MUDKISS FANZINE

Only Divine Love Bestows The Keys Of Knowledge

“This royal throne of ill repute, this septic isle
This dirt of majesty, this bar of Mars
This other Eden Project, demi-paradise
This fortress built by Nature for herself
From which to spread infection and to export war
This unhappy breed of men, their little world
This worthless rock set in a polluted sea
Controlled through the hole in the wall
Like a moat defensive to an MP’s house
To the ridicule of less materialistic happier lands
This cursed plot, this dirt, this act, this England”

With winter truly descendent on this septic isle, so it came to pass that the snow did fall all around . . . and low, the occasion arose to don corpse-paint and black cowl, to venture ever deeper into the darkened forests of Arden, clutching a burning torch, packing a raft of Black Metal sorcery, replete with malevolent intent:

Liturgy -  ‘Renihilation’ (20BuckSpin)  

Damned by the kvlt as ‘trust fund redundancy’ whilst simultaneously dismissed as ‘hipster metal’ by the hipster metal press . . . one has to feel something approaching compassion for Brooklyn’s Liturgy. Sans corpse paint, sans nom de guerre, and wearing the same jeans and ripped t-shirts as any common or garden indie-schmindie outfit, Liturgy create a roar more feral than a million next-big-things roped to a giant inverted wooden cross slipping over the edge of Niagara Falls. Steeped in the majesty of early Ulver, Liturgy rage against the machine with intellectual intent. Vokilist and bandleader, Hunter Hunt-Hendrix, screams his way atop duelling tremolo-heavy guitar squalls and robust bass frequencies, as uber-drummist, Greg Fox, unleashes ‘burst beat’ after ‘burst beat’ with ferocious precision. Across seven songs and three meditative interludes, Liturgy state their case for the coming of age of USBM. Drenched in ubiquitous reverb, veering from beauty to dissonance, ‘Renihilation’ spills it’s heady load with attention to detail and clarity of vision. Impetuous.

www.20buckspin.com

Krallice – ‘Dimensional Bleedthrough’ (Profound Lore)

Not satisfied with production duties for Liturgy, Colin J. Marston also fronts progressive metal band Behold... The Arctopus, plays bass guitar in progressive metal trio, Dysrhythmia, produces, masters, and mixes artists as diverse as Genghis Tron, Child Abuse, Normal Love, Make A Rising, and Orthrelm, yet still finds time to front his own psychedelic BM outfit, Krallice. ‘Dimensional Bleedthrough’ is the band’s second long player in as many years, and it expands exponentially on Krallice’s stunning debut. Blending BM and psychedelia with progressive tendencies, Krallice forge time-stretched volumes of epic post-modern metal. The shared vocals alternate from screamed whispers to death rattle grunts, powered onwards and upwards by the ever inventive drumming and impressive dexterity of Lev Weinstein. Over the course of six gargantuan slabs and seventy-seven minutes of death stained, BM aware, progressive epic metal, Krallice establish a precedent that is unlikely to be surpassed in the near future.

http://www.profoundlorerecords.com

Diamatregon – ‘III: Crossroad’ (Tumult)

Sharing members with French occult Kraut rockers, Aluk Todolo, Diamatregon unleash their first new material in almost a decade to reclaim their rightful place at the helm of Les Legions Noires. Allegedly informed by the blues (hence the LP’s title), ‘III: Crossroad’ sacrifices seven vignettes of bile-drenched misanthropy in the name of trve kvlt authenticity. Complex, inventive and increasingly mature, Diamatregon skilfully weave unearthly beauty into their crypt-soiled shrouds with shades of Killing Joke and early eighties post-punk angst.

http://www.tumult.net

Weapon – ‘Draconian Paradigm’ (Anja Offensive)

Canadian Satanists Weapon’s BM antecedents are more obviously rooted in the genre’s mythical past than any of the aforementioned artists reviewed above. Displaying Burzemic tendencies alongside a healthy respect for NWOBHM, Weapon have forged a debut destined to grow in stature with the passing of time. In the few months since its release, ‘Draconian Paradigm’ has already become the BM critics BM LP of 2009, and in the four-way BM play-off that ensued chez Encoule during the recent festive period, Weapon have emerged victorious! Despite the textural sonic perfection of Liturgy, Krallice and Diamatregon, Weapon possess the balls-out, foot-on-the-monitor, heads-down, no-nonsense-boogie type props required for the prerequisite suspension of belief needed to take this kind of music even remotely seriously.

www.theajnaoffensive.com

Meanwhile . . . back at the plot, the Carona pop man has arrived, with a shed-load of noise:

Ramleh – ‘Hole In The Heart’ (Dirter)

In the hearts of 40-something British noiseniks, Ramleh will reign forever. Along with the possibly more revered Skullflower, Ramleh birthed a genre that welded psychedelics to power electronics in the name of abstraction. Recorded back in 1987, ‘Hole In The Heart’ blends fuzzed out guitar bliss and pumped up organ drone through a prism of eternal reverb over thirteen jams and two discs. Shimmering but brutal, daubed in hooligan-on-art sentiment, there’s a sense of neo-classical sophistication that haunts these feedback-drenched exercises. If you’re not prepared to unquestioningly worship Ramleh, you have no place in the Church Of The Poisoned Mind.

http://www.dirter.co.uk

Wicked King Wicker – ‘God Is Busy, Save Yourself’ (Cold Spring)

Heavy, ritualistic, and devoid of hope, WKW strip the last remnants of rock and roll from the corpse of doom and dress it in a shroud of pure noise. Intense, grating, and atmospheric beyond the call of ambience, ‘God Is Busy, Save Yourself’ is the NYC duo’s 6^th full length outing . . . this time for Northampton’s finest, Cold Spring Records. The three tracks on offer here take some time to digest, and it’s only with repeated headphone sessions that the dark perfection buried deep beneath the whirls of feedback and glitch emerge from the gloom to offer viable explanation for their presence. Ever brutal with each subsequent release, WKW are the perfect bedfellows for Seattle’s blackened noise industrialists, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, with whom they will shortly share a split. Essential.

http://www.coldspring.co.uk

Blue Sabbath Black Cheer – ‘Doom Mantra’ (Doom Mantra)

Seven-track vinyl-only affair from Seattle’s blackened noise overlords, BSBC, and their first for Noisville’s new Doom Mantra imprint . . . ‘Doom Mantra’ comes impeccably dressed in a suitably sombre sleeve depicting the wolves of Lucifer tearing ferociously at weaker flesh. BSBC’s signature sound continues to evolve apace, this time embracing the expansive realms of dub. Broken electronic interfaces, glitch, field recordings of warfare, wailing sirens and explosions erupt under clouds of black static. Minimal drift, streaked with caustic noise, disembodied voices, groaning, detuned guitars, melting synths, bleeps, blurred edges, buzz, murky slowed down vocals, thick waves of hiss . . . all conspire in the name of blackened industrial chaos. Crusty, noisy and brutal as hell, everything churns and rolls. BSBC creep the fuck out of me, and leave me trembling with awe. Harsh: in every sense of the word.

http://www.noiseville.com/doommantra.html

Wraiths – ‘The Grey Emperor’ (At War With False Noise)

The imagined eternity it has taken for Wraiths to follow up the gargantuan excellence of ‘Oriflamme’ is largely due to complications surrounding the packaging of this exemplary release from Scottish noise terror vendors, At War With False Noise. ‘The Grey Emperor’ comes resplendent in a DVD sized fold over card sleeve sealed with an actual wax Wraiths seal. Luckily, it is possible to release the disc from the sleeve without breaking the seal (something this sad auld twat worried about intensely whilst waiting for the postman), releasing an hour’s worth of ritual, blackened, filth. Like a miasma, ‘The Grey Emperor’ invades the listener’s personal space, filling their senses with dread. Opening with a spot-the-join rhythmic loop, landslides of tar-pit sludge and feedback drench descend to further blacken the pages. Building and oozing with oodles of that aforementioned malevolent intent, Wraiths annex large swathes of the industrial hinterland in their bid for kvlt status. Totally engaging and utterly compelling, ‘The Grey Emperor’ is Wraiths finest hour thus far, and cements their lineage as the finest exponents of the dark arts currently operating on this septic isle.

http://www.atwarwithfalsenoise.com

 Vom – ‘Primitive Arts’ (At War With False Noise)

Debut full-length outing from Glasgow’s resident genii-in-waiting, Vom, on the UK’s best label by a country mile, At War With False Noise. Six tracks of brooding post-punk-arthouse-scree described by their label as a hybrid of Scream-era Banshees, Xmal Deutschland and the first Killing Joke LP. Of course, it sounds nothing like that to these ears, but I do know what they’re getting at, vaguely (other reviews have cited The Fall, but I’m not sure I buy that either). Opener ‘Turkish Delight’ took me by the jugular from the get-go, its strident guitar figure simply refused to leave my head . . . and is still there now, as I type . . . looping through the darker corners of my deep fried mind. Neither metal, nor rock, nor merely a sum of its influences either, ‘Primitive Arts’ takes the formula somewhere entirely new. For the first few listens, I was convinced Vom were an instrumental band, kicking the discipline of Mogwai firmly between the balls . . . it was only when donning headphones that the buried vocals registered! Slowly but surely, Vom reveal themselves to your ears . . . take your time with these chaps, the future is theirs.

http://www.atwarwithfalsenoise.com

Jean Encoule mudKISS.com Feb 2010