Unit Wail - "Pangaea Proxima" [2012]

Artist: Unit Wail

Title: Pangaea Proxima

Genre: Progressive Rock, Avant-Prog

Country: France

Release date: 2012 (2016 remaster)

Track List:

1. Mesozoïc Cities
2. Ombos
3. Télété
4. Sargasso Sea
5. Outerspace
6. Humanoïd Fish From Encelade
7. Home of Nowhere
8. Magnétostriction
9. Holocene Extinction
10. Shambhala
11. Three Eyes
12. Subdeath 

Unit Wail is the latest up to date project of Frank W. Fromy of Shub-Niggurath fame. Initially I was sort of disappointed by this album because, judging from its concept, I expected something more in the vein of Solaris or Hidria Spacefolk, but heavy avant-prog rooted in the previous Fromy's project 000 (Triple Zero) is fine too. French prog-rock bands really know how to do this sort of dark and "cosmic" sound the right way! You can read a more detailed review of "Pangaea Proxima" here, and its remastered version (the original 2012 version was recorded and mixed under difficult conditions) is available on Bandcamp:

000 (Triple Zero) - "Crypto Sensus" [1985]

Artist: 000 (Triple Zero)

Title: Crypto Sensus

Genre: Progressive Rock, Avant-Prog

Country: France

Release date: 1985

Track List:

1. Part Three - Pour Produire Un Sentiment De Chaleur Sous La Tête Du Défunt
2. Irruption
3. Part Two - Pour Ne Pas Subir Le Châtiment
4. Les Succubes
5. Part One - Pour Que L'Ame Ne Soit Pas Capturée Dans L'Au-Delà
6. Le Balancement Cathartique
7. Part Four - Pour Ne Pas Etre Echaudé En Buvant De L'Eau
8. De Sales Lendemains

The one and only album of a very mysterious French avant-prog band with an ex-guitarist of Shub-Niggurath in their line-up. Even the release date is uncertain: most sources state it was recorded in 1985, but there's no evidence of it, and only one thing can be said for sure: it was released in 2000 on CD by Musea. Line-up (most likely incomplete):

- Frank-William Fromy / bass
- Edward Perraud / drums, percussions
- Vincent Sicot-Vantalon / electronics

Musically, it's "cosmic" avant-prog with a lot of electronic effects, more similar to F.W.Fromy's later project Unit Wail than to Shub-Niggurath. It wasn't easy to find this album in MP3 (it turned out to be even more  obscure than Nuclear Death's "Harmony Drinks Of Me"), yet I finally managed to do it. Enjoy:

Download

Gong - "Acid Motherhood" [2004]

Artist: Gong

Title: Acid Motherhood

Genre: Progressive Rock, Space Rock

Country: France

Release date: 2004

Track List:

1. Ocean Of Molasses
2. Supercotton
3. Olde Fooles Game
4. Zeroina
5. Brainwash Me
6. Monstah!
7. Bible Study
8. Bazuki Logix
9. Waving
10. Makototen
11. Schwitless In Molasses

Let me get one thing out of the way: this album has got a completely idiotic cover art. The inlay isn't much better, though:

Seriously, it'd be much more suitable for some comedy grindcore album, and it was deservedly included into the "Weirdest Ever Covers" list. Fortunately, the music on "Acid Motherhood" is pretty cool and not idiotic at all. Looks like someone has already reviewed it better than I ever could, so I can only add that I wish this album was purely instrumental - other than that, it's great. If the Wikipedia article is to be believed, the line-up on this album consists of a merger of latter-day Gong, University of Errors (guitarist Josh Pollock), and Acid Mothers Temple (Kawabata Makoto and Cotton Casino), and when it comes to the concept, it continues the usual Gong topics of aliens and alternate realities.

Rotfront - "VisaFree" [2011]

Artist: Rotfront

Title: VisaFree

Genre: Folk-Punk, Ska, Ragga Hip-Hop

Country: Germany

Release date: 2011

Track List:

1. VisaFree
2. Eyn Tsvey
3. Gay, Gypsy & Jew
4. Revolution Disco
5. Cosmos
6. Vodka & Garlic
7. Money Money Money
8. Real Berlin Wedding
9. Csöváz
10. Live Is Life
11. No Sleep Till Berlin
12. Village Superstar
13. James Bondski
14. Sigaretta
15. Backsteinpulver

The second Rotfront album features less linguistic diversity than the first one - the lyrics are mostly in English, with some Hungarian here and there, and some rapping in German. However, almost all the tracks are extremely catchy (even more so than the catchiest songs on their debut), and the lyrics for them are very funny as well. Apart from a couple of weak tracks (i.e. "No Sleep 'Till Berlin"), this album is perfect if you like this kind of gypsy folk-punk in general.

Rotfront ‎- "Emigrantski Raggamuffin" [2009]

Artist: Rotfront

Title: Emigrantski Raggamuffin

Genre: Folk-Punk, Ska, Klezmer

Country: Germany

Release date: 2009

Track List:

1. Intro
2. B-Style
3. Zhiguli
4. Sovietoblaster
5. Kemények A Fények
6. Berlin-Barcelona
7. Red Mercedes
8. Ya Piv
9. Remmidemmi
10. Sohase Mondd
11. Gypsy Eyes
12. Rotfront FM
13. Tüz
14. Devil
15. Emigrantski Raggamuffin
16. Klezmerton
17. Youtube Song

Speaking of "positive" (and not too serious, since today is the April Fools' Day!) music - here's a band that was one of my greatest personal discoveries of the last year. "RotFront - Emigrantski Raggamuffin Kollektiv" is a creation of two Eastern European immigrants in Berlin: Yuri Gurzhy from Kharkiv, and his Hungarian fellow Simon Wahorn. The complete line-up of Rotfront includes many other musicians, mostly Eastern Europeans as well. The music is an eclectic mix of punk, ska, hip-hop/raggamuffin, tango (i.e. the track "Sohase Mondd" - although I prefer this song being sang by Judit Hernádi), klezmer and Balkan gypsy folk. Out of all I've posted here before, it reminds me the most of 44 Leningrad and Bandista.
They're also known for their animated music videos, like this one:

However, the most distinct feature of their music is the multilingualism of their lyrics. On this album, they use no less than 5 languages (all of which I know at least to some extent) - English, Russian, Ukrainian, German and Hungarian - and aren't afraid of mixing numerous languages in one song:

Lonely Star - "Ashen" [2016]

Artist: Lonely Star

Title: Ashen

Genre: Post-Rock, Post-Black Metal

Country: USA

Release date: 2016

Track List:

1. Ashen
2. Black River
3. Fade
4. Lonely Star
5. Embrace Of The Universe
6. Sparks

Another one-woman post-rock/metal project, of which not much is known about: "Just some girl making weird music", and not much else. Anyway, Lonely Star is Alicia M. from Watertown, New York, and she describes her debut album "Ashen" as follows:

"This album includes songs from the split we did with Beautiful Nature and a couple of new ones. I decided to make it darker and added kinda 'metal' vocals. It feels good to put out negative emotions once in a while! But I will be back with more positive music, I promise. :)"

Honestly it's fairly good as it is, no need to make such music more "positive" (which it isn't supposed to be anyway). It's certainly more "metal" than Sylvaine, but the overall aesthetics come from the post-rock scene, and generally remind me of Violet Cold (especially the later releases, such as "Magic Night" and "Anomie"). If you like this sort of romantic, emotional "dreamy" post-rock/metal, then chances are that you'll like this album as well.

Sylvaine - "Wistful" [2016]

Artist: Sylvaine

Title: Wistful

Genre: Post-Rock, Post-Black Metal

Country: Norway

Release date: 2016

Track List:

1. Delusions
2. Earthbound
3. A Ghost Trapped in Limbo
4. Saudade
5. In the Wake of Moments Passed By
6. Like a Moth To A Flame
7. Wistful

This Norwegian multi-instrumentalist has visited Moscow, SPb and Kiev just a few days ago with a live tour. Of course she didn't visit my village of 1.2 million inhabitants, which is sad but unsurprising. If her music was something close to "Amesoeurs 2.0", I'd seriously consider going to Moscow to see her, but alas - both of her albums sound much more like Alcest than Amesoeurs. For the most part, it's depressive post-rock/shoegaze with some black metal elements, but calling it "metal" would be a big stretch. After all, Myrkur has received quite a lot of death threats for performing a quite similar kind of music and calling it "black metal". Well, I can say that Myrkur's 2014 LP is indeed quite boring (but not as bad as some people made it out to be), and Sylvaine's "Wistful" isn't a masterpiece but still a pleasant listen if you like dreamy post-rock/metal with beautiful female vocals. Hopefully she will release something comparable to the Amesoeurs' s/t LP sometime in the future...

Crown of Asteria - "Karhun Vakat" [2016]

Artist: Crown of Asteria

Title: Karhun Vakat

Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal

Country: USA

Release date: 2016

Track List:

1. Tietäjä
2. The Golden Light of Birchwood Temples
3. Hongotar
4. Sky-Nail
5. Black Antlers Above the Lodge
6. Väki
7. Kallohonka (live)

Described as a "one-woman atmospheric black metal band from Michigan formed by Meghan Wood", Crown of Asteria can boast 5 full-length albums and numerous EPs released during last 4 years. Most of CoA's music is inspired by the nature of the North, and this particular LP - by Finno-Ugric folklore as well. A pretty interesting subject choice which alone made me want to check this album out :)


According to Meghan Wood's biography at The Horror Zine, she's a graphic designer from Bancroft, Michigan, and she has been a horror fan from a very young age. She has published several poems of her own, and her photography deserves to be checked out as well.

Nuclear Death - "Harmony Drinks Of Me" [2000]

Artist: Nuclear Death

Title: Harmony Drinks Of Me

Genre: Experimental, Progressive Rock

Country: USA

Release date: 2000

Track List:

1. Electric Spaceboy
2. Eyes Closed (The Sin)
3. Sunless
4. The Baths
5. Strident
6. Shoot
7. Haunted Man-Nimbus

Formed in 1986 by Phil Hampton, Lori Bravo and Joel Whitfield, Nuclear Death were one of the first deathgrind bands in history, and certainly the very first widely known one with a female vocalist. However, that wasn't what really set them apart from many other early death metal bands. They were famous because of their lyrics - which, just as expected from a death/grind band, described very disgusting things, but in a surrealistic horror manner not parallelled by any other band. Phil Hampton definitely has some literary talent, even if his lyrics surely are going to put off quite a lot of people...

This album, however, has nothing to do with ND's early works in terms of both sound and lyrical content, even if it's quite unusual as well. It was recorded by Lori Bravo alone during 1996-97 and released on her own label Cats Meow in 2000, after which Nuclear Death was declared officially split up. It was described as a sort of goth/industrial rock, but I think labels like "progressive" or "psychedelic" would fit it better. Either way, it isn't a metal album in the slightest.

It took me literally ages to find this album online, as it's turned out to be a really rare one - even in the age when nearly anything can be found on YouTube, blogs, or torrents. Yet I finally managed to find it, and I can only hope there wouldn't be any copyright problems with it being posted on here. Still searching for "The Planet Cachexial", an album released by Lori Bravo in 1996, which is rumored to be even more experimental than this one (and seems to have a really interesting concept as well).

Download

Symphonic Destiny - "The Fountain Of Eternal Life" [2015]

Artist: Symphonic Destiny

Title: The Fountain Of Eternal Life

Genre: Symphonic Metal

Country: Serbia/Hungary

Release date: 2015

Track List:

1. The Beginning of an Adventure
2. Compass of Fate
3. Light in the Darkness
4. The Magical Sphere
5. Wayfarer
6. Garden of Eden
7. Voice of Temptation
8. Witch's Cottage
9. Ghost Town
10. Well of Souls
11. The Fountain of Eternal Life
12. Love (acoustic)

As a long-time tradition, I post something with female vocals on this day, and this time it'll be symphonic metal (which you probably have already figured out from the band's name). Symphonic Destiny come from a small town in northern Serbia called Temerin, but all the members are ethnic Hungarians, and they describe themselves as a Hungarian band on their Facebook page.

The music on "The Fountain Of Eternal Life" is fairly standard symphonic metal, yet I found it more interesting than many other albums in this genre released over the last couple of years. The best track on the whole album is clearly "Light in the Darkness". The album is available on all popular platforms (and on dark-world.ru, of course).