It has been 15 years since Helge Sten's iconic Deathprod project last surfaced with proper new material (aside from a teasing collaboration with Biosphere back in 2015) and he has been missed. Unsurprisingly, that long hiatus did not result in Sten's characteristically grim vision brightening at all. In fact, it has only grown darker, as the bulk of Occulting Disk is bleak void of seismic drones and nerve-jangling insectoid dissonance that Sten describes as an "anti-fascist ritual." I am not particularly optimistic about this album's chances in eradicating fascism any time soon, but the album definitely delivers on the ritualistic part, as this seems like a hell of a great soundtrack for summoning demons. While I am still on the fence about whether I love the stark, crushing blackness of Occulting Disk quite as much as the slightly wider emotional palette of earlier Deathprod, this album is undeniably an impressively visceral and monolithic artistic statement. That is more than enough to reaffirm Sten's status as one of the reigning kings of heavy drone, but the album builds towards an explosive climax that ensures that Occulting Disk feels like an exciting new chapter as well.
Mark Nelson's Pan•American project has been very quiet over the last several years, as he has been focusing instead on his Anjou collaboration with former Labradford bandmate Robert Donne. With A Son, however, Nelson returns to his solo work in bold and unexpected fashion (by his own quiet and understated standards, at least). In fact, there is very little that stylistically recalls Nelson's post-rock or smoky ambient-dub past at all here, though his aesthetic generally remains a very moody and slow-moving one. At the heart of A Son lies a handful of hushed vocal pieces that capture Nelson's vision at its most stripped-down, direct, and intimate. Those pieces are occasionally quite wonderful, making this release a fitful creative breakthrough of sorts. The rest of the album is not quite as striking, but the blend of songs, sleepily lovely ambient work, and hammered dulcimer pieces add up to pleasantly gentle and dreamlike whole.
Beast is the latest guise of Mountains' Koen Holtkamp, initially created as a solo project that was performance-based and centered around his experiments with 3D laser projections.  For Beast's Thrill Jockey debut, however, Holtkamp was very much NOT in performance mode, as Ens was recorded around the birth of his first child and is far more shaped by that event and the resultant lack of sleep than it is by his fascination with light. Unsurprisingly, the resulting album is a strange and fragmented one, shifting from tender, pastoral reveries to eruptions of euphoria to dazzling and sublime displays of compositional prowess on a song-by-song basis. While a few pieces are a bit too straightforwardly pretty for my curmudgeonly ears, Holtkamp has long been one of the most intriguing synth composers in the game and that has not changed. His revelatory flashes of inspiration may be intermittent here, but there are definitely impressive when they happen. The opening "Paprika Shorts" is easily one of the best pieces Holtcamp has recorded to date.
A few months past its sell-by date for Valentine's Day, Skullflower's latest excursion into brutal, uncompromising noise-rock is not to be missed by those who'd rather skip the flowers, dinner and dancing, and get straight to the, uh... consummation.
Over their career, Corrupted have been taking a slow (naturally) shift away from their initial starting point: the sludgy assault of the early releases has been replaced with something more akin to modern composition or ambient music. As such, Garten der Unbewusstheit is a logical progression for them as it combines the extreme heaviness of their old recordings with an almost gossamer thin presence. I have always associated their work with the darkness and the atrocities that appear on their album covers and on this album they distil all that hate in one clean swoop into a powerful, positive gesture without losing one shred of their music's emotional effect.
Xela and I got off to an unfairly bad start, as I was first exposed to John Twells through his anomalous black metal opus (The Illuminated) in 2008 and decided that his work just wasn't for me.  Curiously, that very album began the trilogy that this album finishes, but the only real trait that the two albums share is a devotion to all things bleak, murky, and ominous, this time manifested in beautifully forlorn, slow-motion drone.  That evolution is a welcome one.  In fact, the first half of this album is easily one of the best pieces that I have heard all year.
This collaboration between Locrian's Steven Hess and composer/field recordist Christopher McFall is sound art at its most desolate and decayed.  It's a strangely subdued and subtle album, with long non-musical stretches and very rare melodic interludes.  That doesn't make for the most immediately gratifying listen, but it is most definitely by design.  In its own way, this is blacker and more misanthropic than black metal, evoking the ruined and smoldering aftermath rather than the fury.
This is the second installment of Nate Wooley's wonderfully uncategorizable improvisation project based upon a fixed backdrop of abstract tape recordings.  Notably, it sounds radically different than the skittering and nightmarish first album (where Wooley was joined by Paul Lytton and David Grubbs) and continues to betray no hint of Wooley's background as a jazz trumpeter.  This is improvised music at its most difficult and listener-unfriendly, alternating between queasily dissonant droning and explosive catharsis.  I like it, but it is very much pure, uncompromising art without any nod to accessibility.
Concluding a trilogy of releases that began with 2008's Indications of Nigredo and 2010's Order4, Closure... is a dense, operatic work of noise and harsh electronics. Tied together as an album and an overarching narrative, it is a bleak and grating disc that conveys violence throughout. It is a challenging and complex work, but a multifaceted one that takes multiple playings to deconstruct and fully appreciate.
Following up their debut LP and EP, Chicago’s post-everything supergroup Anatomy of Habit (featuring members of Bloodyminded, Tortoise, and Indian, amongst many other projects) continue their penchant for dramatic, expansive rock-tinged music. For their Relapse debut, they provide two lengthy, side-long pieces that distill everything that was great about their early releases into a cohesive, rich album that stays faithful to their previous work, while adding an extra layer of polish.
