Sonic tsunami

With the span of one week I’ve received two packages of noiz from OEC and Coldspring.

Rasthof Dachau – “Prison Poem“. Grim austrian death industrial dedicated to the Irish civil-rights movement in the 70ies of the last century. Harsh noise background and screaming vocals is the base of this album. With some rhythmic background it becomes somewhat ritualistic. The noise is BDN type, not the wall of noise as one might have expected from this album. Good release from the well known act. BTW, it was released 7 years after their last album.

Stahlwerk 9 – “R.O.T.A.” Quite nice and varied dark ambient album. Features martial drums, heavy organs and creates oppressive apocalyptic atmosphere with deep dark ambience. The release features artwork by the russian painter Alexander Nemkovsky. I managed to get the wooden box edition which looks impressive: minimalistic black wooden box with the red pentagram on it, inside there’s booklet with the artwork. Very good album in music and design!

Toroidh – “Segervittring“. Martial industrial project of the Nordvargr shows its power once again. Very nice and proper martial. With vast dark ambient inserts, marches blended with noises, and other cool sounding military trickery. Proper martial release.

Nordvargr – “For the Blood is the Light“. This is quite interesting release. The whole CD has a background of vinyl’s scratches. This little detail removes sterile sound and adds that sepia/rusty atmosphere to the album. The music itself is not a strict ambient as one might have guessed from the artist name, it’s interesting mix of ambient, cuts-n-clicks (dark type of them, if u can imagine this) and some rhythmic base. The album is interesting and keeps attention from the beginning to the end. The CD comes with companion 3” CD which has some additional tracks done by the Beyond Sensory Experience. This one is nice addition to the album, featuring 3 tracks of various nature from darkambient to electronica type o music. The release is recommended for everyone who loves dark sounds.

VA – “Audiotion” – this is quite peculiar release. It features alot of the famous electronic artists and dedicated to the work of the awesome japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike. The music that’s presented on the CD is inspired by his movies, the title itself is a mutated film name. Since there’s quite wide range of the artists presented the music is very varied. From the dark ambient to some noizy breakbeats. But overall the album brings darkness and evil which cannot be missed. So, if you wanna widen your knowledge about the dark scene in general and get familiarized with the artists you haven’t listened so far, I highly recommend this album.

VA – “Four Studies for a Human Portrait“. This compilation featuring four artists from the dark scene: Nordvargr, Contagious Orgasm, Hentai and Lesse Marhaug. They all made the tribute to the work of the painter Francis Bacon. Every track is tied to the certain picture of the artists and transfers its quite sinister mood to the music. Rather interesting idea to transform those disturbing images to no less dark music.

Nordvargr/Drakh – “The betrayal of Light“. The old recording of Nordvargr and Drakh they made several years ago. And finally the music sees the light on the american label Tumult. Well this is, as you might have guessed, the dark ambient, but not the generic type. Nordvargr doesn’t sit in one place, he experiments. This time dark ambient is mixed with low profile blackmetal. And mixed rather well, black metal inserts appear out of blur and go nowhere the same fashion, and all this is on the bleak guitary ambient base. Good moody album.

Sleep_Research Facility – “Deep Frieze“. Finally I’ve got new release of one of my favourite dark ambient projects. This time SRF goes far to the Antarctica to listen to the ice. This is glacier ambient which smells ice and cold wind. It indeed does its job and submerges listener to the atmosphere of the primordial winter. You can feel the speed with which glaciers move, you can touch the ice that was born aeons ago. Once again, SRF proved that it’s one of the top ambient projects out there.

2 Responses to “Sonic tsunami”

  1. Shambler Says:

    Good reviews Vondur! Nice to see you back in action (sorry for late comment, haven’t visited ZC for a while).

    I rather liked Rastof Dachau, very bassy droney, good in new car stereo. I like that the tracks had the same theme but some were even and some were melancholy and some lighter.

    I’m tempted by Nord’s blood album too, maybe I should get both that and the ocean one?? Wanted to see the lighter side of Lord Nord.

    I need to get off my arse and review all the ones I bought but there’s 20 of the bloody things in the end – damn the summer sale ;)

  2. Vondur Says:

    Glad you liked the reviews, Shamb.
    Eh, lighter side of the lord nord? There’s no such thing, both these albums are the same grimness and evil. But yes, these two albums are very nice, you’ll be satisfied by the darkness that oozes from them.
    And yea, go write the reviews, it’s your primary job afterall :D

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