Showing posts with label Skyharbor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Skyharbor. Show all posts

23 December 2014

FREE MUSIC MONDAY: 22/12/2014

Free Music Monday does exactly what it says on the tin. Every Monday I will scour BandCamp for only the best free albums.

Free Music.

Every Monday!

Got that? Good.

Let's begin. 




Anup Sastry – Titan



The world of one-man Djent projects tend to fall into certain patterns. In the minority you have the unfairly talented people who are able to play every instrument they need with more skill than most of us can dream to play one. Damn you Ben Sharp, Damn you. For mere mortals however, machine aid must be sought. Often you’ll find that an artist will track guitars and bass and shove Superior Drummer 2 in the mix for their percussive requirements. The drummer for Skyharbor, Intervals and Jeff Loomis, Anup Sastry, however, has done things in reverse. The only real instrument on this impressively meaty Djent album, are the drums, but it’s very hard to tell.

Call it a criticism of the oft over-produced nature of Djent if you will, but even without such loaded opinions to back it up, this is one hell of a release. Despite being a drummer at heart it seems that Anup has the art of melody writing pretty well covered. This album djents in all the right ways and in all the right places. In reality it is perhaps not that surprising that this album is as solid as it is. Good Djent, in my opinion, requires two things; a good sense of groove and rhythm and a strong ear for melody, both of which are present here. As the rhythmic power house behind many a progressive band as well as for two bands that both appeared on our best of 2014 list, I wouldn't be surprised if some of that Melody work has rubbed off on him. If nothing else, this is worth a listen just to see how that programmed guitars sound.

(Spoiler: Better than you’d expect.)

Nicholas Nicholas – Wrong



Brooklyn project Nicholas Nicholas’ brand of Shoegazey Dream Pop is somehow both nostalgic and comforting whilst still feeling new and interesting. Wrong feels like a distant memory, something from your childhood half forgotten. The production is unashamedly inspired by the 80’s. Old school synths, guitar and drum tones that wouldn’t feel out of place on a The Cure record and, perhaps unsurprisingly for a Shoegaze record, reverb and delay on basically everything. While it is influenced by this 30 year old sound however, it retains a sense of modernity that prevents Wrong from simply becoming another throw back release.

The ambience of this album may best be described by a faded photograph, perhaps a photo of yourself when you were very young. There’s nostalgia, sadness of things passed, but it’s warm; bittersweet perhaps being the best word to use, but the album, despite its title, refuses to become completely morose.

The guitars drone ethereally as you expect and the melodies both from the guitar and mouth are hauntingly delayed to the point of incomprehensibility. It is all very Shoegaze, very solid, but nothing unexpected. I don’t see the album causing any hardcore fan of Shoegaze proclaiming this to be the future of the genre and all that came before it are now irrelevant. But it certainly is a great example of the genre and well worth a listen.

Elizabeth Veldon – Music For The Solstice



As today marks celebrations for the Winter Solstice over on the Salisbury Plains, it seems apt to include an album released just for the occasion. Glaswegian Experimental Noise Aritst (as if there’s a non-Experimental Noise Artist) released Music For The Solstice on December 21st, which the actual date of the Solstice according to Google.

Citing John Cage as a major influence, it is unsurprising that much of this album is quiet to the point of silence. This is not an album to have on in the background, as I made the mistake of doing on a first listen. This is an abstraction of ideas and is something that should be paid attention to. Music For The Solstice represents what the event means to Elizabeth Veldon, realised in processed sine waves. It may not make sense to anyone else, but that’s okay. Music is a very personal expression and that is what I believe this to be, pure personal expression. It is perhaps not something you would listen to over and over, but on this, the darkest night of the year, it might be worth sitting alone with your headphones for half an hour and reflecting.

this is music for the solstice, designed for headphones. 
listen in the dark, wrapped in sound.
Interested in having your band featured on this weekly article? E-mail us at pyramidnoise@gmail.com with the subject line "Free Metal Monday" with links to your Bandcamp page.

20 December 2014

BEST ALBUMS OF 2014: #20 - 11


It's finally here, after a few delays we're ready to continue from last weeks' Best Albums of 2014 countdown from #30 to #21 (Not seen it? Click here!) Maybe that album you were so angry wasn't on that list will be on here, or maybe it won't, maybe you'll still be mad and can rage in the comments. It'll be fun.

Either way, it's time for Part 2 of Pyramid Noise's Best Albums of 2014!


Want to listen along as you read? Then find the 8Tracks Playlist here, or embedded at the bottom of the page!

20: Electric Wizard – Time To Die

We have to face the fact that Electric Wizard are never going to release another Dopethrone. That doesn’t, however, mean that they are incapable of releasing another good album. Dopethrone is pretty much the best Stoner Doom album ever made; it’s hard to top that and highly unfair to dismiss Time To Die off hand, as many fans have done. The UK Stoner Titans continue their ramblings into the world of psychedelia with an album that will lull you into a hypnotic state… whilst gnawing on your jugular. This is pure, filthy, desperate, evil pressed on to wax.

Or it is if you own the vinyl, else it’s burnt onto glass and plastic and that just doesn't have the same ring to it.  

19: The Great Old Ones – Tekeli-li

The cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft is a popular theme in Metal. Nothing is perhaps more metal than realising your own insignificance in the face of monstrous space beasts that will send you completely insane just from looking at them. No, not even Satan is that metal. Few bands however, truly capture the essence of Lovecraft’s nihilistic Cosmicism; the worst offender in my books being Cradle of Filth’s Cthulhu. The Great Old Ones’ brand of Melodic Post-Black Metal, however, captures this aura of inescapable doom perfectly with an album as multi-dimensional as its subject matter. From the brooding string opening of Je Ne Suis Pas Fou to the final, lonely notes of Behind The Mountains, Tekeli-li is a grandiose, yet darkly ambient, homage to one of horrors greats.

18: Fallujah – The Flesh Prevails

While I was not caught up in the same hype avalanche as the rest of the metal community, which may account for its mid-tier position on this list, I still immensely enjoyed Fallujah’s follow-up to 2013’s Nomadic EP. Having shed the last vestiges of their Deathcore past, these San Franciscan’s have embraced a sound that is somewhere between technical and progressive and atmospheric and beautiful. The Flesh Prevails is most definitely a death metal album, though it is so much more than that, but simply calling it a Progressive Death Metal album still does not quite capture what this release is all about. It is an album of lights and shades running parallel, becoming intertwined and tangled and then breaking free of each other; it has all the makings of a modern classic.

17: Unearth – Watchers of Rule

Unearth prove that early 2000’s Metalcore still has the scope to be awesome. Whilst other contemporaries of Lamb of God and the NWOAHM movement are dropping like flies, Unearth are soldiering forth, or rather, they are part of a war charge. Watchers of Rule may not break the rules found in the Class of 2005 Metalcore battle plan, it’s questionable if it even bends them, but it does use them to full, ferocious, effect. Whilst a lot of Metalcore bands write songs based around catchy choruses or simple open string chugging, Watchers of Rule is based on riffs, and there are killer riffs to be found on every track of this album. This is the American four piece, and perhaps even the genre, at its best.

16: Bloodshot Dawn – Demons

If you had told me a few years ago that one of the best Melodic Death Albums of 2014 came not from snow swept Sweden, but from the British Seaside town of Portsmouth, I would have had you burnt at the steak for heresy. 

BURN THE HERETIC, BUUUUURN. 

This, however, is exactly what we find. Bloodshot Dawn, in Demons, have released a relentless metal album. The variety on display here is remarkable and the finger blistering riffs often take you by surprise. This is more than just good old fashioned Melodic Death Metal, the British metalers have taken inspiration from every far-flung corner of extreme music. Bloodshot Dawn’s self-titled debut was a band showing their potential, Demons is a band breaking it wide open.

15: Skyharbor – Guiding Lights

Guiding Lights is the easy listening Djent album you didn’t know you wanted. If Intervals A Voice Within (featured on part one of this list) could be said to be Djent filtered through the melodious hooks of pop music, Skyharbor’s sophomore release is filtered through Post-Rock. The focus here is on atmosphere, yes the mainstays of the genre remain, but even those are toned down in order to serve the greater atmospheric goal. All aspects of Guiding Lights have been crafted in a way to create ambience; the vocals range from soaring to soft and haunting, the guitars can go from dirty groove machines to whispers on the wind in seconds and the electronics are suitably chilled. Skyharbor share Intervals’ ability to write expertly realised songs in a genre known for the riff-salad approach, the difference is that Skyharbor just do it better.

14: Ne Obliviscaris – Citadel

This is a hard album to write about. Citadel is complex, it’s progressive, it’s beautiful and, I’ll admit, a little bit wanky. What defines this sophomore effort from Ne Obliviscaris, however, is the tangible skill that has gone into each track. Every journey (I hesitate to use the word song as 5 of the 6 tracks are parts of greater wholes) is wonderfully constructed, climbing the mountains of metal aggression and traversing green valleys in beauteous violin sections; both are executed brilliantly. In this writers humble (but correct) opinion Citadel is the album Fallujah wanted to write. Whilst both bands have written incredible albums, Ne Obliviscaris possess a cohesion of thought and skill in composition that is difficult to match.

13: Perturbator – Dangerous Days

This will perhaps be the only time on this list that a music video is mandatory viewing prior to reading an album’s entry. 





Go on, I’ll wait.


Done? Good.

DID YOU SEE HOW COOL THAT WAS!? THAT’S PURE MULLETED, SHOULDER-PADED BADDASSERY IN MUSIC FORM! This is easily my favourite electronic release of the year. While you may only know of Perturbator for that one track he did on the Hotline Miami soundtrack, the music is worth far more than that limited exposure. His brand of retro-style synth pop sounds like it should be playing in a gothy night club, owned by a bad guy from a late 80’s action movie. It’s dark, sexy, paradoxically cheesy and endlessly enjoyable.

12: Hang The Bastard – Sex in the Seventh Circle

Hang The Bastard are putting the occult back into sludge metal. Sex in the Seventh Circle delivers deranged mix of Doom and Hardcore that hits hard and slow and has groove to spare. Occult themes and imagery are expertly coupled with mammoth stomping riffs and Black Metal style vocals (which makes more sense when you consider their Blackened Hardcore past.) It’s a truly strange mix; Crowbar-esque riffing, Hardcore energy and Black Metal screeches all merge together to form a lumbering, gestalt beast that is out for blood and human sacrifice. And it’s fantastic. Sex in the Seventh Circle is half Hammer Horror, half Hammer Smashed Face.

11: Job For a Cowboy – Sun Eater

I’ll get this out of the way, prior to Sun Eater I did not care for Job For A Cowboy. I saw them live, listened to songs on youtube, I just did not like what I perceived to be their kind of stale, soulless extreme music. So for Sun Eater to make it on this list? That is a big deal. Job For a Cowboy are no longer the Deathcore poster child they once were. Sun Eater has more in common with Technical and Progressive Death Metal (especially evident in that rubbery bass sound that sits high in the mix) than it does with Deathcore. This huge departure in sound has served the Amazonians well, the music retains the aggression and heaviness from their core-cantered past, but the sonic move has resulted in a complex and engaging album. Sun Eater feature top notch performances from every member and proves that a Zebra can perhaps change its stripes, and for the better.

That is it for this, the second part of the Pyramid Noise 2014 countdown! Come back soon for the third and final part! Do you disagree with any of these choices? (Of course you do.) Then let us know in the comments below!