Monday, 19 December 2016

***CROWNING exclusive song premiere***

CROWNING

Who is CROWNING? I asked myself the same question when I opened my email inbox a few days back. Well hot damn, CROWNING is three fourths of Pregnancy Pact, a band that sent me their three song EP earlier this year, but a few days before they broke up. Needless to say, my attention was hooked. They told me that they were forming a new band that would sound a bit similar but also much heavier. They were so right. CROWNING are insanely good, intense as fuck, noodley, thick and chaotic, yet with a nearly constant source of melody to stabilize the listener during warp drive. Justin had this to say of the band:

"We're from Chicago, the three of us (myself, Myles and Dave) were in Pregnancy Pact, and then when our old bassist moved, we asked Vanessa to join and we ended up as Crowning. We recorded the album with Pete Grossman at Bricktop recording, and it was mastered by Brad Boatright at audiosiege. Our creative process is fueled entirely by crippling social anxiety and dollar store snacks."

I was so excited about this 'Funeral Designs' demo EP that after jamming it thrice I asked if I could help CROWNING do some cassettes. So, following this premiere for "Buddy Dwyer" fans can hear another new track titled "Velleity" on January 1st, 2017 that will appear on the Zampler #8 compilation. The 'Funeral Designs' cassette release will be limited to 30-50 copies and should be available late January of February at the absolute latest. Let me quickly go over each of the five songs in order to further wet your appetite!

The 'Funeral Designs' EP opens with "Funeral Designs" which wastes no time going full tilt through dark and dreary hardcore. This all explodes in a flash right before 30 seconds with some melody before dropping a good few feet into the ground thanks to a pulverizing breakdown. "Velleity" follows and opens with about three seconds of chaos before flippin' over and bustin' out the clean and noodley instrumentals. This overlaps back and forth with the aggressive screaming until around a minute when the band lays into the listener just like Furnace used to. As mentioned above, it will also be featured on the upcoming Zampler #8 in less than two weeks. "Swivet" is 56 seconds of beautifully woven heavy screamo not unlike the new Youth Funeral LP while "Exposure" takes us on a brief ride through some atmospheric and haunting soundscapes before laying waste to the second half of the track.


Today's exclusive song premiere is the closing track "Buddy Dwyer", which is also the longest song, clocking in at nearly three minutes. This phenomenal piece of work ties together everything that makes the band great but also injects slightly more melody and accessibility amidst the destruction. The first half reads like a homework assignment as it is very well thought out and intricate in its heaviness while the second half sounds as if it grew organically out of the rotting remains of the preceding behemoth, sprouting a fantastic array flowers and colours that bring the EP to a beautifully complete conclusion.

Sunday, 18 December 2016

***IL MARE DI ROSS exclusive interview***

IL MARE DI ROSS

From Sardinia comes IL MARE DI ROSS, playing a killer hybrid of European screamo and dreamy post-hardcore. These Italians released 'Nulla è per sempre neppure l'inverno' earlier in 2016 on some great labels, with two in particular jumping out, those being Dingleberry Records, Adorno Records and Screamore. The six songs are very well crafted, weaving in and out of ambient dreamscapes and screamy hardcore that really incorporate a theatrical presence. Jam the two embedded songs and read the relatively short interview we had in fall of 2016.

For fans ofVi älskade varandra så mycketThey Sleep We LiveLibido WinsUbiquity, Violent BreakfastViva Belgrado and Uragano.

------o   IL MARE DI ROSS   o------
Interview

1) How did the band come to be?
Francesco and Alberto played in Hadam, a post rock band with heavy screamo influences. When Hadam disbanded they decided to create a new band that reflects their state of mind and so here we are.

2) Why the name, Il Mare Di Ross?
Il Mare Di Ross (or Ross Sea) is a deep bay of the Southern Ocean in Antarctica and is known as the coldest stretch of sea in the world.

3) What bands have influenced you the most?
We love euroskramz, especially Italian and Swedish music like Suis La Lune, Via Fondo, Violent Breakfast and Raein are our biggest inspirations, but also bands like Saetia and Funeral Diner or something less noisy like William Bonney, Old Gray and Brand New.

4) What bands do you think your music sounds like?
I really don’t know, we tried to create our personal sound trough the years and when I listen to our works I listen just Il Mare Di Ross. Maybe in the angriest riffs I recognize some Orchid stuff, in arpeggios maybe Suis La Lune.

5) What was the band that got each member obsessed with music?
Absolutely Violent Breakfast, I think they were the best doing that skramz thing.

6) What tours have you done? What one was the best?
Honestly we don’t  travel so much, we just crossed Sardinia. Probably the funniest one was the three day mini-tour with Vilma, great guys and big parties. Love you guys.

7) Tell us about your new album.
It’s really different from the others, it’s more post-hardcore. We tried to do something new in a genre that has been stagnating for years. The production is inspired by the bigs of the past, there are lots of crescendos, arpeggios and post-rock parts, spoken word sections and rotten screams. We are very proud of the outcome.

8) How did the writing/recording process differ this time when compared to previous releases?
Everything was written by the two guitarists just improvising, sometimes at parties, sometimes in rehearsal rooms, it came out of itself and wasn’t written like our previous albums. The production took a very long time as we wanted everything to sound different.

9) What is your standpoint of the world at the moment?
Wow, this is difficult. Trivially, I think that sad, angry and whatever bad moments there are, we have more happy ones but we are so concentrated on falling apart because of our incompetence to relate to the world. We can’t see what makes this life good.

10) What things do you have coming up that you'd like to tell the OMSB readers about?
We are currently writing new stuff, stay tuned!

Thursday, 15 December 2016

***LIFE IN VACUUM podcast w/Sasha Chornyy***

click here for the interview/podcast
LIFE IN VACUUM

Also worth nothing for folks in the Canadian province of Ontarion, UP/DOWN Fest will consist of 8 bands playing sets at a house in Guelph on Friday December 16th, 2016. Click here for the event page and contact info for the show.

Life In Vacuum (New Damage Records)
Meanings (Guelph, ON)
Bike Thiefs (Toronto, ON)
Output (Niagara Falls, ON)
Wimp City (Hamilton, ON)