The Paranoyds — Carnage Bargain

Even for the uninitiated, it's easy to tell The Paranoyds are from Los Angeles. Carnage Bargain is a day-glo modernisation of the punk rock that's defined the city for decades; contemporary femininity explored through vocals that channel Alice Bag and Exene Cervenka. It’s a throwback to the classic acts of the 1970s.

The band also manage to swerve the dick-measuring swagger of so many punk instrumentalists since those times, painting a jaunty, involving but unobtrusive backdrop for their pointed lyrics. The tone of this album is hinted at by its garish cover, bright, hyperactive and full of life. And its production avoids dirgey grossness, favouring overdriven garage-punk jubilance. The only way you'd miss a word in this mix is by not listening.

But these words aren't preachy, Idles-style diatribes. Lyrics are generous enough to suggest answers, but wise enough to leave questions open. And the whole album has a playful looseness, refusing to patronise listeners by positioning itself as an educator. It's more like a friend; hearing, understanding and sharing your exasperated questions.

Carnage Bargain knows you're on the same page as it. How could you not be? Only the wilfully dense aren't keyed in to the modern world's absurdity. But this album just gives you an opportunity to dance with it for a half hour or so, laugh in life's face, and find kinship in anger.

Carnage Bargain will be released on the 13th September. Pre-order the album and stream its first three singles here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Zamilska — Uncovered

Uncovered, the third album from Polish producer Zamilska, sounds like a night gone sour. This is music for the bloodbath that opens Blade — for a club whose sprinkler system is ready to paint the dancefloor red. But there's something more atavistic at play, too.

Shamisens, chimes and throat singing lend the LP a lurid sense of ritualistic power. They're littered over dark rhythms and mantra-like lyrics; words as function, spat by unfeeling mouths. For a staunchly electronic album, Uncovered evokes a surprising amount of folk tradition, of monsters with long-dead names. Dark magic and Gauguin's spirit of the dead, hovering in the more ineffable corners of primativism.

Uncovered is eerily difficult to place - flitting from second to second between the futuristic and ancient. Zamilska's ability to draw the album's disparate elements together is impressive. What's more impressive is that she makes it sound effortless.

The tracks on this album are slight, but this reflects its wealth of ideas. You get the impression Zamilska is too inventive to settle, snatching phrases away just as you're used to them. Any slower and she'd be boring herself. As the album goes on it feels like a jenga tower of invention; 'surely it can't keep this up'. But, miraculously, Uncovered punches just as hard in its final moments as its first.

Uncovered is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Blanck Mass — Animated Violence Mild

At this point, you know what to expect from a Blanck Mass record. For years now, Benjamin John Power has been producing tunes for the clubs in hell, coalescing dance and doom.

From out of the gate, Animated Violence Mild follows suit. A somewhat perfunctory skit precedes this album's true intro, the monstrous 'Death Drop'. An anime theme with necro production, this track feels like getting your ears hoovered. It's as relentless and grimy a re-introduction as you could hope for — and even finds time for a playful synth ditty towards its tail end.

But don't think that means you can catch your breath. A seamless transition into 'House vs. House' retains the album's hypercaffeinated pace while allowing some softer, poppier elements to seep in. It's a triumphant track that bops like a carnival. The beat barely changes up for seven minutes, but it's so infectious you won't mind.

In its cheap-thrill energy, Animated Violence Mild seems at least semi-parodic. Each track feels like an assimilation or piss-take of an existing genre. 'Love is a Parasite' has a glam rock feeling to its instrumentals, but retains previous tracks' ice-cold production and introduces some extreme vocals. The result is as compelling as it is absurd; half Norwegian black metal, half Toto.

And on 'No Dice', the glitzy Watch the Throne Kanye and emotionally volatile Yeezus Kanye get into a gory car accident. But it's so out-there, you'll be rubbernecking from start to finish.

The slight frustration with this album is that it's too much of a good thing. Animated Violence Mild is saved by a surprising moment of quiet in the second half of 'Creature/West Fuqua'. Without this, it would almost completely lack variation. But this quiet moment is made even more beautiful by its brevity; restrained in its restraint.

Like a kid running down a hill, arms flailing, feet lifting off from beneath them, Animated Violence Mild is an album on the brink of eating concrete. But it's all the more exhilarating for it.

Animated Violence Mild is released on the 16th August, and is available for streaming and pre-order here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

Föllakzoid — I

Few acts induce a trance as well as Föllakzoid. Their work is languorous and full of space, mirroring a release pattern that's just as unhurried. Fans have been on tenterhooks since the Chilean group's 'III' in 2015, but they can rest easy. It's clear that those four years have been put to good use.

With their new album, 'I', Föllakzoid have refined and re-jigged, no longer recording in collaborative single takes. Instead, phrases and instrumentals have been laid down piecemeal and stitched together by German producer Atom™, a party not present for the stems' recording.

This obfuscation of process, this disassembled assembly, situates Föllakzoid's music in a non-authorial space. More so than any of their past work, this album feels like it grew — rather than was pulled — into being. The fingerprint of an artist is hard to detect. Instead, you feel like you're tuning into some primal frequency; the oscillations of the earth.

When discussing Föllakzoid, and especially 'I', it's hard to avoid platitudes and new age-isms. They reject analysis, blow soot in the face of theory, occupy themselves with the pure and the experiential. This is a listening experience to disappear to, hanging in the air invisibly like dust at midnight.

I is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe

HIDE — Hell is Here

The history of power electronics is a cacophony of male voices. Recent years have seen the genre broaden, and welcome more alternative perspectives. That’s where HIDE stake their territory, with their new album Hell is Here.

Heather Gabel and Seth Sher, the duo peeping out from behind HIDE, explore themes of objectification, abuse and dehumanisation with a unique gothic vulnerability. Gabel's vocals walk a tightrope between Billy Joe Armstrong's iHeart Festival meltdown, and the inscrutable screaming of Pharmakon. The Baby Bear's porridge of extreme vocals, they fall into a great middle ground, in the domain of doom metal geniuses Couch Slut.

And like Couch Slut, HIDE wrap themselves around the skeleton of hardcore. Gabel's targets are clear, her lyrics no-nonsense. Sincerity and social consciousness go a long way in a genre overrun with theatricality and shock tactics.

Hell is Here swerves another noise pitfall, too. It's texturally rich, and demands to be turned up. 999 has a bassline that could as easily be mechanical creaking as a distorted vocal sample. The album's title track is rendered almost unlistenable (in the best way) by a relentless wail; half klaxon, half crying baby. The organic and inorganic collide, over and over again, with the force of a sledgehammer.

And some tracks offer respite. 'Grief' approaches industrial disco with the buoyant energy of a deep-fried Depeche Mode. Its lyrics are sardonic and creepy, with a sinister mundanity. 'Treat yourself/ you deserve it/ you've earned it' reads like something a half-asleep Mark E. Smith would have scribbled onto a lager-stained napkin (that's a good thing, for anyone unfamiliar with the man).

HIDE are living proof noise needn't be immature, boyish or mean-spirited. Hell is Here is a concise, righteous, and good-hearted release that tries to scream the world out of apathy.

Hell is Here, releasing on the 23rd of August, is available for pre-order here. Hear its first single here.

Words by Andrew O’Keefe