New York, New York
On Punos Music
Utrecht, Netherlands
UK
Lille, France
New Orleans, Louisiana
Boston-based metallic jazzists and self-proclaimed falafel djentists Hago released an astonishing eponymous debut album, last year, which I praised in my review and subsequently included in my metal best-of for 2018. Today, I have the pleasure and honour of showing you the music video for their track “Dawn of Machine”. It’s one of their shorter compositions, but it’s exquisite and excellent, and it’s fun to see some guitar and keyboard action from the members of the band.
It’s never too late to grab their album; it’s amazing!
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Burning Ghosts are no newcomers to extreme improvisation music. However, their release of a surprise full-length on January first is a welcome addition to the beginning of the year! With an unabashed reference to the state of the United States’ politics, American Circus takes you through three long-form—the longest being the 33-minute “Drowning on the High Ground”, an homage to Ornette Coleman—improvisations mixing free jazz and heavy progressive metal music. The result is wild and liberating, cathartic above everything. It’s a fantastic album to start the year with!
Yvette … Read more
Minsk, Belarus
Málaga, Spain
On Taghrid Records
Finland
On Dark Descent Records
Anchorage, Alaska
On Lycaean Triune
Bern, Switzerland
On TVL Rec
There was a lot of good music in 2018. That is to be expected for any year; there are just so many artists and musicians out there that are creating, constantly… The absolute number of musical releases is utterly daunting and insignificant by its sheer size—it would be impossible to listen to everything released in a given year—but I’ve truly given it my best, listening to a total of 2,257 albums, EPs, and splits from this year alone (an average of over six releases every day). That is without mentioning older albums, or albums from 2019 that I had the … Read more