From Corners Unknown

Salutations denizens of the void! With our latest episode, we bring to you the powerhouse that is Ulcerate, bearing a welcomed gift of brutal death metal. Within their sixth album Stare Into Death and Be Still, complex layers of death metal are infused with atmosphere as well as blackened progressive prowess. Although I am not drenched in their discography, this is believed to be a breakthrough in sound for the band. They shed claustrophobia and dissonance in favor of melodic grooves and swelling power.

At times I found myself at a loss for words while listening to this beast of a release. I reached into the crawl space in which my brain usually dwells and found it hard to describe the rich, masterfully-displayed instrumentals. In concept, the album touches on the unfortunate experience of observing death in an unhurried manner: death is not always sudden, and therefore it can be hard to watch the slow suffering. Despite these depressing themes, Ryan and I were able to paint vivid and interesting visions in the music such as necromancer warlords commanding vast legions, or immense chunks of land terraformed in front of our very eyes. For some odd reason, I found it to work as a nice soundtrack for massive medieval war games. (I never fail to drop a couple nerdy references in this podcast!)

The New Zealand trio (how the hell do they craft such a massive sound with only three members?) originally formed as Bloodwreath in 2000, before re-branding themselves as Ulcerate in 2002. With several lineup changes here and there, they have slain away for nearly two decades. They continue to show unbelievable musicianship as they sharpen and reforge their death metal craft with each release. I especially enjoyed Paul Kelland’s powerful vocals in this album; it sounded as if he could harness the attention of the universe with his deep commanding growls. Jamie Saint Merat’s drum work had my jaw drop in awe at many points with every listen–like a mace across the face, he left me dazed with pummeling talent. All the while Michael Hoggard caught my guitar-loving heed. His ability to craft progressive grooving melodies as well as extreme harsh riffs is astonishing. The contrast of violent instrumentals over calming atmospheres caught me off guard at points too. Overall the production quality is flawless, and captures the robust emotions the artists exhibit efficiently.

Death is something every human must experience, and I think Ulcerate sonically expressed that personal concept well. Thank you so much for tuning in.

Here at From Corners Unknown, we tend to focus on music and noise which is a little heavier than the toe-tapping tunes our grandparents once did the twist to. As such, it may come as a surprise that for this Retrospective Review we dived into an album blasting straight out of the flower-power heyday of the 1960s. Contrary to what you may be thinking, what this album may lack in volume, distortion and auditory brutality, it more than makes up for in psychological horror and darkness—especially once you’ve scratched through the veneer of jangly guitars, out of time drums, and bizarre monotone vocal “harmonies”. Welcome to our exploration of the surprisingly nightmarish album that is The Philosophy of the World by The Shaggs.

The Shaggs consisted of three sisters from the rural town of Fremont, New Hampshire, and to cut a long story short, they were essentially forced to play music against their will by their unstable and controlling father. Famously, their father believed that it was prophesised that his daughters would one day play in a band together. In this review we explore the relationship between the band members and their father, and we would like to explicitly state that this discussion does get into some extremely uncomfortable and disturbing topics regarding abuse.

On a somewhat lighter note, we also look at the musical legacy of The Philosophy of the World—an album that is today widely considered to be the worst album ever recorded. And yet, despite holding this title, adoration for this record is abundant, to the extent that Frank Zappa proclaimed the band to be “better than the Beatles,” and the two surviving members of The Shaggs were curated to perform at Wilco’s Solid Sound music festival in 2017.

So if you like weird stories and even weirder music, then we have a treat for you today. Prepare yourself for the history and the horror of the “worst” band ever to be recorded. You may, like us, come to find that there’s a lot more to this album than initially meets the ear, and even end up enjoying it.

Though formed in early 2018, the moniker of the Portland-based progressive metal trio, Coffin Apartment, reads a bit like a fragment of a prophecy given the current circumstances around the globe. We’ve been shut away in our respective abodes for about one-quarter of 2020 thus far and the Groundhog Day syndrome has yet to alleviate. Granted, Connor’s and my own day-to-day existence was quite mundane before all of this transpired, but rambling about music has become a sort of mental oasis amidst the tides of tedium. And when the self-titled debut from Coffin Apartment hit my inbox in mid-April amidst the turmoil, we thought it to be an odd coincidence. Thus we acted upon it.

Coffin Apartment is actually a reference to subdivided housing units found in Hong Kong and other densely populated cities that are just large enough to fit a single bed for its resident. Their flavor of progressive metal can mostly be encompassed under the sprawling canopies of death metal, sludge, punk, hardcore, and a dash of psychedelia. A sundry of other timbres permeate their bludgeonings, but on the whole, you can anticipate a raw deluge of trenchant riffs and jolting tempo shifts made murky by infernal wails. Their kinetic transitions are potent and airtight, and these even offer up some deranged hooks to make the shellacking a titch more palatable. Furthermore, the dynamic fervor exuding their tracks comes as little surprise given that each Coffin Apartment member originates from relatively long-established bands in the Pacific Northwest region (A Volcano, Polst/Toim, Same-Sex Dictator). Though their debut dropped back in February 2019, we were both dumbfounded by the grottiness entombed therein. Since we are also at wit’s end, we thought it to be a perfect opportunity to embrace entropy and chat about a record that suitably embodies how we both feel about our respective ramshackle dwellings. Thank you so much for tuning in.

Welcome to yet another track reviews episode. This is a sub-series where Derek, Connor, and myself select six tracks, EPs, or splits, to chat about in a format more relaxed than our usual weekly album review podcast episodes. No genre theme or gimmick is adhered to here. In this episode, we ramble about Necrot’s grisly cast of molting death metal, the blistering mathcore neuroses spilling from Voidbloom’s The Tongues of God, worming bass lines smothered in belly-button hair from Dublin-based noise-rockers Shifting, and the opulent decay of metropolises as reflected by avant-garde mask adorners, Imperial Triumphant. A myriad of other tonal qualities permeate the discussion, but we’ll leave those remaining timbres for you to discover.

We hope you find at least one of the tracks or EPs discussed here intriguing. Below you will find embed players to peruse each piece in full, in addition to social media links and some other cursory details. If you have some suggestions for tracks, EPs, or splits for us to review in this series, please feel to send them along to us at [email protected], or reach out to us on the various social media platforms where we exist. Send us the strangest and most outlandish music you can find! Thank you so much for tuning in.

Welcome to yet another weekly album review podcast episode. If you’ve been following us for a bit, you may recall a lengthy review of Cryo Chamber’s 2019 year-end Lovecraft collaboration, Hastur. In it, I introduced a close friend of mine, Eric, who joined me in a winding conversation about The King in Yellow, Carcosa, and the mystifying timbres permeating its 140-minute run time. He’s well-read on Lovecraft and the wellspring of literature inspired by it. As a result, we thought it’d be fitting to bestow him the moniker of “Lovecraft scholar” and bring him on for reviews of albums that are of a Lovecraftian strain. While this may not necessarily apply to the album of dissection this week (maybe it does, but ever so vaguely), Eric and I have bonded over several hundred hours of late-night driving from Eugene to Portland and back to catch innumerable live shows. And though many of these outings have become fleeting memories, one that continues to persist with utmost clarity is our shared electrifying experience of seeing Napalm Death live for the first time alongside Voivod on their Through Space and Grind tour (2015).

That’s quite the heap of preamble to frame this episode up, but it illustrates, at least in part, the early intrigue both Eric and I took in Shane Embury’s work. His galloping bass lines that trample and plod through Napalm Death’s belters were an early touchstone for developing a deeper kinship with grindcore, particularly in a live setting. And it should come as little surprise, especially if you’ve followed him for a while, that Embury is steeped in a multitude of projects cut from the cloth of extreme metal; however, his latest endeavor is anything but.

Dark Sky Burial is an extension of Embury’s love for gloomy experimental music and SciFi/horror films of yore. His debut, De Omnibus Dubitandum Est, is an assortment of cinematic tones and themes, many of which are electronic and lean into industrial and/or ambient territory. Tranquil passages of shimmering resonances glide by and virulent beats cudgel with retrofuturistic vigor. It’s frankly a bit challenging to capture the vibe of this debut in a succinct manner as it explores a far-reaching spectrum of moods. “Hallowed by thy name” pays homage to 80s synth scores a la John Carpenter and “The Wheel” plays out like an intense chase sequence in a spy-thriller via its tribalistic drumming. There’s a healthy chunk of detail to dissect in this album, and as Embury noted, there is enough material for three to four more Dark Sky Burial records. When those will drop we haven’t a clue, but we’re eagerly anticipating what tonal horizons this project will journey toward next. Thank you so much for tuning in.

A torn banner flutters in a cold wind atop a stack of crumbling ruins. You cast your gaze down a long winding path to ascertain your destination. In this dilapidated world, you are alone and frightened yet you steel yourself for the task ahead. Although many horrors line your path, you must succeed, you must prevail. And if you do not you will try again and again until you drain the last of humanity from your body.

Today we delve into the Age of Fire and its subsequent demise. Firelink is a black metal band from Atlanta, Georgia but their music far transcends what would be expected of that tag. Firelink is a band me and Ryan have discussed on a few occasions now. Once in an album reviews podcast episode and once more when we interviewed Harrison Stivarius, the band’s guitarist and principal songwriter. Every time I do a deep dive into Firelink I become more enamored with it, the music is as bewitching as it is despondent and bleak.

Firelink’s sophomore self-titled is one of the most progressive records we have discussed in a while, the breadth of genres heard is phenomenal. In all ways, this record is a step up from their previous release, The Inveterate Fire. Firelink features live drums from Benighted drummer Kevin Paradis which enhances the album tenfold. Adrian Davis reprises his role as vocalist and he delivers his words as if all the fires of Izalith are contained within his throat. The album production sparkles like the embers of a dissipating bonfire and the guitar work outlines the forms of celestial beings and despondent landscapes in a way no musical metaphor can do justice. This is a fantastic listen from start to finish and although we did have some small criticism to make, they were few and far between.

Be warned that this episode is chock full of Dark Souls lore, so if you have never played the games you might feel a bit lost at times. But never despair young hollow, there is plenty of musical analysis to tie it all together. I hope you enjoy our rambling as much as we enjoyed delivering it.

He’s a happy little duck! the Chief Tail vocalist blurts with glee again and again during the shortest track—aptly titled “Happy Little Duck”—of their debut self-titled effort. It’s simple and to the point. This track, in particular, was more than enough justification to warrant a full podcast review as Connor is wont to expound upon zany punk tunes. The photo of the Tasmanian Tiger was an instant sell too. Beyond this belter of a track though, sloppy, disheveled, and clamorous are all sufficient words to describe the punky noise rock gutter denizens. Disorderliness reigns chief, however, they achieve a tone that incites a rambunctious vigor through the vocalist’s heatstroke ramblings coupled with contagious rhythms and grimy grooves.

Chief Tail formed in the winter of 2019. They emerged from the long-dormant ashes of PCP Roadblock (1995 – 2005), a troupe of abrasive Richmond-based noise-slingers of which Chief Tail retains three of its original four members. I failed to find a slew of information regarding Roadblock, but if some grainy YouTube videos are anything to go on, they seemed like a berserk bunch. Anyway, subsequent to their early 2019 congealing they constructed a fistful of succinct, feedback-splattered punk spew, which was recorded by Steve Albini over in Chicago. And at the turn of this new decade, Reptilian Records unfurled the Tail’s 19-minute auditory acrimony into the mighty shitpipes underlying every American city.

We are seldom inclined to name drop, but both Connor and I would not have known of this gem’s existence if it weren’t for the folks in Chat Pile. In traditional fashion, we’re five months late to the fray to speak about Chief Tail’s debut, but this discussion was quite a jovial excursion relative to our recent ramblings. We spend well over double the album’s length reviewing it (typical), making pathetic forts out of used cigarette butts, and suffocating in its pungent miasma. Thank you so much for tuning in!

Welcome back to the second episode of our fledgling track reviews podcast series where Derek, Connor, and myself prattle on about some relatively fresh cuts from artists known and not so well known. Though the series title implies track discussions only, we do leave the gate open for EPs and splits so long as they are relatively brief. In this iteration, we expand our palates to encompass synthwave from Carpenter Brut, bedraggled punk from New Zealand Brian-bashers CATSICK, a suffocating merge of black and death metal from Oakland gloom revelers Dearth, the meteor striking sludge of the intergalactic brute Cyttorak, plus a litany of other timbres.

Ultimately, we hope this episode brings you at least one new intriguing discovery. Below you will find the list of tracks and EPs we discuss in order of appearance. If there is a particular track you’d like to hear covered in this format, please feel free to reach out to us via email. We already have our list of tracks selected for our third iteration, but we are always seeking new tunes; send us the weirdest and most outlandish music you enjoy! Thank you so much for listening.

It’s arguably been a bit too long since we’ve sat down to discuss some dark ambient here, particularly from the Cryo Chamber label. Back in March, I sat down with my good friend Eric to chat about Hastur, the sixth rotation in the label’s annual Lovecraft cycle; and before that, Connor and I basked in the Silent Hill-steeped melancholy permeating Beyond the Ghost’s debut, You Disappeared. That was back in December 2019. Between then and now, Cryo Chamber has published a wealth of dystopian conceptual pieces from the mesmerizing drones of Apocryphos (Against Civilization) and the sax-laden milieu of Dead Melodies & Zenjungle (Anthropocene), to the science-fiction wayfaring harnessed by Ruptured World (Interplanetary). If time permitted, we would have loved to ramble about each of these, but given that there are so many superb records trickling into the ether of extreme metal and other noisy genres at present, we, unfortunately, have had to be quite selective with our dark ambient reviews (though this may shift in the coming months). While each of the aforementioned records deserves deep dissections in their own right, we could not pass up the warm tonal qualities of the Russian drone ambient quartet Lesa Listvy as their latest effort, Unheard Of, graced a nerve most enrapturing for Connor and myself.

Lesa Listvy (or, Forests of Foliage) emerged in the digital Bandcamp space in August 2017 with their independently released debut album, Птицы листают страницы, which roughly translates to Birds Flipping Pages. Not even a year later did they release their sophomore effort, Way Home. This time, however, their analog tapestries were published amidst the ever-unfurling cinematic dark ambient catalog of Cryo Chamber. And now they return to the label’s fray nearly two years post-Way Home with a steampunk-steeped sojourn through polluted skies.

Enchanting is a decent word to crystallize the atmosphere permeating Unheard Of, though the record and its sundry tones ascend considerably beyond its definition. Every track harbors baritone bass drones that whir like the rusty engine room of a copper sky vessel. These undulating frequencies imbue compositions with purposeful momentum, porting us across awe-striking expanses intermittently pocked by umbral chasms and long-forgotten cities entombed in maroon sand. Much of Unheard Of is pastoral, however. Minutes melt into a fleeting ecstasy that manages to sustain throughout its duration. Electronic rhythms, melodic flourishes, and sublime beats protrude from the shadow-cast dunes, often tickling our sense of wonder and engulfing us in a limbo stasis most surreal. We had a lot to hash out during our discussion of this record and we sincerely hope you enjoy the journey as this is toward the top of our favorite Cryo Chamber releases. Thank you so much for tuning in!

Last week, we prattled about the mysterious avant-garde extreme metal project, Serpent Column. This week, we are coincidentally chatting about another, however, this troupe revels in an experimental domain wholly distinctive from Serpent Column’s terse and bludgeoning mathcore spliced frenetic black metal. Enter Mamaleek. Mamaleek is a mystifying avant-garde duo helmed by two anonymous brothers from the San Francisco area. They formed sometime in 2008 and have released seven LPs to date. Admittedly, Connor and I are quite green behind the ears with respect to Mamaleek’s amorphous and ever-mutating sound, especially in regards to how they have evolved since their conception and how their latest effort Come and See stands in relation to their back-catalog. Thus, we have roped in an infrequently recurring guest for this episode, Adam, owner/operator of Constant Disappointment Records.

Come and See is an album that seeks “to analyze the emotional impact of the spaces we occupy, the surreal forces behind the appearance of physical reality, and the residues they leave behind.” (source). The album’s cover is that of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green public housing project, which was constructed piecemeal over two decades (1942 to 1962), and at its peak, it housed about 15,000 individuals. Through this lens, Mamaleek explores and emits timbres that ceaselessly flood city streets with deafening clamor. Discordant saxophone notes blare like throngs of sirens ricocheting off of concrete and asphalt architecture. Aberrations of desperate shrieks promulgate the erosion of sanity. It’s anxiety-inducing and stifling, yet Come and See manages to simultaneously embed sparks of astounding bliss between their bouts of despondent, smog-laden murk. Be it grooving bass lines, the cathartic blast-beat outpour on “Eating Unblessed Meat”, the shoegazey euphoria percolating within “Cabrini-Green”, or its sundry of surfy flashpoints, Mamaleek continue to shirk categorization. Much more can be divulged here, but so as to not detract from the history lesson and context Adam provides us, we’ll leave it at that. Thank you so much for tuning in!