Metal Priests burst out, Yorba let the music do the rocking, Dixon Hill returns to the holodeck, ScienZe shares his latest travels — and those are just a few of today’s top Bandcamp offerings from my inbox. Listen to them below; click through to buy them directly from the artists. Feel free to tell them I sent you.
1 | Metal Priests | Bursting Out (The Beast Became Human)
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Originally released in 1986 on the short-lived Steps Records, Bursting Out (The Beast Became Human) was the first recorded statement of Germany’s MP. As such, it retains all the electricity and urgency of youth. It also upholds Germany’s rich heritage of heavy metal, which spanned the early hot-rockin’ throes of post-NWOBHM to the nascent rumblings of speed metal and its subsequent thrash offshoot, and of course the more mainstream stylings which lingered across all those idioms. It was still the 1980s, after all, and “heavy metal” as both a term and especially a musical style & subculture had yet to be too finely locked into boundaries. And with a complete lack of self-consciousness and, in its stead, an abundance of enthusiasm and energy, MP ably crisscrossed all these metals on their debut album, Bursting Out (The Beast Became Human).”
2 | Yorba | Yoba
They’re a Polish band. They rock. That’s all I know. That’s all you need to know.
3 | Dixon Hill | Holodeck Beats: Program 3
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Las Vegas producer Dixon Hill’s new instrumental album, Holodeck Beats: Program 3, beautifully captures the feeling of isolation while also being a treasure trove of head-nodding beats. While the beatsmith has woven a tight narrative through the project’s 16 tracks, he’s not necessarily concerned over whether his listeners dig into it or not. “I hope people appreciate the details and nuances of the beats, the narrative structure, and the attempt at cohesion,” Hill says. “But it’s not my place to interpret or analyze my music on behalf of the listener. I want it to be theirs.” Releases Jan. 21.
4 | ScienZe | A Traveling Man. 7
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “A Traveling Man. 7 is the latest installment of a series made for the fans. This EP consists of 7 songs produced by ScienZe with an emphasis on lyrical content and written in journal form. The production is unpolished and gritty, taking each of us back to the moment we fell in love with underground hip-hop with no strings attached. Take the journey with us.”
5 | Billow | III [demos]
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Lo-fi demo versions of tracks from our latest album III. recorded in our bedroom. including two new tracks (A Century Ago and City Thunder).”
6 | Eamon O’Leary | The Silver Sun
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Eamon O’Leary is a songwriter from New York’s Lower East Side, originally from Dublin, Ireland. All Souls, his first album for Reveal Records, was entirely self-written, and recorded with Jefferson Hamer (Anais Mitchell), and Benjamin Lazar Davis (Cuddle Magic, Joan As Police Woman, Okkervill River). A beautiful, sparse album of darkness and light. Eamon O’Leary is back with another beautiful album, releasing Jan. 15, we hope you enjoy listening.”
7 | Badge Époque Ensemble | Future, Past & Present
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Barely a season passed in 2019 between the release of Badge Époque Ensemble’s self-titled debut album, and its followup, the disco-sleeved 12” Nature, Man & Woman. Now, three months on from the release of the group’s acclaimed sophomore album Self Help, we find them repeating the trick with a surprise fourth title on Telephone Explosion Records, the fittingly titled Future, Past & Present. A compilation of sorts, the album collects instrumental, alternate mix versions of all BÉE songs which originally featured guest vocalists and one exclusive track, Future, Past & Present. In practice this results in a pseudo-greatest-hits survey of the Ensemble’s catalogue to-date, touching on highlights from all three releases while emphasizing the group’s strength as versatile mood-conjurors. Where these songs once featured vocal heavyweights like Meg Remy, Jennifer Castle, James Baley and Dorothea Paas, they are now strung together instrumentally in a sequence which represents the purest distillation of BÉE’s collective musical chemistry to date. Releases Feb 5.”
8 | La Punta Bianca / Kuzina | Detriti Split EP 3
Berlin label Detriti Records combines a pair of recent releases — La Punta Bianca’s Demian and Kuzina’s Vrun — into one offering.
9 | Roüge | Ultimatum
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Gaming-inspired relentless industrial techno EBM from France.”
10 | Dog Motif | Demo
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “I wrote and recorded this entire demo EP in less than an hour. Enjoy!”
11 | Meemo Comma | Neon Genesis: Soul Into Matter²
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “On Neon Genesis: Soul Into Matter² Meemo Comma (aka Lara Rix-Martin) takes Kabbalistic text and Jewish prayer and guides them through twinkling ambient synths, breakbeats and cranking industrial noise, full of strange wonder and drama. You can hear soft synths transmuted into choirs of seraphim and moments of occulted dancefloor rapture, from Aramaic chanting and ravey breakbeats to readings from the Zohar. It is quite beautiful at times. Releases March 19.”
12 | Code E1 | What You Gonna Do?
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “All that midnight tweeting hid what was true / Now out in the open, we see the real you.”
13 | Senyawa | Istana
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Indonesian art-doom duo Senyawa — vocalist Rully Shabara and instrumentalist Wukir Suryadi — will release their new studio album Alkisah in February 2021, through a cooperative arrangement with a number of labels across the globe, in an attempt to decentralize the hierarchical structures of the music industry, particularly the distribution system. Alkisah translates roughly to Once Upon a Time, and tells the tale of a formerly rich and powerful country that comes to recognize the impending destruction of its society. They seek to redeem themselves, but it becomes more and more clear that their efforts are futile — doom is here, and what happens afterward is all that matters. Each participating label was given free rein to design their own cover, package the album in the format of their choice, and decide on the number of copies they wish to release. Furthermore, participating labels were encouraged to include remixes/reinterpretations of the album by local artists, as part of the release.”
14 | Constance Tomb | Burning From the Inside
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Here’s a semi-acoustic Bauhaus cover. It’s the title track to the last Bauhaus album of the 1980s (1983).”
