When I reviewed Circus Trees’ debut EP Sekura, I wished for a vinyl version of Delusions, their full-length follow up. And now, the vinyl gods (or more realistically, their mentor/manager/father) have heard my prayer and made good on it.
Good thing too, because the sonic heft of these songs demands a weightier medium than can be offered by ones and zeros.
In the twenty-five years since the release of You’d Prefer an Astronaut, the musical landscape has been filled with bands that exist at the altar of HUM. The combination of doom metal heaviness, laid back vocal delivery, and major key melodies that HUM delivered on that breakthrough has inspired everyone from Deftones to Cave In to Quicksand to Cloakroom to Spotlights to The Life & Times to True Widow…I could go on.
But now, two decades after going on hiatus, HUM has released a new record that proves that they’re still the kings of space rock. And it might just be their best ever.
By now, long time readers will understand that I have an incredible weakness for heavy music that plays with more delicate elements. My collection is filled with these sorts of experiments, from Alcest to Zeal & Ardor—projects that hold tight to the crushing catharsis of heavy metal, but don’t shy away from adopting a sense of gentleness.
An Autumn For Crippled Children’s breakthrough album, Try Not To Destroy Everything You Love is an absolutely staggering example of this kind of music that is equal parts ear splittingly vicious and heart throbbingly sentimental.
Last year, I caught the crest of the hype-wave for Blushing as it was cresting. I listened to it on Spotify, fell in love, and upon finding that the vinyl was way out of my budget, I put them away, trying to forget about them. That is until this week, when my friend Rob included it in an order of cassette tapes from his label, Friend Club Records. So now, I get to fall in love with this record all over again.
I know what you might be thinking—does this guy really need another shoegaze record? And it’s true that for many of the trend-chasing bands in the so-called shoegaze revival scene, the most important part of the genre is the aesthetic. Sometimes, it seems like these bands would rather have an excuse for guitar fuzz or reverb pedals than offer songs with any real compositional fiber.
And truth be told, I love a lot of those bands. I will gladly sit through forty-five minutes of pedalboard demonstrations put to wax, and then I’ll buy it on vinyl. I’m easy to please.
But while Blushing might often get mentioned in the same breath as a lot of the say-nothing revivalists, they don’t just hit the aesthetic of shoegaze. They have the songs to back it up.
And so, we move from a record by Explosions in the Sky to a band named after an Explosions in the Sky song.
Over the last several years, there’s been revival of sorts in bands realizing the power of loud guitar amps and dirt pedals. Cloakroom seems to be at the front of the pack of this type of revival, with bands like Lume and Teenage Wrist shortly behind. It’s a reminder of what bands like Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins so popular, mixed with a heaping dose of My Bloody Valentine tossed in, with Black Sabbath for flavor.
Michigan’s Greet Death is another great new act in this crop of fuzz-loving guitar bands, and they are coming for the crown. Continue reading
For all the impact its had on the global metal landscape, the French blackgaze scene is dominated by a small handful of projects. Perhaps the two most important are Les Discrets and the incomparable Alcest. And in Amesoeurs (French for “soulmates”), Fursy Teyssier of Les Discrets joins forces with Neige of Alcest, Audrey Sylvain of Peste Noire (the female voice on Alcest’s debut), and Winterhalter, who would go on to be a member of both Les Discrets and Alcest.
Amesoeurs, the group’s only album, stretches the limits of black metal in a similar way that Alcest and Les Discrets do, but in this project, they meld its hellish fury with the dark moodiness post punk more than glistening joie de vivre of post rock or the somnambulant heaviness of shoegaze.
After the other two members of traditional black metal band Alcest left, soon-to-be French metal icon Neige decided to use the project—or at least the name—as a vehicle for his own experimental mix of black metal, shoegaze, post rock, and gothic.
As a child, Neige would often dream that he was visiting a forest filled with glowing, enchanted creatures from another world. On Alcest’s debut full-length, the suitably titled Souvenirs d’un Autre Monde (Souvenirs from Another World), Neige explores what he’s always imagined the music of that land to sound like.
The results are just as otherworldly as advertised, though it shows mere glimpses of where Alcest would go in their now legendary career.
Often when I’m trying to figure out what I want to listen to, I find myself trying to make the decision between heavy riffs or catchy melodies. Do I want to sing along with the choruses, or do I want to be crushed beneath the monstrous weight of the guitars?
Luckily, The Life and Times never makes me choose, hitting like a mix of HUM-y walls of noise with almost Beatles-y melodies.
And I am here for it.
Among all of the bands carrying the return of loud, low, heavy guitar music pioneered by bands HUM and Failure, one act is often hoisted above the rest as the standard bearers.
That band is Cloakroom, doomgazers/space rockers/slacker rockers from Northwest Indiana (hey, that’s where I live)! And on their debut EP, Infinity, Cloakroom roars into infamy with the roar of a thousand amplifiers and an earth-crushing gravity.
Given the deep nostalgic ties in the shoegaze, dream pop, new wave, and post punk revivals, it’s little wonder that there’s a fair amount of crossover between them. Hundredth’s RARE drew as much inspiration from New Order as Slowdive. Metallic genre benders like Deftones and Deafheaven have looked to The Cure as much as My Bloody Valentine.
And so, when noted shoegaze revivalists Nothing trade their fuzz pedals for synths and do their best Joy Division impressions, it shouldn’t come as much as a surprise.
(And to be clear, that isn’t an insult).