CORRECTIONS HOUSE: Members Of Eyehategod, Neurosis, Nachtmystium, Yakuza Unite; Winter Tour Dates Confirmed

CORRECTIONS HOUSE, the new collective featuring Mike IX Williams (Eyehategod), Scott Kelly (Neurosis), Sanford Parker (Nachtmystium) and Bruce Lamont (Yakuza), today confirm a string a rare live shows. The 19-date trek will commence on January 21, 2013 in Brooklyn, New York and wind its way through much of the of the East Coast before concluding in Denver, Colorado. Special solo sets by Parker, Lamont, Kelly and Williams will be performed prior to closing each night as CORRECTIONS HOUSE. Further info on CORRECTIONS HOUSE to be announced in the coming days.


CORRECTIONS HOUSE Winter Tour 2013

1/21/2013 Saint Vitus Bar - Brooklyn, NY

1/22/2013 Great Scott - Boston, MA

1/23/2013 BAR - New Haven, CT

1/24/2013 Metro Gallery - Baltimore, MD

1/25/2013 DC9 - Washington, DC

1/26/2013 Strange Matter - Richmond, VA

1/27/2013  Kings Barcade – Raleigh, NC

1/28/2013 The Atlantic - Gainesville, FL

1/30/2013 Churchill’s - Miami, FL

1/31/2013 Crowbar - Tampa, FL

2/02/2013 Bottletree - Birmingham, AL

2/06/2013 Siberia - New Orleans, LA

2/07/2013 Rudyyards - Houston, TX

2/08/2013 Korova - San Antonio, TX

2/09/2013 Red 7 - Austin, TX

2/10/2013 Bryan Street Tavern - Dallas, TX

2/11/2013 Opolis – Norman, OK

2/13/2013 Slowdown - Omaha, NE

2/15/2013 Moon Room - Denver, CO

Horn's Musical Highlights of Late - featuring Christian Scott, Chet Baker, Ramesses, The Sword, mind over four, Law & Order, Dragged into Sunlight, Saint Vitus, nachtmystium, Menace Ruine, Incantation, Havok, Down, Witchsorrow, Bedemon, Bison BC, Neurosis, and Nails (phew!!)

Sometimes, a music critic such as myself, has... very little to say.


I can't think of any ingenious way to change the way you, the reader, hear something. Sometimes, I'm just outta ammo. Sometimes,  the only thing I can say is: "I like this. You should check it out."
So that's what I'm doing. Below are my most recent jazz and metal favorites. I really enjoy them; maybe you will too. I've given you a few sentences to impart, if you will, a flavor of my experience of their work.

JAZZ

Christian Scott, Christian aTunde Adjuah: Miraculously, a spin on Miles Davis' hollow, beseeching sound without kowtowing to him. A somehow New Orleans-warm yet icy-terrified trumpet bleat over doomy lyric song titles. Highlights: "New New Orleans (King Adjuah Stomp)," "Who They Wish I Was," and "Kiel." To me the best new jazz album of 2012.

Chet Baker Quartet, Jazz in Paris, Vol. 53: Chet Baker Quartet Plays Standards: Baker gets some shit from critics, like the New York Times' Ben Ratliff, for not giving a shit about evolving as an artist-- and truth be told, he never really did. But he's the only soloist, to this day, who loses energy and slowly dies as he solos, rather than building up to a crescendo. Easily my favorite trumpet player of all time, over Miles Davis and Christian Scott. Makes me wanna take up trumpet, to this day. Buddy Bolden reincarnated as a white junkie matinee idol.


METAL

Ramesses, Possessed by the Rise of Magik: From former members of Electric Wizard who found Dopethrone too pussy-- disgusting, gritty blackened doom riffs if they were played in a garage and/or torture chamber. Production value zero, and somehow perfect.

The Sword, Apocryphon: The detuned perfect heaviness of their debut Age of Winters, but with a tiny splash of that Texas blues that was probably too obvious on their previous LP, Warp Riders. They can do better, but still pretty great. Top 10 of the year.

mind over four, The Goddess and Halfway Down: Two-decade-old alterna-progressive-metal that is still disgustingly/ criminally underrated. Either album should be in your top 50 of all time.

Law & Order, Guilty of Innocence: Cock-rock with a southern flair (from LA) from the late 80s that still is awesome and not embarrassing in any way. One of the only bands to make me wish I was playing in a rock, not metal, band. Not a bad song on this one. Classic-- top 50 of all time.

Dragged Into Sunlight, Widowmaker: Amazingly, these utterly-decrepit, sludgy, stonery black metal anonymous weirdos evolved on this record, and thisnoticeably so, from their previous release, Hatred For Mankind. Neurosis if they were Satanic black metallers.

Saint Vitus, Lillie: F-65: "Meh" at first, eventually moving up to "hrilled and loving it." The new version of the American blues, lapsteel-playing, deal-with-devil-making howls of despair. Top 10 of the year.

Nachtmystium, Silencing Machine: Perfect stoned black metal. The Cure or The Church if they loved and emulated Darkthrone.

Menace Ruine, Alight in Ashes: Black metal so weird it practically becomes spectral classical music. I dare you to listen to this on acid.

Incantation, Vanquish in Vengeance: Like Asphyx, generic but truly great (American) Brutal Death Metal. You know if this is for you or not.

Havok, Point of No Return: "Re-thrash" as powerful and energetic (though generic) as it gets. There's two covers on this EP, "Raining Blood," and Sepultura's "Arise." They should not have included them. Havok's originals are great, but not that great, and they're just asking for unfavorable comparisons.

Down, Down IV, Pt. I-- The Purple EP: Down is never as good as they should be, as you think they'll be. Previous tunes "Bury Me in Smoke," "There's Something on My Side," and "On March the Saints," are truly great stoner metal tunes, as are Purple's "The Curse," and "This Work is Timeless." But from these guys? There should be more immortality.

Witchsorrow, God Curse Us: Title track, with the refrain of "God curse us, every one..." a cheeky Dickensian nod, or seriously-depressed Shawn-Spencerian perveyoring of dispairitude? Ha! Anyway: doom-worshipping, Hellhammer-loving greatness. Sounds like modern mixing/mastering, but also sounds like a NWOBHM album, where the band was rushing, in 1982, in the studio to record their ideas, when they were sucked into a time vortex and got their asses wormholed into a 2012 studio....

Bedemon, Symphony of Shadows: The other half of Pentagram-- Interestingly, sounds like Witchsorrow, but was actually recorded nearly two decades ago. Astoundingly prophetic. Could've been recorded yesterday.

Bison BC, Lovelessness: Vaguely NWOBHM-ish sludge that loves to eventually gallop and whorl, to take off from its slower stoner metal tropes... not better than Dark Ages, but just as good.

Neurosis, Honor Found in Decay: "We All Rage in Gold," opens with third/fourth dyads, played as clean/ crystalline as humanly, as Scott Kelly-ishly as possible; at around 1:00 we gets the GEE-tars... sounding a bit Sisters of Mercy-ish, if we're being truthful... at @ 1:35 there's a human throat sounding off over the crystal... 3:28, and there's a lonely bass and a Hammond-ish synth effect.... "At the Well" begins with the dying emanations of a suicidal homeless man, or something to that effect... at 4:20 a bitter and romantically-mournful sitar riff (are they called riffs?) that seems perfectly appropriate and perfect... at around 7:00 we get a combination of meditation music/ Zen sounds and heavy fucking metal, as the entire album continues this now very familiar Neurosis blueprint....

Nails, Obscene Humanity: A 3-song ep to tide you over until their new one. Pretty much just like their previous LP, Unsilent Death, for better or worse. Ripping hardcore punks worshiping Entombed....

So there you go. Hopefully something here gets under your skin and into your guts. Figuratively.

--Horn

Nachtmystium - Black Meddles I and II

 

I've been on a real, genuine, phenomenologically-valid, where-the-fuck-did-this-come-from-but-I-kinda-dig-it Nachtmystium kick lately.

I saw them live in June of 2010, touring with Eyehategod. I went to see EHG specifically (though I owned Addicts at that point), and though their closer of "Assassins" was fucking awesome and a rare combination of showmanship and black metal, I failed to fully heed the Nachtmystium call. Said clarion declaration was beyond these ears.

However, and this only of late, that cry pulls my ear-- beckons my eye--  tugs my centre-- and did make boldly necessary this oblation to their manifest corporeal connection to divinity... yielding this sacred equation, which I humbly submit unto thee:

Pure black metal,

plus (arguably)...

music reflective/ exalting  of experiences born from hallucinogenic states (à la Pink Floyd and/or Rimbaud's "Systematic derangement of the senses")

equals...

black metal born of said drug-induced states

which specifically yields:

Nachtmystium's Assassins: Black Meddle Part I and Addicts: Black Meddle Part II.

THIS

is my thesis, at any rate.

Regarding Assassins: Black Meddle, PT. I:

IT IS the screams of the inarticulate, the groundlings, in emulating, this however with pathos, the peace they found in one or more Pink Floyd albums, much like the Ministry's "Breathe," in cruder, less articulate terms, though more passionate, and no less realized for that...

...the last three tracks seems to imply some sort of concept album, or at least a theme album, but if so, what story do they connote? It seems tragic, it seems angry, it seems unsettling, it seems vague... it's most definitely moody, also there are alto sax parts, which amazingly do not sound like a late 80s-AOR rock band...

...although if it sounded like Cameo that would be more than fine....

Opener "One of These Nights," what with its wind sounds, sounds like an ice planet somewhere, like Hoth, like the swirling storms of Jupiter, or the MDMA-esque, ravish underside of Saturn-- does that make sense? No? Learn your astronomy bitches.

"Ghosts of Grace" is the most "normal" sounding tune here-- an extremely "underground," poorly-but-interestingly-lively-recorded Sex Pistols-y attempt to sound like Pink Floyd... this crudeness suggests someone like Murphy from devilishly-boldly-underrated teen comedy Charlie Bartlett, in that he's confessing something intimate to you, like he's not really that much of a pistol of the sexes, more of a floyd who's also pink... but after he talks these lines, is going to be embarrassed that he even told you-- there's such a ungainly, gangly intimacy to it...

...it's almost touching.

"Omnivore" is a black-metalled, diabolus in musica of psychedelic and mystic chords resonant of menace-- then tribal drums, guttural utterances... an overall degradation and evolution at the once....

And what, prithee, what does this say about society, when our normal diet is drugs, is television highs from consumerism, from rationalism, mass manipulation, material expression*--

and not physical sustenance?

THIS IS the information age, indeed, when even our corporeality is digital, is bar-coded....

 

And about Addicts:

Part II is possibly evidence, actual physical contact!, with the evidence Gods, whatever their names, of how the internet sometimes contributes to greatness in music:

Addicts is an amalgam of the strangest two genres to partner-- early-80s new wave pop (like Modern English, Depeche Mode, Flock of Seagulls), a tiny bit of Killing Joke and Ministry (pre-The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste) and of course (by way of Chicago)-- black metal.

From what else but through the internet's instant-access-to-any-genre capabilities could such a union be birthed?

It doesn't always work, but it's refreshing and singularly inspiring, that there are so many (and these, incredibly disparate) genres on this one album. "High on Hate" comes off like a Burzum track with integrity: all low bass, high treble riffs, and downbeats over 200 beats per minute....

"No Funeral" (not the truly great Revocation song from Chaos of Forms), but a Truly Great, early ministry/ killing joke tune... is a, uh... pop song with black metal vocals...? At 4:30 it couldn't sound more like a Dawnbringer song... "Then Fires" comes off as maudlin and somewhat necessary if you're stoned or coming off a long drunk-- it comes off like a New Wave sludge tune, Killing Joke via Electric Wizard, or Zoroaster covering Depeche Mode.... and speaking of Dawnbringer, the chorus of the next tune,"Addicts" --  "All we need is more" definitely sounds like Chris Black-- makes me wonder if he composed it....

The entirety of Addicts, when considered as an album and not a collection of songs--

and this in light of its following Assassins--

is almost an extended coda to Assassins, is an extended credits-scene, one heralding, celebrating and yet also mourning, the perceiver's departure from those agreeable protagonists, from that familiar sound... an extended sonic sounding of farewell....

Well done, Blake Judd. I look forward to Silencing Machine.

*Thank you, Oswald Spengler.

--Horn