All Will Gather To The Shores - Deity Of Ruin

And now for the new release.

All Will Gather To The Shores have crafted something far more abrasive and far more interesting with Deity Of Ruin. Sounds and effects blare and fade, intermixed with distinct and heavily distorted harsh vocals on this release much like they did on the previous. Everything feels more refined, and from beginning to end, Deity Of Ruin feels like a grand escapade towards an abstract land or cosmic goal. Ironically the track titled "Journey" happens to be one of the best on here.

The rattling, jarring opener "Captivity" sets things in motion as Deity Of Ruin begins sculpting its sonic landscape from whale bones and the ashes of modernity. "Machine" is interesting in that it features subtle drumwork and even a few fills along with All Will Gather To The Shores' fuzzy, low guitars. The blaring high register notes are the sounds I would imagine the earth would make as humanity scars its landscape with mines and refineries. Some tracks, like these two, are less subtle than those on Their Bodies Clutter The Sea. The distant roaring of "Journey," and the electric guitar-driven "Ashore" are both similar to the openers in this regard.

As the more subtle, dark ambient track "Mist" gives way to the comparatively lighthearted "Relief," the sonic landscape appears to be reaching completion. The general picture of Deity Of Ruin has already been established by the end of "Relief," whose guitar keeps building in decibels as it goes. "Journey" follows up and sets the action in motion aboard the decrepit world stage. Soft, clean guitarwork dotted with a very light post rock sound guides the listener over crevasses, empty valleys, vast oceans, and tortured cities. The vocals on this track are fantastic, subdued and distant in the mix, and a subtle reminder of all that is wrong with the planet Deity Of Ruin has built. They trail off, fade in, and eventually the distorted, gated guitar brings the world to its knees in a calamitous finale.

"Island" is far more quiet and introspective, guided almost entirely by acoustic guitars. It makes for a nice follow up to "Journey" before the catchy drone riffing of "Ashore." The vocals on "Ashore" are raspy and almost black metallish, contrasting from the primal, world-roar of "Journey." Granted they're all heavily distorted so it makes little difference, but just something I noticed. "Beyond" closes the album out with distant sounds of gulls and waves, returning the world to the water in which it was born.

There are numerous instances on Deity Of Ruin which grant it the added tag of doom along with ambient, drone, and psychedelic noise. The riffing is distorted, fuzzy, heavy, and some of it is constant enough to put it in the drone doom realm. The use of strings is honestly what makes this such an interesting release for me, and the atmosphere that All Will Gather To The Shores create on Deity Of Ruin is stark on multiple levels.

Deity Of Ruin makes me think again about Herakleitos, impermanence, and post modernity. Any album that makes me contemplate...things is good in my books.

8.5 out of 10

Tracklisting:
1. Captivity
2. Machine
3. Mist
4. Relief
5. Journey
6. lsland
7. Ashore
8. Beyond

Bandcamp

All Will Gather To The Shores - Their Bodies Clutter The Sea

I'm going to cover both of Russian act All Will Gather To The Shores' releases. This is their first release, Their Bodies Clutter The Sea.

Drone and ambient work well with psychedelic. The visual aspect of psychedelic has always been the main draw, and as I'm finding out now, the main draw for drone, ambient, and noise. Unlike most purely electronic or synthetic ambient or drone, All Will Gather To The Shores utilize subtle and limited strings and extremely distorted, low-mixed vocals. The latter pop up infrequently, and on this release only on "Gale" and "Calm." "Gale" is appropriately the least soothing with its noisy, distorted looping and dissonant chord transitions. As a concept it serves quite nicely, although it isn't the most compelling track.

Follow up tracks "Hope" and "Despair" are two sides of the same coin with "Hope" being guided by relatively peaceful string sounds. It's nice coming from "Gale" but since the track is barely over a minute "Despair" slowly kicks in, which is surprisingly less melancholy than the name. It's a lackadaisical track, like basking on the sun-baked deck of a ship left adrift after a monstrous storm. "Calm," the longest and most acutely developed track on the album is much more solemn in its development. The soft strings kick in before the vocals do - as harsh and distorted as ever - until they fade to light guitars and a droning outro.

The guitar tone is of note on Their Bodies Clutter The Sea. It's doomy, heavy, and distorted, and the higher register notes sound like the audio interpretation of sun rays beating down onto sunburnt backs. In a way, Their Bodies Clutter The Sea almost evokes a desert image in that regard.

A solid, but slightly underdeveloped taster of the sound that would await on Deity Of Ruin.

6.5 out of 10

Tracklisting:
1. Gale
2. Hope
3. Despair
4. Calm

Bandcamp

Mirrorring - Foreign Body

Before you decry my will to check out singer-songwriter music from the west coast as being "hipster," I suggest you actually listen to some of it. This kind of music can be pretty intricate, emotive, and is very leisurely to listen to.

Mirrorring are labeled by some as a dreampop band and I don't see that at all. Made up of Jesy Fortino of Tiny Vipers and Liz Harris of Grouper, this album blends folk sounds with psychedelic new/no/ethereal/whatever-the-fuck-wave music. The result is a surprisingly heavy record titled Foreign Body, and the whole thing feels quite dreamlike. Perhaps that's where the misnomer dreampop came from.

There's just a single, traditionally structured track on Foreign Body. It's relatively deep-voiced Fortino's gorgeous "Silent From Above," which reeks of mournful nostalgia. Other tracks all follow differing structures, some taking influence from the artist's previous work, and some from other subgenres. "Cliffs" for example borrows heavily from post rock. It builds from a simple, repetitive acoustic intro into a densely layered middle with an electro-ambient conclusion. The result is impressive and evokes a sweeping panorama of the Great Basin and its harsh climate. "Mine" is probably the strongest track on the album, with rising electronic harmonies and some great vocal interplay between the duo halfway through. Harris' electronics envelop the track, subtly building tension that is never quite resolved. It's quite disconcerting.

In fact the entire album pretty much feels like falling asleep and then having a bout of sleep paralysis. Closer "Mirror Of Our Sleeping" really touches upon the feeling of waking up weary and anxious, and then going back to sleep in the middle of the night. Something about it sounds so troubled, yet complacent in how lost it is.

The production throughout Foreign Body is filled with haze and a heavy dose of reverb. Each pluck of a string by Fortino feels like it's amplified and echoed through a tunnel of ions created by Harris. Yes, that was a Wormed reference that I somehow managed to work into this review, and no I won't do that again. Anyway while it fits the theme of the album, I don't think ambient droner "Drowning The Call" works so well in context. Luckily the more straightforward and somber "Silent From Above" had come earlier or else I probably would've felt the same way about it. There are a few plucked guitar melodies that add some texture to what feels like a smooth electronic track that goes nowhere with its sound. One of the few times the dynamic doesn't quite work out in the duo's favor.

For the most part though, Foreign Body is a powerful piece of work. Soothing electronics and vocals, building song dynamics, and a (blatant) dreamlike atmosphere make it a more complex and multi-dimensional release when compared to some of Fortino and Harris' previous efforts (at least from what I've heard - which is quite limited).

7.75 out of 10

Tracklisting:
1. Fell Sound
2. Silent From Above
3. Cliffs
4. Drowning The Call
5. Mine
6. Mirror Of Our Sleeping

Listen // Buy

Hail Spirit Noir - Pneuma

Hail Spirit Noir is a progressive/psychedelic black metal act from Macedonia, and their first full-length Pneuma managed to find its way to my ears.

Psychedelic black metal is tough to describe because traditional black metal tends to shun the elements of most music labeled psychedelic. Melody, surrealist lyricism, and a weird atmosphere are all the rage in psychedelia, while in traditional black metal "only death is real." These Macedonian metallers eschew the traditional black metal persona in favor of a unique, somewhat fruity compositions.

I'm not a huge System Of A Down fan but I might've been if you asked me what I thought of them back in '00-'01. Serj Tankian certainly has some vocal talents that few can match, and Theo Liratzakis does a great job of mimicking his weird, somewhat operatic style. His cleans on "When All Is Black" and "Let Your Devil Come Inside" are eerily reminiscent of Tankian. The guitars are eerie as well, featuring typically French black metal chromaticisms on intro track "Mountain Of Horror" and "Into The Gates Of Time." It works well with the generally subtle synthesizers, which do reach their peak prominence on "Let Your Devil Come Inside."

The production on Pneuma is pretty fitting I have to say. Guitars have a whimsical feel to them not unlike Oranssi Pazuzu's, vocals are mostly dominant, and drums and rhythm feature a steady backdrop for the more melodious elements of the music. It works to create a strong atmosphere that Hail Spirit Noir exudes every step of the way. Some tracks are a bit more weak than others though, and I found the mellow "When All Is Black" to be skip-worthy and large chunks of "Into The Gates Of Time" could've been cut down as well. Pneuma is a solid debut with some flaws and it'll certainly be interesting to hear more from this band since their style is so limited and has yet to become a fad.

7.25 out of 10

Tracklisting:

1.	Mountain of Horror
2.	Let Your Devil Come Inside
3.	Against the Curse, We Dream
4.	When All Is Black
5.	Into the Gates of Time
6.	Haire Pneuma Skoteino

Gigan - Quasi-Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes

Gigan are one of my favorite bands and always have been since I first heard The Order Of The False Eye. What a damn fine record it was in all its complex, noisy, esoteric, and bizarre glory. Naturally I was really stoked to hear Quasi-Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes when it released. I picked it up a few days after release and listened to it nonstop along with the new Origin for a few more days. Musically Gigan is a band that tends to require time to digest, so I feel that now I can safely review Quasi-Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes without feeling like everything I said was wrong. We'll have to see how it turns out.

Quasi-Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes is essentially the continuation of Gigan's sound on The Order, but with the noise turned to eleven. Given tracks like "Unnamed" and "Hiding Behind The House Of Mirrors" on the previous album, guitar effects were always present in Gigan's music. Here we have Gigan experimenting with enough effects to make a shoegazer's ears bleed. Phase shifters, loops, vocal distortions, whatever, it's all on Quasi-hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes at one point or another. Sometimes this muddles up the sound a bit but it generally makes the songs have a more dense feeling.

I find it really tough to describe the songs on the album without just saying they're fucking technical. Every instrument is played with a high degree of finesse, and each song feels like it was almost overly composed. My only complaint with the album is a rather large one and its with the riffing. Sometimes the riffs become so cacophonous that they lose their memorability. For example I couldn't remember the opener if I tried. This wasn't a problem on Gigan's previous release, where everything had a bit more memorability. Quasi-Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes is still a quality release though, no doubt about that.

With that said there are some really cool tracks on here that fit the full range of speeds and intensities one would expect from a technical death metal band. "Suspended In Cubes Of Torment" is chock-full of schizophrenic riffs on speed, while the bizarre "Transmogrification Into Bio-Luminoid" slows to a mushroom-induced vegetative state (there's also a bunch of robot vocals). It almost sounds like Quasi-Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes could be the soundtrack to an alien invasion. "The Raven And The Crow" even manages to be catchy and fun while still retaining Gigan's whole techdeath-plus-acid vibe. "Skeletons Of Steel, Timber And Blackened Granite" is a really cool grindcore-esque track that builds to a squeaking crescendo. The album ends with "Fathomless Echoes Of Eternity's Imagination" which has some killer riffs and a noisy, blaring outro. The album certainly has variety, and each track displays a degree of hypnotic qualities which make it at the very least a unique listen. Vague descriptions aside, Quasi-Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes is one that really has to be heard to be understood.

8.5 out of 10

Tracklisting:

1.	Mountains Perched Like Beasts Awaiting the Attack
2.	Suspended in Cubes of Torment
3.	The Raven and the Crow
4.	In the Tentacled Grasp of a Buried Behemoth
5.	Transmogrification into Bio-Luminoid
6.	Skeletons of Steel, Timber and Blackened Granite
7.	Vespelmadeen Terror
8.	Fathomless Echoes of Eternity's Imagination