{"id":125760,"date":"2025-02-13T09:00:30","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T15:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/?p=125760"},"modified":"2025-02-08T11:07:22","modified_gmt":"2025-02-08T17:07:22","slug":"mini-reviews-from-around-the-bowl-2-13-25","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toiletovhell.com\/mini-reviews-from-around-the-bowl-2-13-25\/","title":{"rendered":"Mini Reviews From Around the Bowl (2\/13\/25)"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Small reviews. Big flavor.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Year Of The Cobra<\/strong>\u00a0–\u00a0Year Of The Cobra<\/em><\/a>
\nProphecy Productions | February 28, 2025<\/p>\n

Doom. Sludge. Stoner. Desert. All these genres are cousins of the same basic premise: low-end groove. It takes more than just that to make an album and a band stick out. If you’ve ever been stuck at a show, forced to listen to 45 minutes of the same, generic bass line while some bedraggled vocalist wails about smoking on a mountain or whatever, it can be torturous. It’s when a band goes beyond the basics and incorporates tempo and melody and, y’know, actual songwriting can they truly stand out and be elevated among the drudgery of the genres. Year Of The Cobra stands head and shoulders above the middling masses. Each song on their self-titled album stands out as the band never rests on the laurels or depends on the slow-and-low trappings so many other bands fall into. Amy Tung Barrysmith’s vocals glide across the landscape as her bass rumbles and Jon Barrysmith’s drums drive us into parts unknown. It’s the little flourishes in each song that make them special, whether it’s backing keyboards, key changes, or vocal flourishes.\u00a0Year Of The Cobra<\/em> is the template for drum-and-bass bands and shows us that there’s so much room in all of these subgenres to grow and thrive.<\/p>\n

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Harvst<\/strong> – Mahlstrom<\/em><\/a>
\nIndependent | January 10, 2025<\/p>\n

Black metal, but with slick production, lyrics overflowing with feelings, and frequent use of clean vocals to drive those feelings home? Ew, ew, and ew again!<\/p>\n

Ostensibly ticking all of my hate boxes, Harvst nonetheless eroded my defenses in a manner that still surprises me. Never feeling hamstrung by their heavy hearts certainly doesn’t hurt; they keep the tempo and aggression up consistently enough while not relying on them so much that everything becomes a wall of noise without any footholds. As for those cleans, being slightly buried in the mix gives them a hazy, dreamy quality that appeals to my sympathy for shoegaze, making them a highlight rather than a nuisance. Rounding out the package is Harvst’s newly acquired drummer who, while always subservient to the bigger picture, still puts in enough little twists to keep attentive listeners occupied. Check out the fills and flourishes between the 1- and 2-minute marks in “Was die Erde nimmt” for a nice example.<\/p>\n

Regarding the lyrics, I’ll maintain I’m too far removed from my teenage self to not wince at lines like “I don’t know if I’ll ever smile again,” and I have some major gripes with the cover design, but I’ve found both issues easy to ignore as the record drew me in again and again. -Hans<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Offerbeest<\/strong> – The Stars Mock My Existence<\/em><\/a>
\nIndependent | January 4, 2025<\/p>\n

… and for His 57th project, Mories (Gnaw Their Tongues<\/strong> et al.) created Offerbeest, which used analog synths to dabble in harsh noise and power electronics, and He saw that it was good, although there may have been some bias there. But lo, as the project descended unto humankind for like the fourth or fifth time, it had shed most of its prior qualities, now humming and droning ominously, with mostly restrained noise elements slithering across imposing ambient walls while vocal samples spake matter-of-factly of unsettling things, occasionally glitching out, SHODAN style. And the people listened, and cried, “Lord, thou hast mercifully refrained from indulging in 20-minute experiments and hast kept thine compositions very digestible, and yea, we can even sort of sometimes make out semblances of song structures, much as we can still see the outlines of ruinous cities underneath all that water from the great flood thou hast sent for good reasons, we’re sure.” Scarcely had the people heard such a mixture of the calm and the creepy, and they rejoiced and praised the Lord, but they remained wary, for always it felt as if a terrible fate might lurk right around the corner, and that’s kinda the whole point of religion if you think about it. -Hans<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a><\/strong>Corroding Soul <\/strong>\u2013 Corroding Soul<\/em><\/a>
\nIndependent <\/strong> | January 24th, 2025
\nIn a world with thousands of monotonous one-man atmospheric black metal projects, Corroding Soul manages to stand out. David Lovejoy uses the genre-standard blasts, tremolos, and wails as a platform for an epic guitar showcase. Every track has a beautifully evocative hook that made me rewind and whisper \u201cdamn, that\u2019s good\u201d to myself. The long outro riff on \u201cBound\u201d is especially good. In a possibly unintentional way, the atmospherics give off a unique mythic adventure vibe, which should interest the dungeon-heads out there. If you\u2019re a fan of the genre at all, give this one a shot, he has the juice. — Joaquin<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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