THE DEVIL'S MONTH: November 2024
Rounding up some of the finest releases of the previous month - now including Andy's picks too!
The end of the year is nigh, and with 2024 having been yet another decisive step towards a gruesome extinction, we have to rely on music more than ever to keep our spirits up somehow. Neurot Recordings have a great slogan they use on social media, “Music will get us through”, and yeah, on our rapidly quickening death march as a species, music will be one of the few things we will remember fondly when the last lights fade out. And there’s been plenty of awesome music this year, as you will realise next week when the usual massive year end lists begin to fill this space up - which is precisely why both me and Andy have limited our picks to just three this month. In a few days this will be a whirlwind of records and recommendations and endless name-dropping, so let’s contain ourselves to the absolutely essential and give you a little headspace so you can still stand the sight of a list of records in a few days time. As always, our esteemed partners Mondo Negro are your best bet if you want to treat someone to the gift of good music these holidays, so head over there to see what bargains you can find after hopefully being inspired by reading our round-up.
Bedsore
Dreaming The Strife For Love
(20 Buck Spin)
Even with progressive death metal being a thing for quite a while now, there are few bands that really nail a formula capable of pushing all the buttons we expect from that sonic categorisation. Mind you, it’s not easy - though they might share more in common than you might think at a first glance, what we perceive by the umbrella terms “prog” and “death metal” are two things that are often pointing in opposite directions. Bedsore, however, have always combined the two things effortlessly, and what’s more, they show with this new album that just because their 2020 debut ‘Hypnagogic Hallucinations‘ was a rich tapestry of naturally flowing, fierce yet complex progressive death metal in the real sense of what that should mean, they’re not about to repeat it just because it worked so well. ‘Dreaming The Strife For Love’ further reinforces the Italian band’s love of King Crimson in their mastery of large-scope songwriting or Ennio Morricone for their obvious cinematic ambitions, and while overall it does seem a tad less extreme than the debut, the death metal element is still very much there. Not as an excuse to still seem “heavy” or whatever, but as a rich element, as important to the entire piece as the unfolding synths, the remarkably creative drum work or the wide-angle atmospheres. Complex and packed full of details, it’s an album that will take a little while to settle, but it’s immensely rewarding once it does. Also, you’ll be able to instantly counterpoint anyone who says prog death metal is boring because they heard Obscura once or some shit like that.
Paysage D'Hiver
Die Berge
(Kunsthall Produktionen)
From 1998 to 2017, Paysage D’Hiver were one of the best kept secrets in the underground, a one-man project that released only demos, each of them a different chapter of a slowly unraveling story featuring a mysterious protagonist known only as Der Wanderer. With 2020’s ‘Im Wald’, the project’s first full-length album, it seems that the floodgates of recognition suddenly opened, even if the music itself didn’t change all that much in terms of its style and scope - hell, that record even made it onto the German charts, which for a raw black metal opus is quite a brag. Main man Whinterr seems to have taken the taste for slightly more elaborate, fleshed out productions, and so ‘Geister’ followed in 2021 and now third “proper” album ‘Die Berge’ is with us. Not to detract any of its immense value, but if you’re a follower of Paysage D’Hiver, you know exactly what you’re getting - another vastly sprawling affair, around an hour and a half of profoundly evocative music, as the blastbeats and the memorable riffs and the bellowed, otherworldly beastly vocals all merge into one stream of consciousness ice pick making its way deep down into your brain. It’s undeniably harsh music, but at the same time completely enveloping and welcoming in an eye-of-the-storm kind of way. Hypnotic is an overused term for describing music, but here it’s simply accurate. Once you’re done with it, time itself will have reshaped and twisted itself around the listening session (the end of the first eighteen-minute song alone feels like the closing of a huge epic that has lasted for three hours, while the last notes of closer ‘Gipfel’ will make you seriously doubt you’ve actually been at it for an hour and a half), and you’ll truly feel like you’ve been a silent watcher to Der Wanderer’s, erm, wanderings. There is sometimes a more dramatic air of finality to some of the compositions, and in fact the blurb on the project’s Bandcamp hints at something, saying that this is “the 14th chapter, which might end up as his last. The main theme of "Die Berge" is death and this time the enigmatic wanderer's journey is comparable to that of a Zen monk who hikes to the peak of a mountain on feeling that his time has come,” so if this does indeed turn out to be a closing chapter of this monumental saga, it’s a hell of a fantastic way to bow out.
Planes Mistaken For Stars
Do You Still Love Me?
(Deathwish Inc.)
The answer is yes, by the way, guys. Of course we do. How could we not? But love always comes with a cost, of course, and if you’re more than just a casual fan of Planes Mistaken For Stars, if this band and the people in it ever meant anything to you, be warned that this posthumous record will break you at some point. If you’re anything like me, it’ll be right during opener ‘Matthew Is Dead’, about the death of founding guitarist Matt Bellinger, where the also tragically deceased Gared O’Donnell comes undone himself rasping out “you’re dead you’re dead you’re dead” followed by a harrowingly real bout of screaming and breaking glass. ‘Do You Still Love Me?’ features Gared’s last recordings, made during the pandemic, when he was going through chemo and radiation treatments for the cancer that ultimately claimed his life, so no, it’s not going to be an easy listen. Not that Planes ever were an easy-listening band - what always drew me and countless others to their music has always been this absolutely raw take on emotions, tragedies, death, but also life and elation and catharsis. In that way, this is kind of the ultimate Planes record, its poignancy heightened to the max, a logical conclusion to a body of music that has always teetered on the edge of oblivion, laughing as much as it cried, kicking out all the jams it ever could before the final inevitable sweep of death took them away. And as much as it will break you, it will also, eventually, allow you to forget yourself, to let go of the pain and the tragedy that are at its origin, and just massively rock out, throwing yourself into the walls and other like-minded companions as the riffs and the words and the beats keep coming hard and fast. In the end, it’s all love.
Blu Anxxiety - Morbid Now, Morbid Later (Toxic State Records)
I’ve only come across this lately and as it’s new to me I’ll take the liberty of reviewing it for November 2024. Chaotic freestyle goth industrial punk hip hop darkness. Gloriously unfettered from any particular genre but with an intense current of eldritch delights inhabiting each track. ‘Fog’ has elements of Bauhaus, ‘500 Years’ follows a warped and degraded keyboard intro with EBM whiplashes of synthetic drums and beautifully cracked, sombre vocal lamentations. Highlight ‘Too Stressed To Be Possessed’ ends the set with a Butthole Surfers meet Front 242 cacophony.
Die Verlierer - Notausgang (Mangel Records)
This release is definitely in my records of the year. Berlin punk/post punk/garage rock gang who seem to cross melodic ramalama punk with Joy Division circa ‘Unknown Pleasures’. Among the blazing power chords and terrace chorus vocals there are guitar sounds reminiscent of Carlos Alomar’s fretwork on Bowie’s ‘Berlin Trilogy’ of ‘Low’, ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lodger’ and motorik drums. ‘Stacheldraht’ manages to pull off the trick of sounding simultaneously glamorous and exhausted, ‘Beton’ and ‘Fickt Diese Stadt’ throttle along not unlike some of Wire’s more uptempto tracks and ‘Attentat’ serves up bulldozing whooses of guitar noise under an addictive, repetitive vocal refrain. Diese Musik ist wunderbar!
False Reality - Path Of Self Destruct (Hassle Records)
London hardcore with a great ear for hooks and riffs all delivered with gale force aplomb. The guitars are wound tight, the drums and bass deliver maximum damage and the voice attacks in a register that cuts straight to the point. With hardcore having a moment again and some bands already falling back into ‘bro’ tropes this sits out and apart from the following pack.
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