Degaruda - Degaruda

Modern day Post-Hardcore has gotten a lot of bad rap. Mostly because the creation of modern "emo" music and how it seems to be so diluted to the point that they seem to focus too much of pop sensibilities. While having pop sensibilities if fine you are honestly a pop band.


The problem then become when they start calling themselves Post-Hardcore or some bands start taking to the term Screamo when there are amazingly original and energetic bands that also use that moniker. It became so bad that journalists started to drop all connotations of Screamo and started labeling bands like Page 99 or Circle Takes the Square "Skramz" instead.


While the modern Screamo phase seems to be over and has retreated away away from the mainstream media, terms like Post Hardcore or even Screamo are slowly being claimed back by many bands. Like the original first wave of Post Hardcore bands like Fugazi that pushed the boundaries of their music, these new wave of Post Hardcore bands also their stuff to the next generation.

Envy, created a blend of Post Rock, Post-Hardcore and Screamo while bands like Isis mixes Sludge Metal, Atmospheric Music and Post-Hardcore to create that devastatingly huge ground pounding sound. Thailand played their part in restoring justice to the moniker with Degaruda.

Out of the streets of Bangkok, Degaruda throws away all the normal conventions of structure and musical arrangement. They throw it away and reconstructed what it means to be Post Hardcore. Some of their tracks don't even have vocals and let the lead guitars do the singing. In fact it was done so well that I didn't even miss the screaming vocals when accompanied. Now the problem with writing instrumental tracks normally would a lack of sense of direction.


No one is there to give commands or to tell the narrative to the listener. So if you get long verses, it tends to get boring very quickly. So there are several things instrumental bands resort to. It is either to slowly build up like an orchestra, creating amazing crescendos that could shake the ground like many amazing Post-Rock bands do or use leads to bedazzle you with their guitar skills.


Now Degaruda does not go into shred territory but they do an amazingly beautiful work with the guitar leads. The guitar leads feels like a scout leader leading you through a camping track. He isn't barking commands at you, he isn't forcing you to go through when you can't but he melody just urges you to go on that trip. When he reaches the camping spot, then all of a sudden the vocals kick in when needed.


A combination of gang shouts and throat shrieking madness. Nothing too frantic, but strong enough to give you the kick while maintaining composure. Sometimes there are melodic clean vocals that kicks with a gruff but still able to accompany the guitar leads. The guitars even at times are willing to enter Stoner Rock territory and give you a taste of it. It's the right amount of crunch and melody, providing you with the right blend of textures.


You can say that this is like eating an ice cream with the cone. Crispy cone made out of corn flour on the outside, but sweet, soft and cold Neapolitan flavors on the inside. The bass lines also add another texture to the whole dish, with the contrast between the guitar melody lines and the bass making everything grounded. The simple yet perfect drumming pounds his way through with a certain sense of versatility. The drums never do go fast at a manic pace but glues everything with a midpace beat and is willing to fade out at the slower parts to collude with the drums to lead to a build up in the song.

At points, I felt like listening to a Kyuss or Queens of the Stone Age record with Melodic Post-Hardcore tendencies. The heaviest track for me was the track Lambs which felt as if they could very well enter Stoner Metal territory if the guitars were tuned much more lower and the amps giving more heavier distortion. In fact, they even teased with a pseudo solo.

I wanted more heavier sounding riffs after but I can't be selfish, and hope every band can suit my Metal tendencies. To be honest, some of the guitar melody in this track easily fit into a Sludge track. Maybe one of the lighter ones.

To wrap this review up, to me this album has a nod to each and every era of Post-Hardcore and how it evolves in the years. From the instrumental Art Rock like lead guitars to the heavier Stoner Rock, almost Sludge tracks to the Post-Punk like verses. This was best highlighted in the track Full Hands where each of every single of those were blended together to create this melancholic masterpiece. Well, it helped a lot that I was listening to this while it was raining.


While not delving into one of those specific eras or sounds of the more popular, well known bands, it does a great job in telling them thank you. Even to the more Melodic parts flirt with Pop stylings.


While the tracks may be easy listening to those on the edgier side of music but this doesn't mean that the band could easily be digested by a regular Pop music listener. This is a love letter to Post Hardcore I fell in love reading it.


Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DegarudaMusic
Bandcamp: http://degaruda.bandcamp.com/

Terence A. Anthony commutes between Kuala Lumpur and Kuching. Co-Founder of Aural Chaos. He also writes for Greater Malaysia and Opinions Unleashed.

Lord Mantis - Death Mask

When was the last time have you ever felt disturbed by a song? Not through psychology but through how grotesque is the subject matter. Music that was specifically designed and engineered to make you feel gross. Was it Butchered at Birth? Or the amazingly detailed, description in the vegan propaganda by way of Cattle Decapitation's Forced Gendered Reassignment?


Both takes "disturbing" to a different level. The idea was too push forward boundaries on what is acceptable in the realm of freedom of speech. In the words of Carcass's Jeff Walker in Sam Dunn's Metal Evolution;

"Dead corpse, dead corpse. Human or animal? What's the big deal?"

As time goes by, imitators go through the revolving door, trying to emulate these records. Some take gore to cartoon-ish levels that you can't help wonder if those bands are just parodies. It makes us wonder if the Metal scene has become too desensitized that any attempt to push buttons is futile. So what angle do bands go to after when gore, religion and even politics have been attacked?


Blackened Sludge monsters, Lord Mantis takes a different approach in stuffing it into your face. Knowing how the Metal scene has been masochist, male dominated and fueled by testosterone, the band decides to serve up an image of a tortured hermaphrodite instead. Though not the first band to do so, and they had previously used an amputated, gender switched Jesus Christ on a crucifix on their previous album before, the band was successful into making people feel disturbed.


What's best about the band attacking our senses is that they managed to question us, whether did we feel disturbed due to the violence demonstrated or the fact that the Metal scene still fears the exploration of sexuality in the scene.


They force you to ponder how violence has been done upon the transgender community and how Metal, despite being a case for misfits, haven't been the best scene for transgenders to mingle around.


Even women, despite how legitimate their taste are, has to make themselves more legitimate and have proof themselves, before hanging out with the boys. At that point, you realize that Metal isn't the escape from an oppressive force that we pretend to have, but an extension of a patriarchal society, extending their arms, to lock the doors to our "exclusive" club.

More family friendly-art so that you can buy the album as a Christmas gift for your 12 year old niece! 
(Make sure she doesn't google the album title.)

But this isn't a review on Jef Whitehead's art and the political critique that the band wishes him to espouse, nor is this an essay in a Gender Studies class. So the question now that might be ringing in the reader's head is that, whether the music corresponds to how disturbing is the material presented. Lord Mantis's music, throughout the years, shows the transition of disturbing imagery in Metal like the paragraph above. When they started off, the band's debut sounded cartoon-ish and almost into Municipal Waste like territory. Given, that they still play Sludge but the music shows that the band is still growing up. Their second album, Pervertor has a more matured sounding tone, but still looking for an actual sound to latch themselves onto. To be fair, that is how most experimental bands work. This album of theirs is a few notches of Pervertor by giving us the heaviest, Sludge riffs the band has ever written and with Black Metal shrieks that sounds like the screams of a man, narrating your death, while him being tortured at the same time.


The guitars come crushing in, by repeating those huge Sludgy riffs and are able to use monotony to their advantage. The best way to explain this concoction is to imagine a band playing Brutal Death Metal without using the elements of such. The tracks are slow, brooding and uses the thickest of all distortion applicable to a Sludge breakdown and play it like a slam riff. The fast brutal parts, normally associated with Death Metal, now is replaced and comes in the form of the faster Hardcore Punk influenced Sludge, with drums that blast like a Black Metal record.


While heavily influenced by Black Metal, especially it's more perverted forms, the band utilizes riffs off the e-string rather than tremolos that is normally used in the Scandinavian form. Tracks like Possession Prayer, uses the drums in a tribal state, that almost reflects the track title. The drums goes into a form of frantic and the vocals goes into frenzy territory that reminds me of the scarier moments of Anaal Nathrakh.


The stand out track for me would be Negative Birth, that probably has the most Black Metal influence in comparison. In fact, for most of the song is on a full on blast that could easily remind you of the gnarlier moments of Gorgoroth but the bass carries on the Sludge influence. While at breaks from the Black Metal fury the guitars were carrying the band was not afraid to pull off Sludge riffs, without compromising the song. Later on the album, the band goes into Doom Metal territory, as if showing off the range that the band has.


The last track Three Crosses though entertaining, seems to be a huge change in tone where the music becomes more and more melodic. In fact, I would say this crosses into Doom/Black category. Even the vocals here seem to be on a higher register, highlighting the Blackened atmosphere, well treading into Deppressive territory at times, crossed with guitar leads that could very well be on a Jesu track. In fact, I was half waiting for clean vocals to come in.

Judging from most broke Sludge bands, they probably live there too.

Despite how much I enjoy the album, there are several things that I don't get from the album. The track "You Will Gag For Your Fix" seems like a misplaced interlude that does not correspond with the rest of the album.


In fact, it could have been shorter, and just been slapped with Negative Birth to create one track. The build up felt like it was leading to something, only to face a dead end. The track doesn't even try to flow into Negative Birth. Another thing that perplexed me was the "robot voice" vocals in Coil. But that didn't get to me long, it was surprising me at first because I didn't expect it but I got used to it at the 2nd listen.

To sum it all up, the band takes Sludge into a different territory, by bursting into Black Metal when appropriate, as if trying to make a statement against the Shoegaze influenced Post-Black Metal bands that has been popular in the past few years.


It's as if Lord Mantis is trying to tell the rest of the world, there are many other ways to do the melodramatic build up that the Post-Rock bands have been trying to do. Sludge could be one of it, rather than creating half baked hybrids of Godspeed! You Black Emperor.


If the Post-Black Metal bands were using Post Rock in building up scenes of drama, then Lord Mantis is using Sludge to build up towards the horrific scenes in torture porn.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lordmantisofficial

Bandcamp: http://profoundlorerecords.bandcamp.com/album/death-mask

Terence A. Anthony commutes between Kuala Lumpur and Kuching. Co-Founder of Aural Chaos. He also writes for Greater Malaysia and Opinions Unleashed.

Cara Neir - Portals to a Better, Dead World

I don't mind me some Skramz or Post-Hardcore and I absolutely love my Black Metal. However, when I hear this eclectic mix of Skramz, Post-Hardcore, Crust Punk and Black Metal I get confused. On paper, this thing is something the Metal scene would definitely hate.

Somebody has the guts to take my precious Metal and dip it into cauldron of different subcultures that have a bad track record in doing so?

Yes, the Metal scene is very much like Gollum. But if you were to take all those bias tendencies and open up your mind a little, you would find this record is amazing. After all, would you have found Metal if your mind was weld shut in the first place?

Obligatory forest photo. You need them for proper Trvepoints^TM . For Kvltpoints^TM, get a Candelabra and xerox your photos 10X instead.

Cara Neir is band that is really hard to pigeonhole a genre onto. Aptly, enough, the band stays away from cornering themselves into one by just calling their music "Experimental Black Metal" if that makes sense to you. The band refuses to stay into the norm set by musicians of yesteryears and changes their sound from one record to another.

Their 1st album has a Post-Rock/Doom Metal/Black Metal mix while their EP right after this album I am reviewing plays Black Metal that has strong Post-Hardcore influence, and has Sludgy moments, all rolled into one short Grindcore-length micro-song. (It's called The Overwatch and you can buy it here)

So this album takes a different route and decided to go for a crossover appeal. To say that this is merely a Skramz influenced Black Metal album is an oversimplification. This is more than that.

The way this album starts isn't exactly how you would imagine a Metal album should. The first few notes could easily get a Metalhead question whether they got the wrong record. The distortion was light, and the chords were more in an uplifting manner, rather than the usual bitter sounds of a frostbitten Black Metal band.


Now from those words, the first thing that many would imagine is the band Deafheaven, that has combined Shoegaze, Skramz, Post-Hardcore and Black Metal into polarizing effects. Where Deafhaven sounds like a bunch of Shoegazers trying to play Black Metal, Cara Neir sounds more like a Black Metal band trying to play Skramz.


It's like an immigrant who settles into another country and learn their language, no matter how well they know their grammar or phrases, there would be a sense of discordance while they speak in those first few years. They retain their accent, and remain distinct in the community.


If Deafheaven was a Shoegaze immigrant who planted their flag into Black Metal country, Cara Neir sounds like a Black Metal band who has a PR status in Skramz country. Even in the vocals show the difference between the "accents."


The vocal style from the Punk spectrum, when they try to scream in their more metallic genres, has a degree of melody that is still in the throat, not allowing a full shriek to occur. Cara Neir does the opposite by trying to add melody in that shriek but mostly retaining a harsh vocal sound in their throat.


It is exactly how you are not sure whether the album cover belongs to a Skramz band or not as the leanings are much more closer to Metal instead. Now the PR status may conjure images of that person returning to his homeland once in a while, despite adopting a new home. Well, that is what happens in this record.


Every time the guitars decideds to take a break from the blasting and the well programmed drums, enter a drum transition, the distortion gets heavier and the tremolo becomes more of a common feature. By the time the track Red Moon Foreboding rolls in, the Skramz is kept to a minimum.


Now even though the tracks becomes "Blackened" as many journalists may say, this album is not influenced by the Marduk branch of Black Metal but more like the artsy side of it, like Ulver or even Enslaved. As if being foreshadowed by the record title, the music does go to darker pastures. In fact, towards the 2nd half of the record, instead of having the vocals being shriek over,


Death Metal-esque low growls take the center stage while also showing off the vocal range of vocalist Chris Francis. The last track, 3380 Pounds, carries on a Doom-laden vibe, and at times teasing you with sounds that could easily accompany the more Doom influenced Agalloch songs. At points, the guitar starts to drift to folk influenced riffs that you would associate more with the more melodic Scandinavian bands instead.

The artsy side of Punk has not only influenced their music. Their lyric-writing, takes into a pseudo-philosophical approach, filtered through the eyes of life in the suburbs.


I have to admit, most of the lyrics here has a very poetic-sounding touch, that can only be written if someone were exposed to modern depressive poetry that at times can make no sense at all. Below is taken from the track Forlorn Love (even this sounds like a cheesy Skramz title)

The stupid cupids grant your wish and summon sister's laws and cheat your way in
Henry murdered Karen and the spoiled son too, he knew this spider had spun a past vile

The band may have something hidden under it, but I'm not getting the message here. Now older, Skramz bands also have the same philosophical approach but I'm am not well versed in it so whatever references that have made here, goes over my head.

To wrap it all up, while if you were to allow your Black Metal to gain a bit of influence from here and there, you might enjoy it. I definitely do, but I have a wider range of music than the average person has. A regular Black Metal fan who wants to keep it pure, as I can imagine will definitely hate it.

In fact, I would call this Deafheaven without the the Post-Rock parts that come off as pretentious and has well avoided the constant blasting, and allow the drummer (or in the case the computer drums) to go the Amebix route, and drum like a Crust band instead.

This is a rough experimentation on the crossover appeal to the artsier side of Punk and from the artsier side of Black Metal. It's Circle Takes the Square blended with early Ulver. One day, when this genre becomes an established trope, I'm sure many would trace back roots to this album.

PS/ I enjoyed this more than Sunbather. Come get me hipsters.
PS2/ I used the term Skramz instead of Screamo so that people don't get confused with the modern usage by shitty modern "Screamo" bands


Bandcamp: http://caraneir.bandcamp.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/caraneir


I'm not putting out a youtube video this time because it's unfair for the band to be judged from one track alone. The whole album needs to be listened as one for that gradual change in tone throughout the album.

Terence A. Anthony commutes between Kuala Lumpur and Kuching. Co-Founder of Aural Chaos. He also writes for Greater Malaysia and Opinions Unleashed.