THE DEVIL'S MONTH: June 2025
Rounding up some of the finest releases of the previous month - including Andy's picks too!
“I have friends everywhere” has not only become a great Andor reference by now, but it has kind of become a symbol for resistance to oppression among the most empathetic of us, at least. And fuck knows we need a lot of resistance right now. Fortunately, it’s also been an expression that has resonated a lot with me lately, so I would like to use this intro for a few shout outs.
First of all, to our partners in crime at Mondo Negro who are going through a particularly exciting period - their new website has just launched and you are hereby mandated to go check it out right now. And don’t come back without a couple of awesome records in your cart at least.
Another constant but never sufficient acknowledgement to our beloved Andy Cairns - even in-between surgeries (one knee is already bionic, the other one coming soon!), in the middle of rehearsals and writing for the forthcoming and surely awesome new Therapy? album and on festival season, Andy still finds the time to share his amazing monthly picks with all of us through TDM. You know why? Because he’s the best, that’s why. Oh, and I’m particularly happy he’s kept going this month, because finally it happened - we have picked the same record in both our lists! That it took almost two years to happen should tell you something about the fantastic vitality of the alternative music underground scenes right now - it’s not like me and Andy listen to completely different music, and even picking five releases a month, it took all this time to finally hit on one that’s been picked by both. So the unanimity achievement is unlocked by Pyrex and their kickass new EP ‘Slugman’. It is in capable hands. As a little celebration, I’ve gone and made a list of six picks instead of five. If anyone cares. I mean, it’s not like you guys noticed that I slipped fourteen records into one of the 13 Underrated lists, did you? Now’s your chance to go count all of them to see which one it was and tell me that you knew all along. You’ll get a cookie if you do.
Also, speaking of you guys - thank you, you guys! Yes, you, reading this. Every day we get new subscribers, people commenting and liking and interacting with our posts, suggestions, ever-growing views, all of it. For what is essentially one dude in his underwear (summer in this country is not easy, okay) rambling at the internet from his home office where he will eventually die buried underneath too many toppling shelves of records and books, fortunately with a few classy friends roped in to clear the air a bit, we have come further than I ever imagined. And it’s all your fault.
Lastly, but by no means leastly, I’d like to extend my love to anyone who has had the extraordinary kindness of not only acquiring, but also giving me feedback on my recently released poetry thingy ‘Words Better Unsung’. It has warmed my heart to see your photos of the book with your pets and stuff. It wouldn’t have happened without Kjetil’s extraordinary foreword or any of the others I thank in the respective section of the book, so thank you again for being friends, everywhere.
Béton Armé
Renaissance
(La Vida Es Un Mus Discos)
Proper, old-school Oi! from this Montreal band like they almost don’t do it anymore. Even some of the bands who are actually good at this stuff sometimes feel like they’re going through genre-motions, but Béton Armé are one of the few who can still take a long-established, defined-in-stone genre like this and still inject new life, vitality and freshness to it. I don’t care whether you think you like Oi! or not - after ‘Renaissance’, you will. Each song an anthem, each dance feeling like the last one of your life, each chorus (even if sung in French - you’ll fucking learn French for this if you have to) the most meaningful in the world, each gang chant an “I have friends everywhere” rallying call. Now go.
Caspar Brötzmann Massaker
it’s a love song
(Exile On Mainstream / Corbett vs. Dempsey)
Now there’s an example of an artist who is most emphatically not tone deaf and realises the state of the world around him. A new Massaker studio album was planned and being prepared - and it will eventually be released after this -, but given the current zeitgeist and its many horrors, Caspar decided instead to employ his significant creative powers for something more immediate, more meaningful, that reflects better all this violence happening around us. That is exactly the name of the track that constitutes the bulk of this unusual release - ‘All This Violence’ is here in two versions, performed live in Vienna and Dresden, and while it does feature the legendary musician’s habitual characteristics, the visceral, hypnotic intensity, the rumbling, unpredictable nature of the sound, the organic in-your-face urgency, all of those are amplified by the context in which the piece was created, and also the setting of its performances. As Caspar himself puts it, “my band Massaker (…) has always been my very own way of enduring the horrors of the world. I get the feeling of having done something that stands up against these horrors and I hope the album conveys not only this but so much more.” And that it does.
YouTube playlist with all three tracks here (hey $potify - fuck you)
Floating
Hesitating Lights
(Transcending Obscurity Records)
When I put together the 13 Underrated lists for death metal recently (here and here), I debated the inclusion of Floating for a little while, in the same spirit as I did with Chiaroscuro, to have something new in there. Thing is, I get the feeling this band and its records will not go underrated for much longer. It’s simply too appealing for it to keep holding its best kept secret status. So, to reduce it to its simplest description, Floating mix death metal with post-punk, and though there’s a lot more to it than that, the idea of that result alone should get you excited enough to press play already. Which you really should, because despite the overall density of the sound and the absolute excess of details and detours these Uppsala natives take all through the album, it never really feels overwhelming. The way those The Cure riffs blend into the death metal rumble and roar on the first track alone is not only unique, but absolutely immediate. It never feels forced either, this isn’t a ‘The Fly’ sort of situation where two separate animals are merged to form an ungodly beast that eventually deteriorates (okay, I should have said spoilers, but after 40 years I trust you to know what happens in it by now). Nope, it all flows so well that you almost start to believe that Siouxsie and the Autopsies was always a thing. The best thing about it is that this collision brings out two often unspoken characteristics in the respective genres it plunders from - a subtletly and emotional vulnerability that is so often lacking in death metal but where it also should belong, and the punching power of post-punk that some of its decisive cornerstones also offer and is greatly amplified here. If the right people start paying attention, Floating can become sort of what we all wished Tribulation would have been.
Lead Into Gold
Knife The Ally
(Artoffact Records)
Especially with AI becoming a daily-discussed subject in the last few years, the images of a dystopian future where the machines take over and obliterate us puny humans have become even more present in our already sci-fi enriched subconscious, and so it’s easy for us lazy hacks to draw on that for comparisons when we get an industrial, machinery-driven record to talk about. Thing is, Lead Into Gold isn’t really menacing in a nasty way from beginning to end, as most of this music tends to be. Everyone seems to be looking to sound like the most evil robot when they pick up their gadgetry to make music, so it does make sense that one of the few going against the norm is none other than Paul Ion Barker. The very same that you’re thinking, yes, of the golden age of Ministry, as well as other related bands like Lard or Revolting Cocks for instance. Ever since leaving Ministry in 2003 (though he reunited with Al Jourgensen last year for what should be Ministry’s final album), Paul has been very active on several fronts, including as a producer, but it’s his reactivated solo project Lead Into Gold that has always seemed to be his most interesting avenue, at least in terms of writing and performing music. His latest offering, ‘The Eternal Present’ (2023), was already a really great record, but ‘Knife The Ally’ seems poised to become one of the major highlights of an illustrious career. As I mentioned at the beginning, within the usual paramenters of industrial electronics, it’s not a particularly evil or aggressive record - I mean, some of the robots in the big machine uprising are bound to take our side, right? Think of this as one of those, a big, badass stomping metallic hulk who will make sure your kids make it to school alright. Because it’s in the textures, and in the infectiousness of the beats, that the fascination of this record resides, more than any aggro kind of approach. It’s not all a bed of beautiful roses, naturally, but as Paul sings hoarsely but with genuine emotional expression over these industrial beats, as the screeches and bleeps and thunderous basslines seem to merge stereogram-like into a fully flowing melody, there’s a whole gamut of feelings being transmitted in a way that is unusual for this kind of music. From joy to apathy, from disillusion to anxiety, from hope to thoughtfulness, ‘Knife The Ally’ is a deep, carefully crafted record that will make you think, feel, and most of all, enjoy yourself.
Pyrex
Slugman
(La Vida Es Un Mus Discos)
It was already as perfectly formed an eight-minute EP as you can possibly imagine, released on one of the coolest labels going at the moment and everything, but despite everything Pyrex have going for them, their biggest achievement has now become the fact they are the first band to be picked by both me and Andy for The Devil’s Month! I mean, it’s a bit silly to run them twice here, of course, I could have removed them from my list (which is even longer than usual this month), but this isn’t a normal publication in case you haven’t noticed, so fuck it. “Fuck it” also seems to be part of the ethos of this (post-)punk power trio from Brooklyn, judging by the amazing spontaneity on deliver here. Sporting what could well be a Lair Of The Minotaur album cover, the four tunes on this EP are delightfully raucous, letting out “prickly riffs and almost rockabilly rhythms with a bug-eyed, blasted throat, vocal delivery,” as our Andy puts it as only he can (why come up with other wordstuff when we already have the best saying it like it is, right?), left and right. It all feels raw and loose, all the songs featuring a nasty, bellicose tone to them that suggests they’d mug you and leave you with a few knife wounds if they ever met you in an alley, but at the same time the mix of hardcore punk aggression, post-punk gloominess and, as Andy once again nails it, a “motorik restlessness” that really comes to the fore on the last song (aptly titled ‘Menace’), all show that this isn’t just mindless noise. It’ll pummel you, but it’ll think about it too. Great combination.
Spider Kitten
The Truth Is Caustic To Love
(APF Records)
So Spider Kitten continue on their merry way, happily sounding like a totally different band from album to album, and sometimes, as it is the case with this crazy new album, even from song to song. I firmly believe the difficulty anyone will have in trying to write about this music and recommend it to someone else (and therefore, sell it) is the only reason these people aren’t superstars yet. Because they seem to be able to do anything brilliantly, so yeah, they’ll do anything. Seems simple. And in the end, it really is - it’s not like you’ll have headaches while listening, going “but whyyyy” or something. In fact, ‘The Truth Is Caustic To Love’ might end up as one of the most “listenable” Spider Kitten albums, not because it’s easy-listening in any way, but hey, it’s also not an experimental doom concept album of a folksludgeprog marathon about the pursuit of peace. And these are not random examples, just two of the latest things the band has thrown at us before this new one. No, this seems to be one of the most focused and more natural-sounding efforts on the band’s long catalogue, often cutting straight to the core of their Alice In Chains gone heavy doom kind of thing, which seems to be at the heart of most their explorations. Not to say that it isn’t as usual a rollercoaster of a listen, but mostly because of their inventiveness, the heavy riffs, the acoustics, the unhinged vocal approach, the dynamics of it all, more than any genre-shifting. And you know, I’m in no position to tell such a creative band what or how to do anything, but from my humble position as a listener, this is the way, guys. The prevailing hazy, ghostly Western vibe, like the Melvins playing in a dive bar on a Tarantino film, gives the songs a very particular kind of melancholy, and is a great setting for the whiskey-drenched tales of woe that Chi Lameo weaves with worrying sincerity and about-to-burst emotional intensity. The narrative is always genuine and cuts deep, be it through the medium heavy riffs and bellowing on top, or with an actual Morricone-on-acid bitter cowboy ballad like the amazing ‘Three Shots’. It’s theatrical, but it’s never theatre. Actually, a final word goes out to the now trio lineup consisting of main man Chi on vocals, guitars, bass and piano, Chris West (Taint, Capricorns live, you remember him) on drums, bass, backing vocals and guitars and the returned Rob Davies on guitars and bass, each of them putting on a staggering individual performance and each contributing decisively to a difficult, troubled album that tackles woe, guilt, redemption and even a bit of hope, with both downcast elegance and rowdy flair.
Birth (Defects) - Deceiver / Mirror (Reptilian Records)
From Baltimore, Maryland this fierce unit plays noise rock right! All the power and oddball twists you expect from the, ahem, genre, but with a compelling knack for memorable hooks (?). Like a sack full of audio punchlines being swung at head height in a packed room. There’s lots of brilliant touches throughout this album that constantly surprise and keep you alert. There are bits of The Jesus Lizard, ‘Bleach’-era Nirvana and even some early Mudhoney vibes. If you liked recent records by The Shits and Thee Alcoholics this will fit in perfectly. ‘Throne’ is a complete banger and ‘Trapped’ has a Shellac meets Helios Creed vibe which is irresistible.
Problem Patterns - I’m Fine and I’m Doing Great (Alcopop! Records)
Another absolutely stunning single from this Irish punk band. Guitars are grungy and gnarly as fuck, and the energy coming off this track is infectious. I’ve played this four times in a row already and it gets better every time. Problem Patterns really do know how to write crackers. Get this now.
Pyrex - Slugman (La Vida Es Un Mus Discos)
Caustic guitars and stamping rhythmic hardcore with strong touches of Crazy Spirit, Hoax and even Squirrel Bait in places. The title track is a perfect 1:46 of prickly riffs and almost rockabilly rhythms with a bug-eyed, blasted throat, vocal delivery. Closer ‘Menace’ spits twisted chaotic shards and discordance through amphetamine motorik relentlessness and yet manages to sound simultaneously anthemic.
Wayne Adams - Survival EP
Some seriously fucked up electronic brain food from super producer and owner of the mighty Bear Bites Horse Studio. ‘New Vessels’ has synapse sparking percussive slashes while mournful keys chatter, ‘Restored and Rewrapped’ begins with an apocalyptic heat haze before busting into broken fragments of industrial reflections. ‘Dissolve’ may be the track that most appeals to readers of this parish with endorphin rushing keys riding through shadowlands of intense drone and vox humana. ‘Energy in Motion’ sets out its stall like a bad robot waking up and reassembling itself before coming in full force with some heart racing percussive chicanery. Strong stuff.
Witch Club Satan - You Wildflower (Lost and Found Productions)
Starts off with a squeezed, cheese wire guitar not unlike Brown Jenkins and then takes a turn into blackened noise ferocity with a powerhouse vocal. There’s a beautiful despair dripping from this record which is affecting and life affirming.
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