Category: Review

Review of Orcus Nullify: Death Hag

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Band: Orcus Nulify

Album: Death Hag

Label: Self release

Members: Bruce Nullify – Vocals, Guitar, Bass/Leonia Teaneck – Lyrics on Death Hag and Rose Veneer/
Drum tracks, mixing, mastering and all around big help Ant Banister of Sounds Like Winter and Lunar Module.

https://orcusnullify.bandcamp.com/album/death-hag

https://orcusnullify.weebly.com

https://www.facebook.com/ORCUS-NULLIFY-136454503096836/

So Orcus Nulify is a wonderful project by Bruce Nullify out of South Carolina. Bruce is one of those wonderful people in this scene that is always going out of his way to help everyone else in the around him. So I was really excited to get this EP and really dig into it. The sound has a lot of heavy old school goth guitar riffs, I would almost call it doom metal. His voice is a deep mellow chant and his lyrics are extremely theatrical and over the top. I get how it might even ride that line too much for some, but not for this guy. I think Bruce glides the absolute razor wire of creating a dramatic picture of allegory while keeping just enough in reserve to not cross the line into cheesy. It’s a real art in this day and age to create something this involved without coming across as ironic. As a listener you have that question in your head but you also have to face that this is extremely well done rock music with depth and substance. The Sisters of Mercy did this, Rosetta Stone did this, and I feel like Orcus Nullify is walking the same path. I think another great strength of this EP is that Bruce is doing every voice, guitar, bass, drums, when it all comes together I think it really gives the songs a singularity which are essential to the effect he is creating.

This was a four song EP I found myself wanting more of. He covers a lot of ground artistically in just four songs. Bruce got some help from Ant Banister of Sounds Like Winter who is an incredible song writer in his own right. He really smoothed out some of the edges and added in some drums beats that give motion to the tracks and make it feel more modern. Leonia Teaneck did the lyrics for Death Hag and Rose Veneer which are two of the strongest tracks. I don’t know any of her work but the lyrics here are truly unique and wonderful. “Drags her fingers through the leaves, and in the night, the veil is lifted.” This EP is full of power and vulnerability at the same time. It’s a memorizing combination.

As I have continued to listen to this EP more an more I think it is important to add a note to the original review. The guitar work in these songs really stick with you. It’s a lot of of rhythm and lead blending and twisting and the more I heard these songs the more I felt they were the true stars of what is making these songs so powerful. Bruce is doing both and I think that is part of what makes them blend so seamlessly and become another voice in the pageant of this music.

Since it is a 4 song EP the best tracks could be any of them, but I will narrow it to two.

Rose Veneer – This is the quintessential bomb track and single. Powerful driving drum intro. Textured guitars that have a very old school Alien Sex Fiend British goth feel. When Bruce comes in with those winding thick vocals describing a crawling graveyard culmination of life and death. It really optimizes what Orcus Nullify does so well. It keeps you guessing as to how serious this is and leaves you as a listener questioning your own perceptions.

The Wind – Here things kick up a notch, a slashing static whip of guitar undercut by a driving Peter Hook bass line. Bruce’s vocals again are a chant in an off kilter rhythm that captures your attention. Then the chorus jumps up an octave in a traditional Cult like rock ballad. I love the dynamics here. The drums really add so much to this track with those crisp merciless snare snaps. I can picture the music video in my mind without seeing one.


Overall this EP is a brave and fresh challenge to the so much cooler than thou feel of modern post punk and goth and I found myself falling in love with it’s unabashed extreme darkness with a standard rock feel. This is an album that needs more appreciation and attention. Find the straight forward spooky romanticism of Orcus Nullify

Review of Curse Mackey: Instant Exorcism

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Artist: Curse Mackey

Label: Negative Gain

Other Affiliations: Pigface, Evil Mothers, Amorous, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, Grim Faeries, SPASM

https://cursemackeyngp.bandcamp.com/?fbclid=IwAR3pLI_Sfju7v_VlnffOHq26o_EY3zOmxXymbDs4fovEw3Zhj-9EYIn-kmY

https://www.facebook.com/pg/cursemackey1/about/?ref=page_internal


So someone much smarter and a better writer than me once told me “If you want to be a better writer, read books written by great writers” I feel like this is advice Curse Mackey has taken to heart. Because here we have an album of a very literary quality with an engineers craft. As I listened to it again and again I kept finding myself drawn to the question, what was he reading when he wrote this?

Curse Mackey photo by Christopher De La Rosa

Going to try a slightly different format for this review because of the artists pedigree. I mean here is a guy David J calls to fill in for Peter Murphy when he is tired. An artist who is appreciated and respected at the highest levels of industrial music. It’s for good reason. He is a wizard of craft bending the ultraviolet light of electronic sounds into a laser focus. This is his first solo offering and is a chance to tell his story strictly from his own perspective.

Right out of the gate the first song “Submerged“ is a subtle and gripping offering. Where the chains slip around behind you and lock in place before you know you are captured. Satirical blasphemous religious allegory in the style of William Blake hints at the greater heresy to come later without going over the top. I was extremely impressed with the rising and falling dynamics to create this sense of slowly sinking beneath the water.

“O’Blasphemy” This is a dance floor burner for the ages. The imagery is sexually charged and delivered in a boot stomp cadence. I love the background keyboard lifts, so much motion feels like dancing in an earthquake. The vocals are razor slices tearing you to shreds while they lull you into acceptance. This sounds like post coital breathing mixed with rebellion. 

“Somewhat Processed” This is a Dante’s Inferno quest of the River Styx touring and longing for something lost. “Just part of the show for our bloodstained soul” A need to feel. The triplet snare snap to create that off kilter hurky jerky motion while the dangerous silky vocal is your Charon poling you down the river.


“Concubinary” Sometimes a song strikes me by what i picture myself doing while listening to it. This is a great city-scape street walking burner that jumps on the back of Mackey’s vocals and lets the lyrics carry it across the finish line. That wild and untamed part of the city where the rules don’t apply.

“ Secrets of the Resurrection” Such a delicious pop hook served up in classic ritual form. The song carefully and strategically assembles all the parts until you see the face of the monster. The chorus from Nat King Cole re-imagined in this wicked anthem of hope and clashing counter culture. Beautiful live wire tension shakes your core.


“Dangerous Sleeper” I love this breakdown creep with throwback samples reminiscent of Wax Trax or Evil Mothers days. Not sure where they came from Mackey is known for finding or creating samples from his everyday experience, but i am moved by the slow creeping doom and flowing rhymes. “He’s my arch angel made flesh, he takes the mark, upon his flesh”

This entire album has a cohesion and message that stands out in a current world of blips, clicks, and snippets as a classical work with the quality of literature and study. It really spoke to me for the experience and craft that was the culmination of a career in art and learning leading to this moment. This is a must own album for anyone who values the genre of Industrial Dance Music.

Review of WitchHands: A Voice and Nothing More

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Band: Witchands

Album: A Voice and Nothing More

Label: Independent

Members: Vocals: Ryan Flint
Guitar: Aaron ‘Batboy’ Hernandez
Bass: Jodajen
Percussion: Sleezy B
Keys: Lance Broodington

https://www.facebook.com/WitchHandsBand/

https://m.me/WitchHandsBand?fbclid=IwAR3Gg2A1F1-pRSjAG8q3LHGGdH5VQaJ-PtSHU6q5-A8DR3gNTc5r4HYkHI0

https://witchhandsdxr.bandcamp.com/releases?fbclid=IwAR3rzCpgmhTS5cVC4AiX0myZ_Anwq3rur9Y9zRCZwKuJZ-Mj6GlEogBRqF0

This is an album I had been waiting for and snatched up the moment it came out. Colorado doom goth punk metal Witchands is a LONG road from my typical musical interest. However since they came on my radar I have found myself rethinking how big my circle is and that is always the best feeling. Lately I am really drawn in by albums that have a chaotic blend of styles and structures that cross boundaries and challenge norms but still ring familiar. “A Voice and Nothing More” really checks all of those boxes. Song to song they really run the gambit of Punk, Doom Metal, Goth, Post Punk. For being a hard style Flint has amazing range to his vocals dancing between Glen Danzig, Musical Theater, Dave Vanian, and Gregorian Chanting. His fluctuation would be enough to give this album that eclectic well rounded feel. The band changes style just as effortlessly though. So each song feels like a total shift. A story being told in music. Aaron Hernandez is bringing a enormous dirgeable of floating steel to his guitar sounds. They hang in the air pushing the weight of a wall behind them. Jodajen’s bass lines are a blistering thump and pounds your bones like a sledgehammer. It gives the songs movement and clarity in that thick pounding texture of the music. Broodington adds on the beauty and flavor with subtle understated keyboard notes that differentiate these songs from metal or punk. Adding a confidence and complexity. Finally lets talk drums, holy shit Sleezy B is an animal these are gargantuan John Bonham blasting toms, slippery fills, and dynamic times changes. I’m a singer, I just don’t get effected by many drummers like this but Sleezy is bringing something special to the sound of this record.

The music and sound is journey enough to make this record worth hearing. The more I listened the more I came back to the poetry of these lyrics. It’s a true epic tale of demons and darkness in a very over the top theatrical style. I found myself reminded of Sabbath/Judas Priest in the imagery and passion of the words themselves not just the voice pushing them. Because this record is so diverse not every song or every part of every song is going to be for each listener. I definitely found myself drawn in and out at different times as the styles veered from my wheelhouse to too far for my sensitive pop loving ears. That became something I came to appreciate after the forth listen. Making myself open up to something new and glorious.

Since I have written this review WitchHands has recorded a new EP which is called L’appel du Vide. A lot of the same driving pageantry but this new offering shows a maturity and refinement to the pounding drive without giving up the intensity.

https://witchhandsdxr.bandcamp.com/album/lappel-du-vide

I kept flip flopping on most notable tracks but here goes nothing:

Night Falls – “How many tears have you got, you never thought you’d die young.” Powerful lyrics with powerful delivery. Aaron uses layers and feedback to create a crushing depth. It’s an anthem song, and a chanters song. This is something old and forgotten brought forth from a grave and given new life.

Derelict – This is one where those drums just cannot be contained within the lines. It has that punk flavor in the lyrics with Danzig and Mike Ness old Social Distortion. Yet the lyrics are anything but punk in the theme. It is macabre and sorrowful but screamed out with such energy. It fills you and kills you and it all happens in the blink of an eye.

Darkness – Oh how this tune flips everything on it’s head. Its subtitle and flowing and has a fairy tale feel. It’s a thick funeral march. Then the change calls back to battlefields of yore. The imagery is contagious and the space between the changes leave you on the edge of your seat. This is a story I want to see told on a stage. The ending hits another level and range.

Overall this album is a complex and theatrical. It is so much more than the sum of it’s parts. It’s easy to get lost in the simple familiar style and miss the true complexity of the time and tone changes. However the more I listen the more I hear. I highly recommend taking the time to really unwrap the sweet fruit on offering here. In the end this is also a scorcher, a record you can bang your hard and stomp your feet to. It just happens to be a well of depth behind the fun.

FIVE YEARS AND A LIFE OF ITS OWN: Artificial Monuments’ 𝘐𝘭𝘭𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘺

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A cast of talented musicians and the darkness of a drawer make for an interesting duality.

Blessedly free of eight minute dirges, plodding male vocals and other dark wave wankery, Illusions of Identity presents us with nine crisp tunes reminiscent of Martin Hannett’s austere design, with none of the orbiting emptiness between melody. In just under thirty minutes, we have both airy pop sensibilities and an acute sensation of claustrophobia, splinters of jubilation and despair. Taking inspiration from acts such as The Soft Moon and Vince Clarke, Artificial Monuments has put forth an album that post-punk purists and pop aficionados will embrace. The corollary is a long, dark ride on your own highway – the fade in and out of headlights, dissociation, punctuated by moments of lucidity and intimacy: this juxtaposition is almost viscerally effective and ultimately, immensely satisfying.

Danish punk scene veterans Kim Wolf and Johannah Jørgensen formed Artificial Monuments in 2013; a handful of demos were put to tape before they asked MOTH alum Patrick Ringsborg to join. According to Ringsborg, the trio wanted something stylistically very different from both MOTH and Johanna’s old band, Metro Cult: ‘We thought we were cutting it down to size, making very minimal cold wave in the style of acts like say, Malaria! but the pop melodies kept creeping in, and the synths kept on layering and layering, and we ended up with this weird amalgamation of super minimalistic compositions and 2-bar pop hooks.’ A few shows in Copenhagen, one in Malmö , and the group was ready to start putting an album together.

Unfortunately, in 2015, an accident left the band without their friend and vocalist Jørgensen, and the project fell by the wayside. Tragedy often lends a measure of truth to a scene frequently fueled by self-indulgence; however, the band is reluctant to talk about it. Ringsborg’s manner is candid yet cautious when speaking of Johannah; ‘It is not a secret’, he says. ‘Even though the LP is drenched in the story, I don’t know how to tell the story and keep it tactful.’

So the nascent record sat. A few years later, the remaining members agreed to get to work. Some of the songs were merely ideas, simply, as Ringsborg says, ‘a synth hook on a mobile phone’. The skeletons of the melody were there, but revisiting them proved interesting. ‘The AM songs were left in the drawer for 3+ years before we agreed on finishing the album, and in the mean time we were listening to vastly different stuff from when we wrote the songs.’ This time around, instead of Iron Curtain and Neon Judgment, Ringsborg took his own inspiration from Bel-pop and ‘cheesy New Age synth’ music. Obviously, he’s not surprised in the marked tonal shift. ‘You do an album on and off over 5 years, it kind of takes on a life of its own!’ Left to his own devices with regards to mixing and mastering, Totem’s Christoffer Bagge offered his skills and support.

As they say, many hands make light work. A host of talented musicians backed the group in its final act – women artists, in particular. Johannah’s sister, Sally Dige, was one of the many who helped Illusions of Identity get off the ground. Ina Noire and Lisa Løebekken absolutely kill the darkly elegant “Wasteful Days” – a disco twist which wouldn’t be out of place on that album Al Jourgensen doesn’t want to talk about. Likewise, Mala Herba’s gelid vocals manage to lay like syrup over the peaks in “The Sun is Anaemic”. A febrile thump countervailed by Johannah’s sultry hum, “Succumb” is, for lack of a better term, a fucking banger. Cecilia Wörlen’s beautifully languid contribution to “Tired Bodies” is almost chipper, contrasting sharply with its lyrics. The lone track to which Ringsborg lends his voice is aptly named: “Incremental Vex”. His spidery whispers sound prophetic as the song builds, plateaus, and ends almost quickly as it begins – your panic attack neatly resolved in under three minutes. Conversely, the following instrumental track “Void” sounds hopeful in comparison.

What’s next for Artificial Monuments? Ringsborg says this is it. ‘We are very proud and happy that it is finally coming out, it took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to do. I’m sure that what we’ve ended up with is substantially different than what we would have done had we been able to finish the album organically back in 2015. Whether that is a good or a bad thing in regards to the outcome of the album, there’s just no way of telling.’

Artificial Monuments’ cassette will be out later this month on Funeral Tapes /Rusted Teeth, and keep an eye out for the LP, to be released on Dead Wax Records this summer.

FURTHER LISTENING: 
https://chainsaweaters.bandcamp.com/
https://technecph.bandcamp.com/
https://sallydige.bandcamp.com/
https://t0tvm.bandcamp.com/
https://mothband.bandcamp.com/
https://metrocult.bandcamp.com/

https://www.gofundme.com/johannah-jrgensen-support-care

-Rachel 

Review of Push Button Press: Spectacle 1

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Band: Push Button Press

Album: Spectacle 1

Label: Cold Transmission

All tracks written, recorded and produced by Jim Walker/Push Button Press.

https://pushbuttonpress1.bandcamp.com/album/spectacle-1-2

https://www.facebook.com/pushbuttonpress/

The new album Spectacle 1 by Push Button Press came to me courtesy of Andreas Herrman of Cold Transmission. I feel like everything Andy has been backing in the post punk scene has been an automatically must hear album and this did not disappoint. Hailing from Tampa Florida PBP has created a complete concept album which uses dynamic and crisp songs which expose themselves in a fearless and genuine manner. These are the songs of a painter creating images with texture and sound. The music has a city feel. Hard concrete and sharp angles. This music breathes and expands with life, but shadowed by a dark tone and stark realism of it’s challenging depth.

Lets talk about what stood out to me in this album. I related so much to the vocals and the lyrics of this album. Jim is not trying to sound like something he has heard before. I feel the authenticity of his tone and emotion. This is an album where the voice you are hearing is not someone trying to create an image or previously created sound. It is a artist laying himself barren with his glory and flaws in a heroic bareness. His cadence is emotional but within a contained timber. While these baselines bellow and creep with a heavy and driving force. The Guitars striking and feinting in a icicle dagger dance. Creating such a roller coaster of volume and intensity. Those rhythmic vocals maintain their tone and desperation. A lot of the album strays into different genres like Mire and The Sea’s dance club beats but those vocals are what never lets this album escape that concept of a post punk landscape. That constant contrast and mental challenge are what adds such expressiveness to this album. The songs are not fierce enough to attack you outright, but instead are peeling talons that strike away at you in subtle ways.

Jim is on a journey back to the music scene in this album. The album drips with that sense of the experience of a life lived but the bright fresh eyes of someone discovering a lost love all a new. This was a theme I kept feeling and found so relate-able.

Standout tracks:

Transfiguration – Ok so I just spoke on how the even and metered vocals on the cadence on this album was the rope that tethered this albums to a single concept defined this album, but this opening track flips that on it’s head. It’s a brighter, cleaner, prettier vocal concept. “Because its over now, everyone has left, got here just in time to see the party end” This is a bass driven city hope song that sets the story of the record.

5’C – Harpsichord, who uses harpsichord in the modern age to break a melody line. Here the vocals hit that familiar flood of melodic dark attack that ties this album together. That tinkling keyboard line creates such a contrast that drives your mind to a sped up motion of isolation and escapism.

Mire and Sea – Again the script is flipped into a lilting ballad at home with New Order technique but with a Peter Murphy artistic croon in the vocals. You have heard all these ideas before but not at the same time. That striking sense of what is familiar with what you haven’t heard is a beautiful step forward.

Overall this album is full of substance and retrospective depth. It is a wonderful blend of familiar themes and dangerous synthesis to create an unnerving sense of sinister discomfort and welcoming nostalgia. It was an easy first listen and a challenging deep dive. Scrape the surface, unlock the mystery. Find what you can in this multifaceted experience.