New Music: Ulver/Sunn O))) - Terrestrials

Album Score: 6.5/10

“Like some lost pilgrim stretching before the sun…” - Rygg

Kristoffer Rygg has certainly made his musical pilgrimages, from black metal allegedly recorded in a forest to haunting ambient-electronic opuses. It comes as little surprise, then, that his lifelong project – the enigmatic entity known as Ulver – would wander into the path of another avant-garde behemoth in Sunn O))). Both bands have basically done as they pleased since their inceptions, and though the latter duo has perhaps alienated as many as it has enthralled, rumors of a collaboration between such creative forces seized the attention of experimental music fans everywhere. Born of early-morning improvisations at Ulver’s studio in August 2008 and painstakingly honed in the years since, Terrestrials is the sort of album that dreams are made of – particularly the kind from which you wake up hyperventilating in a cold sweat.

New Music: Alaskan - Despair, Erosion, Loss

Album Score: 9/10

The mountain stands before me: glaciers wracked with black crevasses extend for miles before windswept ridges jut upwards at jagged angles. Something inside tells me to go back.“A sacrifice!” scream the violins, shrill strings that rise and writhe like harbingers of doom.The storm descends; I forge ever onwards. My footsteps ring against the frozen earth, faster and faster, into the mouth of the sky. An avalanche – the drums, thundering; resonant and sharp, an unstoppable force to carry me to the foot of the behemoth. I pass the point of no return; the falling snow is a deafening blanket. I look around and find nothing familiar but the sound of my own voice as it is carries down the slopes to disappear into some godforsaken chasm. “Beg for forgiveness!” the mountain demands, its voice harsh, merciless.Why undertake this journey? Why here, of all places, when I could be in sunny fields or sandy shores?

New Music: The Visit – Between Worlds

Album Score: 9/10

In an industry where everything seems to be trending towards the more complex – faster, louder, overhyped, overproduced – it takes an act of understated beauty to remind us what makes something truly memorable. The Visit takes this concept and runs with it. Hailing from Ottawa, Canada, The Visit consists solely of singer Heather Sita Black and cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne, who display stunning chemistry on their debut release, “Between Worlds.” Though containing only a single fourteen-minute song, it is, quite frankly, a tremendous opening statement from the duo. The piece traverses a number of peaks as it builds from a chamber-style lament to a progressive juggernaut and back with breathtaking ease.

New Music: Worms in Women and Cattle – Sick Road

Album Score: B+

“Worms in Women and Cattle.” It’s a name that sounds incredibly demeaning, but if you think about it, it’s true: there are worms in just about every living thing. It’s kind of scary and kind of creepy, but it’s also fascinating. Such is the Providence, RI quartet’s only release,Sick Road. Composed of nine bombastic black metal pieces from two to fifteen minutes long, the album conjures some of the most ghastly feelings possible. While the whole band sounds like they crawled out of a bog right before recording, the main culprit is Worms’ possessed frontwoman Pippi, whose ungodly shrieks are bound to give even the most hardened black metal enthusiasts goosebumps. Combine those with some hair-raising and unpredictable compositions, and you get a black metal album like  no other.

New Music: Skeletonwitch - Serpents Unleashed

Album Score: 8/10

Everyone knows that thrash is all about teh riffs, but what’s behind great riffage? If you’re going by Skeletonwitch’s latest effort, the answer is pure energy. With eleven songs clocking in at less than three minutes apiece, Serpents Unleashed is a dissertation on explosive songwriting from the Ohio blackened thrash veterans. Arguably the group’s most cohesive effort to date, the album meshes a variety of influences and styles while showcasing some of the strongest pieces in Skeletonwitch’s catalogue. Purists need not fret, though, for Serpents Unleashed leaves no doubt that it’s meant to get mosh pits moving and hearts racing in proper thrash metal fashion.

New Music: Indian - From All Purity

Album Score: 6.5/10

As a rule of thumb, when a band lists Waylon Jennings and Lynyrd Skynyrd as influences, you shouldn’t expect to hear funeral doom guitars and banshee screams. Apparently, Indian didn’t get that memo. The Illinois quartet’s fifth album From All Purity may not sound particularly Native American, but it’s not hard to imagine that it was born of a thirst for Fire Water and retribution as the band rips through six gritty tracks with the subtlety of a tomahawk. Riding the dirtiest guitar tone this side of Thou and a terrifying performance by vocalist Dylan O’Toole, From All Purity is, for better or for worse, as relentless and overstated as modern metal gets.