We’ve been a bit busy getting last week’s Haiti Relief Benefit together (check out our last blog for info on that) so we’re letting you know a bit late—

New records and reviews!

• John Zorn/Masada - Gimel (Three)
• Wolf Eyes - Always Wrong,
• Couch - Glass Brothers 1993-1994,
• Satyricon - Nemesis Divina,
• Marduk - Nightwing,
• Nachtmystium - Demise,
• Ash Pool - World Turns On Its Hinge,

Full listing and reviews after the jump…

cd 16363
John Zorn / Masada
Gimel (Three)
DIW / Disc Union 1995

Prolific and adventurous New York saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist/composer/record producer John Zorn (born 1953) keeps quite a few plates spinning at any one time…he performs and records with ensembles of different shapes and sizes (he’s appeared on over 400 recordings), runs the excellent Tzadik label, and is an outspoken promoter of a wide swath of counter-cultural arts—for instance, he testifies eloquently on the 2007 bio-documentary about underground filmmaker and performance artist Jack Smith—who wasn’t even a musician (check out http://www.jacksmithandthedestructionofatlantis.com/)…Masada, a group which these days seems to be on hiatus, operated for a decade and a half mostly as a quartet of Zorn, trumpeter Dave Douglas, bassist Greg Cohen and drummer Joey Baron…Masada functioned as an outlet for Zorn’s exploration of his Jewish roots, in combination with the post bop and free jazz lineages which emerged in the late 1950s and 1960s…Gimel is the third in a series of ten Hebrew-numbered albums which were released in the mid-1990s, and it’s a bracing set of ten tunes, with minor-keyed themes that draw from Jewish folk traditions, laid into a late-20th Century jazz context by four expert and empathetic players…
http://www.myspace.com/johnzorn

cd 16364
Wolf Eyes
Always Wrong
Hospital Productions, 2009

Here’s a recent seven-track mini-album torture session from Detroit/Ann Arbor’s Wolf Eyes…WE stands out as a uniquely punishing outfit in the noise-rock underground, and that’s saying something…the insanely prolific (over 100 releases since 1997) trio of Nate Young, John Olson and Mike Connelly don’t just attack relentlessly with brain-stabbing static, bowel-rupturing bass blasts, spine-twisting feedback, and lurching, stuttering anti-rhythms—other acts can approximate Wolf Eyes’ sonic dystopia…what really makes them an uncompromising and polarizing force are their slurred, chanted and howled vocals—when the stanzas of sickness and violence whine and spew, there’s nothing that can blunt the seething nihilism and misanthropy—no way to ‘feel good’ listening to them…let’s just say that an extremely high percentage of the general public would hate Wolf Eyes, and if the band ever started to gain much popularity, it’d surely signal the end of ‘safe’, ‘orderly’ civilization…
http://www.myspace.com/therealwolfeyes

cd 16365
Couch
Glass Brothers 1993-1994
Bulb, 1995

Couch was the short-lived project of Ann Arbor, Michigan’s James ‘Marlon’ Magas, Pete Larson, and Aaron Dilloway…there’s apparently not a whole lot more to Couch’s discography than this fifteen-track, 34-minute dogpile of No Wave nuggets…shrieking, yelping, crashing, stomping, and general misuse and abuse of instruments aside, their absurdist musical rubble occasionally coalesces into danceability—flailing retard style…following Couch’s 1995 dissolution, Magas moved to Chicago to play with Weasel Walter in Lake of Dracula before going solo, Larson released a series of solo spasms as ‘Mr. Velocity Hopkins’, and Dilloway grew into an accomplished noise/power electronics purveyor, played in an early version of Wolf Eyes, and founded experimental/noise label Hanson Records…
http://imaginaryconflict2.blogspot.com/search/label/COUCH%20archives

cd 16366
Satyricon
Nemesis Divina
Century Black, 1997

Here’s the third album from Norway metalheads Satyricon…the band formed in 1990 when Scandinavian black metal was in its ascendancy, but their sound reveals a broader scope of influences than ‘pure’ black metal…the members of Satyricon wear corpsepaint makeup, and the band features strangled wraith vocals (of singer Sigurd Wongraven, aka Satyr) like their black metal kin, but the music of Nemesis Divina has the big riffs of epic/medieval metal and the tight musicianship of the best thrash bands…also, unlike the slate-grey onslaught that to devotees denotes pure black metal, Satyricon opts for the expressiveness of a well-developed dynamic range…
http://www.myspace.com/satyricon

cd 16367
Marduk
Nightwing
Regain, 2008 (Reissue from 1998)

Swedish band Marduk, named for the patron deity of Babylon, was also formed in 1990, and their sound hews close to the template for ‘classic’ black metal…usually their tempos are relentlessly fast, and founding guitarist Morgan ‘Evil’ Steinmeyer Hakansson, shreds furiously, his melodies struggling to surface above the tumultuous pounding din…occasionally though they’ll slow down for a stately plodding stomp, as on “Dreams of Blood and Iron”…Hakansson has led Marduk through quite a few lineup changes, and Nightwing, the band’s fifth album features their second vocalist, Erik ‘Legion’ Hagstedt…Legion’s demonic (and unintelligible) shrieks symbolically arrest and transfix the hordes of ‘civilizing’ would-be invaders to Europe’s pagan traditions…Nightwing has the stated theme of ‘blood’, and includes a suite of songs dedicated to the 15th Century Romanian prince Vlad Dracul, aka Vlad the Impaler, who fought against that century’s Ottoman invasion of Europe…
http://www.myspace.com/truemarduk

cd 16368
Nachtmystium
Demise
Planet Metal, 2009 (Reissue from 2004)


Chicago’s Nachtmystium are in the top tier of an impressive local metal scene, and while their early sound loyally followed black metal’s templates of blurring grind and grotesquely flayed vocals, they’ve evolved over the past decade into a hybrid metal/psychedelic/noise colossus that aims to absorb a variety of influences without sacrificing their extreme edge…on Demise, Nachtmystium’s second album, they’re still in pure black metal mode, but the songcraft already stands out, led by guitarist Judd Blake’s insidiously catchy riffs and melodic fragments…
http://www.myspace.com/nachtmystium

cd 16369
Ash Pool
World Turns On Its Hinge
Tour de Garde, 2008

Ian Dominick Fernow is the guitarist and gravelly shrieker who founded metal band Ash Pool in 2005…Fernow is better known by his nom de guerre Prurient, and as such has had a career as an harsh noise musician going back to the 1990s…on top of performing and recording in various solo and group permutations, Fernow also runs the metal/noise/industrial label and New York City record store Hospital Productions…Ash Pool is an amalgam of extreme metal forms, convincingly blending various elements from black-, death-, and grindcore…stylistically they sacrifice purity towards any one sub-genre for a range of jarring twists, evil juxtapositions, and some good old cathartic headbanging…
http://www.myspace.com/apbbitn

ps! We’re a bit backed up on our Thursday Night Live publications (ie: podcasts, blogs)—but please do stay tuned for Jewsus, Illusion of Safety, Kiddy Korral Jug Band, and more!

Peace, Love, and Freeform!