THE DEVIL'S MONTH: March 2023
Every first Thursday we round up some of the finest releases of the previous month.
You know the drill by now - thanks to our ongoing collaboration with the fine people over at the MONDO NEGRO store, which has now also extended to our special LABEL SPOTLIGHT feature, we have been bringing you a sweet montly round up of some of the most special records being released in every genre. So, after THE DEVIL’S MONTH of January and February, here are our choices for March. It’s an increasingly tough task to keep it to five picks given the staggering amount of quality that we have been witnessing in these first months of 2023, but this way you know you’re only getting prime cuts. Read on, enjoy, hopefully discover a new favourite or two, and do let us know in the comments what your March list of favourites looks like!
Deep Cross
Royal Water
(Roman Numeral / Somatic)
Have you noticed how a large percentage of every exciting new band popping up these days has post-punk as one of the most associated genres? It took three decades, but it seems that most people have finally figured out how to take the “new musick” of the late 70s and 80s and run with it to bold new places. That’s exactly what Deep Cross do on their new album ‘Royal Water’, restlessly adding industrial, noise, doom and electronics to an essentially post-punk template to create a truly haunting, dystopian yet strangely welcoming landscape. It’s a solid leap from their denser, more metallic 2017 self-titled debut, and from what we’ve heard of their songwriting process, never expect the same record to be done twice by this talented duo. With songs like the ferocious and at the same time dreamy opener ‘For Janus’ effortlessly imprinting themselves in your brain with the efficiency of a facehugger growing from within, these guys are on to something really special. Keep watching this space.
Kruelty
Untopia
(Profound Lore)
So you think slam is a boring genre? Tell you what, add a sprinkle of Japanese and East Coast 90s hardcore and some good old Swedish death metal, and brrrrling!, now you don’t anymore. That’s what Kruelty did, and the result is this surprisingly crushing record. When I interviewed them for the April issue of Decibel magazine, guitarist and songwriter Zuma threw bands like Purtenance, Rippikoulu, Corrupted, Crowbar and Electric Wizard at me as influences - hey, look at how well-dressed everyone is in that press pic (Pissgrave!!!) -, and all of them make sense once the quicksand of ‘Untopia’ starts dragging you under. A slimy, sludgy “I’m an old Crowbar tape” kind of sound galloping away on a stompy death metal tempo? I mean, what the fuck is there to not like here? Sign me up, all day long.
Lamp Of Murmuur
Saturnian Bloodstorm
(Argento / Not Kvlt)
It’s all well and good to appear out of the murky darkness with a mysterious new project that everyone falls head over heels for, and this does not at all diminish the merits of ‘Heir Of Ecliptical Romanticism’ or ‘Submission And Slavery‘, which are two fantastic, innovative and endlessly replayable albums, but the real test for projects like Lamp Of Murmuur really lies in their longevity, when the kvlt-new-thing appeal has waned a little, when you’re not the only one in your group of friends to have heard about that hot new raw BM name that no one knows about, and when they’ve even started to play live. Not that we know all that much about lone soul M. now, but as it would inevitably happen, this refreshing, gothic-tinged take on the genre has done a few rounds and reached a ton of people by now. So, does ‘Saturnian Bloodstorm’ succeed in raising your pulse as much as its predecessors, even if it’s coming from a “regular” band now? The answer is a resounding yes, especially because M. didn’t feel the need to remain stuck to the same formula. Featuring a much clearer and powerful sound, it gains in melodic richness and fist-pumping value what it might lose in rawness and spooky old-goth vibes. Gone are the days of covering Christian Death or Dead Can Dance, but on the other hand, in are the days of attempting a sort of 2023 version of Immortal’s finest hour, ‘At The Heart Of Winter’, with the same windswept, epic and strangely distant feel being applied to most of the songs, not to mention some stellar riffs and some properly twisted, albeit a bit too buried in the mix, different vocal styles. It’s a different Lamp Of Murmuur, for sure, but an equally fascinating one.
Primitive Man & Full Of Hell
Suffocating Hallucination
(Closed Casket Activities)
If we had been asked which collaboration we would have liked to have before this circle of friends in The Body / Lingua Ignota / Full Of Hell / Thou / Primitive Man / BIG|BRAVE / Emma Ruth Rundle / etc all started making records together, I’m certain this one would have topped the poll. As, arguably, the two nastiest bands of the bunch, you’d expect nothing short of a full-on barrage of corrosive, bludgeoning sonic hatred and disgust, and hey presto, that’s precisely what we got. Not that it’s a predictable album, in the sense that you never know what each song is going to do next, not even the hilariously brief ‘Bludgeon’ - which hits you with menacing feedback for about half of its 26 seconds, only to ‘You Suffer’ise you blisteringly for the other half -, but let’s face it, we were never expecting anything other than, well, a suffocating 35 minute hallucination. Even the more ambient parts are never welcoming, they all have a chill value akin to hiding in a dirty street corner at 3am with an army of serial killers looking for you. It feels like each band is trying to drag the other into its respective lake of filthy mud, with Full Of Hell on one end of the rope screaming “griiiiiiiind-doom!” and Primitive Man on the other bellowing out “doooooooom-grind!”, until the rope snaps, they all tumble over one another, and the resulting chaos is these five songs.
Terveet Kädet
Kaikki Kaikkia Vastaan
(Svart)
More than this album in particular (though it is still awesome!), this blurb is more of a reminder that the absolutely legendary Terveet Kädet, Finland’s very first hardcore punk band formed in 1980, a massive influence to household names such as Max Cavalera or Mike Patton, are back together again! They tried to retire in 2016, but screw that, their thrashy, raw brand of unstoppable hardcore punk is too good to just lay down and rest like a tired old man. Anyone who’s anyone has a Terveet Kädet story - take Babylon Whores’ Ike Vil, for instance, who told us a hilarious episode of his youth involving the delightfully titled ‘Pissaa Ja Paskaa’ song on a recent podcast episode - and if you don’t have one yet, well, this raucous new album is a good place to start as any. Jeesus perkele!