PopMatters reviews Fire!
PopMatters reviews Rune Grammofon act Fire! and their album "You liked me five minutes ago": https://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/116610-fire-you-liked-me-five-minutes-ago/
Tag: Reviews
It's the End
s/t
Musea Records
It's the End are clearly a band with some talent who, in an attempt to cover the plethora of musical genres that they are quite obviously into while simultaneously trying to be overly-clever with their compositions, come across as being seriously self-indulgent and have offered us a debut album that sounds as though it would only ever find an appreciative audience in some 3am pretentious-as-hell jazz bar. Most of the material on here just sounds too samey and, with boredom setting in very quickly, the album struggles to retain attention for any length of time. It doesn't get much more boring than on "Internal combustion" or, likewise, much more incoherent than on "Drakes equation". And I don't think I've ever heard a worse metal rhythm guitar tone! I'm sure that It's the End would go down a storm on The Fast Show's Jazz Club where, mercifully, we're only exposed to a minute or two of bands' pretentious twaddle. I'd certainly get a good laugh out of that. I'm not laughing, however, after enduring 80 minutes of this pretentious crap, and as closing track "Tautological torment" (a perfect summing up of the album as a whole) winds down, I sit with the onset of a headache and I'm glad that now, it really is the end.
- John Norby
The Silent Ballet reviews Beneva vs. Clark Nova
The Silent Ballet reviews the new album "Dramadadatic" from Norwegian electronic act Beneva vs. Clark Nova: https://thesilentballet.com/dnn/Home/tabid/36/ctl/Details/mid/384/ItemID/2926/Default.aspx
The Silent Ballet reviews Erik Enocksson
The Silent Ballet reviews the latest Erik Enocksson record "Man tänker sitt": https://thesilentballet.com/dnn/Home/tabid/36/ctl/Details/mid/384/ItemID/2922/Default.aspx
![[ingenting] - Tomhet, idel tomhet](/reviews/ingenting-tomhet.jpg)
[ingenting]
Tomhet, idel tomhet
Labrador
It's been inspiring to watch [ingenting] develop from record to record as they peel off all those print-out faces from pop music's hall-of-fame piece by piece. These days, their influences stand behind, never in front of the music, as they move from making music inspired by others to finding their very own place among the many indiepop bands that sing på Svenska. The competition is pretty stiff it seems, but [ingenting] need not hide their creativity behind that of their countrymen and women. Their strength lies in their directness: their witty melocism is never overly playful, their trademark melancholy never overdone. When they become bombastic, like in the album's definite stand-out "Dina händer är fulla av blommor", it's to make a point. And when I, as a non-native speaker, make the effort to track their lyricism in my head, I'm struck by how equally direct it is. [ingenting] seem to have no need for cynicism to make their point, yet they manage to sidestep those kitsch-traps that overly direct lyrics often cannot avoid. Even if "Tomhet, idel tomhet" can't make true on all the promises that "Dina händer..." and powerful opener "Hallelujah" carry along, I still expect the album to make many year-end-lists.
- Arnulf Köhncke
Pistol Disco
Evergreen
Celebrity Lifestyle Records
Great albums always make me reconsider their premonitions on a type of music, especially with that labeled as "experimental". Such is the case with the new Pistol Disco release; for a while I had been a bit lost on what to write, however, now I am finally able to. What bewildered me the most was, how symmetrical the musical experimentation is being created here. At once the undercurrent was layer in drone and melody, yet all loose ends were always resolved. Gone was the notion that noise had to be profligate and vociferous, it can also be so constructed and confined to an eggshell, a thin membrane separating the outside from that within -- one that is also crafted with the same care.
- Matt Giordano
Too Cool to Die reviews The Amazing
Too Cool To Die reviews Swedish psych-rockers The Amazing: https://www.toocooltodie.com/index.php?/tctd/aotw/the_amazing/
Ofag
Session one: Oslo
Sonet
Hard to get around it: Ofag is a pure ego. Five friends convene in a recording studio to hang out, play a little improv music; someone hits record and then they release it on their own label. It's not as if the end result is unlistenable (it's not), it's more a question of why. Why waste the plastic? I'm sure it was tremendous fun for everyone involved and there's no reason they shouldn't be proud of their work, but why not make it digital-only? Or better yet, offer it as a free download? Do they honestly think that fans of their other bands (Heroes & Zeros, Superfamily, Balkansemblet) will be stoked on it? Or that they'll cross over into the already over-saturated experiment/freejazz scene? Doubtful. This is for friends and family, perhaps even the curious superfan, but most of all, it's for themselves. That's fine, but I can't recommend it for anyone else.
- Avi Roig
Under the Rader reviews Anna Ternheim
Under the Radar reviews Anna Ternheim's "Leaving on a mayday": https://www.undertheradarmag.com/reviews/anna_ternheim_leaving_on_a_mayday/
PopMatters reviews Children of Bodom
PopMatters reviews the Children of Bodom covers album "Skeletons in the closet": https://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/114932-children-of-bodom-skeletons-in-the-closet/
Fact reviews the new Alog 12"
Fact Magazine reviews the new Alog 12" on FatCat: https://www.factmagazine.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3939&Itemid=32
The Silent Ballet reviews Pg.lost
The Silent Ballet really likes the new Pg.lost album "In never out": https://thesilentballet.com/dnn/Home/tabid/36/ctl/Details/mid/384/ItemID/2905/Default.aspx
I gave it a run-through this past weekend and wasn't so impressed, but I will definitely be revisiting it.
Tribulation
The horror
Blood Harvest/Pulverised Records
Those of us old enough to remember the emergence of the classic Swedish death metal sound -- that is, the Tomas Skogsberg/Sunlight Studios sound -- know only too well the nostalgic goosebump feeling that arrives every time we hear said sound chainsaw its way out of a good set of Mordaunt-Shorts. And it's that feeling that arrives in abundance upon listening to "The horror", the searing debut album from Arvika's Tribulation. The music itself is a tech-death/black/thrash amalgam that's as musically precise as they come and that benefits from exceptional song construction throughout. Add a shivering guitar sound that references Sweden's old-school elite with a perfectly-balanced production and you have an album that simply commands attention. With vocals bordering on a black metal rasp layered over a relentless metal bombardment, the sparing use of clean and piano passages offers a welcome deviation from the onslaught and exudes an eerie '70s horror movie feel. While the majority of "The horror" is an all-out riff-frenzy, there are numerous slower moments that, without doubt, is when we see Tribulation at their finest; parts evident in the likes of "Curse of resurrection" and "Seduced by the smell of rotten flesh" that suggest that these guys -– if they're clever -– could find themselves the torchbearers for a resurgence in the style. Hell, they even sport an image that screams Stockholm 1990. "Left hand path" this ain't but, by hell, it's one savage album!
- John Norby
Pitchfork reviews Lake Heartbeat
Pitchfork reviews Service act Lake Heartbeat: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13719-trust-in-numbers/
Dusted reviews Fire!
Dusted reviews Rune Grammofon all-star act Fire!: https://dustedmagazine.com/reviews/5390