THE DEVIL'S MONTH: April 2025
Rounding up some of the finest releases of the previous month - including Andy's picks too!
Yeah, the first Thursday of the month was technically last week, but it was Workers’ Day so let’s go with that as our excuse to delay our usual monthly round-up a week. It’s not like you guys were clawing at the walls in despair, yearning for us to tell you what to listen to, right? Right? I mean, even if you were, you could have gone to our beautiful friends at the Mondo Negro record store and you would have found something. They’re almost as good as The Devil’s Mouth in their curation.
Anyway, let’s get on with it! April has been another great month full of weird and wonderful music, and this is what José and Andy have hand-picked for you. Let us know if we turned you onto something awesome, and/or what dozens of records you think should have been here instead.
The Dream Eaters
Quarterly Report: Q125
(self-released)
If you don’t know The Dream Eaters yet, welcome to their wonderful, wacky and super fucked up world. They describe themselves as “The Carpenters meet Slayer” on their Bandcamp, and they’re basically the kind of artist the internet was invented for. Half band, half highly shareable hilarity producers, they’ve coined unforgettable, highly catchy micro-songs such as ‘we’re fucked’, ‘satan is lord’ or, indeed, more elaborate epics such as ‘fuck my skull’. Honestly, they could just keep making videos for YouTube/TikTok and we’d still be huge fans, but the thing is, these songs, whether 23 seconds long or three minutes, actually work as songs, so they do put out real albums and EPs as well (if you like the tiny under-30 seconds jingle-like ones, I suggest ‘Metal Gods’). I have all of them on my phone and I highly recommend being on a flight and peacefully look at the other passengers while hearing jolly synth-rich tunes singing along things like “I am bleeding internally and also externally” in your head. ‘Quarterly Report: Q125’ is their latest release, a short EP featuring six songs on the general theme of technology and office work. All of them around the two-minute mark, so closer to proper songs, insanely hummable and danceable as usual, and featuring highlights such as ‘3D Printer’ (“I'm gonna 3D print your body with my 3D printer”) or ‘Program Me, I’m A Machine’ (“you can press my power button / and watch me come to life / you can dress me up in gingham / and I will cosplay as your wife”). Even if you’re not at all a fan of joke bands (I am not), you need The Dream Eaters in your life.
Årabrot + Hifiklub
ARTAUD!
(Pelagic Records)
Yes, the new Årabrot album is coming (have you heard/seen ‘The Satantango’ yet?), but first, a little sidestep in their constantly enthralling artistic journey, with this collaborative record in the company of restless French rockers Hifiklub - an adventurous duo that you should check out in case you’re not too familiar with them, there’s a shitload of albums (most of them collaborations too) and they’re all wildly diverse. There’s also an appearance by the actor Charles Berling reading, you guessed it, an Antonin Artaud poem, just like Årabrot’s Kjetil does (well, sings it, but still) on the other song of the two that constitute the album. Essentially, the two duos locked themselves together in the south of France for a week and came up with semi-improvisational pieces as a homage to Artaud, a legendary figure in the avant-garde scene of the first half of the 20th century. True to Artaud’s frequently visceral, impacting work, so too these pieces layer textures upon unexpected textures, veering from noise to noise rock, from ethereal uneasiness (Karin Park’s vocals are extraordinary in the middle part of ‘The Poem Of St Francis Of Assisi‘) to blunt force, but constantly evoking the surreal and the unexpected. The biggest takeaway for the future, especially in Årabrot’s case (since this is pretty much Hifiklub’s wheel house), is the seamless flow of the collaboration and how naturally the two ensembles appear as one, opening up exciting avenues of future musical partnerships.
Idle Heirs
Life Is Violence
(Relapse Records)
Whether you know or not that Sean Ingram is the vocalist for this new band, the opening of ‘Life Is Violence’ will surprise and amaze in equal amount - a quiet, beautiful yet somehwat eerie passage, complete with some gorgeous, understated clean singing from the great man, easing you in perfectly for the storm that is about to unfold. When the song (‘Loose Tooth’) finally erupts, there’s our good old Sean roar, yes, but make no mistake, the only familiarity with what he’s done is really the tone of voice. Equally important in the staggering outcome of this record is Sean’s partner in crime, the other half of the duo, Josh Barber, acclaimed musician and producer, who really let loose on these songs, their carefully crafted dynamics perfectly reflecting the emotional intensity that is behind them once you start paying attention to the lyrics, which carry sincere and often poetic reflections on the nature of fatherhood, loss and trauma. Post-metal will be a nice catch-all term to classify ‘Life Is Violence’, but it’s so much more than that. Each song carries you to different places, and all of them are both fierce and fragile, dark and hopeful, harsh and melancholic. It’s a deeply affecting record that is also, ultimately, incredibly human and relatable. And one of the very best of 2025 so far.
Iron Lung
Adapting // Crawling
(Iron Lung Records)
I mean, if you need any sort of explanation as to why a new Iron Lung record in 2025 is a big deal, then maybe you should go and fill that void in your life before hanging out in weird obscure websites like this one. Though consuming the duo’s entire discography in one sitting might lead to unpredictable hearing and mental damage, it’s worth it. So anyway, ‘Adapting // Crawling’ is Jensen Ward and Jon Kortland’s first since 2013 - which these days sounds like a whole lifetime ago almost, doesn’t it? - and goddamn it, if the state of the world in 2025 needs one band to not only illustrate it, but kick our asses for letting it reach this point, it’s Iron Lung for sure. As always on the edge of the frontier between powerviolence and grincore, as always firing off huge riffs that if you blink, you’ve missed them, and as always packing enough intensity, rage and violence that after being ravaged by it, you’ll actually believe things can change. The revolution is now, and we have our soundtrack ready!
Kaleidoscope
Cities Of Fear
(La Vida Es Un Mus)
To be honest, I googled for some info on Kaleidoscope when I started listening to this record (without great success - as usual, releases on La Vida Es Un Mus are as awesome as they are enigmatic), because these guys kinda sound like they’re making it up as they go along sometimes. Such is the raw spontaneity and loose, energetic vibes they display on these songs that I did wonder if some of this isn’t actually semi-improvised live in the studio. In any case, it’s a record of unusual impact. It’s not normal - in most cases it would even be heresy - to say of someone in 2025 that they live up to the standards of 80s anarcho-punk or that they even evoke prime Black Flag sometimes, but that’s really what Kaleidoscope bring to the table. They sound essential, primal, urgent. Go pay attention now!
Benzo Queen - No Gods, No Masters, No Sleeves (Stolen Body Records)
This is an absolute riot from the opening ‘Wardrobe Malfunction’ to the closing ‘Ballpoint Ken’. Crunchy percussion, squelching riffage and vocals which suggest a manic party protagonist joined by a Greek chorus of mischievous sprites. There are touches of Devo, The Residents and even ‘Egg Punk’ here but the real treat is that it all feels delivered with such delightful abandon that you listen to the whole thing with a huge smile on your face. The song titles underline a playful sense of humour (‘ACAB 4 Cutie’, ‘Return Of The Gak’, etc) and there are times I’m reminded of the much missed brio of the Cardiacs. Ace stuff.
Care Home - For Nothing (Bandcamp)
Propulsive post-punk from Yorkshire with brooding neo-gothic flourishes. Motorik drums hypnotise while chorus f’x’d guitars pick forlorn melodic figures and plangent keys paint swathes of almost cinematic ambience. The vocals command a position between void-screaming rage and a tender, pleading baritone. ‘We Lost’ has drums that could have been on The Cure’s ‘Pornography’ and throughout the album there are sections that remind me of Killing Joke, Murder City Devils, Jesus Lizard, Girls in Synthesis and even Type O Negative. ‘Loved at Home’ has a strange uplifting, angry loneliness at its heart which is quite remarkable and one of my faves, ‘Prescription Sleep’, has a dark, majestic swagger that manages to simultaneously exude grandeur and sleaze. A beautiful bruise of a record.
KLAMP - Totaal Techniek (Human Worth)
KLAMP are back and on first listen this is a huge development in their sound from 2020’s ‘Hate You’ opus. There are numerous additions to their noise rock beginnings with repetitive krautrock drums and synths that wouldn’t be out of place on any of Bowie’s much lauded ‘Berlin Trilogy’. There’s a lot going on with the sound field and at times it’s almost, dare I say it, prog!?! I’m certainly hearing King Crimson and Magma among the previously established The Fall influences (in fact, I’m wondering if the title is an amalgam of ‘Totale’s Turns’ and ‘Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh’). ‘Wet Leather’ pulls off the astounding feat of managing to meld early 80s Simple Minds and black metal tremolo picking while ‘Adult Proper’ is a hedonistic anthem that mixes noise rock and the sawtooth riffing of early rave. A total blast from start to finish.
Knives - Glitter (Marshall Records)
I love it when I can tell who the artist is within a few bars and Bristol’s Knives have got this. Boisterous, buoyant and vital songs don’t so much unfold as suck you along in the riptide. Everything is so memorable here. Countless stunning, inventive riffs played on either guitar, sax, bass or in unison compete for attention but don’t distract from the vocals which command attention in the same way as Chuck D or Zack de la Rocha can. Nothing here sounds generic at all. Yes, there are touches of others, RATM, McClusky, Sons of Kemet, X-Ray Spex, Captain Beefheart, but the overall engulfing noise is is a very singular experience in the current modern rock/indie scene.
Singles ‘The Dagger’ and ‘PHD’ introduced me to them but here there is so much more and it really is banger after banger. ‘Rhinestone Cowboy’ and the Pixies-esque ‘Post Macho’ are stellar stand-outs but any of the tracks on this wonderful record could be a single. The acoustic, lilting closing track ‘I See Them Fall’ is a lovely way to end the album. Buy this record.
Terrorboy featuring Peng Weng - Conversational English (Local Music for Local People/Bandcamp)
From Doagh in the North of Ireland this is cellar dwelling lurch noise which wallows in its own grease and grime and is all the better for it. It uses vocal samples in the same way Butthole Surfers and Electric Wizard do which is to say it’s reminiscent of that frightening glossolalia one experiences when in the grip of a very bad trip. I think the voices dropping the C-bomb with such venom are Peter Cook and Dudley Moore but I can’t be certain. The delay on the sounds doesn’t help the uneasy feeling of dislocation. The bass is absolutely filthy and the drums thunder on as if all hope is lost. Unclean stuff and well worth getting your ears dirty listening to it.
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