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noise rock

Radar Men From The Moon – Vomitorium (2024)

Four years ago, a concert announcement for my hometown (that never took place due to the Covid pandemic) made me circle to a local band that I heard of, but did not really know. The previous album of Radar Men From The Moon had just been released and I decided to review it.

I had heard of the new album “Vomitorium” and I think I even listened to it, but them holidays came and I forgot about it until one of the members let me know that he has a new project.

“Vomitorium” is again a noise rock album that in sound goes from Swans-like heavy industrial rock to more a Ministry-type approach, to a direction that I would rather describe as ‘noisecore’, a noisy version of hardcore rock. Actually, the description about the label Fuzz Club Records is quite fitting for “Vomitorium” as well: “raw, experimental rock ‘n’ roll, influenced by psychedelia, shoegaze, noise, garage, blues, folk and experimentation”.

A nice album.

Links: Radar Men From The Moon, Fuzz Club Records

A Place To Bury Strangers – Synthesizer (2024)

It is utterly incredible. APTBS is constantly on tour and yet they manage to not only change line-up, release a series of singles, but also work on a new album. What is more, the steady part of the band, Oliver Ackerman, also proves to be behind Death By Audio which used to be a concert hall, studio, guitar effects pedal factory and more. Death By Audio still exists in some form and Ackerman decided that the new release of his band would come as a synthesizer that you have to assemble yourself. Where does he find the time to come up with such ideas and to execute them? “Synthesizer” also seems to come available as 12″ in the near future.

The album opens with the great track “Disgust” which has been released as a single before. It sounds like the band sounds live: energetic and noisy. While concerts are always extremely noisy events, recorded, the band shows its softer side. Sometimes. “Synthesizer” contains the noise rock side that we love APTBS for, but also softer (‘shoegaze’?) side and more electropunk type experiments.

Not all tracks are brilliant, but a couple of them are. “Synthesizer” is yet another very nice album. And if you have not seen the band live yet, be sure to get out your earplugs and go and hear and see them when they are in your vicinity. With their touring schedule, that should not take too long.

Links: A Place To Bury Strangers, DedStrange

Radar Men From The Moon – The Bestial Light (2020)

It is strange how things go sometimes. Last week Facebook notified me that Aufnahme + Wiedergabe (from Berlin) has an event in my hometown in October. There are never concerts of interest in my hometown, so I clicked to see which bands (Spit Mask and Gnaw Their Tongues, the first has released material through A+W, the latter is a Dutch noisy doom metal band). Then I noticed that another organiser from the concert is a name new to me: Metakamer, “a independent clothing brand based in Eindhoven” (sic). Well, well.

On the Facebook page of Metakamer a radio show was announced which opened with… Haus Arafna. This took place on an Eindhoven radio-station I had never heard of: Rararadio. There prove to be some (locally) famous musicians active there. Then there is also a link between Metakamer and a local band that I already knew, but not too well: Radar Men From The Moon.

RMFTM is an experimental rock band. They tend to change styles with every album and frequently also change members. They very recently released an album (May 8th). A good reason to listen what is what.

“The Bestial Light” contains noisy rock. Sometimes the sound is slightly stoner, sometimes the psychedelic rock background shines through, but most tracks are more like Swans (their noisy style), Zeni Geva or Pop. 1280. The band itself seems to call their style “acid metal” and “strange wave”.

Not bad at all!

Links: Radar Man From The Moon, Fuzz Club

A Place To Bury Strangers – Rare Meat (2017 / 2020)

Earlier this week somebody posted a live photo of APTBS on an industrial forum and I replied saying that they are my favourite popband, which was not received well. I found APTBS when I was looking for more uptempo “shoegaze” many years ago and I still see the band that way.

In basis the style of the band is shoegaze, so wave-type rhythms, screeching guitars and soft vocals. The band has two sides. On one end of their spectrum they make soft songs that are well described as “shoegaze”. On the other end they go way off track with extremely noisy rock with massive feedback walls of guitar noise. Unfortunately, the latter style seems to become thinner as new releases are put out.

Somehow I missed the tape from 2017 on which “demos and rarities 2003 – 2017” were released. Due to everybody having to stay at home because of the Corona virus, the band decided to release the “Rare Meat” through their Bandcamp page. A great idea!

“Rare Meat” opens with two magnificently noisy tracks, “I Walk Away” and “Hit The Ground”. Then follows a less interesting soft song, but we are soon back to guitar noise again.

Some tracks are earlier version of songs that appeared on albums. Most tracks were new to me. There are great energetic tracks, but I do not like most of the softer songs here (sometimes they are better), but over all “Rare Meat” is an excellent album that brings back the old days of this great band from Brooklyn.

Link: A Place To Bury Strangers

A Place To Bury Strangers * Transfixion (cd 2015)

A little over two years I discovered A Place To Bury Strangers from Brooklyn, NY. They have grown to be my most favourite popband. What I did not know back then is that this band somehow seems not too far from the scene where much of my music comes from. A Place To Bury Strangers is often named in a line with The Lost Rivers, The Soft Moon or The KVB, bands that are scheduled on festivals such as the Wave Gotik Treffen. There are even people drawing lines towards the ‘minimal wave scene’ (under whichever name) calling the musical style “ghost wave” or “witch wave” which includes bands like Agent Side Grinder who do not sound anything near similar in my ears.

In any case, today “Transfixion” was unleashed unto the masses. I am now playing the album through Deezer and have already ordered my physical copy. In April the band is coming to my country. Since I got to know them, they visited my country twice and both times I was abroad. This time I got my tickets the day they were available, so I am not going to miss them again (lest someting unexpected happens of course). The new album does not have the flying start of previous albums. The band is at its best (to me) in their uptempo tracks which until now included the opening tracks of their albums. Not so on “Transfixion”. “Supermaster” makes a nice opener to get in the mood, but the mood is yet relatively soft; calm before the storm so to say. After this we are off with one of the two songs that have been available earlier, the uptempo track “Straight”. Some softer tracks follow and just when I started to wonder if APTBS took a step back in energy the other track that we already knew is up, the great “We’ve Come So Far”. But it gets even better with the great, dirty track “I’m So Clean” and “Fill The Void”.

Like before, the band goes from a rather wavey sound (in the 1980’ies gothic style) to shoegaze to downright noise-rock. Some tracks are slow, some are explosive and great. The band also likes a joke; sometimes the distortion is so heavy that it sounds like they blew up the studio (or my speakers). I am very curious what this is going to sound like live. “Transfixion” is not as good as “Worship”, but is certainly is another great album.

Links: A Place To Bury Strangers, Dead Oceans

Swans * The Seer (2cd 2012)

Swans is one of those bands I have known about for decades, but never got to listen to them. In my head Swans is an old industrial band that was around before I started to listen to industrial music and since everybody says that they Swans are the hardest live band they ever saw, I took them for probably being a noise band. Actually Swans were there before there was industrial and since Michael Gira is also in the “nowave” documentary “Kill Your Idols!” that would probably mean a guitar-oriented noise outfit. Another reason that I probably never heard them is that they seem to have quit after the 1998 album “Swans Are Dead” and released nothing until 12 years after. I, at least not consciously, did not hear about the 2010 album “My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky”, but Last.fm did recommend me “The Seer”. Since they are also coming to my country to play, I decided to try this new album and I noticed that there are actually two new albums, “The Seer” and “We Rose From Your Bed With The Sun In Our Head”. The latter appears to be somewhat how I expected Swans to sound, but not as loud as I thought, guitar-oriented noisy music. Fortunately I heard “The Seer” before “We Rose…” otherwise I might not have heard it. Not that “We Rose…” is a boring album, but “The Seer” is a lot more interesting. It opens with a brilliant song called “Lunacy”, a soft track with constantly repeating singing of the song title. The next track is more a long, epic rock song with softer and louder parts, completely with organs. After a short soundscape comes the over half hour title track epic which goes from soundscapes to jazzy music to noisy rock, heck, this is almost what you nowadays call “sludge” or “stoner doom” and not bad either. The next track is almost poppy as are some other tracks on the second disc. There is folk, classical nowave/artpunk, popmusic. Not every track is brilliant, but most are good to very good and the variety of styles makes “The Seer” very interesting and very listenable. I might need to find me more music of Swans! Would this be a new sound for the band or did I mistakingly ignore them all these years? You probably know the band for a long time, so perhaps this review will tell you if Swans changed and if you still want to hear the new album, but for people like me, who somehow managed to miss this band, “The Seer” could be a good introduction to start exploring the massive discography.
Swans, Young God Records