some of the well-trodden pathways of its death metal forebearers; however, it remains inextricably linked to its roots. Thrashy surges lambaste with primal energy. Salvos of tremolo picking spew acrid, atonal frequencies that fluster. Vocals excoriate like venom. Ripe melodies are abundant; tempo shifts are persistent. So many of these elements are familiar, yet Atvm manages to invigorate the death metal formula with funky excursions and an electrifying spirit. Often they fissure the momentum of their arrangements with sprawls across verdant instrumental tangents, be it jubilant, heady, or disquieting. Brutish are their metallic hammerings, but there exudes an intoxicating buoyancy that renders each composition a breeze. I have yet to suss out all qualities of this record that enrapture me, but each re-visit (and there have been many of them) has been a savory treat.

We likely mutilated what could have been a rather precise dissection of this album’s innards,—mostly due to nonsensical diatribes, as is tradition here—but we sincerely hope you enjoy the ramblings in this episode. This album gets top marks from the two of us and we couldn’t urge you enough to give it at least a few spins. As always, thank you so much for tuning in!

Salutations, portal loiterers! It’s been quite the year for outlandish death metal albums thus far. In February, Ad Nauseam dropped their cerebrum-liquefying sophomore LP, Imperative Imperceptible Impulse, just days after the release of StarGazer’s fourth dimension-warping album, Psychic Secretions. Famine, Putrid and Fucking Endless, the debut full-length from progressive death metallers Atvm, revels in invigorating melodies spliced with stupefying riptides of corrosive tempo shifts (podcast review coming in a couple of weeks). And more recently emerged the torturous hallucinations from Qrixkuor’s Poison Palinopsia. This is but a mere smattering of records that have piqued my curiosities and have held my attention long after experiencing them. None so far though have been as eccentric as Diskord’s Degenerations.

Diskord is an Oslo-based death metal trio that has existed since 1999. In their approximate twenty-two years of respiring they have released several demos, a couple of EPs, and three albums. Although I have been aware of the band’s existence for a handful of years now, I admittedly am not well-seasoned in their discography. So, I thought who better to drag along through this corpse parade of rambles than one of our very own writers, Tim Harbour?

It took at least half a dozen spins of Degenerations for my gourd to begin computing the pandemonium. The slurry of dissonant riffs and ever-tilting drum patterns, fills, and blasts locked me in a state of disorientation. In a way, the album’s tenacious flux of barbarous timbres felt rather numbing at first; however, the longer I loitered to soak in the slithering bass lines and peculiar atmospheric sprawls, Diskord’s eccentricities became more digestible. The cowbell strikes that originally left me scratching my skull wound up peppering their compositions with some whimsical levity. Moreover, the discharges of bedlam slowly congealed into misshapen grooves with each passing spin of the record.

Despite all the talk of being flummoxed by Degenerations, Tim and I found ourselves enraptured by its quirkiness. Diskord’s tendency to lambaste with a vortex of merciless frequencies only to devolve into a primordial chug section is amusing. The odd minute-and-a-half breather “Lone Survivor” is a skin-crawling spacewalk through doom-enameled incisors. And within the far-flung reaches of the album’s last track, “Beyond the Grime”, oblong neoclassical-like textures fuse with phaser-caked distortions.

In this episode, we endeavor to dissect the enigma that is Diskord. Though we could offer up essentially no comparisons between Degenerations and their prior LPs, it was an immense delight trying to make sense of their lunacy. Thank you all so much for tuning in!

Greetings from beyond the pale, fellow denizens of HomeTown Buffet. This week, Connor and I attempt to rationalize the mystifying timbres radiating from Cities Last Broadcast’s sophomore Cryo Chamber LP, The Umbra Report. Cities Last Broadcast is one of many projects helmed by the prolific dark ambient producer Pär Boström. Toward the beginning of 2021, we dissected Thronal, the fourth record from Pär’s long-established (est. 2000) post-apocalyptic endeavor known as Kammarheit. And although this review is only our second podcast delving into Pär’s ever-growing body of work, we found ourselves wholly ensnared by the ghastly textures harbored within The Umbra Report‘s runtime.

There’s a distinctive quality about Pär’s compositions that persistently elude me. The production of his frequencies is replete with warm and sizzling tape noise; however, the odd chitter from tongues of apparitions burrow under my skin and slither through my cerebrum like a parasite. Moreover, the density of his onyx-laced drones instills dread while simultaneously suspending me in a stasis of introspection.

While the conceptual throughline of The Umbra Report is decidedly vague, it did not halt our smooth brains from rampantly striding from one idea to the next. The album poses the question: is it depression, a séance, or an exorcism? Although we toyed with these thoughts in our review, we somehow landed on the former lead singer of Hinder using his velociraptor arms to coax unsuspecting victims into a derelict HomeTown Buffet to convert them to a post-grunge cult. It makes no sense, but here we are.

Cities Last Broadcast was originally founded as an archive project of after-dark sounds Pär recorded while wandering city streets in the late 90’s. Over the course of about a decade, his archiving culminated into The Cancelled Earth, the debut Cities Last Broadcast record published by Cyclic Law in 2009. Since then, Pär has released two solo records under Cryo Chamber’s banner—The Humming Tapes (2016) being his inaugural work—and has contributed to several collaborative works including Black Corner Den (2017), Miles to Midnight (2018), and Black Stage of Night (2019). The Umbra Report was officially released on June 1, 2021.

We want to thank you all for your continued support and tuning in to this episode. It gets quite unhinged in parts, but it was a most sincere pleasure probing the eerie frequencies disembodied in this record. If you are keen on this album, Pär has a litany of other sonic endeavors to explore. We’ve bulleted them below in case you may be interested in journeying through other amorphous realms of his own construction and those created with other artists.

Andulmedir: The Lunar Lexicon (2019) | The Winter Scriptures (2021)

Altarmang: Void (2016) | Moth Star (2020)

Bonini Bulga: Sealed (2017) | Blood Name (2020)

Hymnambulae: Orgelhuset (2016) | Nausikaa (2019) | Andarlīh (2020)

Kammarheit: Asleep and Well Hidden (2003) | The Starwheel (2005) | The Nest (2015) | Onyx (2015) | Echo (2017) | Thronal (2020)

Teahouse Radio: Her Quiet Garden (2018)

Underwater Sleep Orchestra: The Night and Other Sunken Dreams (2021)

What’s up, maw agapers. This week Ryan and I spew some word slop from our verbal orifices as we endeavor to make sense of the crushing LP, I’m Sorry Mr. Salesman, from the heavy hardcore quartet known as MouthBreather. As is typical, we incorporate nonsensical ways of explaining the bloodcurdling tones lacerating our eardrums. How the hell does Nic Cage getting swarmed by bees describe a droning guitar texture? Or, what would it be like to get your cranial fluids sipped through a crazy straw? We bring the outlandish tangents, and you just embrace them. If you have a hankering for some quality Massachusetts hardcore, look no further.

MouthBreather will leave your mouth ajar as they weave a conceptual tale rife with searing vocal hooks and gnarled riffs. I found myself incessantly repeating the reprised line, “Don’t bring me back” over and over again in my hollow noggin. Mathcore skronkage (can I trademark this made-up word?) douses the dour atmosphere with synapse-frying discordance. All the while, sterilized guitar thrums purport a harrowing glimpse into the seedy doll-making factory managed by none other than Mr. Salesman himself. Though we could not firmly grasp the album’s concept from front to back, its violent hardcore spasms and maniacal vocal deluges kept us enraptured across its succinct 24-minute run time.

Beyond the excoriating beatdowns, MouthBreather does not shy away from experimentation. Tarnished glints of nu-metal leer from rotted alloy structures, and the odd melody or two bite with teeth-licking glee. Standout bass moments and blistering drum pummels are aplenty too. This is just a flat-out fun fucking album, and I recommend checking out their music videos as well. You got weird and kinky red room foreplay (“Tension Underbite”), a dude losing his shit at a talent show (“Cotton Shot/Daunt”), and Mr. Salesman playing Russian roulette (“Wasted Science”).

I’m Sorry Mr. Salesman was released on May 7, 2021 via Dark Trail Records. The quartet emerged in 2017 with their debut EP, Pig, and in 2018 they released a follow-up entitled Dollmeat. Now get to listening and have yourself a cathartic blast. Thank you for tuning in!

Hello, plains walkers! A few months back, Connor and I bent our own “rules” pertaining to some album coverage. Typically, we prefer to review albums that are dropped in the same year we record an episode. However, we made an exception for Dawnwalker’s fourth LP, Ages, which was independently released by the London-based outfit back in December 2020. The album would have most certainly crested the tops of our respective year-end lists last year had we done our jobs and been more thorough in our research, but so it goes.

Mark Norgate is Dawnwalker’s lead songwriter, who founded the project as a bedroom endeavor back in 2011. Drummers, flutists, bassists, and vocalists ebb and flow throughout the band’s discography like a revolving door; however, Mark remains the constant. Moreover, he pens the overarching concept for each record. He notes that conceptual ideas arise from difficult-to-define obsessions in his personal life, which could range from pieces of art like Ted Nasmith (the artist who hand-painted Ages’ cover) to a director’s filmography. And while these obsessions are challenging to articulate, one thing is for certain: Dawnwalker’s music is colossal and cinematic in scope.

The conceptual underpinnings of Ages served as a hook for both Connor and myself. Giddy at the sight of not one, not two, but seven Gandalf-like individuals depicted on the album artwork, was enough to compel Connor to review this opus having not even pressed play on Bandcamp. Little did he know that the sweeping, gargantuan timbres contained therein would catapult the record into the upper echelon of his favorite releases from 2020. I found myself similarly awestruck by Ages’ weighty compositions. Most of its runtime is composed of tracks that approach or exceed the eleven-minute mark. And although that sounds daunting, each piece is balanced with kinetic shifts. Be it blankets of wind or oceanic tides stirring a sense of serenity, volcanic barrages of molten black metal unexpectedly lurching from heavenly choral harmonies, or the poetic cadence of barb-laden riffs, Ages is an auditory sojourn through the life cycle of a people and world. From its first flicker of creation to its inevitable decay and subsequent disintegration, Ages conjures a bittersweet amalgamation of hope and dispirited prostration.

In this interview, we speak with Mark at length about Ages and Dawnwalker’s tenured history. We touch on some of his obsessions that have fueled records in the past, as well as some current ones that may spill into the band’s forthcoming LP. There are many other details we uncover and explore in our block of time with Mark, but I will refrain from divulging further here. That being said, thank you all so much for tuning in; we sincerely appreciate it. And thank you for any support you can provide Dawnwalker.

Good morning, afternoon, or night! While Connor basks in some rays, sipping brews alongside a lazy creek up near Sisters, Oregon, I’m down here in California visiting family. A geographical swap for the long weekend, if you will.

In this week’s episode, Connor and I (mostly Connor) ponder our self-diagnoses with impostor syndrome, a key theme underpinning the sophomore LP, The Violet Grim, from New York’s one-man doomgaze project, Gloomseeker. We have been endeavoring to lighten the mood with albums we discuss during this time of year as we often couple sweltering summer heat with frenzied punk, hardcore, and noise rock. However, we stray from that sun-gilded cobblestone pathway here. Instead, we found ourselves paralyzed in the umbrage of a bottomless well, suffocating in the throes of anxiety with an ever so infrequent glimmer of hope. Sounds captivating, yes?

As the album title (and moniker) suggests, The Violet Grim is a dreary stupor through the dwindling of life and subsequent passing into death. It’s rife with reverb, which often masks Gloomseeker’s vocals. In the same breath, the ponderous vibrations distort the sundry of instrumental layers into nebulous clouds of melancholy. Primordial industrial rhythms shape the spine of each composition. They are stifled in biting acidic resonances, yet somehow, each strike is rendered palatable due to the atmospheric undertow subsuming them. Moreover, the rare post-rock protrusion makes for a sobering moment or two to self-reflect amidst the dour wandering.

I don’t want to spoil all of the points we touch on in this review, so I will refrain from divulging further. You can expect our usual non-sensical tangents, in addition to some personal reflections fueled by the poignant aura percolating from this record. That being said, we sincerely hope you enjoy our exchange. Thank you so much for tuning in!

Hello! It has been a minute since I’ve released a solo podcast interview here on the site, but I am ecstatic to share with you all an in-depth conversation with Terror Peaks, an enigmatic, UK-based extreme electronic producer. This project was not on my radar until I received a feature request several months back. And while I was initially hesitant to conduct an interview—primarily due to my dearth of electronic music knowledge—I was enamored by the mystifying conceptual descriptions paired with Terror Peaks’ debut, self-titled EP.Frequent readers and listeners of our output already know that we harbor an ingrained passion for extreme music, particularly of the metal strain, but never have I considered electronic music extreme. It is not “extreme” in the way one would typically characterize metal per se, but it is analogous insofar that Terror Peaks’ tunes are unrelenting auditory assaults. This is not to say his compositions induce ear fatigue or tinnitus, but they are in perpetual flux. He never rests or relishes in a texture, beat, or frequency for more than a few seconds. Often, a fresh layer will protrude for but a moment, only to flitter off and never re-emerge. This renders his tunes rather bewildering as their blistering kinetic energy keeps you wondering where the hell Terror Peaks is taking you, but his elaborate constructions are anything but chaotic walls of noise. Rather, despite the litany of high-end sizzling frequencies, there permeates an assortment of ambient tendrils that caress and suspend you in a state of awe.Furthermore, Terror Peaks is conceptual down to its oldest roots. The project’s title is the cryptic name ascribed to an arcane realm, of which each track is a recorded journey of a fortunate soul that survived the brief traversal of one of Terror Peaks’ innumerable portals. There are many who have endeavored to record their journey, though only a few have managed to return. Angels, cloth floaters, a lush but perilous landscape of stabbing crystalline stalagmites, are but a few glimpses gleaned from indiscernible vistas. Much more could be divulged here, but that would defeat the purpose of exploring the sentiments and insights shared by the entity behind Terror Peaks.That being said, I sincerely hope you enjoy our exchange as I was thoroughly captivated by Terror Peaks’ words. Below are vague descriptions of the three portals traversed in Terror Peaks’ debut EP. Thank you so much for tuning in!

Showyou portal:A knife-edge world of angular forms. Strange pointed artifacts, like icicles, jut out from the ground, stabbing at surrounding objects. Sometimes stormy. Otherwise quite a serene place. Harmless tendrils, of unknown biological composition, appear in clusters. Ringing sounds, like singing bowls, are often heard. Angels are common.

Blis portal:A quiet, temperate plane. Visitors often report feelings of overbearing rapture here; upon arrival,

Hello hello! It’s been awhiiiile since I’ve penned a write-up for one of our album review episodes, but it’s a pleasure to return to the fold. In this episode, Connor and I ramble and sputter into the void about the latest LP, Rule 36, from some of our favorite noise rockers, Intercourse, who have become a household name here in our dingy dwelling.

With this new album comes a new line-up. Fresh are the guitarist and bassist, helmed by Sean and Pete, respectively; however, the bedrock of the quartet remains unshaken. Tarek continues to forge utterly batshit lyrical wizardry and Caleb stomps with leaden percussive rhythms.

Less present are the mathcore influences this time around—as heard on their prior LP, Everything is Pornography When You’ve Got an Imagination—and in their place, an undiluted strain of noise rock hammers. Corrosive blockades of blaring feedback and sibilant string notes slither through tracks. The grooves are meatier and there even persists intermittent splotches of an acrid atmosphere that effuses like a stifling must from a claustrophobic basement show. Each track is punctual too, with only one of nine piercing a three-minute runtime. Most interesting, however, may be the final two cuts of Rule 36. Although these frenzied diatribes fester in the aforementioned tones and timbres, they exude a palpably bleak mood that is felt through the synergy of the pared down instrumentation and sobering, introspective lyrics—especially in the album’s final track, “Pagliacci Was Ahead of His Time”. We cannot say for certain if the tones Intercourse tinkers with in these last couple of tunes will become a mainstay in future releases, but we found ourselves agreeing that this novel change in pace is one we would love to hear explored further.

Rule 36 is a twenty-minute cotton shot of deranged noise rock. It’s one Connor and I have been enjoying a whole hell of a lot. And though only twenty minutes in length, we ended up dissecting it for well over an hour. That being said, we sincerely hope you enjoy the tangents and weird exchanges contained herein. Thank you so much for your support!

Skol, fallen warriors of the void! This week Ryan and I interview the vastly talented composer Patrik Jarlestam. For the gamers out there you may know him as the composer for the hit Viking survival game Valheim. The soundtrack is a stellar mix of relaxed folk-like melodies, peculiar ambient textures, and epic metal boss fight compositions. Ryan has never played the game himself, but now that he’s getting a new PC here soon… I’ll guide him into the dangerous magical realm myself!

My good pals and I had just beaten the final boss and we decided to see what it would be like to fight multiples of each boss. We spawned about fifteen Eikthyr (a giant stag that shoots lighting) and watched the chaos ensue as our framerates tanked. As the glorious Meshuggah-inspired boss battle riffs blared my friend asked, “Dude, why not interview the composer for your podcast?” Lo and behold, that’s exactly what we did.

Within the episode, Patrik goes into detail about his involvement with Valheim as well as his other musical endeavors, from briefly being in the Swedish metal band Hom Dai to conducting modern classical orchestral pieces. He speaks about some of his most cherished games, how he went about piecing together Valheim’s soundtrack in a matter of months, as well as his musical influences and travels. I was also intrigued by his thoughts and sentiments toward learning about other cultures through their music.

Patrik is a man of many talents and is superbly well-spoken. It was an immense pleasure to chat with him for a couple of hours and glean so much backstory about his life and how he crafts his compositions. I sincerely hope you enjoy this episode with a tankard of mead in hand. Below is a screenshot of our plains Valheim fortress—those damned horrid Deathsquitos and Fuling weirdos.