The sunset in Texas in October brushes us familiarly. I feel a twist in my heart as the late afternoon's gold mixes with shadows that take more and more space—much more space now than what blocks the light. And then the last rays slip over me and run fingers through the treetops.
Note: What can you do but notice the beauty of it, even during the final minutes of the football game.
When songs on Ylem offer an opportunity for resolution, Sunless always takes a pass. Instead of allowing for the emotional release of a headbanging breakdown or final minor-to-major chord change, this Minneapolis-based death metal trio always chooses yet another stutter-step to keep you off balance.
My favorite song, "Spiraling into the Unfathomable," starts strong with a chaotic onslaught. Then the song pulls through nimble riffs and irregular beats, throwing lots of elbows and fingers. Most of the album is like this—dense, dissonant, mathy metal. Guitars slice thin cuts of spoiled notes, the snare drum pops like popcorn, and a raspy vocal growls to this kaleidoscopic examination of the dark.
Passion is channeled into proficiency, and emotional connections wither during the endless pursuit of curiosities. Ylem, through intricacy and denial of resolution, sublimates violence more than a lot of other death metal albums.
Sunless will release Ylem, the band's sophomore album, on October 29 on Willowtip Records. The album is billed as part two of a trilogy that began with the band's debut, Urraca, from February 2017.
Donald Ray Pollock writes a twisted version of American Southern Gothic fiction, and The Heavenly Table twists the genre to the point of torture. This novel, caked in cruelty, depravity, and poverty, is a hell of a story. The events are set in 1917 and, consistent with Pollack's other novels, unfolds in territory around southern Ohio. The story revolves around the three Jewett brothers; their father's death sends the impoverished brothers out on the road, their appetite for adventure primed by the Western pulp-fiction novel they have read so much they have it memorized. Pollock introduces many other characters, and shuffles between them chapter by chapter. Everyone—each barkeep, school teacher, vagabond, and whore—comes with a story, no matter how minor the part. It's a bargain. The cruelty, depravity, and poverty that splatter every other page make some passages tough reading. But few of the characters are straight-up bad, and the tidy, focused storytelling and prose compel further reading.
The first time I saw a gate like that in the neighborhood was probably 10 years earlier—on one of the houses in the alley opposite the field belonging to the public elementary school. Is that the one that started it all? Today, those alley driveway gates are everywhere. Whatever neighbors value is stored away safely now, along with whatever value neighbors have.
Each sate sullenly apart, gorging himself in gloom. – Lord Byron
Last week, Montreal’s post-punk quintet, Talleen, put out a single, “Economics.” A pulsing bass drives the song while an insistent, anxious beat counters the woozy guitars. The combination produces a black cocktail of uppers and downers. The dominant sound, though, is the vocal—a mimic of ridicule and sneer. The song, accompanied by a video (by Alex Ortiz, the bass player and singer for We Are Wolves), gives a heavy-lidded glance at capitalism.
Talleen debuted with an EP, The Black Sea, in 2018. They sound a little like Killing Joke.
Loose Sutures returns with a sound shot with axle grease and cheap wine. A Gash with Sharp Teeth and Other Tales, the band’s sophomore album, gets going with “Stupid Boy.” After two minutes of control-slipping rock ‘n roll, the song tumbles down a smokey segue, then falls back into stripped-down, heavily fuzzed rock.
My favorite song is “Sunny Cola”: the band’s faux-vintage sound blends sixties’ suede rock and a film-noire sound during the verses, but then sidesteps into an oceanic riff at the chorus. Just a city-leveling sound accompanied by dryly intoned lyrics: “The more you have, the more you smile.” On “Last Cry,” the overdriven guitars crackle out, with the lead guitar pumping more adrenaline into an already heart-pounding attack; and the final two minutes of the song are just a fuckin’ jam.
Loose Sutures are a heavy fuzz-rock group from Sardinia, a large Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea. A Gash with Sharp Teeth and Other Tales, due out October 15 (via Electric Valley Records digitally and on colored vinyl), follows last year’s self-titled debut; since that release, guitarist-singer Gianpaolo Cherchi left the band, and guitar player Giuseppe Hussain joined up.
I asked the band how Hussain has changed the band’s sound.
"Giuseppe joined the band when we were about to step into the studio to record A Gash. We soon realized how talented he was and how much his style could turn our music into something else. Comparing the two albums, you'll see that there's a groovier guitar sound, more solos, and more accuracy in the guitar texture. Thanks to Giuseppe! Moreover, he's a singer and songwriter, too."
Major influences remain The Blue Cheer and Fuzz; heavy fuzz and stoner rock still front the Loose Sutures sound. But the new album has a bit less punk and little more psychedelic-space rock.
Instruments are treated with echo and heavy reverb; the vocals, which sound less snotty than on the debut, are pushed to the back of the mix so that the singer often seems to be shouting over the instruments. So I also asked the band about its writing and recording process.
"It all starts from guitar riffs: we used to play these tones ‘til we got a good rhythm session going, then we would add vocal lines and lyrics. The last and most important part is to get the best fuzzy sound from each instrument. We were lucky enough to record in the same place that we rehearsed and wrote the songs; that's pretty relaxing! We know how the room sounds while using the same gear and amps. And Alfredo Carboni, the sound engineer who recorded both albums, is a longtime friend who built up the studio. So recording for us is part of the same process, and it's extremely fun."
The band sounds like it's having fun on “Animal House,” pounding out an almost Sabbath-like groove. A Gash with Sharp Teeth and Other Tales closes out this binge with a big double: “Death Valley I” opens with more overdriven, blown-out guitar; that song takes a breath, and “Death Valley II” picks up there, lets the music drift, spaces out, and then pulls itself together with a little hair of the dog.
Adolf Eichmann played a leading role in the deportation of Jews from Germany and a significant role in the logistical implementation of the Nazis' "Final Solution to the Jewish Question." After Israel's Mossad captured Eichmann in 1960 in Buenos Aires, the state of Israel tried him in Jerusalem for collaborating in the persecution of the Jewish civilian population. He was found guilty and executed by hanging in 1962.
Hannah Arendt, a political theorist, reported on Adolf Eichmann's trial for The New Yorker. Her writing was revised and enlarged for a book published in 1964. In Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, Arendt draws out insights big and small as she dissects the trial and shares historical research. It is a fascinating blend of reporting, insightful meditation, and history.
The book's title captures the theme that emerged from the trial, according to Arendt. Eichmann came off as fairly average: an obedient, law-abiding, rule-following
joiner, with no trace of mental illness and no real hatred for Jews. But he could not think for himself. Furthermore, he had no career
plan and came to his position in the regime almost by accident; and,
there, he found he had a knack for logistical planning. And
when the regime's plan to expel the Jews changed into a plan to exterminate them,
Eichmann accepted the change and the given rationale that doing so was the most humane
option.
Arendt closes the last chapter by describing how Eichmann, after walking readily to his execution, offered a clichéd string of last words. This was wholly in character for him. "It was as though in those last moments he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us—the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil."
Arendt is reluctant to call the whole episode a show trial, but aspects seem to beg the description in Arendt's telling. Eichmann, who played an important role in the most horrific event of the century, stood in for the whole German Reich, and the execution was largely an act of vengeance.
For various reasons, including her descriptions of how some Jews helped implement Nazi policies against fellow Jews, Arendt came under heavy criticism after the book's publication. She addressed the criticism in a postscript added in a subsequent edition. She ends the postscript by stating that the trial did fulfill "the demands of justice."
Notes:
Mr. Barnes,
I went to Tulsa once, more than 25 years ago, to visit my sister. She and her husband had just moved there so he could die near where he was born. He was diagnosed with cancer a few months into the marriage. The last time I saw him, he was in a hospital bed in Dallas, and his head was deformed and exploding with his disease. That visit was goodbye.
A few weeks later, I was pulled out of Spanish class so my family could join my widowed sister's side. I rode to Tulsa, Oklahoma in the back seat of my other sister's boyfriend's coupe—a Camaro. I felt the giddiness, nervousness, and melancholy one feels when one doesn't know what else to feel. But the mood in the Camaro was fine, with my other sister and her boyfriend magnetically alive and well. They seemed happy. Those two had great chemistry, like cocaine and alcohol.
In Tulsa, we found my parents, who had arrived from Dallas to console the inconsolable. My sister, 22, tragic, had been living with death in a strange city, and now death left her alone in that house. So she grieved, and we offered our presence as comfort. Little did I understand of sadness and grief.
Guitars lumber, vocals bellow, drums exorcise still spirits: this is Incidents, the debut from Black Ink Stain.
The French noise-rock trio sounds like Unsane, and this album is like a used cargo van overloaded with deep-groove riffs bowling down the freeway.
“I See You Dead” opens with a continuous track of bass and drums along with a dissonant guitar. Then the song rounds into a steel-chain groove accompanied by a flat, shouted vocal. A vacant, moody section comes at about two minutes in, and, after that, everything condenses again loudly into the groove.
“Pont Des Goules” is the most dynamic song on Incidents. It starts with a soft-focus riff, fuzzy notes soon accompanied by another steel-toe beat. Then comes a clean vocal—a rarity for Black Ink Stain. The song flows between parts like lava and recalls the soft-loud-soft-loud style so prevalent in the 1990s. On “Frozen Stance,” a bass riff rumbles and jabs through the opening minute. Restless drums and a dissonant guitar join, and this leads into a loafing, bottoming-out chorus.
Most songs fit this pattern: trunky grooves power ahead, find pockets of noise, then get back in gear. Black Ink Stain also takes advantage of the loads of momentum it builds in songs to add in breakdowns or syncopated high-knee jogs and not lose the groove. I guess once you build up that inertia, the easiest thing to do is keep going.
