Even if there aren’t more albums released this year, 2022 is going to go down as a fantastic one for music. (If not much else) September has been another great month, with a few albums not making the cut just because I haven’t had enough time to give them the attention they deserve.
I was thinking of listing them with a short blurb, but this month’s round up is long enough as is.
Anyway, to the music and this month’s top album.
Holy Fawn
Dimensional Bleed
( Shoegaze / Metal )
Holy Fawn have always tried to side step their genre tags by saying that they play “loud heavy pretty noises” and it sums up their sound perfectly. HF play a mix of shoegaze and metal that, while intense, has very little of the musical aggression found in traditional metal. The band builds more on the emotional side of the musical spectrum, with a lot of the songs being very pretty, but that’s not to say they don’t have any edge. When they need to dial up the intensity they use a blackened / screamo vocal. However, it should be far enough down the mix not to be off-putting to the casual listener, if you can listen to Alcest you’ll have no problems here.
Death is a Relief, the first song proper, is a gentle introduction. With its dissonant piano and almost whispered lyrics they draw the listener in, but when the song kicks in you can hear the power the band have. This isn’t shoegaze coming from C86, jangly indie, this sounds huge. This has the bombast of metal and is almost dizzying. It’s a dynamic that bands like Deafheaven have used before but Holy Fawn make it their own.
Dimensional Bleed is an improvement on their debut, it flows better, the song writing feels more assured and it is much more polished. But it’s important to say that for once this polish isn’t over production, the band have just perfected their sound.
I honestly can’t get over how good this record is and yet again I’m lucky enough to say another album has jumped to my end of year list.
Also, if you can see them live, do. They are astonishing for such a young band.
George Fitzgerald
Stellar Drifting
( Electronica )
If ever an album has a title that doesn’t match its sound, it’s this one. To me, stellar drifting sounds cold and lonely, where as this album is lush, warm and down to earth, and feels far more like London than outer space.
There are echoes of the early 2010’s here. Rainbows and Dreams has traces of George’s garage roots while the first single, Cold, is a full on post dubstep ballad.
It seems a bit cheeky to call a dance song Setting Sun, as that name seems pretty tied up in music history, but the song’s fast paced number is a great centrepiece for the album. There’s also something here that reminds me of Orbital and as anyone who has ever read this blog before will know, that’s catnip for me.
After that the album dials things back about, Retina Flash sounds like a much less threatening version of Machine gun by Portishead. Cosmonaut Alley and Betelgeuse continue the bass heavy, chilled out atmosphere this record does so well.
This is a perfect album to enjoy as the nights close in and the days get colder, snuggle in somewhere warm and let Stellar Drifting envelop you.
Crippled Black Phoenix
Banefyre
( Prog / Post Rock )
Banefyre covers a lot of ground musically, probably sitting somewhere between Prog and Post Rock but that feels like doing the band a disservice, this album feels much bigger and more sprawling than that kind of dry description.
Joel Segerstedt, the new singer, reminds me an awful lot of Justin from New Model Army and his gravelly voice perfectly complements Belinda, the band’s other vocalist. Like NMA, CBP are furious at the state of the world and this album is a rallying cry against the silver spoon fed, entitled self interest that is destroying the planet we live on.
Wyches And Basterdz, the first song proper, sets the tone, a song about a woman who is going to be burned as a witch for being good with animals and being different. It’s a song with gritted teeth against a religion that burned women for no real reason other than fear and power. Ghostland is more like a pagan invocation, with the band embracing its inner Nicol Williamson, (in Excalibur) and the track will be the perfect soundtrack for when we finally start shoving Tories into a wicker man.
CBP are not shy about their support for hunt saboteurs and The Reckoning is a song about getting revenge on fox hunters, which is a little shocking to have it sung so explicitly. (Just to be clear the Ways of Exile are against blood sports. If you want to hurt something, take up boxing. At least then your opponent can fight back.)
In places this feels like a raw nerve in album form. The pain, anger and rage at the cruelty of man, on humanity, to animals and the world itself is to the fore here and is something to be celebrated in a climate where music can feel toothless and saccharine.
On the down side however, brevity has never really been the band’s strong point and that is a problem here. At over 90 minutes there is just too much here to digest and dropping some of the tracks would turn a very good album into a great one.
This is an intimidating amount of music but will really repay the time you put into it.
Gaerea
Mirage
( Black Metal )
I always feel out of my depth talking about Black Metal, I’m not Kvlt and never will be so there’s always this nagging fear that I’m going to say something stupid while talking about it. Deafheavan were my gateway to the genre so I guess I’m always going to feel like a musical tourist with BM. But! To be quite honest, fuck that gate keeping bullshit. I’ll like what I like and I like Gaerea.
The opener, Mirage, lulls the listener with a very pretty post rock intro before unleashing the blast beats and by track 2 we’re in full on black metal carnage.
Black metal like this should be intense, and sometimes it feels like someone tearing their soul out, which (strangely) can be exhausting over 50 minutes but Mirage has a lightness of touch that stops the album from becoming overwhelming.
Even the heavier songs Garera have a catchiness that can help navigate some of the more brutal passages of the album. It’s something that only the best bands can do and here, it’s done with style. So if you like black metal, this is a great album, if you want to dip your toe into the darker musical waters, this is a great place to start.
Death Cab For Cutie
Asphalt Meadows
( Indie Rock )
Time moves fast when you’re not looking and somehow Death Cab for Cutie is 25, and the boyish, floppy fringed Pacific Northwesterners are now the elder statesmen.
25 years of jangily indie guitars, tortured metaphors and over earnestness, truly there is no one quite like them. They’re also at the point of their career that they’ve been written off after a few poorly reviewed albums. (I really like Kintsugi fyi) So the question is… Is this a return to form?
Yea. It really is. The band sound energised like they haven’t in years and it’s great to hear.
From the off, I Don’t Know How I Survive, is a classic Death Cab song. The opening, with it’s almost funky bass line might be a bit surprising but the fuzzy guitars on the chorus is classic DC and stands with the band’s best songs.
Roman Candles is pure DCFC, excuse me while I post the first verse.
“It’s been a battle just to wake and greet the day
Then they all disappear like sugar in my coffee
(Sugar in my coffee)
A hint of sweetness but the bitterness remains
The acidity devouring my body
(Devouring my body)”
You can spot Ben Gibbard a mile away and I wouldn’t have the band any other way.
I Miss Strangers is the only lock down song I’ve heard that doesn’t feel like it’s wallowing in misery and puts into words a concept that I hadn’t even thought of. The fact that it’s a fast paced number and not a ballad makes me love it more. This could have been a maudlin nightmare, instead it’s going to be a cathartic live moment.
I’ll Never Give Up on You is a lovely, gentle hug from the band as they close things up on a fantastic album that can stand side by side with their best.
Otus
Torch
( Post Metal )
Putting Cult of Luna as a genre tag on Bandcamp certainly is one way you can nail your colours to the mast and Otus are not afraid to wave that post metal flag.
The most striking thing about Torch is that while all the usual post metal tropes are here, the loud / quiet dynamics, what sets this band apart from the crowd of CoL clones, is that Otus do post metal really well. They side step every genre trap with a flourish. The dynamics flow organically, and with a real sense of journey in each song.
None of the songs feel dragged out, even if they are on the long side, but at 43 minutes, the runtime never gets overwhelming.
This is a great post metal album, nothing more, nothing less and that’s enough.
The ways of exile 