Monday, February 10, 2014

Burn The Water - "Eschatological" [2012]

Artist: Burn The Water
Title: Eschatological
Genre: Industrial Metal, Experimental
Country: India
Year: 2012

Track List:
  1. __________
  2. The End pt.1 (The Warmonger)
  3. The End pt.2 (Yes, today is DOOMSDAY v2)
  4. The Scene
  5. The Escape
  6. __________
  7. The World (outside) ft.The Siren's Allure
Apocalyptic electronic/metal from India, first release of this kind from South Asia I could find. Actually, it isn't bad at all, considering it was recorded at home using only quite primitive equipment:

"Formed in early 2011 as a solo Metal project by Debojyoti under the moniker of BURN the Water, it started out with creating experimental tunes influenced by musical genius Devin Townsend and the like...
This EP was recorded using a 10$ mic, 120$ guitar, a cheap ZOOM processor onto a (really old) Celeron pc. So all donations to this EP directly goes to the artist for funding his upcoming projects/albums" (bandcamp)

Nathrzeim - "Sickness of inner divinity" [2011]

Artist: Nathrzeim
Title: Sickness of Inner Divinity
Genre: Melodic Black Metal
Country: Jordan
Year: 2011

Track List:
  1. Muerte Silenciosa (Overture) 
  2. The 73 Cults 
  3. Virtue and Vice
  4. Possessed by Salvation
  5. The Magnitude of Treason
  6. Sickness of Inner Divinity
Nathrzeim are among the very few Jordan-based metal bands that are known outside their home country. I even have found a Russian translation of their interview, which is quite short, yet informative. They're playing standard European sympho-black metal without any folk elements. According to them, it's neary impossible to play concerts (at least not completely underground ones) or buy metal merchandise in Jordan, and they had no other options than to record this album at home and release it independently (they were searching for labels, but couldn't find any). Their name means "Dread Lords" in Arabic (by the way, I knew that there's a race in the Warcraft universe called "Nathrezim", which means "dread lords", but I thought it was in some fictional language).

Weapon - "Drakonian Paradigm" [2009]

Artist: Weapon
Title: Drakonian Paradigm
Genre: Death/Black Metal
Country: Bangladesh
Year: 2009

Track List:
  1. Weapon
  2. Cacophony! Black Sun Dragon's Tongue!
  3. Serpentine Ayat
  4. Mortem Pyre (In Darkness and Blood)
  5. Archana
  6. Drakonian Paradigm: The Flame of All
  7. Remnants of a Burnt Mosque
Some people wonder if there's any Indian (or other South Asian) black metal with lyrical references to the cult of Kali. Well, read the lyrics for the track#3 on this album - I guess that's what they're looking for. Otherwise, it's just typical death/black metal (more death than black), good but nothing outstanding. Vetis, the leader of the band, iis originally from Bangladesh but now resides in Canada with the rest of the band. However, all Weapon's early stuff was recorded in Dakka (Bangladesh). They also have forced two other metal bands called weapon to change their names due to copyright issues, so I don't think they'd be OK with their music being posted here. The whole album is available for listening on youtube, though.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Vallendusk - "Black Clouds Gathering" [2013]

Artist: Vallendusk
Title: Black Clouds Gathering
Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal
Country: Indonesia
Year: 2013

Track List:
  1. Fragments Of Light 
  2. To Wander And Beyond 
  3. Shades Of Grey 
  4. Into The Mist 
  5. Among The Giants 
  6. Realms Of The Elder 
  7. Land Of The Lurking Twilight
This band was recommended to me by a friend on last.fm, and it indeed turned out to be very good. Top notch atmospheric (post-)black metal, on the level of best American and Western European counterparts. Looks like not only death metal/grindcore scene of Indonesia has lots of potential...

Friday, February 7, 2014

Burzukh - "Time & Space" [2013]

Artist: Burzukh
Title: Time & Space
Genre: Avant-garde Metal/Rock
Country: Pakistan
Year: 2013

Track List:
  1. Despair And Fall
  2. Death Toll
  3. Demonize
  4. Subjugation
  5. Spiral Down
  6. Critical Thinking
  7. City
  8. Mortuary
  9. Space I - Sector 5
  10. Space II - Void
Before you laugh at the name of this project, read this. I'm fairly sure that "burzukh" is another spelling of "barzakh", and not a corruption of "Burzum" (as some think). Musically, it's stange stuff that hardly can be called "black metal" (or even metal at all), something in the vein of Norwegian avant-garde metal-rock projects like Fleurety or I Left The Planet. Unlike most Pakistani metal bands, which typically released a demo or two and then split up, Burzukh is a relatively long-running project (started in 2001), which has released several demos in early 2000's and 5 LPs during 2007-2013. Its leader says that he has played in a number of industrial, grindcore and metal project, but his solo project he wanted to try something different.

"Time and Space" definitely isn't an easy album to get into, but it's interesting to see such release coming from Pakistan, where only very few active metal bands exist. Moreover, Burzukh seems to be a really unique project; at least everything else I heard from the underground Pakistani music scene is poorly recorded grindcore/death metal/punk. There's also a band called Black Warrant whose genre is listed as "industial thrash metal", but judging from what I could find on archive.org, it's just regular heavy/thrash metal with political lyrics.

KSK - "Drakonia Sektoria" [2013]

Artist: KSK
Title: Drakonia Sektoria
Genre: Industrial Black Metal
Country: Singapore
Year: 2013

Track List:
  1. Nekrologue
  2. In Quadrant Ab:7U
  3. Code B:H:B!
  4. Infernal Israfel Invasion
  5. Inhale
  6. Living Emptiness Within Me
  7. Khaos Function Storm
  8. The Alchemy Man
  9. Drakonia Sektoria
  10. Deathikon
  11. Finis
KSK is one of the oldest Singaporean black metal project, started in 1994 as a 4-piece band named Kibosh Sybil Kismet. Back then they've played raw old school black metal that's typical for Malaysia and Singapore. Since the mid-2000s, the band name was abbreviated to KSK, and the sound became more futuristic and electronic-based, akin to such bands as Aborym, Anaal Nathrakh, and Ayat. The first full-length from KSK, called "Drakonia Sektoria", may be not as impressive as the best albums of the aforementioned bands, but nevertheless it shows that Z:c4 (the only member of KSK, as of now) has a right inderstanding of ggod industrial black metal sound and aesthetics. The best track on "Drakonia Sektoria" is "Living Emptiness Within Me", I think.

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

From Beyond - "Galaxium" [2011]

Artist: From Beyond
Title: Galaxium
Genre: Dark Ambient
Country: Malaysia
Year: 2011

Track List:
  1. Galaxium
  2. Phobos & Deimos
It was interesting for me to find out about this Malaysian cosmic ambient project - because the underground music scene of Malaysia, albeit relatively big by Asian standards, is mostly dominated by early 90's-style metal (thrash metal, old school death metal & grindcore, "bestial" black metal etc.). Unfortunately I couldn't find much info about From Beyond (not least because the project name isn't very searchable).

Cracked Core - ".-.-." [2013]

Artist: Cracked Core
Title: .-.-.
Genre: Ambient, Noise
Country: Russia
Year: 2013

Track List:
  1. Адреналиновая тоска / Adrenaline Anguish
  2. Пограничное расстройство личности / BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder)
  3. Бессонница / Insomnia
  4. Летние воспоминания / Summer Memories (feat. Yrrow)
  5. Метро / Metro (feat. Yrrow)
 ".-.-." (a/k/a "dotdashdotdashdot", or just "Morse code") is the final release from Cracked Core. It was recorded in summer 2013, shortly before the decision to close the project. As of now, all the works of CC are in public domain. The most recent releases are also available on bandcamp, and if you're looking for his full discography - see this blog. It also contains some tracks by First Sleg, a short lived trance/synthpop collaboration project of Kazdalevsky and Cracked Core, which CC considers to be one of his best works.

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Cracked Core - "2009-2012 Highlights" [2013]

Artist: Cracked Core
Title: 2009-2012 Highlights
Genre: Ambient, Noise, IDM
Country: Russia
Year: 2013

Track List:
  1. Breakpoint [Remix by (Project) Ritual Noise]
  2. Radio:martial [tribal mix]
  3. Spice Trip
  4. Restored Signatures
  5. Blue warm water [cut edit] (feat. Sergrunt)
  6. Split Effect
  7. Memory Error [Hardcore Remix by Terror Panicus]
  8. Birds from empty north (feat. Sergrunt) 
  9. Blackdays / Dogdays [clean version]
  10. Ma$$ Media (feat. Brandkommando) 
  11. Stand Alone
  12. SoAT [End Credits rmx by Kazdalevsky]
Unfortunately, the "Cracked Core" project is closed by now, and there will be no new releases anymore (at least under this moniker) - mostly because its creator is dissatisfied with the quality of his songwriting, plus he's more interested in producing stuff like breakcore and hip-hop right now. However, there's some previously unreleased material left, which I'm going to post soon to.

This release is a compilation of remixes and remastered tracks from six Cracked Core's albums released during 2009-2012. It was intended to be a summary of all CC's creative output, but after completing the process of mastering he was left disappointed with the result. Personally I think it's his perfectionism speaking, but this compilation indeed could be better - mostly because he had lost the sources for some of his best tracks, thus being unable to remaster them.

Saturday, February 1, 2014

The Peoples' Republic Of Europe - "Nicolae Carpathia Died For Your Sins" [2009]

Artist: The Peoples' Republic Of Europe
Title: Nicolae Carpathia Died For Your Sins
Genre: Rhythmic Noise
Country: Netherlands
Year: 2009

Track List:
  1. Nicolae Carpathia died for your sins
  2. The true face of Evil
  3. Female Domination (Necrotek remix)
  4. Zion must fall
  5. Work it
  6. The third
A lot of people who are into extreme electronic music associate the Dutch scene mostly with hardcore techno/gabber, but tPRoE make a slightly different kind of sound - namely, power noise. For me they're one of the best rhythmic noise projects I know, in terms of both sound and aesthetics. Like many noise projects, they deal primarity with topics of radical politics and extreme sexuality, but of course, tPRoE also explore a lot of ther themes that are usual for industrial/noise music - technology, post-humanism, post-apocalpse, etc.

"Nicolae Carpathia died for your sins" is a free promo EP that's available off the project's bandcamp page. If you liked it and want to hear more tPRoE stuff, I'd recommend to start from "Monopoly of Violence" (or, maybe, "Juche").