1.Intro /2. The Whaler /3. Town Square /4. Mother-Of-Pearl Moon /5.This Path Through The Meadow/6.Valdrada /7. No Mountains, No Horizon /8. Visions of A Stray /9. Field After Field /10. Ypsilon /11. Away From Me

Release date: February 23, 2024

and also the trees coverThere is the world, and then there is the world seen through the sonic poems of And Also The Trees. The latter is the world that I prefer.

Mother-Of-Pearl Moon‘ comes two years after ‘THE BONE CARVER’, to mesmerise, seduce, and take our gaze away from this close-up-view of life, towards that less observed one. Like its title, its energy is lighter compared to its predecessor and looks away from Balkan and Eastern music tradition when it comes to its sources of inspiration.

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For some reason, we have always thought that reviewing a personal album, like this one, would never do it justice. We overcame these hesitations, and this had everything to do with the album’s particular atmosphere created by the music.

Nick Carlisle coverWe have been trying to think of another album we have come across that had so much light amidst so much darkness…nothing comes to mind and, with every new listening session, we are getting more and more reassured about this. But let’s take things from the beginning.

Bloody Saturnalia‘ comes after the release of a haunting soundtrack to celebrate 100 years from the release of the movie ‘Hӓxan’. It is an album inspired by and dedicated to Nick Carlisle’s father, who sadly passed away on New Year’s Eve 2023. The title of this album and the subjects of its lyrics also relate to the book ‘Defying Hitler: A Memoir by Sebastian Haffner’ whose theme, the rise of Nazism in Germany, is a timely one as we see the rise of populism around the world today. Kenneth Clarke’s documentary series ‘Civilisation’ also fed into the themes of various songs on this album (e.g. ‘Another Level Down‘, ‘Life in A Major Key, ‘Bloody Saturnalia‘).

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1.Old Timer /2. Common Sense /3. National Team /4. Eastbound and Down /5. Strut /6. Morning After Mourning /7. An Ideal for Living /8. Points of View /9. Eazy Being Lazy /10. Solidarity Song

Release date: 27 January 202
Label: The State 51 Conspiracy

…or else an ode to a disenfranchised leftist youth

First things first – it has been a while since a band has put messages across in such powerful ways. Indeed, it has been about five years since the release of such a powerful album by a different band aimed at an audience with similar political beliefs but a very different idiosyncrasy. Hotel Hotel Lux coverLux are named after a safe house hotel in Moscow to which communists were exiled, though it failed in its mission as a lot of them ended up being killed during Stalin’s purges. The band, however, has been steadily making its mark since 2017, ever since their surreal song (full with political allegory), ‘The Last Hangman‘. That song, and the accompanying video, left us anticipating their debut album.

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1.CRISTAL /2. ACCORDS PERDUS /3. SIRENE AUTOMATIQUE /4. EN ESPAGNE /5. JE SUIS VENU TE DIRE /6. J’ABANDONNE /7. JE NE RESPIRE PLUS /8. CE QUE CA FAIT /9. L’ECLAT DU CREPUSCULE /10. TOUS LES CHEMINS

Release date: December 2, 2022

Nous avons venu vous dire que votre album est superbe!

Sometimes, when a loved band comes back after some time, it can feel like a tap on the back or a playful wink. ‘Cristal’ feels like the latter. Released at the end of 2022, three years after Frontière and three years on from the beginning of the Covid lockdowns, it is an album that we can’t get enough of.

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IDLES-CRAWLER

1.MTT 420RR /2.The Wheel</span< /3.When The Lights Come On /4. Car Crash/5.The New Sensation /6. Stockholm Syndrome /7. The Beachland Ballroom /8.Crawl! /9. Meds/10.Kelechi /11. Progress /12. Wizz /13. King Snake /14. The End

Release date: 16 November 2021

…or what does a paralytic loveless dream sound like?

When IDLES first dropped ‘Brutalism’ – their debut album on the planet, followed by a mind-blowing gig at Rough Trade East at the height of a blistering London summer – we all jumped for joy in the presence of a band that dared to IDLES coverlook at the ‘life of the dog’ and had the audacity to spit on the ills of such a life with the in-your-face emotional drama that is absent from our everyday lives. Two studio and two live albums later, this band has stood the test of time and drop ‘CRAWLER’. IDLES have carried a certain assertiveness with them, an  urge – to take back things ‘stolen’ (friends, innocence, jobs, decency…) – that comes from the emotional strength acquired over time, when someone keeps too many things inside for far too long.

Are you ready for the storm? (lyrics:MTT 420RR)

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Release Date: 6 August 2021

1.THE ORDER OF SPIRITUAL VIRGINS /2. I WHO BEND THE TALL GRASSES /3. PENNSYLVANIA FURNACE /4. MANY HANDS /5. MAN IS LIKE A SPRING FLOWER /6.REPENT NOW CONFESS NOW/7. THE SACRED LINAMENT OF JUDGMENT /8. PERPETUAL FLAME OF CENTRALIA/9. MAN IS LIKE A SPRING FLOWER/10. THE SOLITARY BRETHREN OF EPHRATA

Label: Sargent House

An existential cry from the periphery of Hell to the depths of Lower Hell

This is an album that you must handle with care from the second you unseal it. This is an LP that you must take care of, possibly more than very few others in your collection. This is a sonic howl from the depths of Hell that overwhelms all conscious sentiment of those who never perceived sin this way before. It is a procession for the expulsion of pain and for this reason it is sacred.

Each time Kristin Hayter, a.k.a Lingua Ignota, offers us a sonic story, it is often one written in blood. ‘SINNER GET READY‘ – an album that defies categorization, whose title and song titles are written in capital letters to signify their conceptual gravity – is the sixth release by Lingua Ignota in four years. It surpasses everything that she has created so far in terms of production, texture, emotional and conceptual depth, arrangement, aesthetic references, instrumentation and performance. If the previous releases were all delivered from the perspective of a creature in one of the seven circles of Upper Hell, then ‘SINNER GET READY’ is the sound of all the gatekeepers of Hell combined.

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Release Date: 8 May 2020

1.Leave The Winter On the Ground/2. Paint The Stars Tonight/3. Pretty Something, Never Was/4. Capulet Loves Montague/5. Gloomy Witch/6.Disease of The Divine/7. Dearly Beloved/8. Gloomy Witch (Düstere Hexe) Twin Tribes remix/9. Dearly Beloved Wisborg remix

Label: Negative Gain Productions

Where has this album found you? What is tormenting you? What frightens you? Have you accepted your Astari Nite coverillusions and fantasies with grace? Are you deep inside a dark place or on the outside looking in? ‘Here Lies‘, the new album by inspirational band Astari Nite, comes to soothe an intense pain so that it does not turn into self-hatred and bitterness. The nest that is depicted on the album’s cover is the first and most important clue to this change of atmosphere, while the poetic song titles offer glimpses of an emotionally mature and spiritually deeper approach into matters of the heart and mind.


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Release Date: 23 August 2019

1.Passing Through/2. Never Arriving/3. The Weather/4. End of Days/5. Great Disguise/6.Conversation/7. Where I Am/8. Hard Way/9. Watch And Learn/10. Maps/11. Setting Sun

Label: Attack Attack Records, Ear Music

New Model Army coverHere we all are, almost at the end of another year which seems to have passed as quickly as a couple of months.  New Model Army have had something of grave importance to share with us about the state of things around us and their own attitude towards them; and they did so in the best way they could possibly do it, with a new powerful album entitled ‘From Here‘.

Whether, like us, you were intrigued to build a phrase around this album’s title or not, you must agree that it conceptually represents a sort of an ethical standpoint. Just imagine how these two words of the title would change if there was an exclamation mark at the end, a question mark, or if even if there was an ellipsis after them…What would precede these words if they came at the end of a sentence and what would this sentence talk about?


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Howard Rickard and The Pale Riders or else a modern day story of ‘outlaws’ and ‘outcasts’

…And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts And I looked, and behold a pale horse And his name that sat on him was death, and hell followed with him…

When Willie Nelson released the album ‘Wanted!The Outlaws‘ with a brilliant cover which replicated the aesthetics of bounty hunters’ posters, he did it to make a comment about the position of outlaw country music in contrast to the more traditional Nashville sound. Similarly, when Johnny Cash was singing ‘Folsom Prison Blues‘ on his debut album, he was partly referring to his own life and the time he had spent in prison. One would think that these people have always been more than great songwriters with great public appeal. They were always the protagonists in their own stories, they made music out of their experiences, they have performed it with all the contextual gravity that a lived experience encompasses and they have lead lives that inadvertently inspired their songwriting. Because of that, their music has been loved so much and in such a profound way than the music of others.  (more…)

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Release Date: 06 October 2018

1.Persona non Grata/2. If Mississipi John Hurt Knew What I’ve Done/3. Bathed In Moonlight/4. PNG-Wounded By A Gunshot (Remix by The Prowler)

Label: A Man out Of A Man

The Man and His Failures Persona non Grata cover

With such a project name and such a title one can barely decide where to start talking about this debut EP. Do you remember Mani Deum? If not, then a quick read through this review will probably refresh your memory and a listen to the band’s latest EP, will help you place them in the dark folk rock music realm. A band is nothing if not the creative ‘sum’ of its parts. The fact that one of its two vocalists a.k.a Manos K. decided to release a solo EP, helps us get a bit closer to the collective psyche of Mani Deum and to the mysterious sonic universe of Manos K. If the band is a puzzle of 1000 pieces then the fact that a fraction of one of the pieces, is doing something solo, is always a nice excuse for us to examine it closer.

A sonic trip from Athens to Mississipi

Enough about that though, we love nothing more than a musician who is artistically restless and keeps experimenting and challenging his/her artistic comfort zone and our expectations. ‘Persona non Grata‘ an EP that unapologetically uses an expression tied with the refugee problem that Greece has been struggling with the last few years, is a trip from Belgium’s coldwave scene to the birthplace of blues, America’s Mississipi. With the help of its 4 tracks we traverse these regions. The reference points of these 4 tracks are both plenty and different in nature. There are strong Pink Floyd influences in the beautiful guitar solos, there are rhythms that could have been taken straight from Trisomie 21’s ‘cookbook’, there is a performing style that could also work well in a doom metal EP (i.e. ‘Bathed In Moonlight)and there are drum machines that ascribe post punk and pop elements to the mix.

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