Cellgrat - Deception Schematic / External Habitation

Speaking of short lived cult grindcore bands here's another one from the American continent. This one's called Cellgraft, they formed in 2008 and sing about how everything is going to shit. In 2012 they called it quits after one full length (full 12 minutes of audio!) and a few eps, splits and demos. I've never actually bothered to check out their full length release, something I'll have to correct very soon but I've been digging their two EPs quite a lot over the years.

Deception Schematic is fully immersed into old school 90s grindcore style including the low end muffled production. Lots of screams, crunchy guitars and a few guttural vocals thrown in the mix for good measure. It's also really short, like 7 and a half minutes short. This is probably the greatest downfall of it. You don't really get to hear much of it but what you do is excellent if you're into more old school style.

External Habitation on the other hand has a much different approach. It's slightly longer but it's completely different in atmosphere and production. Everything has a lot of gain making it teeth sharp and extremely loud and disorienting. Seriously this shit is bordering on noise at times. I don't enjoy this one as much as I do DS but it's still a pretty wild and fun ride albeit also short one.

Get them both.

N.I.B.I.R.U. - War Before Extinction

Back when Insect Warfare decided to quit I was sorely disappointed. I mean, they released possibly one of the best grindcore album of all time (along with a string of excellent full length demos and EPs) and then they just petered off into obscurity. The band disbanded in 2009 officially and people went their separate ways. Ever since then I've been looking for similar grindcore bands and quietly following ex-band members of IW through their various projects.

One of these projects was NIBIRU which was a short lived grindcore band that didn't put out much but it was deeply rooted in IW style of playing. This EP is pretty much the only thing they did and it's only 8 minutes or so but it's fucking radical. Since the band contained a lot of IW members the whole thing sounds like IW (like it's a spiritual successor) but there are distinct differences as well. IW used to focus on those fast thrashing riffs but on here the focus is more on guitar chugging at lower rates of blast beats. The result is a familiar IW sound but much more slower and far more pummeling.

It's a taste of things that promised a lot but sadly they never continued with this band. What got though is surely worth several listens.

Get it.

四人囃子 - 一触即発 = Ishoku-Sokuhatsu

This album/band might be or it might not be a hidden gem depending on how knowledgeable you are of the Japanese prog-rock scene. I personally discovered them by chance and I greatly enjoyed this album which also seems to be their most popular. They also released a bunch of other albums but I haven't had the chance to hear them.

It came out in 1974 while the band was relatively of a young age. It starts off with a short burst of noisy synth sounds but it quickly segues into a much more conventional prog rock sound. The overall experience is similar to Pink Floyd and similar bands like for example the first (proper) track sounds like Pink Floyd but the synth solo feels like it came from The Doors song. It's strange but it works. Later on the album picks up speed and other drugs bringing much more psychedelia, strange transitions and wicked guitar solos. As it goes one (especially in the longer more jam packed tracks) the band brings in more of their own unique sound.

To be honest I'm not very picky about prog rock and I'll like an album as long as it's not too cheesy or cluttered so I can't really tell if this album stood the test of time or not. Its continuing popularity might suggest that it did.

Get it.

Sweet Smoke

Sweet Smoke was a band that kinda just came and went by. They never really garnered a lot of attention during their prime but they did record three albums (two studio and one live) during their interesting but short career.

The band was formed in US but they eventually moved to Germany where they lived in a commune. So basically they lived out their lives being hippies, eastern philosophy enthusiasts etc. while playing gigs around their town. Eventually someone from EMI came along and gave them a record contract. The contract produced their first album called Just A Poke.

Just a Poke is a +30 min jam which defines their sound/style pretty well. The band does not do regular song structures or lengthy prog passages. This sounds to me a lot like a really fine tuned jam session where each musician gets plenty of room to improvise and interact with other musicians. There is a structure here albeit very open and free but the music is still very melodic and in tune. There's no "out there" experimentation or free improvisation adventures. Everything actually gels very well together, the vocals occasionally pop in to sing a verse or two but the main focus is on soloing and having fun.

So now that they had a record and now that the record was really well made you would expect great things to come for this band. Sadly not much happened. The group just kinda dilly dallied around the world. Some went to India, some went home and some stayed in Germany.

Eventually they managed to realize that their album was actually good (Wikipedia mentions German tourists in Nepal telling them how popular they are). So after that interesting encounter they went back to Germany and recorded their second album called Darkness to Light.

Darkness to Light was in a similar vein to their first one but it had a much more commercial appeal. For starters the album was now segmented into proper songs and the vocals became a little more prominent. Although the songs were relatively short the album still has two +10 minute jams which are both really good and greatly improve the overall quality of the album. On here you can also hear some Indian influences that the band brought back from their trip. So while this album had filler songs the overall experience is still pretty much worth your time. Most of the fillers aren't that obnoxious anyway.

After this record the band again split up doing various travels and such. A year later the same company that did their albums recorded their last performance live and put it out as an album. This album was simply called Sweet Smoke Live.

This one is my favorite one from their short lived discography as it lets them do whatever they want and play however long they want. None of the songs here were on previous albums so all of the songs are new or unrecorded. With that you also get two jams at the beginning and at the end. During the first jam they do a cover of The Creator Has a Master Plan which is fucking amazing and should not be missed.

Anyhow, here are the links for all three albums:

Just a Poke
Darkness To Light
Sweet Smoke Live

Rachel Goswell - Waves Are Universal

Rachel Goswell is a name commonly associated with a band called Slowdive. I'm not very familiar with them so I can't really make any meaningful comment but I'll get around to them one day. She played for them the guitar and also sang and she also played in another band called Mojave 3 which is a great band and you should definitely check out their albums. Especially if you end up liking her solo album which I'm sharing.

On her solo album she combined the music of Mojave 3 with some of her own styling and instrumentation. Even though this came out in 2004 the album sounds a lot like the 90s. It's a quaintly melancholic affair with love songs throughout and songs of longing. It's one of those albums that you put on when it's raining outside and you just made tea and you're comfortably snugged somewhere warm. The songs themselves are diverse enough to feel unique in terms of instrumentation albeit being relatively simple in terms of structure. It's definitely varied enough to keep things interesting throughout the album.

Get.