Badblood - End Me(2013)

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Earlier this year, Simi Valley's Badblood put out their 4th release to date, "End Me". This EP is 12 minutes of pure angry, disgustingly depressed self and world hatred to rip you straight the fuck down from cloud 9 and assure you that nothing is ok and the fact that you ever thought it was is a fucking problem ok?

The vocals are incredibly grating, Tamayo continually breathes misanthropic fire in your face for the length of the EP. The vocal tone is a quite apt amalgamation of both old school black metal and early hardcore vocals much like the rest of the tones and composition relate to these genres. If Nails were a little less Death/Grind and a bit more Punk/Black, they would probably sound similar to Badblood.

Reject opens with some bass slides that immediately have my head bobbing along, lips pursed in reverance. The shortest of the three, this is the most crusty sounding song on the album. Fall comes in as a bit more Sludgy, which leads into the final track Pale which still retains the sludgery found in Fall while adding a few more elements one would describe as Black Metal. For their sound this is the perfect arc for a 3-track album, proving that while Badblood respects those that laid the ground for their sound they are still going to do it their own damn way, I sure am glad that they do because they do it damn well.

Pale is my favorite song on this EP...its like a harder old school Metallica at times and like a sludgy Xasthur in others. At 1:53 Tamayo screams the album title in an eerily convincing manner which brings me to another thing I love about Badblood: the lyrics.

I have become a bit bored with the mass overflow of angry hate the world lyrics...yes shit sucks, and a lot of people agree...but anyone can stand there and yell "SHIT SUCKS!" at you, but Badblood offers insight into their hatred and disgust within their lyrics making the anger portrayed in the songs seem all the more real. To put it simply, they aren't trying to prove anything which adds a hefty dose of purity to their sound.

This album is what its all about for me: loud, heavy, raw no fucks given Sludge & Roll. The tonality of the guitar adds the perfect wrapper of dirt around the blasting bass, coupled with the hardcore leaning kick and snare tone and these guys are unstoppable. I have had the pleasure to see them live twice in the past year and trust me it only gets better when you are wholly enveloped by their blasts of beyond.

I have been keeping an eye on the release details for the 7" version of End Me of which there is a pre-order somewhere...and they are also currently writing a full-length for 2014 so you should probably keep up to date on that, but at this point if you want any merch, in their own words: "Go to shows. Don't be a bo-zo"

-Stonerhound

Boreal - The Sarcophagus Demos(2013)

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If traditional black metal is a slow, painful, misanthropic death, Boreal is a descent into an introspective coma after succumbing to the throes of hypothermia. A one man drone act from Tacoma Washington, Boreal creates cinematically ambient layers of drone using but a guitar and his voice.

The album starts off with waves of distorted drone washing over you as bits crush and disintegrate in an etherial fire. Wretched, distant wails begin to poke their head through the funeral fog, a spectre that is one with the drone instead of seperate and above. This song makes me feel as if I had comitted some unspeakable evil across dimensions and have been locked away in a celestial prison, everything is grey and bleak, I am but a sketch shifting in sprectrum between hate and disgust gazing into a solitary hole in the floor that is forever a reminder of a time and life past. Despair fills me until the walls and floor disintegrate into floods of water rushing in.

It is on Intermission that I start slowly dropping to the furthest depths of this strange dimension. The sound of glaciers is accented by distant birds calling, birds that I know full well are of a realm that will always be too close to touch. Just when I am finding solace in these familiar sounds, the rug is swept out and I have been dragged even further beneath the ice where the comforting calls of nature are replaced with the uncomfortable whispers from beyond.

By the third track I am released from my icy prison as it dissipates into a vapor that carries me through eternal nothingness while the faint reminders of the past life lurk in the spaces between. The pattern of my fall could best be described as an outwardly arcing, eliptical spiral creating the illusion that I am suspended in a cosmic field of energy on which I could float peacefully forever.

This album is one of the most poignant sonic journeys I have ever been taken on, the clear bell like ambiance with intermittent cracks and peels of distortion dance together to create an audial landscape limitless in mental and visual possibilities. It seems to me that what is being projected is pure, honest and flowing projection of its conduit...something I find can be lost easy when trying to force the ritual experience. I get the sense that for Boreal it really is a ritual, one that if not performed would bring dire consequences not only for himself but for all.

If you have ever wondered to yourself what an even mixture of Earth, Sunn O))) and Xasthur would sound like, this might be the closest you are going to get. Boreal will be releasing a split in the near future, stay up to date at the links above.

-Stonerhound