The Rock Blogger

The Angelic Process. Weighing Souls With Sand. 2007. 3.5 stars.

Before disbanding at the end of 2007, Georgia’s The Angelic Process crafted this final epic, merging ambient and metal styles into a grand and mournful vision. Weighing Souls With Sand is best described as a massive wall of sound, reverberating with druggy shoegazing riffs and martial drumming, playing in the same league as post-metal bands like Jesu and newcomers Have a Nice Life.

While those other acts punctuate their sound with punk or industrial touches, The Angelic Process pushes more towards dark ambiance and experimentation, creating long emotive tracks that slowly unfold into fuzzed out and noisy climaxes, immersing you in their hazy atmosphere. Weighing Souls With Sand is a majestic accomplishment, with its hypnotic drones, ethereal and distant vocals and the sheer depth of its sound, the transcendental aspirations of the band are immediately fulfilled.

The only major criticism I can throw at this album is that the band far more concentrated on atmosphere than producing distinctive song structures, letting all the tracks bleed into each other with little variation between them. Whereas Jesu for instance will add to the variety on their releases by emphasizing different melodic elements, tones and vocal styles, The Angelic Process seem entranced by their own beauty and can’t avoid the sameness that falls across this otherwise fantastic record. However, if Weighing Souls is taken as a cohesive and psychedelic sonic experiment, rather than a collection of songs, than the listener is sure to find the whole experience rewarding. While the band is no longer creating music, as an unfortunate injury has left the guitarist unable to play fully, this release is a satisfying summation of an interesting trend in underground metal.

Have a Nice Life. Deathconsciousness. 2008. 5 stars.

Sometimes, the conditions are just right for the appreciation of new music. I first started exploring Have a Nice Life’s double album debut as I was leaving my house at 5:45 am last Saturday, still in a somnambulist daze, feeling the cold winter night across my face while overlooking the city lights of Toronto from the lonely hilltop leading my street to the empty road heading south. It was in those moments of dreary isolation, where it felt like the only living souls were miles away in the distance, that the early moments of Deathconsciousness began to seep in. This is record, though far from perfect, delivers an emotional wallop that seems unparalleled. A mysterious synthesis of post-punk, shoegaze, metal and post-rock, Have a Nice Life’s ghostly ruminations aren’t just careful homages to their favorite genres and influences, they instead push the boundaries of them to get to their dramatic core, presenting a perfect summation of where the underground has been and where it will be going.

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Vic Chesnutt. North Star Deserter. 2007. 4 stars.

I had just recently discovered Vic Chesnutt, the celebrated folk/rock songwriter from Athens Georgia, after learning that A Silver Mt. Zion, one of my favorite post rock bands, lent their orchestral stylings to this harrowing album. Recorded at the now legendary Hotel2Tango in Montreal, Chesnutt’s collaboration, which also includes members of Fugazi and Godspeed You Black Emperor, fits beautifully among Constellation Record’s rustic yet avant garde catalog.

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Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

- William Butler Yeats The Second Coming 1920.

65DaysofStatic. The Destruction of Small Ideas. 2007. 3 stars.

A lively and intricate post-rock album, The Destruction of Small Ideas has the UK’s 65DaysofStatic taking their math rock stylings and pushing them into new and interesting directions. Rather than delving into the soft-loud, slow burn dynamics of other post rock bands like Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky, 65Days opt for more spastic and immediate exercises, weaving technical and complex guitar work with hammering piano lines, synth-stings and electronica-tinged drum beats a la Venetian Snares.

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While on the ride home from work today, I was drifting off to sleep with the post-rock band Labradford playing on my iPod. It was a strange experience to say to least, having the sunlight splatter shifting colors behind my eyelids while the haunting ambiance set in. While partially asleep, I could still hear the jangling guitar and soothing drones weave in and out, as my body slipped into some subdued state of paralysis. When I got home, I found this strange video and it seemed to capture the mood. This song is from their debut album Prazision.

Japan’s psychedelic masters return to the fray with their newest LP Smile to be released on Southern Lord on April 29th. The label will also release a 7” single for “Statement” which will also feature the B-side “Floorshaker” on February 26. If their last collaboration album with Merzbow was any indication, Smile is going to be a massive, blistering record.

Stay Tuned.

Venetian Snares. My Downfall (Original Soundtrack). 2007. 4.5 stars.

Winnipeg’s Aaron Funk can feel my pain. Hailing from the frozen prairies, Funk (yes that is his birth name), has crafted cinematic suites that seem to capture the chills of a dark, Canadian winter. Under his Venetian Snares moniker, Funk revels in insanely kinetic drum and bass compositions (a la Aphex Twin), that blend seamlessly with weeping classical string, synth and choral movements - treading in the same post-rock shadows as Godspeed You Black Emperor, Mono and World’s End Girlfriend.

The combination of seemingly disparate musical forces is surprisingly seamless and fluid, allowing Funk to craft a unique musical language of his own, touching on his most frantic, isolated or contemplative frames of mind. The album’s progression moves from haunting choir samples and moving string arrangements to drilling beats and then back again, maintaining lush and organic transitions that are as emotive as they are composotitonally complex.

My Downfall provides, like its proto-classical contemporaries,  a soundtrack to a movie never made, with all its tension filled buildups, chaotic breakdowns and exhilarating climaxes. If you are looking for a companion piece for your winter odysseys, look no further than Venetian Snares.

Boris with Merzbow. Rock Dream 2007. 5 stars.

Easily one of the most intense live albums I’ve ever come across, this 2 disc collaboration between psychedelic/drone masters Boris and famed Japanese noise artist Merzbow is a sublime exercise in wailing guitar solos, monstrous feedback, distortion and impossibly raw energy - this rocks you to the core.

The first disc features the mammoth, 35 minute “Feedbacker”, where Boris lays down their heaviest guitar drones as Merzbow plays deliriously with delays and electronic effects, creating an incredibly dense wall of sound that progressively swallows up everything in its path. The following three tracks edge off into shorter bursts of propulsive noise and jangly guitar solos, with neither artist overpowering the other. The timing and pacing between them is impeccable.

The second disc is a more prominent showcase of Boris’ more punk inspired diversions, as the band rips through the most powerful and energetic tracks from their 2005 LP Pink. Just as that album rollicked in reckless abandon, their live counterparts are equally explosive.

For those not familiar with the work of either Boris or Merzbow, this is an excellent place to start. Rock Dream, in all its fuzzed out and psychedelic glory, has raised the watermark for all the rock genres Boris has dabbled in, from punk to drone to the avant garde.

Kayo Dot Choirs of the Eye. 2003. 4 stars

Kayo Dot. Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue. 2006. 4 stars.

Kayo Dot are a psychedelic metal outfit that formed out of the ashes of Maudlin of the Well, a progressive metal band that acquired a cult following in the underground scene. These two albums demonstrate the intense vocal abilities of the band’s mastermind Toby Driver as he verges from spine-chilling wails to hushed, harmonic whispers. Musically, the band sprawls in many exciting directions, using many fluid jazz arrangements, crunching metal riffs and waves of spectacular cymbal crashes. Defiantly one of the standout acts to emerge from the progressive metal scene, Kayo Dot’s jazz-metal explorations continues to challenge and reveal themselves over many listens.