april: showered with noise
hi everyone. lots of listening going on out here by the river. working on a new sonic project as well, details in the future. hope everybody's well out there.
2026 cool shit
asmodexia - sublevel abyss
this band has been putting out stuff pretty fast in the last month or so but i just discovered them. great ultra harsh metal-based noisecore. has a death/black tinge and mixed for maximum harshness. great work.
sunn o))) - s/t
new album from a reliable pillar band. this is just the two core members playing guitar, no features or gimmicks. supposedly over a hundred guitar layers per track. i really enjoy this even if it's "samey" - the interest is in the micro-details and sustained mood. rothko paintings for art is a good choice.
merzbow/pandi/gustaffson - cuts cut
i love the "cuts" group that usually features these three and sometimes collaborators. merzbow is very good in a live/live-in-studio group setting. he's mixed super loud here. this would have been awesome to see in person. this one and "cuts of guilt, cuts deeper" are my favorites from this amorphous lineup, worth checking out.
stuff from past years, discovered now
the new monuments - live
found this on slsk. originally released on american tapes in 2008, a cut down 4-disc version of an 8cd box set the band originally put out of their entire tour. i don't know anything about the 8cd version but it seems to me like the warped crowd noise at the end of some tracks is an inzane johnny addition. maybe i'll ask him about that at the next wolf eyes show? in any case, this is an awesome set, super energetic and fun and lots of wild sounds. ben hall is such an awesome drummer - he and olson played as a duo in my basement a couple years after this box set came out and it was a major highlight of that era of my noise life.
boris - vein (both hardcore and drone versions)
i'm not a huge boris head. i've liked what i've heard of theirs - started with the "sun baked snow cave" merzbow collab in high school as one of my earliest experimental albums actually, and stuff like amplifier worship etc - but i just never really dove into their discography. the idea of them doing a full on hardcore/noise rock album was pretty intriguing though, so i downloaded both of the original vinyl versions of this release (i think the version on their bandcamp is an amalgamated collage version of both that i only found out about later, not sure how fans feel about either). i really enjoyed both records. lots of great guitar based noise, very crusty and heavy. they are definitely connoisseurs of aesthetic and tone.
penny rimbaud - arthur rimbaud at verdun
i like improv with poetry a lot. kazuko shiraishi, k. curtis lyle, amiri baraka, fred moten, jayne cortez, and jeanne lee have all done work in this realm that is some of my favorite music ever. the album here is penny rimbaud of crass reading a long piece on arthur rimbaud while three extremely talented saxophonists - evan parker, louise elliott, and ingrid laubrock - fill in the details. i really really like this setup, the three saxes work marvelously together and definitely heighten the poetry, which has a punk/beatnik attitude and does good work with its fantasy-historical material. if you have an interest in jazz/improv poetry this is a good experimental example of the form.
SHRIMP - brine shrimp
this band likes long albums and i'm happy for them. ryosuke kiyasu on drums means a legend is in the building, and the extended free-metal-noisecore-improv pieces on display here are well worth their typically alienating runtime. i first heard this group from their 2020 album which was billed as a one-off live collab but i'm glad they got back together for more.
burmese - lun yurn
weasel walter drums for this album. two bassists, math-noise-grind with hyper intense focus, culminating in a 45 minute free improv at the end. originally released in 2011, weasel apparently quit the band before that tho, and the legend jay korber drums for them to this day. super intense stuff here, and this and the SHRIMP album show that i am always down for a 45 minute noise metal jam.