Glassing // #Glassing //

Circle Down
[album From the Other Side of the Mirror, 2024]

//via // #BrutalPandaRecords #PelagicRecords //

#buzzingroom #music #bandcamp #Glassing #FromTheOtherSideOfTheMirror #CircleDown #CoryBrim #DustinCoffman #ScottOsment

link bandcamp: https://glassing.bandcamp.com/track/circle-down-2

Glassing // #Glassing //

Ritualist
[album From the Other Side of the Mirror, 2024]

//via // #BrutalPandaRecords #PelagicRecords //

#buzzingroom #music #bandcamp #Glassing #FromTheOtherSideOfTheMirror #Ritualist #CoryBrim #DustinCoffman #ScottOsment

link bandcamp: https://glassing.bandcamp.com/track/ritualist-2

Glassing // #Glassing //

Defacer
[album From the Other Side of the Mirror, 2024]

//via // #BrutalPandaRecords #PelagicRecords //

#buzzingroom #music #bandcamp #Glassing #FromTheOtherSideOfTheMirror #Defacer #CoryBrim #DustinCoffman #ScottOsment

link bandcamp: https://glassing.bandcamp.com/track/defacer-2

Glassing // #Glassing //

Doppler
[album Twin Dream, 2021]

//via // #BrutalPandaRecords //

#buzzingroom #music #bandcamp #Glassing #TwinDream #Doppler #CoryBrim #DustinCoffman #JasonCamacho

link bandcamp: https://glassing.bandcamp.com/track/doppler

Glassing // #Glassing //

Twin Dream
[album Twin Dream, 2021]

//via // #BrutalPandaRecords //

#buzzingroom #music #bandcamp #Glassing #TwinDream #CoryBrim #DustinCoffman #JasonCamacho

link bandcamp: https://glassing.bandcamp.com/track/twin-dream-2

Couch Slut – You Could Do It Tonight Review

By Dear Hollow

Couch Slut does not concern itself with the prettier things in life. While the noise rock tag may be a dead giveaway, the unconvinced need only to look at the cover of the Brooklyn five-piece’s 2014 debut My Life as a Woman (not at work) to understand. The monotone theme is a spirit likewise captured in fourth full-length You Could Do It Tonight, displaying a humanity succumbing to vice, filth, and weed – as the style’s stalwarts in Cherubs, Oxbow and Brainbombs have long done. But there’s something distinctly unhinged about Couch Slut, whether it be the jerky hardcore rhythms, dissonant squeals, and deceptively placid passages of simmering menace, the blasts of straight-up noise that feels as furious as its content, or frontwoman Megan Osztrosits’ manic shrieks, banshee howls, and ominous mutterings. Like its predecessors, You Could Do It Tonight dives headlong into darker things through the lens of urban alienation.

Unlike its predecessors, however, You Could Do It Tonight flies off the rails at nearly every turn. Compromising solidarity through its thirty-eight-minute runtime through a variety of vicious tricks, no two tracks retaining the same technique, Couch Slut dives into surreal storytelling dedicated to self-harm and suicide. Using a thick haze of noise, combined with skronky guitar work and dark bass and helmed by the manically captivating spoken stories and Osztrosits’ manic shrieks, You Could Do It Tonight is an otherworldly and absolutely menacing trip to drug-fueled insanity.

The two faces of You Could Do It Tonight, in spite of different stylistic decisions throughout, can be pictured as simmering and unhinged. “Couch Slut Lewis,” “Laughing and Crying,” and “Wilkinson’s Sword” plod carefully and deliberately with an Oxbow-esque lounging pace through a noisy backdrop with memorable guitar licks throughout erupting into dissonant squawks, while Osztrosits’ shrieks describe rape and self-harm with raw and unflinching detail. The heart on their sleeves were traded for weed on 4/20, so any compassion is left in a haze of shock and smoke. Explosions of noise envelope tracks like “Ode to Jimbo” and “Energy Crystals for Healing” in a wave somehow larger than the already mammoth riffs dominating, while devastating roars of guests Zach Ezrin of Imperial Triumphant and Doug Moore of Pyrrhon add a distinct edge to “Couch Slut Lewis” and “Downhill Racer.” Like any good noise rock, there is a constant curtain of sound draped across Couch Slut’s sound, weaponized to a vicious and unhinged degree.

While the album at large maintains that trademark insanity, there are three instances in particular that challenge the listener. “Presidential Welcome” is a grimy jazz interlude straight outta Vile Luxury, starkly decadent after the climactic and filthy predecessor. This predecessor, “The Donkey,” features Osztrosits’ spoken word with dissonant squawks and a tapestry of feedback, lyrics describing a particular nightmare in which a couple make a stop-motion horror film, and the guy nearly saws off his arm to get enough blood for their film – the antics are described with unnerving conversational casualness. Meanwhile, closer “The Weaversville School for Boys” utilizes spoken word atop pulsing beats and warbling squeals, describing an urban legend of three boys massacring the entire population of their school and vanishing, as our drugged narrator stumbles upon them laughing at the sky. It’s all unnerving.

In its themes and mood, You Could Do it Tonight can summed up by the lyrics in “Downhill Racer:” “My walls build moisture, enough to drown. I watch the water where he went down. My leg’s infected from all these scratches.” Couch Slut has no clear motive aside from absolute grime and maximum discomfort. While horror and mutilation are common themes throughout metal- and noise rock-adjacent lyrics, there’s an obscene absurdity that collides with jarring normality through these stories: as if rape, self-harm, and murder were all just everyday facets of urban life. You can trust no one. Interpreting Couch Slut and You Could Do It Tonight is a complex feat – it’s not an easy album, hardly an enjoyable one. But it is an impressively uncomfortable drug-induced listen full of captivating storytelling through effective spoken word and a vocal performance from hell, stinging instrumentals, and oily grime – like all good noise rock steeped in misery and sarcasm.

Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 41 Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Brutal Panda Records
Websites: couchslut.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/couchslut | instagram.com/couch.slut
Releases Worldwide: April 19th, 2024

#2024 #35 #AmericanMetal #Apr24 #Brainbombs #BrutalPandaRecords #Cherubs #CouchSlut #ImperialTriumphant #NoiseMetal #NoiseRock #Oxbow #Pyrrhon #Review #Reviews #SludgeMetal #YouCouldDoItTonight

Transit Method – Othervoid Review

By Dolphin Whisperer

We don’t like to admit it, but we all know that music outside of metal exists, and many (if not all)1 of us started our journeys outside the metalsphere with something else that sparked ridiculous joy. For Baby Dolphy, the first recalled love that rocked my unknown world was Lenny Kravitz’s “Are You Gonna Go My Way.”2 I care a lot less for that song these days, but any surface in my childhood memories functioned as a platform for me to shout away with Sir Kravitz’s huge guitar anthem when it graced my ears. It’s not particularly inventive, but it’s big, it’s loud, and its exuberantly itself. In that same spirit of unencumbered self-expression and a hope to strike the fun zone, Transit Method delivers to us their newest amplified declaration, Othervoid.

And it’s prog! Is that not what you expected? Truthfully, Othervoid carries prog rock that reminds me of stuff that doesn’t necessarily qualify as the most heady music—less 70s Rush and more 90s Rush if you catch my drift. And this makes sense since Transit Method also identifies as punk. Again, not of the hardcore variety—zero ounces of vitriol splattered about the snappy run of Othervoid. This thing’s got more of a pop-punk bounce to it and a vocalist who reminds me of the bright, wailing Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction against the straightforward energy of early Therapy?. Except for the eight-minute closer which swings right back to bright vocal harmonies, soaring electric leads, and sparse acoustic backings à la Kansas but in standard rock band line-up. These punchy Texans cover ground.

But for as wide a net as Transit Method casts, Othervoid remains built on simple bones with squeaky flourishes to make the boldest statements. Primary vocalist (and guitarist) Matt LoCoco, despite his cutting croon, doesn’t always push with the most power, so the vocal layers that Transit Method adds to their highest-reaching choruses add just enough to make you want to hum along (“Psychometry,” “The Outside”). And speaking of humming along, so many of the crunchily-captured riffs and thumping, warm basslines ring with the kind of clarity that sticks to the mind, whether you want it to or otherwise. Even when guitar passages feel a little too reminiscent of the solo backings you might hear in a classic Rainbow or Scorpions tune (“Strange Creatures” bridge being the biggest offender), Transit Method finds a way to cut in with a blaring solo or modern throaty shout to cut the olde with a little new.

Othervoid hits fast and with fiery frets—catchy choruses and slippery solos only go so far—but it does little in the way of establishing a voice that sounds like Transit Method. “Into Your Mind” calls us quickly to rock and play, but is it truly in a manner that out-Foo’s the Foo Fighters? “Frostbite” closes the journey with a shifting prog epic, but does it really chart zig-zag guitar patterns and swift mood movements any differently than a modern call of the Mastodon? Love ’em or hate ’em, bands like these stand as pillars in the memory of music listeners. Where Othervoid does succeed, though, is in its ability to maintain an exuberant pulse and steady stream of thoughtful musical moments—the quiet storm solo-drop-out of “Nightmare Machines,” the continuous acceleration that guides the wah-driven melody of “Psychometry,” the quick-step jam of “The Outside.” Transit Method wears their thirty-six minutes like seasoned performers despite treading a familiar path.

No matter the method, music still needs to achieve that amorphous goal of stimulating the heart, the horns, the cheering crowd. Transit Method comes off more to me like the crowd than the stage-smashers. No doubt the radio of olde may have functioned as a decent medium for the light-hearted tunes that Transit Method transmits. In a different life, they may have threatened to become some kid’s Lenny Kravitz. However, in this timeline, their third full-length effort does not make me want to jump on the couch swinging my arms wildly hitting the biggest strings on the biggest guitar known to man. Rock in attitude and warm in execution, Othervoid has solid enough curb appeal, but after all my time with it, I haven’t got a clue why I should care.

Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: N/A | Format Reviewed: Stream3
Label: Brutal Panda Records | Bandcamp
Websites: transitmethod.net | transitmethod.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/transitmethod
Releases Worldwide: February 2nd, 2024

#25 #2024 #AlternativeRock #BrutalPandaRecords #Feb24 #FooFighters #JaneSAddiction #LennyKravitz #Mastodon #Othervoid #PopPunk #ProgressiveRock #Rainbow #Review #Reviews #Rush #Scorpions #Therapy #TransitMethod