THE DEVIL'S MONTH: December 2023
Rounding up some of the finest releases of the previous month
We - meaning yours truly, The Devil’s Mouth, and the lovely Mondo Negro, whose ongoing partnership has brought you these little monthly round-ups for a full year now - have genuinely discussed if we should do The Devil’s Month this month. December is typically a slow release month, as everyone is mostly focused on end of year lists and holidays and stuff, and on top of it we haven’t even finished our yearly list for the whole of 2023. So who can be arsed with a few scraps from the flimsiest release month, right? Well, we can. No matter how questionable the decision is to put out records in December, the fact is that quite a few good ones came out once again, and hey, in the end, that’s the whole point of all this, right? To share cool music with you. Also, it’s now been a full year ‘round the sun of The Devil’s Months, so happy anniversary to us or whatever. Here’s to many more.
BJØRKØ
Heartrot
(Svart Records)
A bit of a surprise, this one - of the Amorphis founding pair of guitarists, Esa Holopainen has always been the more expansive one. More of a rock’n’roll posture on stage, also usually the go-to guy for interviews, so it wasn’t shocking when his solo project Silver Lake appeared a couple of years ago (with a rather excellent debut album, it has to be said). It turns out that the more apparently discreet of the two, Tomi Koivusaari, has also been having solo thoughts, and this BJØRKØ project actually follows a lot of the same lines to Silver Lake, as Tomi is not only also accompanied by an excellent band to interpret his compositions - Waltteri Väyrynen (Opeth, ex-Paradise Lost), Lauri Porra (Stratovarius) and Janne Lounatvuori (Hidria Spacefolk) - but has similarly recruited a few famous vocalist friends to help give each song a very individual personality. As Esa had Anneke, Jonas Renkse or Einar Solberg, for instance, Tomi roped in people like Addi Tryggvason (Sólstafir), Jeff Walker (Carcass) or Shagrath (Dimmu Borgir), for example. Funnily enough, they both have a song for Amorphis’ own vocalist Tomi Joutsen - the man is so good that even on a side project they seem to can’t let go of him. Just like the Silver Lake album, ‘Heartrot’ feels a little more over the place than it actually is because of the varying vocal approaches, but even so manages to maintain an interesting level of cohesiveness. You can also pick up a few Amorphis-isms here and there, but it’s clear that Tomi wanted to explore a freer, looser and more genreless kind of rock music, which is why it’s the less “extreme” songs that end up working the best. ‘Vaka Loka’ with Addi is a kickass tune, as is the fantastic ‘Värinvaihtaja’ with Finnish veteran Ismo Alanko. Perhaps perversely, ‘Hooks In The Sky’ with Joutsen on vocals is also a big highlight and would have made for a great old-school Amorphis kind of tune. All in all, a worthy detour by Mr. Koivusaari. Here’s hoping that the two guitarists manage to keep their main band going strong as they’ve always done, but reserve a little time in the future to keep developing these new avenues, as they surely deserve it.
Cryptworm
Oozing Radioactive Vomition
(Me Saco Un Ojo)
Time for some proper, good old cavernous death metal, kids! Cryptworm’s 2022 ‘Spewing Mephitic Putridity’ debut was an absolutely rotten delight, a true gift for anyone into the murkiest depths that death metal has ever sunk to, a veritable worship of early Carcass or Autopsy. Slow - or slow-sounding, at least, as even when they go fast they seem to be trawling through neck-high mud swamps anyway -, putrid, sounding as if played inside a small cave, with plodding zombie vocals that still maintain some expressiveness, silly piles of gore aplenty in the lyrics and artwork… it’s like these dudes from Bristol (well, the main guy Tibor Hanyi is originally Hungarian, but whatever) tapped directly from the primal oozing source of this kind of thing, exhaling all kinds of noxious odours except the stale nostalgia one. While very much rooted in the past, they made that album sound fresh and still exciting, a delicate combination that is rarely achieved by bands like this. The initial apprehension you might have of seeing a follow-up appear so quickly (about a year and a half later) quickly subsides as soon as you give ‘Oozing Radioactive Vomition’ a whirl. Songs are generally longer than on the debut as they seem to be attempting to refine and doomify their songwriting a little more, which is cool, but to be honest, the overall feeling is pretty much exactly the same and that’s really what we want. Evolve and tweak it in little steps all you like, guys, but just keep floating on that swamp that suits you so well, guys.
Full Of Hell And Nothing
When No Birds Sang
(Closed Casket Activities)
Another month, another Full Of Hell collaboration, right? After a colossal record in the company of Primitive Man (which we covered on the March edition of The Devil’s Month), they end 2023 on a high with another very tastefully-chosen collaboration companion besides them, the stars of modern heavy shoegaze NOTHING. Just as the aforementioned collaboration with Primitive Man seemed to highlight some characteristics of both bands and smash them together to achieve something greater, that is also the musical approach on this album. First of all, it has to be said that the result of having the majority of the two line-ups (Full Of Hell’s Dylan Walker, Spencer Hazard, Dave Bland and Sam DiGristine, and NOTHING’s Domenic Palermo and Doyle Martin) working physically together for the whole process instead of throwing demos back and forth like these things are usually put together is remarkable, you could be fooled thinking this was the work of one solid band if you didn’t know, and hey, that’s pretty much what these six people were for this duration. Even so, some of the more important separate aspects of each band’s personality made it in there - the rabid ferociousness of Full Of Hell and NOTHING’s knack for simple, ethereal beauty, as contradictory as both seem, are both very much present, and it’s the delicate balance between them that elevates the record to something very special. Adding vulnerability to rage but also adding an untold depth of weight to barely-there fragility only heightens the feelings on display, and in the end this could well be called either the most vicious shoegaze album ever, or the most delicate sludge-grind album ever. That it isn’t quite any of those but something more, is testament to how well the elements were concocted together by the bands into this tremendous whole.
Harp
Albion
(Bella Union)
Almost a decade and a half after his last album with them, 2010’s gorgeous ‘The Courage Of Others‘, former Midlake frontman Tim Smith appears with a new project, Harp, alongside his wife Kathi Zung (who is also, interestingly enough, a veteran puppetmaker that has even worked with Guillermo Del Toro!). He describes it as a cross of inspirations between William Blake and The Cure, which already gives you some kind of hint, but do feel free to add the whole Canterbury folk scene, The Smiths, Fleetwood Mac, Gwydion Pendderwen or Cocteau Twins to that mix, with hints of Radiohead’s earthier moments and the evocative emotional power of Barclay James Harvest thrown in for good measure. Mostly acoustic-driven, the songs on ‘Albion’ are simple, yet never simplistic, as they effortlessly hark back to an age long gone by, curiously feeling alternatively historical or fictional, never in an overbearing fantasy swords-and-wizards kind of way but more in a storytelling, dreamlike kind of atmosphere. A beautiful record that will never fail to create a unique atmosphere every time you play it.
Health
Rat Wars
(Loma Vista Recordings)
HEALTH really got extremely prolific from a certain point on, and ‘Rat Wars’ is already their fourth album since kicking into that higher gear sometime around 2019. As soon as the main riff on opener ‘DEMIGODS’ kicks in, you will instantly feel at home in familiar Nine Inch Nails territory, and while the songs do go to a lot of other places as they develop, with vocalist Jake Duzsik in particular introducing a lot of different moods with his expressive delivery, that is the general ballpark of the thing. They don’t shy away from it either, calling the album “The Downward Spiral for people with at least two monitors and a vitamin D deficiency” on their Bandcamp page. It’s funny because it’s true. Less funny but equally true, they also say that it’s “a definitive statement on the insanity and the insipidness of contemporary life,” which definitely translates in the harsher, rawer approach that it exhibits. By far their toughest record yet, but with heaps of groove and feeling underneath its hardened industrial exterior.