Bloody Knives Get Bloodier

I was really impressed with Austin's industrial shoegaze trio Bloody Knives and their debut release back in 2010. A heady mixture of HEALTH and A Place To Bury Strangers, the tracks on Burn It All Down were relentless and loud - very loud. (check it out here if you missed out - silly.)

Well, I missed their Disappear EP from May last year (silly), but grabbed their Blood release recently. These punkish rogues have taken their aesthetic and twisted the dials to breaking point. It can be quite busy, and the noise can fight the actual melody of the song, but it's true that this trio are insistent on branding their music onto your soul. By the end of this listen, you'll be glad to oblige.

Bloody Knives - Blood
Bloody Knives - Death Blessing

Disappearing Languages

Disappears is an amazing, grossly underrated band. Their first record proper Lux was a fantastic broiling pot of motorik dissent. They backed this up with last year's Guider, an album that scraped onto our best of lists, not because it wasn't great, but because it felt like more of the same. It's on my list because more of the same is brilliant nonetheless. Since then Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley has joined the fray. Now the Chicago destroyers bring us Pre Language, an album that sticks to the mantra of "if it ain't broke..." and for the most part succeeds to reignite those heady sensations from Lux and Guider. The tracks alternate between the chugging repetitive pace of old with the lurking intensity of brooding slow numbers. Funnily enough it is these slower tracks that bog down the album a little, thus making their 3rd foray into the longplayer realm a less enjoyable listen. It's still pretty killer though, better than a lot (A LOT) of shit that is out there at the moment, so it's strongly recommended.


Pre Language can (and should, post haste) be grabbed here.

Disappears - Replicate
Disappears - Hibernation Sickness
Disappears - Brother Joliene

Your Sex Grows Over In This Church...

There was a time late last year when everyone seemed to be losing their shit over Sex Church, the Vancouver outfit whose music dealt in masochistic mayhem of the rustiest variety. Their Six Songs release was raw, brutal, and inherently enervating. Since then though, we have seen a surge of acts drink at the same fetid pond - namely TV Ghost and Brisbane's own Slug Guts. But where TV Ghost embrace a more indie-centric viewpoint to the industrial malaise (and I mean no disrespect - I think it is this pop aesthetic that elevates these guys to a much higher realm than most others plying their trade) and Slug Guts are more style over substance, Sex Church really seem to inhabit the rabid viscera contained within their performances. That's not to say these guys are worse than trash humpers - I'm sure they are lovely tea-sipping fellows? Or maybe THAT will be offensive to them? Maybe humping trash is their ultimate pastime? Whatever, the point is that this is REAL.


And on Growing Over, their latest on Load, Sex Church feel a little more cosy amongst the shards of jagged glass and broken syringes. Its insidious. It sometimes feels like Disappears headed by Rowland S Howard, at others like a freebasing Iceage. But comparisons are useless, like they always invariably are. All's can be said is that Growing Over is exactly that - Sex Church have just let the ether take them over to spew forth whatever it sees fit. Such abandon means that tracks either start with intent before tangentially chugging into the shadows, morph from garage staple to oozing wretch, or thrash you with a thousand hammers before kissing you deeply. Its skewed, somewhat brutal and a more than a little unhinged - and very, very real.

Sex Church - Waking Up
Sex Church - Beneath The Bottom