Crippled Black Phoenix - Banefyre (Season Of Mist)
The self designated voice of the voiceless, Crippled Black Phoenix is Justin Greaves' has been playing music with an anti-fascist, anti-capitalist, pro-European, pro-environment, humanist message for a long time now. Multiple albums, EPs, bootlegs and members, CBP has never been a band but a collaborative project built around Greaves' multi-instrumentalism. His long term relationship with lyricist/vocalist Belinda Kordic has proved more fruitful than any before, their previous album Ellengæst seeing them be more collaborative than ever with numerous guest vocalists, but the music is still sprawling and esoteric, evoking strong emotional resonance with every longing vocal, ringing chord and shift in atmosphere.
The self designated voice of the voiceless, Crippled Black Phoenix is Justin Greaves' has been playing music with an anti-fascist, anti-capitalist, pro-European, pro-environment, humanist message for a long time now. Multiple albums, EPs, bootlegs and members, CBP has never been a band but a collaborative project built around Greaves' multi-instrumentalism. His long term relationship with lyricist/vocalist Belinda Kordic has proved more fruitful than any before, their previous album Ellengæst seeing them be more collaborative than ever with numerous guest vocalists, but the music is still sprawling and esoteric, evoking strong emotional resonance with every longing vocal, ringing chord and shift in atmosphere.
Banefyre according to the band is their most emotional yet bringing in Swedish singer Joel Segerstedt to add low, brooding vocals to Kordics ethereal witchyness, he also plays guitar. He fits the aesthetic of the perfectly, dark, mysterious and honest, sometimes painfully so. The band is completed by Helen Stanley (keys/trumpet) and Andy Taylor (guitar) and after the spoken word intro evoking the occult, performed and written by artist and witch Shane Bugbee; Wyches And Basterdz is the first song proper, an eerie, crawling, Gothic number that showcases the analogue, dirty sound of this record, moving away from the more polished sheen of some of their previous ones to make Banefyre, primeval and contemplative.
The chanting on Ghostland set to become a uniting ritual between band and fans as is Down The Rabbit Hole but both show that unlike so many acts around today you really never know what to expect from a CBP album. As the strident chords from Greaves, picking up pace on The Reckoning, showing some mystic country like a voodoo Stan Jones, the song having a strong presence from the fiddle. As with all CBP albums the tone is pessimistic and downbeat but also defiant, politicians, fox hunters and more shot down in lyrical flames, Greaves' position as representing anyone that feels underrepresented solidified.
Without the chance to tour their last album, they worked on making this album sound as different to Ellengæst as they could, an achievement that is shown by the traditionally heavy Bonefire shifts tonally into the beautifully cinematic Rose Of Jericho, clocking in at over 10 minutes, it's one of four that is over the 10 minutes milestone but definitely the one that makes the most of the long format, almost feeling like four different songs in one, I think I also detect a few hints of Floyd's Interstellar Overdrive at about 12 minutes, The Scene Is A False Prophet also has an homage to Simon & Garfunkel. It also leaves you breathless, meaning that Blackout77's slower synthier rumblings allows you to breathe as New York's social structure crumbles in news/interview samples.
Banefyre is a long album but it needs to be as these 13 tracks are all vital to the brilliance of the album, though the final song No Regrets is actually from Greaves and Kordics new project Johnny The Boy, still it sits perfectly on what is Crippled Black Phoenix's most diverse but also most personal album to date. I've always been the most ardent supporter of CBP and whether it's in record or live they are certainly a one of a kind act. 9/10
Laurence Jones - Destination Unknown (Marshall Records)
At just 30 years old Laurence Jones is already on his sixth album. Destination Unknown is his first on Marshall Records, who have gone all in, bringing Jones to their headquarters to record on the desk that The Rolling Stones recorded Tattoo You on. Jones felt he needed a sense of Englishness for this record, having spent plenty of time in the USA as a youth on the blues scene, having won "Young Artist Of The Year" at the British Blues Awards for three consecutive years as well as being hailed the "future of the blues".
At just 30 years old Laurence Jones is already on his sixth album. Destination Unknown is his first on Marshall Records, who have gone all in, bringing Jones to their headquarters to record on the desk that The Rolling Stones recorded Tattoo You on. Jones felt he needed a sense of Englishness for this record, having spent plenty of time in the USA as a youth on the blues scene, having won "Young Artist Of The Year" at the British Blues Awards for three consecutive years as well as being hailed the "future of the blues".
In that time he's played and toured with some of the blues' biggest artists but now at 30 he finds himself at a crossroads much like Robert Johnson, as Destination Unknown is his documentation of becoming a man under the spotlight, his influences and musical activities evolving from straight up blues, through blues rock and into a more rock based approach. So recording on an analogue desk used by the UK's most recognisable rock band, is a no-brainer really.
Jones also says that he wants to be his own artist like Eric Clapton, not constrained by genres but having the freedom to explore musically (the lockdown helping with timing) Again recording, and sometimes co-writing with his longtime band of Bennett Holland (backing vocals, Hammond organ, piano and synth), Jack Alexander Timmis (bass) and Samuel Jenkins (drums), Jones has made an album that is 10 distinct original cuts, no covers needed unlike on his previous albums.
Sequenced to be a journey the strutting rocker Anywhere With Me sets the vibe with some choppy organ drenched rock n rolling, as Can't Keep From Loving You goes a bit more into some Stax soul. On just these songs you can hear a difference between now and his albums of old. There's a gnarled rock n roller emerging out of that blues boy. The smoky Give Me That Feeling is followed by the AOR of Gave It All Away both total opposites but each of them sound as if they belong here.
He delves back into his blues roots for the ballads Tonight, Holding Back and the title track but, there is a real notion that, Destination Unknown is Laurence Jones unfurling from the blues cocoon into a future rockstar on this Marshall Record debut. The destination may be unknown but the ride will be entertaining. 7/10
They Live We Sleep - Sorrowful World (Trepanation Records)
South Wales noisemakers They Live We Sleep bring about 13 minutes, 30 seconds of harsh, ear piercing violence on their latest EP Sorrowful World. Having seen them live, they are force of nature when it comes to sheer presence, so as I pressed play on Sorrowful World, I hoped that this elemental sound would be the driving force on this EP.
They Live We Sleep - Sorrowful World (Trepanation Records)
South Wales noisemakers They Live We Sleep bring about 13 minutes, 30 seconds of harsh, ear piercing violence on their latest EP Sorrowful World. Having seen them live, they are force of nature when it comes to sheer presence, so as I pressed play on Sorrowful World, I hoped that this elemental sound would be the driving force on this EP.
No light shines through here, just misery brought to fruition with raging hardcore, crust punk and crushing sludge that is inspired by Converge, Nails and Trap Them, basically any band that rages at the inequality of life, how the rich step on the poor, how people use technology a distraction and basically how we're all fucked!
Getting the bile spewing forth is first track Endless Waltz, punishing hardcore that is a guaranteed to get the pit started. Doom Scrollers (guess what it's about?) gets more groove, a huge screamed chorus and dissonant stomping riff, reflecting those late nights of depressingly refreshing the screen as the bad news roll in.
Hellspeak is more frantic hardcore on the fringes of death metal as the title track goes down a more punishing doom route, to really stomp out any positivity that could be left. Sorrowful World has captured the volatile sound of They Live, We Sleep perfectly, a protest about the way things are today, skilfully recorded by WoodCroft Audio for maximum impact, it's going to make you ears bleed. 8/10
Grief Ritual - Spiritual Disease (Self Released)
Grief Ritual are on a tear, their volatile, seething, ferocious music has seen them support Heriot, Knocked Loose and Heart Of A Coward as well as a recent mini-tour with Gutter. I missed the Cardiff date of that tour and listening to this EP I'm gutted I did as the blackened hardcore of Grief Ritual has all the electricity and danger of bands such as Leeched and Nails with the slow, barren sound of death and doom.
Grief Ritual - Spiritual Disease (Self Released)
Grief Ritual are on a tear, their volatile, seething, ferocious music has seen them support Heriot, Knocked Loose and Heart Of A Coward as well as a recent mini-tour with Gutter. I missed the Cardiff date of that tour and listening to this EP I'm gutted I did as the blackened hardcore of Grief Ritual has all the electricity and danger of bands such as Leeched and Nails with the slow, barren sound of death and doom.
It's misery personified as Chris Ward (guitar), James Broady (drums) and Jamie Waggett (vocals) beat you down at every opportunity. Like many bands in the metallic hardcore sound, see the They Live We Sleep review, Spiritual Disease and the band themselves have been referred to as "caustic catharsis" their lyrics politically charged and aim is taken at Human Rights abuses, the increase of poverty, power and inequality, all those things that boil the blood distilled into five bruising cuts.
Dissolution is where the death metal comparisons comes from, while Immurement is a frenzied assault on the senses that shifts into atonal atmospherics at the end. Telluric has the breakdowns of hardcore but also brings in some solos for more of the metallic elements, this is before Atrophy injects some speed and shifting riffs while Pareidola gets going with stomping hardcore but at the end it slows for some fluctuating distortion and reverb. Spiritual Disease is Grief Rituals' arrival and you should be scared. 8/10