Last Rites: Outré Monde – Krang vs. Krang

Craig and I return with an examination of Krangs that reside both north and south of the Canadian border:

Krang #1 is a Canadian four piece from Edmonton, Alberta, but alas, they are no more. I was saddened and angered to read that, with the April release of Winds of Change, they had decided to call it a day after five fruitful years. How could they do this to me? After all, I had only discovered them in 2013 and now they were gone. I know that’s a childish reaction, but sometimes when a band clicks with every part of your being you can’t understand that they have agency outside of your wants and desires. It’s when fandom gets scary. Let’s just say Krang and I are both lucky they’re far away and I can’t make their final show. No one wants to see an old man cry.

Last Rites: Outré Monde – Blood of the Black Owl and Ampacity

Craig and I return to our periodic conversation, this time discussing Blood of the Black Owl’s dark ritual music and Amapcity’s chugging space rock.

Besides my eternal love for space rock in all it’s many shapes and forms, I felt that Ampacity’s debut, Encounter One, was criminally overlooked last year. I’m pretty sure you heard it – or at least heard of it – because I yelled about it on twitter and Facebook and elsewhere. But damn it, I wanted to make sure you listened!

Last Rites: Outré Monde – Vespero and Cold Womb Descent

Craig and I return with the second installment of Outré Monde for Last Rites. I think it’s some of my best writing yet.

Though you and I have had a few conversations on drone and it’s ilk, I don’t think we’ve ever touched on when it works for me and when it doesn’t. I’m picky when it comes to drone, unlike say, my whoring for 10th generation Sabbath clones. It has to be transformative or transportive; make me feel other than I am, or take me places I can’t reach alone. Apocatastasis, despite it’s meaning, was not personally transformative – I’m the same old schlub the whole way through – but I was transported.

I was only slightly joking when I said it was the music of the spheres. Apocatastasis moves on a scale that feels interstellar; the vistas are vast, the sounds unfold from afar, reaching the ears long after the image has come and gone from the mind. Cold Womb Descent are masters of the swell. They take a synth wash and drag it’s rise from a dust mote to a star and it feels like it unfolds over the millennia that process actually occurs.

But it’s never dull. This is epic music, a triumphant big bang slowed 800 times.

I think it’s safe to say I liked it. Even though it did bring to mind the Roy Batty “tears in the rain” section of Vangelis‘ Blade Runner score once or twice. I’ll be damned if this isn’t the proper sound to accompany the glittering c-beams near the Tannhäuser Gate.

 

Last Rites: Outré Monde – Arc of Ascent and Compactor

Outré Monde is a new regular column over at Last Rites where the esteemed Craig Hayes and I will be discussing bandcamp discoveries, both new and old, that cover the full gamut of our broad and eclectic tastes.

We stuck close to home for the first installment, chatting about a heavy psychedelic band from New Zealand and a release on a cassette label based in Denton, TX (with a hat tip to my friend Rob Buttrum and his excellent Out-Of-Body Records).

One persons poison is another’s nectar, and in the spirit of sparking the synapses into gear, Outré Monde is here to illuminate bands that might not be metal per se, but still retain plenty of elements of serious interest for the open-minded metal fan.

So, dig in and join in. The trip to the outer reaches starts here.