THE REAL GONE SINGLES BAR #61

Welcome back to the Real Gone Singles Bar, the place where we explore some of the more interesting mp3s and individual tunes that’ve landed in our inbox over the previous few weeks. In proper Singles Bar tradition, this week’s column covers a lot of musical ground by taking in country and a couple of singer songwriters alongside some extreme metal. There’s even time to introduce a new rock band. It’s unlikely that everything here will appeal to everyone, but as always, we hope you find something new to enjoy.

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TANGO WITH LIONS – The Light

After a five year recording break, ‘The Light’ marks the return of one of Greece’s most popular English speaking bands, Tango With Lions. With core sounds rooted within the early mid 90s, Tango With Lions are keeping the flame of European dreampop alive…or so it would seem if you were to only listen to the first few tracks of this 2018 comeback disc. ‘The Light’ presents lots of floaty, dreamy alternative sounds – ’tis true – but it ploughs deeper into bits of alt-folk than most dreampop acts would consider, or even dare.

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EDxKEMPER – Cut Her Head And Love Her

edxkemperBack in 1986 when the seeds of grindcore were sown, it seemed to take extreme music to a whole new level. Often with a raw sound and fairly low budget, the fusion of extreme thrash metal and blistering punk sounds in the hands of bands like Napalm Death and Extreme Noise Terror created something almost beyond music – a form of short and sharp brutality that was utterly visceral. For something that seemed so niche, grindcore flourished with scenes popping up all over the globe. With bands like NAILS keeping it alive in the twenty first century, almost thirty years on from Napalm Death’s genre-defining ‘Scum’, it couldn’t just be written off as a novelty.

Greek grinders EDxKEMPER are absolutely devastating on their 2016 release ‘Cut Her Head and Love Her’, as they mix the brief bursts of noise from those genre pioneers with more of a crust punk aspect and some extreme metal heaviness for good measure. What’s perhaps most impressive here – without anything resembling actual songs – are the production values. Whereas you might expect something of this nature to hang on to some fairly primitive origins – much in the way an early Crass record could be seen as a snapshot of an afternoon – the production/mix on this disc is stunning.

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KEVEL – Hz Of The Unheard

KevelKevel are a Greek quartet specialising in a style of metal that crosses several subgenres to create a huge slab of sound.  On this debut release, there are moments of progressive metal complexity fighting to be heard against huge blocks of instrumental post-metal and sludge.  While there isn’t a vocal acting as a central element from everything to pivot, the tunes are huge and often demanding on the listener; each one exploring different intense musical terrains.

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Watch the new video from Greek thrashers Biotoxic Warfare

As part of the promotion for their 2015 full-length ‘Labotomized’, Greek thrash metal outfit Biotoxic Warfare have released a video for the track ‘Proclaim The Gospel of Lies’.

The track is a great old school thrash affair, almost guaranteed to please fans of ‘Beneath The Remains’ era Sepultura. Check out the video below.

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