What the Bandcamp Daily editors are listening to right now.
Begotten
If All You Have Known Is Winter
Cassette
It makes a lot of sense that the highest-profile touring gig for Ottowa black metal band Unreqvited was opening for Mizmor in 2023—both bands love the spotlight about as much as Dracula loves oven-roasted garlic. Given that, I was pretty surprised to get a notification informing me that Unreqvited—or I guess more specifically William Melsness—had started a new subscription label on Bandcamp. It took me about six seconds to sign up; Melsness’s track record as an artist at this point is so good that I’m genuinely looking forward to having him introduce me to new bands each month. But I’ll admit that Melsness’s first offering, Begotten (no, not that begotten), caught me off guard. Unreqvited is known for lush, cinematic orchestral black metal, so I was expecting the same from Melsness’s label. Not so! Instead, If All You Have Known Is Winter is fucking harrowing—like, Longlegs-trailer harrowing—minimalist depressive black metal shorn of all adornments, the guitars raw and pulsing, like exposed muscle. Dave Sherk sings every note like he’s being set on fire in real time, his voice operating somewhere between a desperate yelp and a pained shriek. As maiden voyages go, it’s a doozy—and the fact that it’s so different from Melsness’s own work bodes well for the future of the label, which by the way is named Lifesick Lullaby. Subscribers get exclusive access to the cassette versions of the label’s’ releases as well as 10% off all other purchases. In other words, when it comes to Lifesick Lullaby—Melsness, forgive me—don’t sleep.
–J. Edward Keyes
Caput Medusae
You Can’t Negotiate With Zombies
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD), Cassette
One of the most pre-ordered records of the year thus far, You Can’t Negotiate With Zombies is the debut album from Caput Medusae, an experimental duo from Germany so sick, you can see why they named themselves after hallmark of liver disease. I mean that as a compliment, obviously: between their instrumental multitasking and their encyclopedic knowledge of seemingly every sinister sound known to man—post-punk, dark wave, coldwave, black metal, a splash of depressive shoegaze—Tina Mar and Stefan Scott stand as two of the most impassioned, flexible artists to emerge from the gothic underground in years. The sticky hooks and tight songwriting are major pluses, but the real pleasure comes from the shadowily, and the textural unpredictability and dynamic contrast it yields; across the album, metallic guitars wrestle with frigid darkwave keyboards, piercing screams yield to moody baritone vocals, and gated drums play nice with shoegaze riffs. Children of the night, drink, dance, and be merry.
–Zoe Camp
Color Green
Fool’s Parade
Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
The dream of the Paisley underground is alive in Color Green. Formed in 2018, the Los Angeles quartet missed the Califonia jangle rush, spearheaded by local legends like Game Theory, Rain Parade, and The Dream Syndicate, by roughly three decades. Lest we conflate that generational gap with a lack of credibility or originality on Color Green’s part, though, their new album Fool’s Parade isn’t the stuff of open-and-shut, copy-and-paste Paisley, but extended, radiant choogle that hopscotches between multiple timelines simultaneously—’90s Britpop (“Four of Clovers”), ’70s piano rock (“When The Clouds Run In”), and ’60s country (“Hazel Eyes”) are just a few of the stopping-off points. It’s a loose, winding journey, but with four singers and two guitarists in their ranks, they’ve got more than enough multilayered hooks and blissed-out solos to keep the procession structured and enjoyable. For those of you who dig Fuzz, Kikagaku Moyo, Circles Around the Sun, or any of the bands mentioned above, consider this a must-hear.
–Zoe Camp
Doza The Drum Dealer
The Severed Ear
Much to my dismay, The Severed Ear is not a Blue Velvet concept record. That said, the minute the loop on “Catch the Drum” kicked in—with its kung-fu movie flutes, bone-dry bass-and-snare crack, and ululating Tibetan monk chant—I moved past my initial disappointment pretty fucking quickly. Context: I first encountered Doza the Drum Dealer in Issue 4 of O.G. Press—for my money, the best hip-hop magazine publishing right now—where he spoke at length about how his father was adamant about instilling a knowledge of their Puerto Rican heritage into Doza and his brother, teaching them all of the percussive instruments core to that music— “timbales, congos, bongos, the clave, the guiro, the maracas…. We used to have these house parties where musicians would come over […] and he would have us sit in with the grown folks.” So it’s no surprise that the rhythms are the backbone of Ear, from the phenomenally menacing stomp (draped with stomach-churning strings) in “Hypocrite,” to the bright, rolling drum pattern that propels “Imagine That”—a song that lyrically plays like a belated sequel to Jadakiss’s “Why.” It also shows off one of Doza’s other chief skills: The way he gftts the melodic hook to unlikely instruments. Oboe? Sure, why not. Wailing sax in “Misery”? Hell yes. And it works! In fact, it works so well that the fact that Doza is also a killer rapper is almost icing. Blessed with a gruff, gravelly voice that recalls Cappadonna at his finest, Doza provides the grit that offsets his sumptuous production. He does his father proud.
–J. Edward Keyes
Heaven for Real
Hell’s Logo Pink
Compact Disc (CD), Cassette
Canadian duo Heaven For Real’s 2022 release, the jangly Energy Bar, was a favorite of mine from that year; follow-up Hell’s Logo Pink (a “mini-album” according to the liner notes, whatever that means since this self-recorded, self-produced collection plays to my ears like an “album-album”) is no less delightful, if a bit darker and definitely a lot weirder. Retaining the jangle and peppy buoyancy of Energy Bar but dialing down the freneticism just a touch, twins Mark and J. Scott Grundy navigate a shadowy inner landscape studded with potently surrealistic imagery straight out of some mid-90s MTV version of Alice in Wonderland (e.g. “dumbass eyes at dawn” and “pairs known by the languid gadabout”) that matches the oddball intricacy of their songs. Yet underneath the eccentricity, this seems to be a record about heartbreak and solitude, which the Grundys approach with a kind of solemnity that captures well the unsettling feeling of no longer understanding how to behave—or understanding much of anything—in a world gone upside down.
–Mariana Timony
Kiasmos
II
2 x Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD)
Icelandic pianist and composer Ólafur Arnald once described the mindset behind Kiasmos, his electronic project with Faroese synth-pop producer Janus Rasmussen, as “thinking in loops,” an lens through which to examine and deconstruct the closed-circuit systems inherent to majority contemporary dance music: simple grooves, cyclical drum and keyboard patterns, and of course, the almighty drop, unleashed ad hoc so as to keep the serotonin flowing. If we think of the first Kiasmos album, released nearly a decade ago, as an introductory brain teaser, then II truly embodies the stuff of genius, blending Rasmussen’s rigid, procedurally assembled club beats with Arnald’s stunning, neoclassical piano lines so as to blur the boundaries between EDM’s mechanical precision and classical music’s organic discipline. It just goes to show—circular logic is super underrated.
–Zoe Camp
Lifeguard
Ministry / Energie
7" Vinyl
Chicago little babies Lifeguard will release a full-length eventually, but until that happens I’m kind of into this band just releasing a bunch of bundled EPs and 7-inch singles. It feels like an appropriately old school approach to building a discography in the same way their knotty and abrasive neu underground (we’re not calling it indie anymore) rock sound also has a refreshingly old school quality to it; not without ambition but not unadventurous either, even if we’ve heard it all before. On this latest offering, recorded by Randy Randall of No Age, an energetic original on the A-side is matched with a similarly energetic Wipers cover on the B-side, both a raucous good time even if we’ve heard it all before.
