by Ben Arzate Jib Machine is an Ohio-based record company with a wide variety of artists from different genres. Established in 2004, this compilation celebrates their 15th year by collecting thirty different tracks from thirty different acts. I had decided when I received this album to go in blind and I was surprised at how
Few albums will hurt you this bad. After the release of Daughter’s masterpiece, You Won’t Get What You Want, which stole the album of the year slot for “The 20 Best Albums of 2018” on this site, it would be reasonable to suspect that the world of experimental and dark music might take a while
One of my favorite quotes is by singer and songwriter Macklemore. “It’s up to you to turn the pen into a machete and make sure that every beat that you meet gets killed.” I try to live by this line. It’s a perfect representation of what every author, filmmaker, singer, and songwriter strives for. A
by Ben Arzate The Buggles are the quintessential “one hit wonder” band, to the point that they’re less recognized by their name and more by “the guys that did ‘Video Killed the Radio Star.’” Their biggest claim to fame is that their music video was the first one to air on MTV. However, they couldn’t
Welcome to Bandcampology! I’m your Bandcampologist, Justin. This segment is intended to celebrate the delightfully weird, undeniably wonderful, and tragically underappreciated music platform, Bandcamp. In a world where music streaming services tend towards interchangeability due to the fact that any cool, new feature immediately gets implemented across board by all the major companies, Bandcamp is
Album: Burning Ad Infinitum Band: Gnaw Their Tongues / Crowhurst (collaboration, not a split) Release: 31 August 2018 Label: Crown and Thorn Ltd. The fifth angel, who poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain, And blasphemed the God
Band: A Forest of Stars Album: Grave Mounds and Grave Mistakes Country of Origin: UK Release Date: 28 September 2018 Genre: Melodic black metal/folk/experimental Label: Prophecy Productions Oh my! What’s happening? Is it possible? Can it really be… a metal cousin of Current 93? In a lot of ways, yes. Needless to say, I’m jumping
Band: Abstracter Album: Cinereous Incarnate Country of Origin: United States Release Date: June 8th, 2018 Genre: Blackened doom Label: I, Voidhanger I seriously can’t put this one down. The third release from Oakland’s blackened doom masters is one of those albums good enough to bleed from the review pile to my regular rotation. I’ve listened
Band: Al Ard Album: Al Ard Country of Origin: Italy Release Date: June 22nd, 2018 Genre: Black metal/noise, experimental. Label: code666 Aside from featuring the coolest album art in recent memory, Al Ard is an all-out treat for those of us straddling the fence between black metal and electronic “noise” musicians like Pharmakon. This album
Band: Kekal Album: Deeper Underground Country of Origin: Indonesia Genre: Progressive black metal/avant-garde metal Release Date: March 2018 That sinking feeling of guilt (and I get it disturbingly often) when you realize you’ve been missing out on an extraordinary band working in a genre you love isn’t fun. It’s even worse when you’ve heard the
