Stoned Jesus has been around for a couple of decades now, blessing us with their genre bending doom/stoner/prog/everything heaviness with up till now five amazing albums and a bunch of singles and EPs that have cemented the Ukrainian band as one of the most eclectic and best bands in the scene. The driving force behind SJ, Igor Sydorenko, is the creative genesis, and for his next act, he brings a new line-up and part one of a three-part trilogy, titled Songs To Sun, which takes Stoned Jesus to a whole new level of awesome.
Igor says that Song To Sun is the heavier and less dark and depressing record of the three parts. If that is the case, part two may make you paint your walls black, because Song To Sun is no shiny happy pop record either. What you do get is a record with everything I could possibly want in my heavy music. Igor’s voice sounds great, the playing is amazing, the new band sounds super tight, and the song writing is next level stuff for a guy who has always been at the top of the game.
Yes, Stoned Jesus has been around for a while, and yes, they have always been a top tier band, but Songs To Sun is on another level of everything. Igor is hitting his creative peak with this project and this version of the band. I can’t wait to hear the whole story, but to me, Part One is perfect as it is. 10/10
Scorpion Milk - Slime Of The Times (Peaceville) [Matt Bladen]
Mat McNerney is on a mission to single-handedly make post-punk great again. Be it with Beastmilk or Grave Pleasures, if it has that heavy throb of punk, goth, electronica and krautrock then McNerney is all over it, he also is a very strong history with black metal bands including Dødheimsgard and his current act Hexvessel.
So never a man to be locked into one style, he's excels at most things he puts his mind too, so I'm always going to check out anything he puts his name to. His newest project is Scorpion Milk, which is his first as a solo artist and the debut album Slime Of The Times is a brooding, sneering, politically resonant record fit for this era where a real life apocalypse seems closer and closer than ever.
Signed to Peaceville, McNerney has channelled all of his skill and his history into another set of songs that explode out of the stereo with pulsating, dystopian, gothic post rock inspired by the likes of The Fall, Killing Joke and Sisters Of Mercy. Tracks such as the discordant The Will To Live and the intensely gothic She Wolf Of London which features guest vocals from Creeper's Will Gould, are two of the best examples of that style of haunted, thundering music of the early 80's.
Mat is joined on the record by Tor Sjödén (Viagra Boys) on drums, Nate Newton (Converge, Cave In) on bass guitar, they give the furrowed bottom end grooves to these songs as the jangly guitars loom large on Another Day Another Abyss, while the title track goes down a more industrial route.
Mat's love of this style has been vindicated by Killing Joke's Big Paul Ferguson joining the record as well, sealing the deal of this being more than just a homage to the post punk era, Slime Of The Times is a contemporary take on the genre, that slots right into place with McNerney's musical forays so far. 9/10
Sunniva - Hypostasis (Svart Records) [Joe Guatieri]
Sunniva are a Sludge Metal band from Finland who formed back in 2016. With two EP releases under their belt so far, they come into 2025 with their debut full-length, Hypostasis. Was this record worth the wait?
The opener, titled Mercurial Bloodstreams, immediately drops us into a hell that cannot escape from, surrounded by fiery walls of distortion, showing shades of bands like Grief. There’s more than just chaos afoot later on as ambient-like fumes seep deep into the crevasses of this track, making for a welcome accompaniment. To my surprise, it refuses to bury anything in the instrumental, only helping Mercurial Bloodstreams reach that next level of brilliance.
With the following track Peine Forte Et Dure, we are presented with an attack on all of our senses, for a gigantic chaotic riff swallows the planet whole. The refrain isn’t overly flashy, it has an air of simplicity about it in its attack and the way that it moves effortlessly across the fretboard. Moments like that combined with subtle dissonant discomfort felt near the death is what solidifies Peine Forte Et Dure as a declaration of unease and punishment to me. Definitely my favourite song on the album.
As we sink into later offerings, track five brings us Sun Funeral which makes me ask myself a question, do I enjoy Post Metal now? It’s very bleak and uneven, at times almost falling off a cliff in its scattering nature before these strikes of guitar chords which makes the heavens open up and rain fall down on your head. I was laying down on my bed and just looking at the ceiling when I first heard Sun Funeral, it just felt that overwhelming, something about it brings a tear to my eye. By the end a camera zooms out to reveal a female on top of a mountain, interwoven with warm textures which cover this track like a blanket, it reaches out and hugs you when you’re at your lowest.
Having an Albini influence to the production, it highlights so many beautiful things about the record. The harsh vocals screaming into your ear, the delicate taps of a high hat to the unrelenting bass that carves a deep hole into your chest. Dare I say that Sunniva constructed a near-perfect album. The only thing that knocks it back a tad for me is with the closer with Hung From The Sky. Though a good song in its own right, it doesn’t feel final enough to me.
There’s a start-stop riff that’s undercooked but mainly it’s a clean vocal that pops up sparingly which is very jarring for me. Whilst everything else is appropriately damaged, this singer's voice is being projected through the best microphone ever known with a “studio feel” to it, soaked in reverb.
Despite this, overall, Sunniva has made a movie out of Hypostasis which I’m on the edge of my seat for the majority of the time, grabbing onto it for dear life. For forty three minutes you are sent crashing from pillar to post. The record is consistent, earth-shatteringly heavy and memorable, a new addition to the greats of modern Sludge Metal. 9/10
Silver Dollar Room – It Can’t Rain All The Time (Self Released) [Simon Black]
I’m hearing mid-90’s Manic Street Preachers crossed with Bush as a clear influence, delivered with an early Oasis style wall of sound approach to the guitar and rhythm layering that really creates a huge dollop of atmosphere into proceedings without sounding over produced. Vocally though John Keenan doesn’t dominate, and the feeling is very strongly one where all members of the band are weighted and balanced equally.
And they need to, because this lyrical content here is sensitive and dark, and really socially topical, exploring dark themes that tend to be uncomfortable in public discourse. Many bands would package one or two tracks of such a town within a broader package of moods, but Silver Dollar Room do not compromise their punches here and keep the mood relentlessly and effectively. It’s dark and powerful stuff, and I can see it working incredibly well live.
Coming only a year after their debut, this band are clearly talented and prolific when it comes to writing, because this is a far cry from the feel good in your face delivery of Gilded Echoes only last year and it’s a brave step to address such tonally dark material when you need to be stylistically building on the impact of your debut, which traditionally means demonstrating that you can churn out more of the same and haven’t used all your best material first time out.
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