Our inbox is over flowing again so we are letting you good people know exactly what is new and available out there in the music world. This week we have some sludgey instrumental metal, some shoegaze and some indie legends in Teenage Fanclub. Some pretty great music this week! If you want to see your band on one of these lists, send us streaming music and as short bio.
Band Name: Dead Sea Apes
BMN Score: 9.3/10
What the band says: DEAD SEA APES are back with a passion to deliver their most essential and cohesive album to date. Formed in 2009, DEAD SEA APES have become a fixture of the modern-day psych scene, sharing stages with the likes of Part Chimp, The Heads, Acid Mothers Temple and Mugstar while producing a distinctive body of work, ranging from psychedelic punk to experimental dub, from freeform jams to constructions of loops and drones.
What we say they sound like: Sludgey instrumental doom metal. I approve because the amount of metal singers who growl like a feral animal and ruin songs is too high. This is exactly what I want to hear when I have a beer or two in me and am in the mood for loud metal grooves. You can't listen to track one "Denialist" without moving your head, I dare you to try. Tracks like “Rewilding” give us some experimental delay noise before the song kicks into a thrashy slow sludge groove. I can only really explain this EP as at times tribal and primal sounding. This is a record that sounds like the band had as much fun making as we are having listening.
Song to add to your playlist: Denialist, Paradise Rex, Truther
Band Name: The Dionysus Effect
BMN Score: 8.4/10
What the band says: New York-based trio, The Dionysus Effect, was formed in a dark basement with a passion for writing songs that conjure up raw energy but are still catchy af with boundary-pushing hooks. With songs ranging from stories about a cuckold named Darryl, going to rehab because of heroin addiction, and a love that feels like joining a cult.
What we say they sound like: This band has a dark garage rock feel like equal parts punk rock anthem and stompy drinking song. The vocal cadence makes it an earworm that will get the chorus playing over and over in your head. I can appreciate a trio doing their thing and these guys definitely have it down to a science as far doing a less is more writing style. The song is simplistic in structure but the guitar fills so much space that it's hard to even fathom it's a trio. Fans of Motorhead and Sabbath will appreciate the vibe here.
Song to add to your playlist: Never Never
Band Name: The Holy Ghost
BMN Score: 8.9/10
What the band says: An anti-racist fight song, more specifically about how tired and angry I get from Sverigedemokraterna (a right wing, nationalist political party active in the Swedish parlament) getting so much power. It is about the normalization that has taken place, and how they constantly try to shuffle the cards and appear to be clean when in fact they are a bunch of tie-breakers. Let's call them what they are: if he speaks, makes decisions and tweets like a racist, he is simply a racist. The music, despite the angry lyrics, is quite uplifting and peppy, and this is on purpose.
What we say they sound like: There is something about this track that feels to me like the 90's band Failure but mixed with more upbeat melodic punky things like Guided By Voices. It's almost melodic and poppy sounding, but feels like it never resolves, which is kind of a neat trick, it only really releases the tension of the rest of the song at the mellow bridge. This has a really interesting feeling of uneasiness throughout with harmonies that feel like the opposite of whatever feeling you get from Beach Boys harmonies. This will definitely appeal to fans who love 90's alt / indie stuff like My Bloody Valentine, Swervedriver, Failure, etc.
Song to add to your playlist: Brownshirt Trojan
Band Name: Bed
BMN Score: 8.8/10
What the band says: BED, the alternative dream pop/punk project fronted by Ebed Moreno, has released a brand new single titled “Waves”, and it’s out now via Wiretap Records.
What we say they sound like: This definitely uses the My Bloody Valentine formula for writing great shoegaze. The main riff feels like it was partially lifted from ‘Loveless’. The track has reverb soaked vocals and just the right simplistic chord structure to make you instantly declare “This is great shoegaze”. It's hard for me as a critic to criticize when a band takes all things I very much like and does them kind of in a similar way to create music that is enjoyable. Sure they aren't reinventing the wheel but most bands aren't and this is just plain great.
Song to add to your playlist: Waves
Band Name: Teenage Fanclub
BMN Score: 10/10
What the band says: “Foreign Land” is the opening track on Teenage Fanclub’s eleventh full studio album Nothing Lasts Forever. That track - and the rest of this beautifully rich and melodic album - is the sound of a season’s end, of the last warm days of the year while nights begin to draw in and thoughts become reflective and more than a little melancholy.
What we say they sound like: I first saw Teenage Fanclub in the 90's opening for Radiohead and I loved every second of it. As people sang along I wondered why I hadn't heard of this band. Over the years the band has just been consistently doing their own brand of brit rock that to me sounds like somewhere in between 60's acts like The Kinks and late 80's bands like The Stone Roses. It's kind of great that it doesn't reach beyond that and they haven't tried to incorporate newer production sounds or techniques into their overall brand because this is just a perfect gem. Good songwriting is never going to go out of style and Teenage Fanclub continues to write amazing music.
Song to add to your playlist: Foreign Land