Extreme metal band Forlesen closed 2023 in a grand and uncompromising fashion by offering an abrasive cover of Type O Negative’s ‘Red Water (Christmas Mourning)’ as festive bait. Transforming the slow, heavy gothic tune into an abrasive black metal/doom metal tour de force, they not only gave the track their own twist, but also made it sound like an original cut – something that originated from somewhere deep within the American band’s blackened souls.
OUR SOULS – I Won’t Tell You The Same Lie EP
On this follow up to ‘I’m An Adult In A Punk Rock Band’, Leicester’s Our Souls condense all of their best traits into a five song, thirteen minute blast.‘I Won’t Tell You The Same Lie’ appears to value its ferocious guitar riffs above everything else, but scratch just beneath the surface noise, and you’ll find musicians who understand an importance of big choruses and tight basslines to help drive their unquestionably enjoyable noise – and in a couple of cases, aren’t afraid to throw everything at an arrangement to see what sticks. More often than not, their gutsy approach works brilliantly.
The Dollyrots share lyric video for ‘Tonight With You’
As part of the ongoing promotion for their well received 2023 release ‘Night Owls’, The Dollyrots have highlighted the brilliant ‘Tonight With You’, and coupled it with a lyric video.
SLOWER – Slower
Slower. As the name implies, this band is all about the doom. However, this is doom with a twist. Bringing together members of Kyuss, Fu Manchu, Kylesa, Year of The Cobra and others, the performers are famous in their own right, but nowhere near as famous as Slower’s choice of material. This debut album features five Slayer classics, each one drastically reimagined as a timeless doom/sludge piece; five numbers that end up invariably sounding like more like Acid King than Kerry King. It seems inconceivable that speed driven bangers that sound tracked a generation’s metallic apocalypse could take on the stance of Electric Wizard and Witch Mountain, but behind their comical name, Slower have made such things a striking reality.
THE FALL – Fall Sound Archive Vol 8: The Real New Fall LP (Formerly Country On The Click)
The Fall’s twenty third studio album had a tricky birth. In 2003, a release called ‘Country On The Click’ was almost ready to make its way into the world, but plans changed at the eleventh hour. Depending on which stories you believe, the original release was either cancelled because Mark E. Smith was unhappy with the final mix, or shelved because it’d somehow found its way onto file-sharing services and bootlegged. Either way, a second version of the record – now titled ‘The Real New Fall LP (formerly Country On The Click)’ – made it onto Britain’s record shop shelves in October of that year.
Initial reviews were generally positive, and over the years, it’s become somewhat of a fan favourite in “later period Fall” terms, and it’s pretty easy to hear why. The bulk of the material adopts a fairly typical “Fall sound” – if, indeed, there ever was such a thing – but the arrangements are often superb, and Smith appears in particularly great form throughout, armed with lyrical barbs and a suitcase worth of obtuse lyrical references that serve some superb riffs and angular noises. It doesn’t seem to matter which way you approach ‘The Real New Fall LP’, it plays very strongly.