On a cloudy Thursday Fighting Boredom gifts you another page of album reviews. You can read our thoughts below but first here’s the PR speak sent out with the releases, we give you Coventry’s own Superhooch who have moved ‘to explore influences and sounds outside of hard rock music like Ennio Morricone, cinema and avant garde’. Warrior Pope who are ‘Mostly presented as doom, but plenty of black, post and stoner metal going on, always liked mixing it up some.’ Lower Slaughter whose new album ‘sees the group firing on all cylinders and kicking the door open with new business to set!’ Tavare with a live recording of the time before a concert ‘using the natural reverb of the church and with minimal overdubs, the trio attempted to capture the immediacy and delicacy of these songs as they would be presented live later that day.’ Orthodox with ‘a full-throttle masterpiece’ Fuzzriders with ‘a sonic explosion: loud, unruly, and packed with the rhythm of chaos.’ Agabus with ‘brutally downtuned breakdowns mixed with ferocious jazz saxophone, blast beats for days, thundering bass tones, and the beautiful poetic sound of the Norwegian language aggressively spat in your face.’ Tan Cologne and ‘a cerebral record that echoes and shimmers with realms of the unseen, borderlands, and supernatural connection.’ Charlie Nieland and ‘a new collection of sweeping melodies and restless rhythms’ The Sick Man Of Europe who ‘is a global citizen of an increasingly fractured world.’ Jah Thomas & The Roots Radics and a CD boxset of ‘a trio of dub collections that first saw issue over three decades ago, but which have remained unavailable on any format ever since.’ Electric Junk which tells you to ‘Take a ticket, find yourself a comfortable seat and embark on a musical journey across the underground musical landscape of 1970s Germany….’ So onmce you’ve got your head round that lot, actually read what they feel like and listen to them below…
Superhooch – Gallons of Gold
Mains Spike Music
Superhooch have created something pretty special. It starts off with a snatch of the soundtrack for the best Spaghetti Western never made and finishes in the rain as a brittle, combustible rock’n’roll monster flails around in the dark. It takes in Fuzz, Cow Punk, Soul and Funk, all done brilliantly with the edge that seems to emanate straight from Coventry. The thing that really gets you is the vocals, either fuzzed out spoken, sung in a weird accent or just the soulful croon that emerges occasionally, it grabs you, makes you listen and makes you dance. Seriously dude, this is something special.
Warrior Pope – A Morbid Parody of Justice
This is a history of the Cadaver Synod told in metal. For those who don’t know what that is, imagine a dead pope exhumed and put on trial. That’s what this is about and I think you already know what it sounds like. It is an angry, unbelieving mass of music. It is also absolutely spectacularly played and created. The range of sound is awesome and the fact that I can hear a trombone just makes it even better. It is Black Metal, Doom, Dense and warlike (think Killing Joke at their hardest) and restrained majesty in places too. A brilliant metal album, get on this one!
Lower Slaughter – Deep Living
Human Worth
There’s a palpable sense of menace gouged into this record. It’s unsettling in the extreme. It’s guitar based nastiness , melodic and restrained in places, hard and loose in others but the vocals are clear and very obviously sung so you understand what’s being said. It’s an interesting post-whatever record, I recommend a listen.
Tavare – Too Small To Be So High
Cruel Nature
A meticulously created and performed record. This is a low, deep musical journey with a luscious sound resonating into your psych and moving you. There are different vocalists but the feel remains the same, beautiful and just far enough away from the mainstream to make it dangerous.
Orthodox – A Door Left Open
Century Media
A chugging, fast, angry Metal album. The vocals go from screamy, growly to epic eighties Heavy Metal. The guitars are heavy and chug along nicely, the band lurch and sway then burst into hard core thrash too. If you want some new angry Metal then this is the bees knees.
Fuzzriders – I like it
Electric Valley
It’s not a huge stretch to guess what this sounds like, proto Sabbath with fuzzed to hell riffs and a strained high vocal, they’ve got a nice loose groove that swings like a mother. It’s great blues laced psychedelia but it’s let down by the vocal, this would be much better as an instrumental stretching out the grooves for their own sake. It’s okay but it could be better.
Agabas – Hard Anger
A ferocious hard core album, driven by anger, speed and nastiness. Plus, there’s a saxophone adding just the right amount of jazz madness behind the noise. It doesn’t give an inch, stands firm and batters you as you dance.
Tan Cologne – Unknown Beyond
Labrador Records
A mesmerising, gentle dream pop shoegaze album. Effortlessly put together and played, put this on and drift away with the clouds, plunge down below the sea waves or float out into space. Wonderful.
Charlie Nieland – The Ocean Understands
Charlie gives us an EP with four completely different songs. A fuzzed out slow distorted groove that fades into weirdness. A slow acoustic gentle tune, an angry fast rocker and a shimmering guitar layered groove. But the thing that ties them all together is Charlie’s voice, clear, emotional and vibrant. A great EP.
The Sick Man Of Europe – The Sick Man Of Europe
The Leaf Label
It starts like Suicide, synth stabs, throbs and beats with a bored vocal but as the album goes on the synths stutter, glitch and lay down warm washes, the beat carries us through it all and his voice goes from bored and aloof to menacing and hopeless. He’s sick of it and telling us so.
Jah Thomas & The Roots Radics: The Trojan Dub Albums Collection
Cherry Red
The only downside to this reissue of three brilliant albums is that, in order to fully appreciate them, you need bass bins the size of wardrobes, the bass is that powerful. So, slow down, just ease back and shiver your way into the bassline, then when your spines aligned and your head is light enough, concentrate on the brass and drums, the sweet chopping guitar and the echoing groove. The snatches of noises over the top, the echoes of vocals and wonder at the pure class of putting this music together in the first place. Just brilliant, go and buy it.
Various Artists: Electric Junk – Deutsche Rock, Psych and Kosmische 1970-1978
Cherry Red
How do you review four CDs worth of KrautRock, a genre that encompasses a myriad of sounds, feels and grooves and is consistently different even within single tracks? This is an intense listen, I mean your brain has melted out of your ears by about halfway through the second disc. The variation of music, sounds, grooves and vibrations is immense. Ultimately it’s built on repetition, mesmerising sound and an edge that nudges it over some undrawn line from prog, heavy rock, jazz or anything else really.. All I can say is, book a day off work, stock up on coffee and crisps and stick this on. You’ll thank me, you really will.
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Superhooch’s website is superhooch.weebly.com they are also on Facebook.
Warrior Pope are on Facebook and Instagram.
Lower Slaughter are on Facebook.
Tavare are on Instagram.
Orthodox are on Facebook and Instagram.
Fuzzriders are on Facebook and Instagram.
Agabus are on Instagram.
Tan Cologne’s website is tancologne.com, they are also on Instagram.
Charlie Nieland is on Instagram and Facebook.
The Sick Man Of Europe’s website is thesickmanofeurope.net, they are also on Facebook and Instagram.
All words by Adrian Bloxham.
