Kabul Golf Club - Le Bal Du Rat Mort (2012)

Finally sat down, grabbed a submission and mustered enough strength to do a proper review. Between preparing a fine amount of interviews for the blog and some rather bad and insane personal happenings, doing this write-up has been a tough ordeal. Still, the fact that this is posted now just shows that I still have some fuel left to run on.

Today will be washed in weird noises, wailing guitars and maniacal melodies. "Kabul Golf Club", a four-piece haling from Limburg, Belgium, brings forth the shredding sounds of noise-imbued mathrock. Formed in 2010, the quartet slowly worked on their material, eventually releasing an EP called "Le Bal Du Rat Mort", a fourteen minute monster born in February 2012. While this record was being brewed, the band members also played and contributed to other projects, some of them being "The Rott Childs", "The Powerkrauts", "Enemy Of The Sun" and "Kindred".

What we find inside this release is a wave of disturbing and eerie tunes, attacking us through five songs. The very first sounds you get to hear instantly drag you into the madness of "Kabul Golf Club", coming in the form of a track named "Bits of Freedom". The introduction song, as well as the very number of the tracks and their duration, immediately signal that this will be an extremely fast experience. And indeed, the entire record is a rushing and furious ride, the band being continuously remorseless. Most of the tunes are at a truly fast pace and they just fly through your head. At other moments, however, the speed drops a little, but the overall chaos, noise and high-pitched sounds make up for the lack of tempo.
Don't be fooled though, those slower sections just carry an unexpected surprise for you on the next corner. One second you are entranced by a horrific melody slowly creeping up on you, but already the coming moment is upon you, bursting with a loud detonation of screeching guitars and crashing drums. The vocals fit exceptionally well in these song sections, since they resemble a sort of raspy shriek which definitely adds to the eeriness of the entire experience. This is something I really liked about "Kabul Golf Club". There is a fine dose of ambience on this record and the band has great skill in portraying a certain type of mood around the listener. Overall, I find their music to be quite eerie and lunacy invoking, which is something that not a lot of projects manage to do successfully.

The EP has been released in collaboration with a label named "Uproar For Veneration", which is also a booking agency and a fanzine. Distribution of this release has been handled by "Rough Trade". This  Dutch distributor has been focused on the countries of the Benelux and has been doing an awesome job for quite a while now. Production, mixing and mastering has been done by Micha Volders who has previously worked with other bands such as "Fence", "The Rott Childs", "Little Trouble Kids" and "The Sore Losers". "Le Bal Du Rat Mort" comes in CD format, housed in a nice gatefold package adorned with gloomy and dark imagery. The overall design is rather simple and straightforward, quite fitting to the tunes in general. You can order the CD, and get connected with the band, on their official website, found here.

In the end, "Kabul Golf Club" gave us an interesting ride. The album picks you up in a wild manner, utterly fast and unstoppable, so you end up listening to it multiple times in a row. At this point the band has several concerts lined up, as you can see on their facebook page found here, so they are pretty much alive. Definitely keep an eye out for them and any potentially new material that might crawl out from under their hood, since it would be a true loss if you would miss out on these guys. Hope you enjoyed the read!

Mala In Se - Mala In Se (2011)

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These past few days I completely melted my brain with various black metal bands and found myself in need of some new stuff completely out of the norm. Plus, I haven't written a release review in quite a long time, so this seemed like a good excuse to get back on track.

"Mala In Se" is a trio hailing from Cincinnati, Ohio, presumably formed in 2010. I say presumably, since on some places the year 2010 is found as a release year of this album, while on others you will find the year 2011. In the email I received from "Phratry Records" the spring of this year is mentioned as the official release date, so we'll go along with that. In any case, "mala in se" is a phrase in Latin which means "evil in itself" or "offenses against conscience". Once you take a listen to this album you realize how much the name actually suits the band, since the name implies the existence of multiple layers of something (in this case evil if you take it literally, but we will get to that as well). Namely, the band whips out a completely weird mutation of noise, mathrock /core, psychedelic and quite a few other tidbits as well. The instrumental section and overall style of song composition is absolutely hard to define, since there are a ton of genres, tempos and layers of sound flying around. For example, the intro song named "Time lapse photography of decomposing animals" starts off with spasmic, pounding and rushing drums which are accompanied by extremely distorted and chaotic strings. After a few seconds of smashing into your brain, the aggressiveness calms down, followed with some howling of the strings, only for everything to explode again in the next instance, but this time with a bit of a sludge-like tone. Things shift between this and the rushing drums from the beginning, yet somewhere at the middle of the song we are greeted with a section that reminded me of something that could most likely crawl from a "Meshuggah" song. One other great example is the song "Devil Dung". The intro is an eerie sound made by the guitar, but it is soon broken by some overtly technical playing, later transformed into a fast metal-like beast. Tempo drops drastically moments after and it lasts for a while until everything acquires a post metal/sludge tone. Yet, once all the behemoth smashing is over, the ending is executed in an extremely minimalistic fashion and just trails off. As you can see, there are really multiple layers per song, but everything is tied together with a sort of unifying undertone that keeps it all tight and orderly. Be it a certain instrument, a repetitive vocal performance or something else, there is always one element keeping a specific track from being lost in utter chaos. Tempo and melody changes are almost omnipresent, yet you always feel as though everything is in order and there are no stray tones.
Speaking of vocal performance, they definitely deserve some special credits as well. Both string players contribute with their voices and the cool thing is that even here some contrasts and different layers are present. On one side you have a screaming/yelling vocal, while on the other there is a sort of half whine, half shrieking one. This not only provides the above mentioned contrast, but also the combination is unique and quite interesting, not to mention how chilling it is especially when the vocals are followed by some gruesome riffs. The vocals justify the name of the band as well, since they speak of animal cruelty, environmentalism and similar subjects, the evil I mentioned in the beginning. However, it is here where I have a complaint, though it is not a real complaint per se, and that is the band not posting their lyrics on their bandcamp page (which is found here, by the way). What little notion I managed to grab from their words was kinda tough and seeing as though the lyrics are in theme of the rest of the band, posting them online would definitely make things much more enjoyable. So yeah, not really a flaw, just a minor suggestion, if anyone from the band reads this.
All in all, I am really impressed by "Mala In Se". Not every band can manage to throw at you such a bomb filled with chaos and succeed in taming it. This trio has a specific talent with that and I am honestly looking forward to hearing some future work from them. Until then, definitely check out their self titled release, you won't regret it! Download link is provided by "Phratry Records". Enjoy!

Boats Against The Current

http://boatsagainstthecurrent.bandcamp.com

Thinking about this band makes me want to whack my head against the wall until either cracks first. Not because the band is hideous or anything (quite the contrary), but simply because of the fact that only today did I realize that Jake from the band ever contacted me in the first place...a month ago. So yeah, apparently I suck hard with managing my e-mail inbox, I hate it so much when I don't reply to a band submission. Anyways, moving on from my shame....

"Boats Against The Current" are nothing other than a duo from Orlando, USA playing some sweet mathy, jazzy, screamo! One might conclude that a sentence ended with an exclamation mark would stand for amazement and excitement, which is absolutely correct. For some reason I am extremely attracted to bands which have something unorthodox, be it a weird number of members or some crazy instrument amongst themselves. Obviously, what surprised me here is the "duo" thing. There was one such similar band before, "The Sea Swallowed Us Whole", which I love so damn much, basically I can't describe it with words. It is well enough to say that I instantly fell in love with it, because it had a special something that attracted me. Either way, like with the mentioned band, the same happened to me with "Boats Against The Current". You would think that a duo consisting of drums and a guitar would be way to simple when it comes to making sound, but it is quite the opposite. Of course, you can sense a difference due to the lack of a bass or second guitar, yet the great thing is that you don't feel that as being a flaw. When you are on the task of creating music with only two elements then it seems that the very passion and creativity that drives you becomes a member of the band. This may sound stupid, but trust me when I say that this band has more passion floating around their tunes than a lot other bands full of members. The melodies that "Boats Against The Current" create are constantly changing, as well as the general mood the songs invoke in you. This fluctuation of emotions is quite masterfully achieved and it ranges from quite sad tones to mellow, joyful and somehow hopeful.

On the technical side, the combination of a guitar and drums really lets you just sit back and enjoy. Most of the times when I write a review or just analyze some band's music, I really have to make an effort to pick just one instrument and focus on it which some times just can't even happen. Here of course, it is extremely easy and it is great when you can just relax, let the music wash over you and be able to touch and hear every bit of it.

While I am on the technical side of things, it is worth pointing out that there are three "releases" on their bandcamp page and they are all different when compared to each other. While the "Ta ta tera" thingy was probably a funny pastime, the "unfinished tracks" and the demo are definitely a bright star of this band. "Unfinished tracks" hail from August 2010 and this is an all instrumental release, obviously not finished to the point of adding vocals. And this is quite amazing. Imagine "The Sea Swallowed Us Whole", "Lion of the North" and "Me and Goliath" having a dance and you get "Boats Against The Current". These tracks were the focus of this writeup and as I wrote above, this is probably the most passionate, heartfelt music I heard in a while. However, despite the fact that this was the focus of my writing it doesn't mean that the demo is bad. The only problem with the demo is that it was recorded live, most likely from a gig the band did (unintentional rhyme) judging by the sound. The recording is way to crunchy and chaotic to be enjoyable as much as the other tracks, but it is definitely worth checking out because of the vocals. Yes, the vocals are present here and damn I like them! I could only imagine the vocal being added to the unfinished tracks, makes me get goosebumps! There are two more exclamation marks, so go figure.

All in all, this was an extremely great surprise. I am very pleased with this band and would love to hear their final release, since these tunes just blew me away. Honestly, I really hope that these guys are still playing music together, it would be a real shame that this project dies when it has so much potential. "Boats Against The Current" are definitely worth your time, so I urge all of you to give them a try.