An Ocean of Void - Great Escape - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

After some silence since their magnificent demo, Dead Void return from the depths to bestow a crushing debut album-Volatile Forms-upon the world. Drawing in on doomy, yet certainly not meek, atmospherics-the sheer monstrous tone of which will pin one to the wall-it is clear this is something unwieldy. Murmuring bass seeps through buzzing guitars in a manner that sounds profoundly unwelcoming, while the daunting vocals and crashing drums give no alleviation from the bludgeoning force. While the hostile and claustrophobic sounds of this record cannot be ignored, equally impactful are the grooves which hit like a hammer of pure malice when carefully spliced with the caverns of eerily contorting death metal. When the pounding drums break through the guitars, they have a real hard tone, while the seeping filth of the strings is not overshadowed. Clearly the three demos and spacing between them have allowed the band to develop into the best version of themselves, as on this debut album one hears a refined but unpolished and inhospitable cut of truly awesome music taking form.Moving forth, the hooks, the grooves, the expanses of doom and desolation, all conjure something inescapable and dread-tinged while the malignant hammering of pure old school violence is not lost or forgotten, as warped riffs and blast-beats meet gutturally-spewed vocals and occasional lead oddities. Contrasting often nuanced moments with an assault of bestial ferocity, there is no predictability or obvious pattern, rather a chaotic and honest approach to all of the songs. These tracks move in a lumbering fashion with organically composed structures while not feeling formulaic or running-in-circles with the same idea. Dead Void fantastically curate their most vile elements into a cohesive and ultimately expansive experience that takes the promise shown on the demos to unfathomable new heights. This is n

Manifesting superhuman force through near-magic sonic alchemy, HO99O9 consistently break free from any and all creative constraints. The duo, the OGM and Yeti Bones, co-mingle genres like chemicals, mixing gloriously hellish hip-hop, basement-born hardcore, future-facing punk, throat-slitting metal, jarring industrial, and off-kilter electronica into a concoction meant to combust the moment you press play or when they hit the stage. As such, the group has quietly haunted the darkest corners of the culture, peeking out with a series of unanimously acclaimed releases, A-list collaborations, and sold-out tours. In 2025, they make a statement with their third full-length album, Tomorrow We Escape, a 999 Deathkult / Last Gang Records/MNRK debut

Ludwig van Beethoven invented Jazz. That statement might seem enough to provoke a paroxysm from a musicologist, but, with a passage in his final piano sonata, Beethoven created the first example of pure swing in the history of music. We might also wonder how the serious-minded Johannes Brahms could open a sonata movement with a walking bass blues that smacks of the Mississippi Delta, or how Modest Mussorgsky, in his InchPictures at an Exhibition,Inch foreshadows Quincy Jones. This album makes these extraordinary connections before exploring the profound influence of jazz on composers of the 20th century, from Maurice Ravel to Leonard Bernstein.