U-731 "By All means..." CD
Black Plagve
Members from United Front, S.H.P., Vomit Arsonist,... It sounds to me quite a like one could expect based on hearing those names. Also something what makes me think of several current USA projects. In a way, it is decent. It has pretty much all the basic elements of the dark post-industrial / heavy electronics stuff. Aggressive vocals. Strong samples from speaches or documentaries. Aggressive electronics as well as bleak and eerie, even tonal keyboard usage. It's not recycling same template, but actually each track does stand on its own.
But what sets it apart from the best of the genre, is the fine detail of sound. Many tracks suffer from somehow flat production. You got steady tone of raw electronics as back bone, then processed vocals echoing on top, and perhaps few other sound elements or samples going on, but nothing melts together and the true punch is missing. Seemingly like mixed on computer multitrack without sounds truly "becoming one", and often sound is relatively thin or flat, only enhanced with things like "reverb", rather than looking into core of sound, is it really any good? And instead of looking for brutal, fat, crunchy or truly fierce and ripping, you got this almost low bit rate multieffect type crackle tone hidden under echo? Well, of course not all the time and all the tracks - but the commonly heard and seen problem these days in this type of approach.
Of course, when you put some germanic leader speaking, you can throw almost any fuzzy tone behind it, and track can't be too bad, hah... So the CD is fine. But project appears like they could do way better than they have ended up doing. Lack of physicality and loud amplification is perhaps one missing detail, but I'm not sure if that's even the thing they want.
Aeoga 'Obsidian Outlander' LP
Aural Hypnox
This has been my turntable for some days. Probably 5 times later, I can conclude few things. If talking loosely about category consisting Dark ritual/drone/ambient/etc etc, it is not mandatory to put out double albums. Not even hour long albums. Not even 40 mins! This LP, is barely 30 minutes and I have ended up listening it several times each day.
Because length is half an hour, and there are six tracks, it is not merely some flowing abstract sound stream. Without becoming music in conventional underderstanding, it still makes songs. Slow eerie guitar tones, dark and noble almost soundtrack-esque synth tones, rhythmic loops of chains or other objects. Analogue synth pulsations, church organs... and so on.. It is hard to just call it "drone" or "ambient" as it neither one. Also lumping into vast category of "ritual music" hardly does justice, as while it may be that - it is more. It is clearly not product of simple drugged jam or easy routines hidden under neat aesthetics, but most of all artistic perfection! I'm quite sure at this point, that this Aeoga album is becoming my favorite Aural Hypnox release so far!
I'm pretty sure label saw the strength of it, since this was first ever vinyl release of the legendary label! Also published as CD, though. Essential album. Also, when listened after the above mentioned cd, there is such a drastic difference in audio alchemy. This album doesn't have singly crappy sound to it. Any approach in sound it look for, they come up with greatest results.
