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Good Lord certainly does Giveth us some good music with their debut EP, “The Many Varied Shades”. AHAHAHAHAHA. But on to the review!

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Lo-fi ambient music can be fun and it can be boring. Mostly I find it to be boring. Goslings’ “Perfect Interior” EP goes dreamy then a bit more dark, fuzzing and droning along hazily in its minimalist ways, and is mostly somewhere in the middle of the two (fun and boring, that is). This ethereal, slow-building five-track EP is probably something I’d put on when I’d just want to chill out after a long day, or for study with some non-distracting drone music in the background. “Perfect Interior” is fine for doing what experimental lo-fi tends to do, with good sound quality despite its 4-Track/low-budget origins, but I’m not going to get my boxer shorts in a twist over it.

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While British Bolt Thrower may not play the most brutal or even original stuff available in the grindcore/death metal genre, they sure do get points for consistency. “Honour Valour Pride” is chock full of evenly well-written, slower-tempo, songs featuring grinding guitar riffs, machine-like drumming and deep, raspy vocals. The latter work less well in my opinion, due to their lack of distinguishing texture so that they just sort of fade into the background, but are more than made up for by the sheer “cool” factor of the mechanoid blasting beats and the band’s melodic excursions. Songs like “Contact Wait Out” and “Inside the Wire” lay the foundation for the rest of the album, building up the overall tempo slowly but surely with surgical efficiency.

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It starts off well enough, with warm electric/acoustic guitars playing in the rich, earthy tradition of American folk rock, but slowly descends into a sort of Coldplay-meets-Neil-Young bland indie record. And that’s never a good thing, in my modest opinion. While he plays his guitar well enough and sings quite sweetly, the problem with our singer/songwriter Mr. O’ Sullivan seems to lie in the deep and dark abyss of originality. Develop your own style, man, and it should all be very much better. Nobody wants to listen to the same old, recycled stuff over and over again.

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Swedish hard rock lives.

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Released by the No Colours label, “Suicidal Emotions” does justice to the name of its mothership (oh, is black a colour?). This debut release by Shane Rout�s “Abyssic Hate” black metal project is as dark and grim of an album as you will find. The 4-track, 50 minute record demonstrates the pure, raw, screechy BM style that was apparent in Darkthrone�s earlier sound (and, I suppose, their “current” one too). The purposefully poor production quality adds to the intense and rather depressive atmosphere generated by Rout�s flesh-tearing vocals. Along with his vocals, the guitars form the main focus of the sound. They are heavily distorted and create a vibrant effect, which alienate the drumming as the main drive in the composition. “Suicidal Emotions” requires more than a quick listen, which makes it wholly unsuitable as background music (although something tells me, that�s not exactly what the creator had in mind when going into studio…). Instead: light up some candles, turn off all other electrical sources of light, turn up “Depression: Part I” and listen through the entire composition. It really is very well thought out.

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It’s quite strange to think that Hellhammer’s (no, not the drummer) rather mediocre album “Apocalyptic Raids” would, along with Venom, help spawn the black/death metal movement. When the Swiss group set out to create music, they simply wanted to play something no-one had ever heard before, and managed to do so by borrowing from 80s metal acts, the punk movement as well as throwing in some pretty lousy recording equipment (by that time’s standards - of course, Darkthrone had not yet come into existence) and their personal signature of droning fuzz-guitar riffs and quickly shifting atmospheres.

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Oooh, I quite like this one. Isis’ “Red Sea EP” (which on CD includes an early, but well-produced demo by the band) is pure aggression, a monumentally dense and sludgy doom/hardcore metal release. Awesomely brutal vocals combine with extra sludgy riffage and shockingly distorted bass/guitar combos for aural assault opener “Carmicarmicarmicat Shines To Earth”. Great, mysterious sound samples featuring some quasi-Southern chick expounding on the wonders of nature work as a backdrop to the relentless, unwavering “The Minus Times” and crushing “Red Sea”. Isis quite obviously master a sound remiscent of genre-buddies Neurosis, and even add their own to the pot with some of the most gruelling, grinding, unforgiving stuff I’ve heard in a long while.

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