In his 15+ years recording as How To Dress Well, LA-based musician Tom Krell has played with the concept of what we hear and how we communicate in order to create music that exists somewhere between celestial transcendence and an outsider approach to what pop music can be. In Krell’s musical world, the weight of a sample comes from his history with it, the meaning of a lyric fragment is stretched and distorted, its core skirting universal interpretation in favor of specificity.

I Am Toward You is the first new How To Dress Well album in six years, with some of his noisiest, most free, and most poetic music to date. Krell opens the second decade of his career with an album that delivers on the hallmarks of his best work. When creating the album, Krell was in search of not a fresh start, exactly, but instead a return to the open-hearted, uncynical approach to music making that he adopted as a kid, and carried through the release of his haunting breakthrough debut, 2010’s Love Remains, when he was making music in relative anonymity with little external pressure.

Krell alongside returning and new collaborators CFCF, Chris Votek, Joel Ford, Josh Clancy, Trayer Tryon (Hundred Waters), Brian Allen Simon (Anenon), and Aaron Charles Read began work on what would become I Am Toward You in 2020. He sifted through hundreds of snippets he’d recorded in the preceding decade, finding inexplicable samples and snatches of audio that began to cohere into an album that stripped back the density of previous albums to create a collection of songs that oscillate between the present and the past as if it’s happening all at once. A memory from 20 years ago holds just as much weight as something that happened yesterday. Each song, too, is linked to the larger world: these tracks are in constant dialogue with not just each other, but the environments in which they were made. It feels like a diaristic approach to how we can find new perspectives on our own lives, as informed by the way Krell transformed himself in the nearly six years between the release of The Anteroom and the release of I Am Toward You.

TRACK LISTING

1. New Confusion
2. Contingency / Necessity (Modality Of Fate)
3. Crypt Sustain
4. No Light (feat. Anarthia DLT)
5. Nothingprayer
6. On It And Around It
7. Song In The Middle
8. Gas Station Against Blackened Hillside
9. A Faint Glow Through A Window Of Thin Bone (That’s How My Fate Is Shown)
10. The Only True Joy On Earth
11. A Secret Within The Voice

Legendary Tacoma, Washington mathcore/hardcore/metal band Botch’s final EP An Anthology of Dead Ends was originally recorded in 2002, serving as a swan song sending off one of heavy music’s most inventive groups. Now, the band’s final EP is set to be re-issued on Sargent House over 20 years after its original release. Their monstrous concoction of metal, noise, indie rock guitar trickery, and depth is on full display. This is a last will and testament to the group's drive and intent, cementing their legacy as one of the untouchable greats, already having influenced many a group.

Bassist Brian Cook, guitarist David Knudson, drummer Tim Latona, and vocalist Dave Verellen formed Botch in 1993, eventually becoming one of the most significant bands of their time. Their final show was June 15, 2002, the same day as the original release of An Anthology of Dead Ends. The members would go on to play in These Arms Are Snakes, Minus the Bear, and Russian Circles, among others, with acclaim for the band coming mostly post-breakup. Over 20 years since they played their final show, Botch are reuniting for select dates across the US throughout the end of 2023.

TRACK LISTING

Spaim
Japam
Framce
Vietmam
Afghamistam
Micaragua

David Eugene Edwards has always been larger than life. His music with innovative heavy droning folk band Wovenhand, and before that the haunting revivification of high lonesome sound antique Americana of 16 Horsepower breathed a near apocalyptic sense of urgency and power into musical archetypes long abandoned in the latter-20th Century.

On his first-ever solo album under his own name, Hyacinth, David Eugene Edwards delivers a sound uniquely his own, with a vulnerability and introspection unheard from him before. Stripping back the heavy rock of his recent work with Wovenhand, Hyacinth puts the man’s voice, and sparing instrumentation into the main focus. There’s a somber beauty and world-weary tone throughout these songs. The album could’ve been considered a slight return to the more melodic sounds of 16 Horsepower’s Secret South (2000) and the first, self-titled Wovenhand album (2002). But there’s more going on here: a rhythmic, pulsating undercurrent reminiscent of the tape loops and rudimentary rhythms of 80s Industrial post-punk as well as 808 Drill Style beats. The overall effect is often as if we’re hearing the clock ticking away our own mortality.

“Hyacinth was a sort of vision,“ Edwards says. “A dream. I sought out of my old wooden banjo and nylon string guitar a hidden path. Secrets they had kept from me within themselves all these years and created a new Mythos to myself of philosophical and spiritual ideas or concepts.” Once he’d harnessed the music within, he enlisted multi-instrumentalist and producer Ben Chisholm (The Armed, Chelsea Wolfe, Converge) to help him realize the album’s recording and mix.

“Overall, the album is a weaving of narratives ancient and modern, of humankind’s search for understanding of this world we find ourselves in and of each other. In all its simplicity and complexity,” Edwards continues. “Hyacinth is a reference to the Greek myth of Apollo. And, the word meaning a precious stone and blue larkspur flower of purple and pall.”

TRACK LISTING

Seraph
Howling Flower
Celeste
Through The Lattice
Apparition
Bright Boy
Hyacinth
Lionisis
Weavers Beam
Hall Of Mirrors
The Cuckoo

The Armed return with their new album Perfect Saviors, the first new music since 2021 breakout release ULTRAPOP. Providing a full accounting of album contributors for the first time, Perfect Saviors was produced by the band’s Tony Wolski along with Ben Chisholm and Troy Van Leeuwen, with contributions from Julien Baker, Sarah Tudzin, Mark Guiliana, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Eric Avery, Stephen Perkins, Josh Klinghoffer, and many more. The album was mixed by Alan Moulder. Vocalist Tony Wolski offered this statement on the album: “Too much information has made us dumb and confused. Too many ways to connect have inadvertently led to isolation. And too much expectation has forced everyone to become a celebrity. Predictable primal dangers have given way to newer social ones. And the result is a world that is confounding and terrifying but ultimately still beautiful. We hope this record is exactly all of that, too. Perfect Saviors is our completely unironic, sincere effort to create the biggest, greatest rock album of the 21st century.”

Perfect Saviors is the conclusion of a trilogy of albums examining and dissecting what constitutes “pop culture” in a world of limitless information and access. Using “pop music” loosely as a format in which to express these ideas, each album used composition and presentation as a way to challenge these questions further. Perfect Saviors is the ultimate product of this evolution. Using one of the world’s most well-known mixing engineers to create a beautiful album fully immersed in the language and world of pop through the inherently unique, extreme, and perverse lens, The Armed communicate their art.

TRACK LISTING

1. Sport Of Measure
2. FKA World
3. Clone
4. Modern Vanity
5. Everything's Glitter
6. Burned Mind
7. Sport Of Form
8. Patient Mind
9. Vatican Under Construction
10. Liar 2
11. In Heaven
12. Public Grieving 

When Mutoid Man came crashing out of the gate back in 2013, the Brooklyn trio’s combination of basement punk’s zero-fucks-given energy, classic metal’s over-the-top showmanship, and prog rock’s musical gymnastics had a seemingly unstoppable momentum. Riding on the success of their debut EP Helium Head (2013), the band took on a manic work ethic over the next four years, cranking out two full-lengths, Bleeder (2015) and War Moans (2017) and playing relentlessly across the US and Europe on their own headline tours. With tour dates supporting acts like Mastodon and Danzig, it appeared that Mutoid Man’s entry into the upper echelon of heavy metal heroes was inevitable. However, life has a way of complicating things, and between line-up changes, an exodus from Brooklyn, a slew of other high profile musical projects, and the pandemic, the band was put on hold in the midst of their ascendancy. But after a six-year recording hiatus, Mutoid Man are back to reclaim their throne with their most mindboggling effort yet, their third full-length album Mutants.

Guitarist/vocalist Stephen Brodsky (Cave In, Old Man Gloom) and drummer Ben Koller (Converge, Killer Be Killed) have always excelled at crafting their own unique brand of frenzied, hyper-focused, dynamic, and deliciously excessive fretboard-savvy metal. Take two players who were raised in the hardcore world and who quickly surpassed the technical requirements for playing even the more sophisticated spins on that sound, and then make them playfully push each other into more outrageous and catchy territories, and you have a rough approximation of the Mutoid Man sound. With the addition of bassist Jeff Matz (High on Fire, Zeke) in tow, you now have a trifecta of prog-level players approaching metal with punk irreverence. But Mutants never comes across as academic noodling. Rather, the whole album radiates an exuberant and adrenalized joy.

Despite the setbacks of the pandemic, the new obstacle of members living in different cities, and making room for the schedules of Cave In, Converge, and High on Fire, Mutants sounds like it’s still operating on the endorphin rush of their early years. “I think the strength of our new material and the unwavering excitement for its potential kept us going,” Brodsky says when asked about their hiatus. “We knew there was a great album in the vault, even if it meant letting the ingredients marinate for a little longer.”

TRACK LISTING

1. Call Of The Void
2. Frozen Hearts
3. Broken Glass Ceiling
4. Siren Song
5. Graveyard Love
6. Unborn
7. Siphon
8. Demons
9. Memory Hole
10. Setting Sun

Legendary Tacoma, Washington mathcore/hardcore/metal band Botch’s second and final full-length album We Are the Romans was originally released in 1999, eventually becoming one of the most ground-breaking records during a pivotal shift in heavy music. Now, the band’s seminal album is set to be re-issued and will include Botch’s first new song in over 20 years, “One Twenty Two”. There was never any intention for the band to release anything else, but when guitarist David Knudson went to write his debut solo LP, it made sense. He explains: “During Covid, I was writing my debut solo LP, and mentally, I was sick of everything in quarantine. Lots of frustration had set in at home, and I figured the best way to deal with it was to write something heavy. I had no intention of writing anything for Botch, but when I was thinking of a singer to collaborate with, I thought, “Hey, I know the best hardcore singer ever to do it,” so I hit up Dave V. He was super excited and so it just kind of snowballed from there. There was never any intent or conversation about getting back together or writing. It just happened so naturally and was a great release for all of us to make it happen without any of the traditional pressure an “active” band faces.” Bassist Brian Cook, guitarist David Knudson, drummer Tim Latona, and vocalist Dave Verellen formed Botch in 1993, eventually becoming one of the most significant bands of their time. Their final show was June 15, 2002, the same day as the release of their final EP, An Anthology of Dead Ends. The members would go on to play in These Arms Are Snakes, Minus the Bear, and Russian Circles, among others, with acclaim for the band coming mostly post-breakup. We Are the Romans went on to become one of the most influential albums ever for the genre garnering posthumous acclaim across the board.

TRACK LISTING

To Our Friends In The Great White North
Mondrian Was A Liar
Transitions From Persona To Object
Swimming The Channel Vs. Driving The Chunnel
C. Thomas Howell As The 'soul Man’
Saint Matthew Returns To The Womb
Frequency Ass Bandit
I Wanna Be A Sex Symbol On My Own Terms
Man The Ramparts
One Twenty Two

Across the span of their previous seven studio albums, Chicago-based instrumental trio Russian Circles traversed a diverse topography of sounds, moods, and approaches with their limited armory of drums, bass, and guitar. It’s difficult to chart an evolution in their sound when their records have always felt like well-curated playlists. It wasn’t uncommon to hear drone-heavy meditations, dazzling prog exercises, knuckle-dragging riff-fests, haunting folk ballads, and tension-baiting noise rock all within the span of one album. Still, it’s difficult to ignore the progression from the pensive and intricate melodies of Enter (2006) to the layered distorted dirges of Blood Year (2019). It’s been a gradual sonic shift owing to the band’s rigorous tour schedule and a predilection towards playing their more authoritative material on stage. But with their latest album, Gnosis, Russian Circles eschew the varied terrain of their past work and bulldoze a path through the most tumultuous and harrowing territory of their sound.

As was the case for so many artists in the age of COVID, the obstacles of geography and isolation forced Russian Circles to reevaluate their writing process. Rather than crafting songs out of fragmented ideas in the practice room, full songs were written and recorded independently before being shared with other members, so that their initial vision was retained. While these demos spanned the full breadth of the band’s varied styles, the more cinematic compositions were ultimately excised in favor of the physically cathartic pieces.

Gnosis was engineered and mixed by Kurt Ballou. Drums and bass were tracked at Electrical Audio in Chicago to maximize the natural room sounds of the rhythm section. Guitar and synth overdubs were conducted at God City in Salem, MA to take advantage of Ballou’s vast inventory of amps and effects pedals. Despite the entirety of the album being written remotely, the songs were recorded with the full band playing together to retain the live feel of the material. Owing to the climate of the times and a new writing method, Russian Circles created their most fuming and focused work to date—an album that favors the exorcism of two years’ worth of tension over the melancholy and restraint that often colored their past endeavors.

TRACK LISTING

1. Tupilak
2. Conduit
3. Gnosis
4. Vlastimil
5. Ó Braonáin
6. Betrayal
7. Bloom

Follows 2021’s critically lauded album Engine of Hell, which saw acclaim from Pitchfork, NPR, The Guardian, Stereogum, Consequence and more. Emma Ruth Rundle’s second installment in her Electric Guitar series, EG2: Dowsing Voice, is almost like the soundtrack to a film that hasn’t been made. The mostly instrumental record follows her on a trip to the Welsh coast and down a magical well into the waters of nature, myth and the Old Golds - by way of her improvised music. The 40 plus minute album was sewn together from recordings channeled during her month-long solo journey in the early days of 2020 and completed before 2021’s critically lauded album Engine of Hell was even written.

Unlike Electric Guitar One, EG2: Dowsing Voice features vocal improvisation, unconventional singing and extended vocal techniques free from lyrics - like the throat singing on “In the Cave…” which is meant to be the voices of crones gathering in a rhythmic and physical ritual. Rundle was led to these voices by unseen forces along with the immense impact of the Welsh water: ocean, rivers springs and wells that gave the album its extended title Dowsing Voice. While there is some focus on vocal and story here, her textural and even bombastic guitar improvisations are featured throughout the album. For Rundle, the Electric Guitar series will always be about inspired, unplanned moments like this at its core.

TRACK LISTING

1. Intro To The Underpool: The Path, The Gate, The Field, The Well
2. Keening Into FfynnonLlanllawer
3. In The Cave Of The Cailleach's Death-Birth
4. Gathering Around Pair Dadeni
5. Brigid Wakes To Find Her Voice Anew. The Little Flowers And Birds Show Themselves
6. Imbolc Dawn Atop Ynys Wydryn. Ice Melts As The First Resplendent Rays Of Spring Pour Over The Horizon.
7. The Tempest On Trefasser
8. Don Danann Dana Danu Ana
9. Standing Stones Singing / Cellphone Towers Ringing Up ToThe Darkening Sky
10. In Sadness For Our Dying World (here Come The Christians) 

The Armed are set to release Ultrapop: Live at the Masonic Temple, an incredible live soundtrack from the band’s narrative-driven concert film of the same name. The album and film were captured in the opulent chapels, imposing asylum rooms, full-size indoor handball courts, halls (and more) of the mysterious Masonic Temple of Detroit; a 550,000 square foot fortress in the heart of the city. Ultrapop: Live at the Masonic features breathtaking, hyperactive performances of tracks off The Armed’s break-out album Ultrapop, selections from their second LP, Only Love, the Cyberpunk 2077 single “Night City Aliens” and culminates in the ultimate catharsis with the entire collective converging for the devastating closer ”On Jupiter.”

The Armed’s latest album Ultrapop, released in April of 2021, received acclaim across the board, gaining the highly coveted Pitchfork Best New Music and praise from The New Yorker Magazine, Vulture, Stereogum, Revolver. AV Club, Fader, Bandcamp, Entertainment Weekly, Interview Magazine, and so much more. Reaching the same extremities of sonic expression as the furthest depths of metal, noise, and otherwise "heavy" counterculture music subgenres, it finds its foundation firmly in pop music and pop culture. A joyous, genderless, post-nihilist, anti-punk, razor-focused take on creating the most intense listening experience possible, and now with Ultrapop: Live At The Masonic, the most intense live experience possible.

TRACK LISTING

Off Jupiter (dan Greene's Theme)
Ultrapop
Twiin Ascension
All Futures
Masunaga Vapors
An Iteration
Average Death
Mother (gold Jade's Dream)
Night City Aliens
Fortune’s Daughter
Where Man Knows Want
At The Moment Of Being Heard
On Jupiter

Keep This Be the Way is Helms Alee’s sixth full-length and first new album in over 3 years. Across the span of their first five studio albums, Seattle trio Helms Alee have consistently refined their signature sound—a blend of lilting siren songs, crushing thunder and sludge, and heady guitar pop filled with lush guitars and elaborate three-part vocal harmonies that reach widely across various subgenres of the heavy music world. On their latest album, Keep This Be the Way, the band expanded their palette by delving into the production possibilities afforded by recording the album themselves, creating their most dynamic and technicoloured work to date.

Guitarist/vocalist Ben Verellen, bassist/vocalist Dana James, and drummer/vocalist Hozoji Matheson-Margullis found refuge during the pandemic in their music and bunkered down in a makeshift studio in Verellen’s amplifier shop, recording songs with the assistance of Ron Harrell as they were writing them, composing the material with the added benefit of hearing them come together from the engineer’s chair. Keep This Be the Way still very much sounds like a Helms Alee record, but it’s their first album that diverts from the faithful recreation of their live sound and delves into a vibrant tapestry of surreal sounds and invented spaces.

This new approach is immediately evident on first single “See Sights Smell Smells,” where reverse cymbal crashes, fragmented piano, layered drums, woozy drones, saxophone freak-outs, and trippy vocal treatments transport the listener to an altered state of exhilarated anticipation. The pendulum swings towards more adventurous and exploratory sounds on songs like “Tripping Up the Stairs”, it’s nightmarish synth glides pitted against distorted barrages steeped in classic Helms Alee timbre. And therein lies the power of the Keep Us Be the Way: it reflects a period of change, ambiguity and perseverance through its fearless curiosity, cathartic rumble, and sublime beauty.

TRACK LISTING

1. See Sights Smell Smells
2. Keep This Be The Way
3. How Party Do You Hard?
4. Tripping Up The Stairs
5. Big Louise
6. Do Not Expose To The Burning Sun
7. The Middle Half 8. Mouth Thinker
9. Three Cheeks To The Wind
10. Guts For Brains 

Emma Ruth Rundle’s Engine of Hell is stark, intimate, and unflinching. For anyone that’s endured trauma and grief, there’s a beautiful solace in hearing Rundle articulate and humanize that particular type of pain not only with her words, but with her particular mysterious language of melody and timbre. The album captures a moment where a masterful songwriter strips away all flourishes and embellishments in order to make every note and word hit with maximum impact, leaving little to hide behind. “I really wanted to capture imperfection and the vulnerability of my humanity,” Rundle says of the album’s sonic approach. “Here are some very personal songs; here are my memories; here is me teetering on the very edge of sanity dipping my toe into the outer reaches of space and I’m taking you with me and it’s very fucked up and imperfect.’”

Emma Ruth Rundle has always been a multifaceted musician, equally capable of dreamy abstraction (as heard on her album Electric Guitar: One), maximalist textural explorations (see her work in Marriages, Red Sparowes, Nocturnes or collaborations with Chelsea Wolfe and Thou), and the classic singer-songwriter tradition (exemplified by Some Heavy Ocean). But on Engine of Hell, Rundle has opted to forego the full-band arrangements of her previous albums in favor of the austerity of a lone piano or guitar and her voice, which creates a kind of intimacy, as if we’re sitting beside Rundle on a bench, or perhaps even playing the songs ourselves. It’s an extremely up-close and personal confessional with a focus on the rich subtleties and timbre of Rundle’s graceful performances.

“For me this album is the end of an era to the end of a decade of making records. Things DO have to change and have changed for me since I finished recording it.” In essence, Engine of Hell signifies a major turning point for Rundle as both an artist and as a person. The catharsis of this type of songwriting has effectively served its purpose, and to continue ruminating on the past going forward is less of a healing process and more like picking at a scab and refusing to let it heal. This may help explain why Rundle is less than enthusiastic about divulging the details about her muses, but it doesn’t alter the fact that these songs served a purpose in their creation, and that they may continue to bring comfort to others.

TRACK LISTING

1. Return
2. Blooms Of Oblivion
3. Body
4. The Company
5. Dancing Man
6. Razor's Edge
7. Citadel
8. In My Afterlife

“I’ve always felt like more of a performer than a writer,” Alexis Marshall says when asked about the impetus behind his first solo album. “In the past I lacked confidence to guide the creative process, but now I just wanted to be entirely in control of something.” Marshall is best known as the frontman for Rhode Island’s notorious provocateurs Daughters, whose eight-year hiatus between their posthumous self-titled album and the critically acclaimed comeback album You Won’t Get What You Want found the ever-evolving band explode from down-and-out cult heroes to one of the biggest bands in the nebulous territory where abrasive noise rock fuses with high-art aspirations.

Whereas most music built around dissonance and tension feels like a cautious flirtation with nihilism or an excursion of role-playing the villain, Marshall’s loathsome oratory and self-flagellating performances always conveyed a sense of true emotional gravity and danger. For his debut album, he wanted to push that sense of chaos even further, by crafting an album around moments of spontaneity and sonic detritus, where a mistake could become a hook or the whip of a chain could become a beat. “I’ve never been interested in perfection because I’ve never even felt close to being able to achieve it.

I wanted this record to be a living, breathing entity, flaws and all” Marshall explains of the writing and recording process for the album. Soliciting help from his childhood compatriot Jon Syverson (Daughters), musical colleague Kristin Hayter (Lingua Ignota), and former tour-mate Evan Patterson (Jaye Jayle, Young Widows), Marshall and the band convened at Machines with Magnets studio in Pawtucket, Rhode Island with producer/engineer Seth Manchester. The strategy was to embrace new sounds, employ the element of chance, and capture the creative process in a song format. Drums were the first priority, so Manchester led Marshall into the basement of the studio to cobble a kit together out of various bits of broken drum parts and construction materials. A marching drum became the kick. Scrap metal served as the cymbals.

It was as if the team was attempting to make music from literal scratch. As the team assembled their collages of scrapyard percussion, no-wave guitar abrasion, and piano dirges, Marshall threaded together his poetic diatribes and acidic litanies from stream of consciousness exercises. Age has not tempered his vitriol. As a man that delved deep into self-destructive behavior in his twenties, it’s a small miracle he crossed the threshold into his forties earlier this year. With his recent introduction to fatherhood came a new perspective on youth, and the conflict between nostalgia for lost innocence and disdain for naivety became a focal point on the album. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Drink From The Oceans . Nothing Can Harm You
2. Hounds In The Abyss
3. It Just Doesn't Feel Good Anymore
4. Youth As Religion.
5. Religion As Leader
6. No Truth In The Body.
7. Open Mouth.
8. They Can Lie There Forever
9. Night Coming

The Armed return with their first new album in over three years and Sargent House debut, ULTRAPOP. The album reaches the same extremities of sonic expression as the furthest depths of metal, noise, and otherwise "heavy" counterculture music subgenres but finds its foundation firmly in pop music and pop culture. As is always The Armed's mission, it seeks only to create the most intense experience possible, a magnification of all culture, beauty, and things. The band goes on to explain, "crafting vital art means presenting the audience with new and intriguing tensions sonically, visually, conceptually. Over time and through use, those tensions become less novel and effective and they become expectations. The concept of "subgenre" becomes almost the antithesis of vitality in art itself a fetishization of expectation. ULTRAPOP seeks, in earnest, to create a truly new listener experience. It is an open rebellion against the culture of expectation in "heavy" music. It is a joyous, genderless, post-nihilist, anti-punk, razor-focused take on creating the most intense listener experience possible. It's the harshest, most beautiful, most hideous thing we could make."

ULTRAPOP follows their recent contribution to the Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack “Night City Aliens” and 2018’s critically acclaimed album Only Love, which landed on ‘Album of the Year’ lists from The Atlantic, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Vice, Stereogum, and many more. The album was co-produced by the band's own Dan Greene in collaboration with Ben Chisholm (Chelsea Wolfe) and features contributions from Mark Lanegan, Troy Van Leeuwen (Queens of the Stone Age, A Perfect Circle), Ben Koller (Converge, Killer Be Killed, Mutoid Man) and many more. Kurt Ballou (Converge, High on Fire, Russian Circles) remains at the helm as executive producer.

TRACK LISTING

1. Ultrapop
2. All Futures
3. Masunaga Vapors
4. A Life So Wonderful
5. An Iteration
6. Big Shell
7. Average Death
8. Faith In Medication
9. Where Man Knows Want
10. Real Folk Blues
11. Bad Selection
12. The Music Becomes A Skull

It was recorded during COVID, so no live audience. For the past ten years, San Francisco rock / post-metal luminaries Deafheaven have built one of the most compelling discographies in metal, one that has challenged both the modus operandi and perceptions of the genre. Each critically acclaimed release widened the scope of their particular views of what rock and metal can be, capped by their most innovative album to date in 2018's Ordinary Corrupt Human Love. It all began though, with the 2010, four-song Demo released to Bandcamp by the bands founding members George Clarke and Kerry McCoy. Set to embark on a world tour earlier this year to celebrate their 10th anniversary as a band and the five albums released in that span, Deafheaven had to switch gears when COVID canceled all gatherings across the world, instead teaming with longtime producer Jack Shirley at Atomic Garden studios to bring the show they planned to perform in a studio sessions format. 10 Years Gone includes the first song they ever wrote in "Daedalus" from the first album Demo, which also serves as the first single released from this album, along with fan favorites like “Dream House” and “Vertigo” that have an added power in this setting. Deafheaven named ‘Artist of the Decade’ by Vice, along with albums featured in ‘Best of 2010s’ lists on Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Metacritic, AV Club and many more. 

TRACK LISTING

1. From The Kettle Onto The Coil
2. Daedalus
3. Vertigo
4. Language Games
5. Glint
6. Baby Blue
7. The Pecan Tree
8. Dream House

Mrs. Piss is a new collaboration between Chelsea Wolfe and Jess Gowrie . Drawing on their collective rock, metal, and industrial influences, the project began while the two were touring around together during Wolfe’s Hiss Spun album in 2017. The result is their debut album Self-Surgery, which was recorded at The Dock Studio in Sacramento, CA and in Wolfe’s home studio, The Canyon. These songs feel more urgent and visceral than anything either of them has created before: heaviness spurred on by punk spirit. Chelsea Wolfe (vocals, guitar) “Working on this project brought Jess and I so much closer as songwriters and production partners, after reuniting as friends and bandmates. It was freeing and fun to channel some wild energies that I don’t typically put into my own music.

We tried not to overthink the songs as we were writing them, but at the same time we did consciously put a lot into crafting them into our own weird sonic vision. This project was a chance for us to do things our own way, on our own terms, and we plan to invite more womxn musicians along for future Mrs. Piss recordings.” CW // Jess Gowrie (drums, guitar, bass, programming) “To me, Mrs. Piss represents a musical chemistry cut short long ago that now gets a second chance. Creating with Chelsea has always been very liberating for me, and we both push each other to try new things: anything and everything. Both of us have grown so much as writers and musicians since our first band together (Red Host), and with the journeys we had to take separately to get there, we both have so much more to say; so much more pain and anger to express. 

TRACK LISTING

1. To Crawl Inside
2. Downer Surrounded By Uppers
3. Knelt
4. Nobody Wants To Party With Us
5. M.B.O.T.W.O.
6. You Took Everything
7. Self-Surgery
8. Mrs. Piss

Prisyn features guest appearance by Emma Ruth Rundle. Evan Patterson has always been a wanderer and an explorer. It’s evident in the constant evolution of his music since his earliest days as a guitarist in left-of-center bands, but it’s best exemplified by the constant creative shifts within the fever-dream blues of Jaye Jayle. On the newest Jaye Jayle album, “Prisyn” Patterson takes his boldest leap into unknown territories, capturing immediate moments in his ever-shifting surroundings with the most basic tool at his disposal: the GarageBand app on an iPhone. Instead of his usual backing band, he paired up with Ben Chisholm (White Horse, Revelator, Chelsea Wolfe) as collaborator and producer to create an electronic album completely unlike anything else from Jaye Jayle and an ambitious step from 2018’s remarkable No Trail and Other Unholy Paths LP.

The LP began with a request from couture designer Ashley Rose, when she proposed that Evan Patterson team up with Sargent House label mates Chelsea Wolfe and Ben Chisholm to create a soundtrack for one of her upcoming fashion shows. Patterson was in the early stages of a massive eleven-week stretch of touring and used his downtime in the van to flesh out ideas on his phone. “I sent a track to Ben and he sent it back the next day with additional instrumentation, sounds, and effects,” Patterson recalls. “It was wild. He suggested we make a whole record that way.” By the end of tour, Patterson and Chisholm had an LP’s worth of songs waiting for vocal treatments. “I printed out all these poems, stories, and journal entries I’d made on my phone over the course of the year and went into the studio with my friend Warren (Christopher Gray). We’d find things that rhythmically worked, and that’s how all the lyrics and singing happened. It was all gut instinct, improvisational,” Patterson recalls.

“The vocal approach isn’t meant to be full of hooks and melody. The music is framed almost as a film score for my life. Instead of David Attenborough or William S. Burroughs as a narrator, I used this opportunity to narrate visuals from my reality,” he continues. The record's title “Prisyn” is a play on the idea of a synthetic prison, and alludes to Patterson’s desire for artistic freedom and the album’s conflicted use of addictive technologies. But in the time of the pandemic, he also views it as an example of overcoming adversity in desperate times; this is a record that could have been made under the jail-like confines of quarantine, with Patterson and Chisholm having never been in the same room at the same time. Patterson comments, “These songs have a totally different energy, and that’s the exciting thing about making art. Things have to progress. I don’t want to draw the same picture for the rest of my life. Maybe that keeps you from being a master at it, but being a master isn’t the key to art. It’s having that constant expression, the constant outlet, the constant change." 

TRACK LISTING

1. A Cold Wind
2. Don’t Blame The Rain
3. Synthetic Prison
4. The River Spree
5. Making Friends
6. Guntime
7. Blueberries
8. I Need You
9. The Last Drive
10. From Louisville

Disheveled Cuss, singer/guitarist Nick Reinhart’s self-titled debut album under that moniker, is like a welcome time capsule from another era, a trip through 90’s-inspired pop/rock on par with any of the timeless and lauded milestones the decade produced. Nick’s coming of musical age in an era when the Pixies, Teenage Fanclub and Smashing Pumpkins were major features on the cultural landscape is writ large across Disheveled Cuss. Their respective presences, and others, populate the sonic DNA of the songs, emerging here and there like new snapshots of old friends.

“Playing music like this is satisfying in a very different way than what I’m used to,” Nick explains. “It’s a rock band playing ‘normal’ songs and in many ways, that’s the least normal thing I’ve done.” It seems only fitting, then, that the most relatable of topics, love – attraction, obsession, rejection, etc. – plays a central role on Disheveled Cuss. Brokenhearted, perhaps, Nick has crafted a work of poignant exuberance, a melancholy rock classic masquerading as an artifact from his youth. Which isn’t to say Nick’s taking himself any more seriously than he has previously, with many songs betraying a tongue-in-cheek attitude that’s familiar to those who know him as the frontman of cult favorites, Tera Melos. If he isn’t casting doubt on his own ambitions, he’s likely painting an idiosyncratic portrait of something (or someone) peculiar, or sublime. Possessing standards that have kept the bar high over Tera Melos’ four albums of genre-bending, post-everything rock, Nick has quietly emerged as a unique, technically-minded player whose talent seems in direct proportion to his modesty. A rare combination of punk energy, crafty and inventive melodies, and oblique vocal harmonies that often feel as though they’re leaking into your mind from someone else’s dream, Tera Melos mine the kind of varied territory unlimited proficiency can offer.

Keeping pace with the trio for the past decade and a half, meanwhile, have been Nick’s forays into everything from hardcore to experimental jazz. His versatility and eagerness to collaborate are evidenced not only by ongoing contributions to groups as disparate as Best Coast, Death Grips and Portugal. The Man, but by his membership in Big Walnuts Yonder, alongside legendary players such as Mike Watt, Nels Cline, and Deerhoof drummer, Greg Saunier. Whistle-stop projects, such as Bygones with drummer Zach Hill, suggest a need to strip things back to basics now and again, however momentarily. Stoking the wizardry in recent years, no doubt, has been his role as co-host of Pedals and Effects, a video blog for gadgetheads that finds Nick talking shop and jamming with The Mars Volta’s bassist, Juan Alderete. 

TRACK LISTING

1. Generic Song About You
2. She Don’t Want
3. Wanna Be My Friend
4. Nu Complication
5. She’s Odd
6. Fawn
7. Oh My God
8. Don’t Paint The Sun
9. Shut Up
10. Sunland
11. Surf-101

Chelsea Wolfe has always been a conduit for a powerful energy, and while she has demonstrated a capacity to channel that somber beauty into a variety of forms, her gift as a songwriter is never more apparent than when she strips her songs down to a few key components. As a result, her solemn majesty and ominous elegance are more potent than ever on Birth of Violence.

There is a core element to Chelsea Wolfe’s music—a kind of urgent spin on America’s desolation blues—that’s existed throughout the entirety of her career. At the center, there has always been Wolfe’s woeful longing and beguiling gravity, though the framework for compositions has continuously evolved based on whatever resources were available. Her austere beginnings were gradually bolstered by electronics and filled out with full-band arrangements. The music became increasingly dense and more centered around live performances. Her latest album, Birth of Violence, is a return to the reclusive nature of her earlier recordings

“I’ve been in a state of constant motion for the past eight years or so; touring, moving, playing new stages, exploring new places and meeting new people—an incredible time of learning and growing as a musician and performer,” Wolfe says of the era leading up to Birth of Violence. “But after awhile, I was beginning to lose a part of myself. I needed to take some time away from the road to get my head straight, to learn to take better care of myself, and to write and record as much as I can while I have ‘Mercury in my hands,’ as a wise friend put it.“ Birth of Violence is the result of this step out of the limelight. The songs stem from humble beginnings—little more than Wolfe’s voice and her Taylor acoustic guitar. Her longtime musical collaborator Ben Chisholm recorded the songs on a makeshift studio and helped fill them out with his modern production treatments and the occasional auxiliary flourish from ongoing contributors Jess Gowrie (drums) and Ezra Buchla (viola).

The album opens with “The Mother Road,” a harrowing ode to Route 66 that immediately addresses Wolfe’s metaphoric white line fever. It explains the nature of the record—the impact of countless miles and perpetual exhaustion—and the desire to find the road back home, back to one’s roots. Songs like “Deranged for Rock & Roll” and “Highway” offers parallel examinations on the trials and tribulations of her journeys while the ghostly “When Anger Turns to Honey” serves as a rebuttal to self-appointed judges.

While the record touches upon tradition, it also exists in the present, addressing modern tragedies such as school shootings in the minor-key lullaby “Little Grave” and the poisoning of the planet on the dark wind-swept ballad “Erde.” But the record is at its most poignant when Wolfe withdraws into her own world of enigmatic and elusive autobiography. Much like Alan Ginsberg’s hallucinatory long-form poem Howl, the tracks “Dirt Universe” and “Birth of Violence” weave together specific references from her past into an esoteric overview of the state of mankind. Though the lyrical minutiae remain secret, the overall power of the language and delivery is bound to haunt the listener with both its grace and tension.

“These songs came to me in a whirlwind and I knew I needed to record them soon, and also really needed a break from the road,” Wolfe says. “I’ve spent the past few years looking for the feeling of home; looking for places that felt like home. The result of that humble approach yields Wolfe’s most devastating work to date.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I've been a big fan of Chelsea Wolfe for a while now, and it's absolutely true that the beauty of these compositions really shines when stripped back to Wolfe's haunting vox and an acoustic guitar. Pieces like 'American Darkness' certainly harbour more than a nod to classic folk psychedelia of the late 60's but imbued with a gothic gloom and echoic spookiness that is uniquely hers.

TRACK LISTING

1 The Mother Road
2 American Darkness
3 Birth Of Violence
4 Deranged For Rock & Roll
5 Be All Things
6 Erde
7 When Anger Turns To Honey
8 Dirt Universe
9 Little Grave
10 Preface To A Dream Play
11 Highway
12 The Storm

There are few things one can be sure of these days, though one truism that remains is that Russian Circles will continue to reign as one of instrumental music’s supreme champions. These masters of sonic tension and release plan to deliver their seventh studio album August 2nd on Sargent House. Dubbed Blood Year, the LP is less a musical exploration and more a statement of authority, lest there be any doubt that Russian Circles remain a force to be reckoned with on the stage and in the studio. The Chicago trio have always explored the dynamics of volume and timbre, with their albums often vacillating between caustic attacks and blissful respites.

Russian Circles returned to the studio with Kurt Ballou to record Blood Year, but this time they tracked it in Chicago at Steve Albini’s world-famous Electrical Audio. From guitarist Mike Sullivan’s riff-fueled assaults, to Dave Turncrantz’s war machine rack and floor toms and Brian Cook’s meat grinding bass lines, the sound of Blood Year is that of a band unafraid to flaunt their hard-earned prowess. Sullivan, Turncrantz, and Cook made a conscious effort to approach the songs on Blood Year with the same organic feel of a live show. In an age where rock records are often built on a computerized grid, Russian Circles chose to track the foundations of the songs together in one room as complete takes without click tracks. The human pulse and unmetered energy is woven throughout Blood Year, a presence that can be felt with each bone-rattling minute

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I love a bit of Russian Circles, and remember listening to 'Station' obsessively over ten years ago. Their sound has considerably evolved since then, not too stylistically different but a lot richer and more texturally diverse. Blood Year is undoubtedly their greatest outing yet and is the perfect tonic for anyone who wants a modern take on post-metal, brilliantly structured and unsurprisingly, brilliantly played.

TRACK LISTING

1. Hunter Moon
2. Arluck
3. Milano
4. Kohokia
5. Ghost On High
6. Sinaia
7. Quartered

Commemorating thirty trips around the sun as one of metal’s most monolithic bands, Earth release their ninth studio album, Full Upon Her Burning Lips. A purge of the embellishment and panache from previous releases, Full Upon Her Burning Lips intimates Earth’s commitment to the minimalism of their primordial days.

Deconstructing the tried-and-true dynamic consisting of Dylan Carlson on guitar and bass and Adrienne Davies on drums and percussion, Full Upon Her Burning Lips taps into the Platonic ideal of Earth—an incarnation of the long running band bolstered by the authority of purpose, where every note and every strike on the drum kit carries the weight of the world. In addition to scaling back the flourishes of their hulking, drone-driven opuses, Full Upon Her Burning Lips was composed sans narrative, relying instead on their collective subconscious to hone in on the overarching muse as the songs developed.

The record was engineered, mixed, and mastered by long time associate Mell Dettmer at Studio Soli. Showcasing Carlson’s sepia-toned Bakersfield Sound guitars and Davies’ death knell drums, Full Upon Her Burning Lips mines for the expressive, nuanced, and tonally rich components of Earth’s arsenal of sound. And indeed, anyone that’s followed Earth on their journey will bask in the unadulterated hums, throbs, and reverberations conjured by Carlson and Davies.

“I feel like this is the fullest expression and purest distillation of what Earth does since I re-started the band,” Carlson says in reflection of Full Upon Her Burning Lips. And indeed, anyone that’s followed Earth on their journey will bask in the unadulterated hums, throbs, and reverberations conjured by Carlson and Davies.

TRACK LISTING

1. Datura's Crimson Veils
2. Exaltation Of Larks
3. Cats On The Briar
4. The Colour Of Poison
5. Descending Belladonna
6. She Rides An Air Of Malevolence
7. Maidens Catafalque
8. An Unnatural Carousel
9. The Mandrake's Hymn
10. A Wretched Country Of Dusk

The debut solo album from Ioanna Gika, Thalassa, takes its name from the primeval spirit of the sea, a nod to the singer's Greek heritage and a thematic touchstone for the self-produced 10 song set. Written in Greece during a period of familial grief and romantic dissolution, Thalassa documents an unanchored soul facing nature at its most unforgiving. Gika's unique voice is laid bare, a beacon above the black water of dense, looming production that lies beneath. Her elegiac lyrics chart a path through her own mourning, while luring the ear like a siren’s call.

From expansive opener “Roseate” to the stark loneliness of closer “Drifting”, she channels the helplessness of being plunged into the depths of Thalassa's great waves, along with the adrenaline of not knowing if she will come up for air. A member of the band Io Echo, Ioanna Gika toured extensively in support of the album Ministry of Love including performances at Coachella, Lollapalooza, and Moma Ps1 Warmup. The band also opened for Nine Inch Nails, Haim and Jon Hopkins. She co-wrote the score for a Louis Vuitton Ready to Wear collection and has also collaborated on two songs with producer and best friend TokiMonsta. Gika has also contributed original music to a number of noteworthy films, including Harmony Korine’s Rebel, Universal Pictures Dracula, and was shortlisted by the academy for her original song ‘Gone’ in Snow White and The Huntsman. Thalassa is the debut album from Ioanna Gika, formerly known as IO Echo. UK publicity handled by Kate Price at Stereo Sanctity. 

TRACK LISTING

1 Roseate
2 Out Of Focus
3. Thalassa
4. Messenger
5. Swan
6. Weathervane
7. New Geometry
8. No Matter What
9. Ammonite
10. Drifting

After more than a decade of existence, five studio albums, and a slew of EPs, it’s easy to imagine Helms Alee continuing on in perpetuity as one of those tightly-guarded artists with an extensive catalog of treasures just waiting for the uninitiated to discover the depths of their riches. But things are going to change with the release of their fifth album, Noctiluca; the album continues Helms Alee’s tradition of blending girthy sludge riffs, deceptively clever compositions, lush instrumentation, and transcendental melodies into a potent standalone sound and proves why the band has rightfully stuck around all these years.

Starting with album opener “Interachnid,” Helms Alee displays their multifaceted approach with Hozoji Matheson-Margullis's eight-armed drum patterns underpinning thunderous walls of fuzz distortion provided by bassist Dana James and guitarist Ben Verellen, with Verellen’s barrel-chested roar serving as a counterpoint to the siren song vocals provided by Mathenson-Margullis and James. The balance between knuckle-dragging force and transcendent beauty fluctuates throughout the record, with songs like “Beat Up” operating on single-minded aggression, while songs like “Pandemic” completely eschew the heavy-handed approach in favor of blissed out dream pop. “Spider Jar” still sounds like the more subdued side of Helms Alee in many ways—jangling Jazzmaster guitars and tom-heavy drum patterns set against soaring vocals—but never before has the band sounded so authoritative with such straightforward arrangements.

Inspired by the bioluminescent marine algae of the same name, Noctiluca pays tribute to the oceanic themes that has pervaded Helms Alee's music. The marine reference is perhaps the closest approximation to their sound: mysterious, magical, and providing light in the darkness. Helms Alee have always been able to jump between the sublime and the savage, but with the aid of producer/engineer Sam Bell (Minus the Bear, R.E.M., The Cars), the band pushes their various methods to new extremes on Noctiluca. 

TRACK LISTING

1 Interachnid
2 Beat Up
3 Play Dead
4 Be Rad Tomorrow
5 Lay Waste, Child
6 Illegal Guardian
7 Spider Jar
8 Pleasure Torture
9 Pandemic
10 Word Problem

Atlanta, GA’s Blis. debut LP, No One Loves You, avoids the trope: it’s an album of a band that’s lived a lot of life, exploring sonic realms that on the surface, should not go together, but manage to find cohesion. The record mosaics their influences—the intricate rock riffs of American Football, Pedro the Lion’s midtempo balladry gone awry with crucial aggression, indie rock sensibility that has mainstream press publications referencing Modest Mouse and Silversun Pickups. It was their 2015 Starting Fires in My Parents House EP that inspired Sargent House Records to sign them. The band officially started recording under the Blis. name a few years ago, but frontman/primary songwriter Aaron Gossett has been pursuing the project for much longer. “It’s pretty much the first musical endeavor I did after high school,” he recounts.

The quartet—drummer Jimi Ingman, bassist Luke Jones, guitarist Josiah Smith and Gossett—have found a system that works, though the process was arduous. In the two years since their last EP, they’re at home with their lineup, they’ve spent an impossible amount of time on the road (including a two month U.S. tour with now label mates And So I Watch You From Afar). No One Loves You is a record of complex musicianship and even more complicated emotional development—despondent songs that criticize the negative forces in Gossett’s life while never feeling particularly hopeless. Almost every track mentions God or religion. He explains. “If you get to the core of a lot of religions, they’re kind of awful: really disgusting homophobic, misogynistic shit.” It’s harsh, but near the heart of Blis. There’s loving sentiment beneath the percussion, beneath the moments of riotous riffing and explosive texture. Even the title of the record itself reflects the duality of Gossett’s interpretation. “Lost Boy” is a love letter to his partner and a criticism of blind belief. 

TRACK LISTING

1 Dumb
2 Stale Smoke
3 Take Me Home
4 Servant
5 Old Man
6 Lost Boy
7 Ugly
8 Home
9 Christian Girls
10 Pathetic
11 Broken
12 Instant Lover

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Tera Melos. 4 years to be exact. And, oh my, are they back with a vengeance. Trash Generator, the trio’s third full length, is an astonishing blast of confidence and rejuvenation. It sounds as if the downtime has recharged the band with an entirely new sense of purpose.

The performances are brilliant and sharp, the songs concise yet intricately detailed, and the album production deftly captures the band’s strength as a live unit. Their dalliances with mellower psychedelic phrases on their previous two albums, X’ed Out (2013) and Patagonian Rats (2010) are significantly trimmed and instead utilized as colorations within a swirling maelstrom of righteous aggro punk-jazz abandon. Tera Melos — guitarist/vocalist Nick Reinhart, bassist Nathan Latona and drummer John Clardy — have learned to stop worrying and just be Tera Melos.

Regardless of the group’s own potentially esoteric goals, if you’re not reaching for the “next level” at every turn, you’re supposedly not doing it right. “ “We made Trash Generator because we just wanted to get together, have some fun, and make something that we think is cool.” The trio decamped to San Diego in late 2016 to record at Singing Serpent Studios with Ben Moore (Hot Snakes, Pinback). “We stayed in a spare place at Rob Crow’s house which had a barracks kind of feel to it,” Clardy explains. “We’d come home exhausted each day and fall asleep within an hour. It was very spartan when away from the studio.” That mindset clearly informs the direct, in-your-face energy of Trash Generator. 

TRACK LISTING

1 System Preferences
2 Your Friends
3 Trash Generator
4 Warpless Run
5 Dyer Ln
6 GR30A11
7 Men's Shirt
8 Don't Say I Know
9 A Universal Gonk
10 Like A Dewclaw
11 Drawing
12 Super Fx 

Big Walnuts Yonder is bassist/vocalist Mike Watt (Minutemen, The Stooges), guitarist Nels Cline (Wilco, Nels Cline Singers), drummer Greg Saunier (Deerhoof) and guitarist/vocalist Nick Reinhart (Tera Melos). It is not a supergroup. "It's worlds colliding," says Mike Watt. Four exceptional musicians whose work spans multiple genres and generations, Big Walnuts Yonder is a monumental endeavor that's more than the sum of its parts. The results are a truly epic album defying categorization, where one might hear elements of proto-punk, free jazz, power pop, experimental music, psych-rock and your first teenage acid trip all in one. The impetus for Big Walnuts Yonder came about way back in 2008 from a conversation between Watt and Reinhart while their bands toured together in Japan.

The two discussed recording together and who they might bring in to the sessions. "Nick gets ahold of my first opera," Watt explains. "Made in 1997 with Nels Cline. He said 'what's it like playing with Nels?'" "So Watt says, 'if you want to know the man, play with the man,'" Cline elaborates. Cline agreed to join if Reinhart picked the drummer. Reinhart quickly mentioned Saunier, unaware that Cline had previously brought Watt to see him perform at a Deerhoof show years before. The lineup solidified in its mutual appreciation and they began making plans to write and record - while circumnavigating the schedules of 4 extremely busy musicians. "We had planned it for so long," Saunier says. "Then several years passed in which nothing occurred due to everyone's schedules. It was 2-3 years of warm, leisurely prep time, then suddenly made in a panic with time and money on the line."

The album was recorded in just 3 days in summer 2014 in Brooklyn, NY with producer and former Pere Ubu bassist Tony Maimone engineering at his Studio G. "It was this concentrated sort of freakout," Saunier says. "We basically had to invent a new band on the spot. And, people might have a stereotype of what each person does, but we all showed up to do what we're prevented from doing in other groups." The album's 10 tracks were recorded primarily live with very few overdubs. Although Big Walnuts Yonder was created under somewhat spontaneous circumstances, the group endeavored to ensure the album wouldn't sound like a jam session. "It was very clear among us," Saunier notes: "Let's not overindulge and make it a 'musician's recording'." Asked how he might describe Big Walnuts Yonder, Cline succinctly nails it on the head: "It's sick. It has an extreme quality and kicks ass." 

TRACK LISTING

01. All Against All
02. Sponge Bath
03. Flare Star Phantom
04. I Got Marty Feldman Eyes
05. Raise The Drawbridges?
06. Ready To Pop!
07. Forgot To Brush
08. Rapid Driver Moon Inhaler
09. Pud
10. Heat Melter

"Zorch demonstrate how good 'weird' can be." SPIN.

The debut full length by Austin duo Zorch is the end result of nearly 5-years worth of material similarly collected, then shredded, condensed and completely remolded into a solid whole. It sounds like two hyperactively creative minds finding ways to cleverly merge together effervescent synth blips, blue-eyed soul vocals, gang-chant backups, blurting EDM bass lines, frenetic drums, hazy psych-drone and even the proverbial kitchen sink taking leads here and there. Each song sounds like it could've been crafted out of samples from several different decades of pop culture history, though it's entirely the work of two exceptional musicians.

If Zzoorrcchh sounds like a photomosaic looks, it's because there is similarly a meticulously organized logic to it all. When Zac Traeger (keyboards, omnichord, vocals) and Shmu (drums, omnichord, vocals) first started playing together in 2008 while studying music in college in Boston, the pair would improvise and record many hours worth of ideas. Some of these songs are direct descendants of those jams; the duo picking out pieces of those recordings, re-organizing and reworking them multiple times and in various studio settings while also adding on and creating new ideas. Demo versions of some of the songs on this album were previously released, only to again be redone a couple of times over for the album. And, Zorch even previously offered up all of the basic audio tracks from early EPs for fans to remix their own versions.

The band are just as intensive about its live shows, often playing upwards of 20 shows during the 4 days of SXSW. Zzoorrcchh kicks off fittingly by easing listeners into their world with a slow fade-in to whirling synths, a stately piano loop and countless layers of sounds comprising "My Joy is Explosion." The minute-long tune immediately segues into the blissfully hyper celebration of life, "We All Die Young." Here, Shmu's rollicking drum pattern that might make Neil Peart's head spin drives Zac's frantic synth arpeggios while several layers of voices sing, "what a day, let's celebrate it/ I want to feel elated." Elsewhere, on "This Is The Way It Goes" neo-rave staccato chords sounding like computer error tones, marimbas and pounding toms meet cheerful vocals singing the song title's seeming lament. "Inopportune Sailing" starts off like a repetitive, perky chiptune from an imaginary 80s video game that morphs into a full-fledged living pop-soul jam. It sounds like Zorch actually beat Daft Punk to the punch at making their own organic recordings sound like vintage song samples. "Zut Alors", a longtime fan live favorite lyrically pokes fun at conspiracy theories of reptilian overlords with the refrain, "giant surprise/ We are lizards disguised/ And we're controlling your lives/ With trilateral spies."

The album is a wild auditory amusement park that gets more and more exciting with each visit. Early support/features confirmed with Pitchfork, Spin, Magnet, Alarm, Consequence of Sound, MSN and much more.

TRACK LISTING

1. My Joy Is Explosion
2. We All Die Young
3. Its Kind Of A Deal Where…
4. This Is The Way It Goes
5. Mutwa
6. Zut Alors
7. Inopportune Sailing
8. Cosmic Gloss
9. Oceans Dawn