Getting Laid at Bandcamp V
Welcome back to another edition of Getting Laid at Bandcamp! This week is filled with artists that tickle my fancy pants.
Stevie Floyd – Stevie Floyd/Aerial Ruin Split (Portland, Oregon)
When listening to this incredibly haunting split I can’t help but feel like I’m falling into a bottomless hole. The dark atmosphere and echoing voices from both Stevie Floyd and Erik Moggridge (Aerial Ruin) draws you in like a succubus and covers you with a cloak of sadness and despair. Strangely, this seem more like a collaboration between the two than a traditional split. I covered Stevie Floyd’s other project TAURUS in a past post. I’d highly recommend you check that out.
Tardigrada – Widrstand (Zürich/Basel, Switzerland)
Tardigrada are one of the best atmospheric black metal bands out there right now and this demo is damn good proof of that. One of the many reasons I find this demo to be extremely well done (aside from the overall greatness of the music) is the atmosphere and production value. Many atmospheric black metal bands are ruined by way to much reverb and low-fi production. Everything is clear here; the drums, the guitar, the synths, and the vocals (there is no bass guitar). Tardigrada have a very good formula for making their black metal soar and dominate at the same time.
THACLTHI – ..Erat Ante Oculos (Volterra, Italy)
The best way for me to describe this band is this: Imagine combining the massive bass guitar intensity of Electric Wizard and the hateful aggressiveness of Dragged Into Sunlight, mixed with the zany, atmospheric spaciness of Skáphe. You have to hear it to believe it. THACLTHI are certainly a rarity.
Last Words – S/T Raleigh, North Carolina)
It’s always great to find bands from your old stomping grounds. Last Words go hard on their first LP, playing some angry straight-edge female-fronted hardcore/fastcore that kicks you right in the teeth. Seriously though, this LP is a homewrecker. Marina Madden’ screams her angry lyrics with passionate aggression. “Trash and Dirt” is a personal favorite of of mine. Get mean!
Symptom – Caverns of Katabasis (Portland, Oregon)
Symptom is a 1-man band fronted by JT Gilmore that I’ve been sharing a lot the past couple of months. No one seems interested in giving JT a chance, which sort of amazes me because Symptom is best-of-2014 material. What we have here is some doom and death metal in the vein of bands like Disembowelment and Incantation. It mixes the driving, fast-paced death metal with melancholy doom very well. The structures and playing style on this album really remind me a lot of Disembowelment’s Transcendence into the Peripheral, which is one of my favorite death/doom metal albums of all time. Give this album a try; it’s one hell of a trip into dark bliss. I could play the song “Pnakotic” on repeat for an entire day and not get tired of it.
FUTURE – Abyss EP (Paris, France)
Yup, Tyree loves him some dark, spacey-sounding dark wave and shoegaze. Future sends the chills down the spine and soaks your soul in depression that somehow isn’t depressing. These lads have only put out a couple of EP’s in the last 2 years, so I’m hoping for a full length very soon. Let the reverb run through you! Embrace the the dark wave of pop!
Tyree’s banner art work of the week:
