Cheap thrill #11: Karate and friendship

This time we’re doing something different. Don’t worry: everything is still ‘name your price’, and there will still be plenty of riffs. The main difference is that we will be releasing a few more albums than usual, with a catch: five of them will come from the same group of people… probably. You’ll see what I mean later.

Otherwise, everything else is ‘business as usual’. I didn’t mean to scare you. Enjoy some black metal and avant-prog craziness, among other things. As always, support the artists by picking up some tunes and/or merchandise!

–Alex Chan

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Formless master – First strike

April 22, 2020

Formless master is a killer “karate grind” three-part piece with a surprising pedigree. Colin Lewis and Matthias Joyce of the Minnesota death metal crew Invidiosus handle the vocals and drums respectively, but they are also joined by none other than Takafumi Matsubara of Gridlink and Mortalized. So it’s no surprise that First strike hits some major ass with his combination of staccato guitar thrusts, flurries of blast beats and barked battle cries. If there’s a martial arts movie with a grindcore soundtrack, I nominate Formless Master to cause the stir.

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Vaurien – L’espirit en le Beton

July 8, 2023

What starts as a ferocious black metal attack from Paris’ Vaurien slowly turns into a much more nuanced album with more than a few tricks up its sleeve. Vauräss Temör, the multidisciplinary musician at the helm, lets some gothic and noise rock influences filter through on the grimy and gloomy intermezzo ‘Armure cuir’, but it only gets stranger from there. For every blackened barn burner, there’s a curveball to keep you guessing: a violin solo over apocalyptic tape loops, or a carousel drunkenly spinning over glitchy industrial beats.

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The Prava Collective

December 1, 2023

For those who like shadowy black metal labels whose roster probably consists of the same five people: ПРАВА Коллектив (also known as The Prava Kollektiv) reappeared last December with a slew of new releases. I didn’t get a chance to listen to them much before the end of the year, but each of the five albums are, surprisingly, all excellent in their own way. It took me a few months to digest them a little better!

Arkhtinnthe longest running project under the Prava Kollective banner, leads the pack with 三​度​目​の​災​害, or The third disaster. Powered by cascading synth arpeggios, frenetic drumming and soaring guitar leads that light up the night sky like beacons, the album sounds almost wistful. Instead of watching atmospheric black metal, imagine them staring at the stars.

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HWWAUOCH is the gnarliest and most unhinged of the group thanks to its wild hopping vocals and cacophonous guitars. I tend to describe this project to others as “music that the crew of the Event horizon would include”. While Under the gaze of dissolution ditch the suffocating production of the previous HWWAUOCH albums, this latest release is just as dizzying and disorienting.

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Mahr brings things back to earth with the aggressive yet grounded Odium. In addition to the upbeat black metal sections, there are some truly stunning segments in blasting, reverberating doom that make this album my favorite Mahr release since their debut.

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Pharmakeia the pendulum swings back to the wild side Maenadic ecstasy. As the “youngest” project of the bunch, they also pack the most powerful punch, forgoing the 7-20 minute odysseys of the other Prava bands and focusing their fury on six tracks of churning black metal chaos.

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Finally we did that Voidspheres sixth full-length album titled Infect | Inflict. While not as relentlessly melodic as their sibling Arkhtinn, Voidsphere aim for a more mysterious atmospheric sound, with moody curtains of synthesizers supporting the meaty yet melodic guitar riffs.

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Ухадиш Дистаж – Uhadish distance

Here’s another wild one. Ухадиш Дистаж is an avant-garde project from Russia whose self-titled compilation combines songs from three albums from the past ten years. Sides A and B together form a prog metal cabaret, in which jazzy piano runs collide with angular guitar riffs and throaty death grunts. If that’s not enough, side C is a completely different beast. The artist recalls how they composed and recorded that section during a period when they did not have access to most of their instruments and were thus forced to resort to improvised instruments made from scrap metal. The result is a disturbing industrial/folk soundscape that manages to be more than just a curiosity.

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