Gros groupe is a Saguenayan big band who’s released their eponymous jazz full-length in April of 2016. The twelve compositions on Gros groupe go through various genres of jazz music, and is fuelled by a dozen seasoned musicians. Songs range from the funky ‘Angle mort’ to the more experimental ‘Barry’, to the tikilke ‘Hawaï 2.0’. Each track is interesting in its own right, and utterly enjoyable for any fan of jazz music.
Forests is a math post rock band from Singapore, and they released the wonderful Sun Eat Moon Grave Party EP earlier last year. Their brand of emo, indie, even punkish math rock is dead on. Songs like ‘Biting Straws’ are just as memorable as they are engrossing. They keep things simple, but are so pitch-perfect in their delivery that you can’t fault them for that. That EP is genuinely charming.
Antipsychocircumseptemsomambulation is a very peculiar concept microtonal cybergrind project. From It Pours What Some Call Emptiness is an instrumental album with silent lyrics, apparently translated from ‘Alkeryth’s silent forbidden language’. The mystery and occult science-fiction shrouding the release makes it exponentially more interesting than the music alone would. On the music itself, it’s far from being mundane. The compositions are set in twenty-four notes per octave, and all instruments are synthesized. I definitely would favour an organic lineup, but this would prove almost inhumanly possible for this project, and would also probably break the rules of the cybergrind genre. The whole thing is over an hour long, and would deserve its own full-length review. I’ll try to make it happen. For now, you can definitely listen to it, because it’s brain-melting.
Ghost Fleet is the latest release of San Franciscan band The Mass. Labeled as progressive punk, the thing sounds a bit closer to sludge metal or hardcore, so take that with a grain of salt. One of their defining characteristics is the use of a saxophone and synths, played by the singer. This makes for some pretty interesting songs that are harsh-sounding, with banger riffs.
A Recess in the Wall New Edition is a rerelease of Arbus‘ 2010 mathcore album from the Japanese band. At a little under twenty minutes, it’s rather short, but also pretty good despite the somewhat harsh and loud production. A pleasant little addition to any mathcore playlist.
I only very rarely come across noteworthy cybergrind, but apparently today I’m featuring two releases. This one is of a project named ιρκεδ, and it’s for their βραιν фλυιδ EP that came out on December twenty-fifth. This is the logical conclusion to allegedly mathematics-based technical metal genres and bands. As with the other cybergrind release, this one would be nigh-impossible to set in real life, but a more convincing synthetic instrumentation would be appreciated. On the other hand, a less convincing one would also be more enjoyable; this one sitting right at the bottom of the uncanny valley, thus making it more revolting than it should. Nonetheless, as a display of compositional skills, βραιν фλυιδ is highly original and made with absolutely no compromise in mind. The next release should feature vocals, according to the project’s facebook page, so that ought to be interesting!
Don’t ask me why, but I remember completely dismissing Sean Ashe‘s debut album, Flux, when I first heard, it almost a year ago. However, thanks to a friend, I revisited it this week, and it’s an awesome melodic instrumental progressive metal album. As a lazy comparison, it sounds quite similar to Plini’s and Theo Young’s material, so dive right in if you haven’t already!

The Project Hate MCMXCIX is a progressive death metal from Sweden, and Of Chaos and Carnal Pleasures, their latest full-length, was just released. The project’s Satanic lyrics and thematics are now more than redundant, overused, and have lost all meaning and impact, and so has their personal style not aged very well. I was a big fan of Bleeding the New Apocalypse, but following iterations all proved disappointing by comparison. On top of that, the very aggressive, almost insulting stance of the band towards fans and music lovers makes it very hard to like them. At the moment, no streaming of the album or of any song is available anywhere, and the only way to acquire it is to send the amount of money to the man behind it via Paypal (around $20). This is not only detrimental to the fans, who cannot make an informed decision on their purchase, but also to the band itself, who gets rids of the best form of publicity they could have: making the world listen to their music. Finally, I wouldn’t recommend buying Of Chaos and Carnal Pleasures. I would say ‘Go listen and judge for yourself, this might be more your cup of tea than mine’, but it’s nowhere available for preview.