METRO SCHOOL REUNION FOREVER!

(Post written by Fred Savage Beasts)

Adelaide - home of the severely underrated genius. Right where Australia balances between the currents from the Antarctic and the wide, brown desert. Wide streets, trams, Jamie Siddons, Crows and now this… The Metro School Reunion. This is the reason you’ve been looking for to take your beat up VK Holden on its final legendary drive.

Get a load of the bands on the list, dammit! TV Colours alone would make this worthwhile. Like the Crows say, “FAAARK…” All these bands should be in the test team.

TV COLOURS★CONSTANT MONGREL★HIT THE JACKPOT★NATIVE CATS★LAKES★SCHOOL OF RADIANT LIVING ★BITCH PREFECT★PEAK TWINS★OLD MATE★RULE OF THIRDS★WIREHEADS 

On at the city's stalwart Hotel Metropolitan on October 5. Wind down the windows, rubber band your teas towels round your frozen water bottles and get yourself there. Any way you can.

Australian Pride, Sonic Masala Style (Pt1)

SO MANY AUSSIE BANDS DOING GOOD THINGS. So let's check some of the most recent ones out!

Let's start with my currently most played song from one of the best bands in Australia. 'Flesh War' is the first taste from the upcoming Total Control record Typical System, coming out on the excellent Iron Lung label. It's shaved away some of the industrial dirge that lurked in the corners and fully embraced the 80s Gothic New Wave. This doesn't even feel Australian - if it weren't for Mikey Young's guitar lines, I would thing we were in Berlin on a snow blasted Sunday, time indeterminate, all pofaced and windswept, black coats and wasted gazes. In short, it's amazing. Cannot wait to hear how this all comes together - colour this my most anticipated release of 2014. Always a dangerous comment to make - but it can't be unmade now...

Three bands are playing tonight in Brisbane that have new music out. Depraved goth rock trio Gazar Strips are launching their second EP Sparkling on yours truly's Sonic Masala Records. I can't go into too much detail as that would be self-aggrandising, but obviously I like it, especially closer 'Bee Mantis'. Pre-order the EP here.

Then there is Naked Maja, who have been steadily building elliptical steam since the release of their Disillusion EP last year. They have a new single at the ready, 'Out Of Mind', and it's a slice of tempered, considered mood, a salubrious offering that nevertheless feels suspended in formaldehyde, the sun piercing the liquid in amber shards, a sleepwalking daydream in between worlds. It's this kind of sun drunk miasmic emotion that this band does so well, a meticulous deconstruction/reconstruction of pop conventions. Great stuff - their The Vagrant EP promises to be another bar raiser.

Finally there is one-man darkness machine The Steady As She Goes, whose Dangerous & Dead LP is a brooding, calculating winner. All brooding theatrics in a minimalist pit, this act is one of the more understated must-see acts in Australia at the moment. It's the fact that the magnetic pull comes from one man, sucking the air out of the room at the first few notes of the guitar, that makes his performances so hypnotic. All three bands, alongside the excellent Barge With An Antenna On It (who are recording new music the following day at Incremental Studios) and Hypnotic Bedrooms, all at the Underdog for a tenner. See you there.

Now for another current favourite album from a band I can't get enough of right now. Melbourne four-piece Nun have released their debut self-titled record through Aarght! (Australia) and AVANT! (Europe), therefore letting it slip that they love exclamation marks. And darkness - plenty of darkness. For Nun is one delectably dark spiral of despair. Opening track 'Immersion II' is by far my favourite due to its chaotic atonal nature, but the way it bleeds straight into 'Evoke The Sleep' is brilliant. Apocryphal synth madness - can't beat that. 

Keeping things dark is label No Patience, who has just brought forth two great releases from doomed soothsayer Lakes and gutter scum Flesh World. Lakes' Carved Remains/Face In The Ash 7" follows hotly on the heels of last year's Blood Of The Grove LP, and these two tracks are another cut above, filled with sworling gothic tension and pent up anguish. There is a vibrating intensity that hums at the heart of these tracks, even as Sean Bailey's delivery seems at once teeth-gnashing and slack-jawed - on the precipice between exultation and damnation. No such tightrope walking for Flesh World though - their Planned Obsolescence EP is a breakneck kick into the abyss. This kind of thrash wasn't made to be heard on anything other than shitty cassettes thrown onto a bonfire, but now that they are on vinyl expect this devilish energy and power to ooze out and consume the world. 

Let's travel to Newcastle now and catch up with Bare Grillz. This band brought out Friends at the beginning of the year, and it's an excellent record that I unfortunately slept on until only a few weeks ago. There is a rawness to the recording where you can hear the mistakes, elements of the studio wouldn't normally take in, and this is the Araldite glue that stick all of this atonal angular aggression in place. It has that hollowed dissonance that some of the NZ bands that dole out this type of warped noise tend to have woven into their DNA, and that is an imminently good thing. A real grower - hopefully the boys return for a show up north sometime soon.

I'm running out of time because I have to go eat a handful of flu tablets so I can make it through the Gazar Strips show tonight alive - although Ill probably try to drown the germs in liquor anyway - so I thought I would end this first instalment of Aussie awesomeness with everybody's favourite, Courtney Barnett. She played The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, she has the video clip out that is at the bottom of this post, and she has this interactive zine about her tour/trip that you can colour. I could write for hours more about this, but Ill leave it for now. Keep between the lines! Come back tomorrow for the next instalment, featuring the likes of Wizard Oz, The Seaport and the Airport, Austin Buckett, Full Ugly, No Action, Freak Wave and lots more!

Looming On The Vinyl Ceiling

This has been in the wind for about a year now, but excellent local label Lost Race has finally released Loomer's debut LP Ceiling on vinyl! I was lucky enough to be walking past Rockinghorse Records on Monday after Lost Race's Danny Venzin dropped off some preliminary copies (the release date isn't until May 30). Originally out on CD in December 2010, Ceiling showcases the burgeoning talents of the dark shoegaze-driven quartet. I got to see them support Swervedriver in 2011 (which I reviewed here), and looked forward to their imminent explosion as the year went on. Unfortunately that was not to be - the band imploded, with members going on to focus on other sonic efforts such as Per Purpose, Spite House, Slug Guts, Eastlink and Lakes. Thank God for Lost Race then, because Ceiling is a minor masterpiece  all atonal bluster and feedback wash corralled by Brea Stanbridge's soothing vocals, a hint of menace barely held in check. This kind of music is a rarity in Australian circles, and almost never done this well. The vinyl sounds incredible too, and fittingly displays a band that could have been so much more.

You can pre-order Ceiling here (there are only 100 copies, which is Lost Race's MO). You can also get it from Permanent Records here.

HTRK Back To Work (Work, Work)

It may seem from a cursory, outsider's perspective that its strange - morbid, even - that HTRK are still together. The Australian band have called both Berlin and London home, their brand of cold, icy synth soundscapes evoking an alien landscape devoid of feeling or empathy, all masquerading as pop songs, and the live shows are delivered with an air of detachment yet innate sexual tension. Everybody wants to be loved, right? But in the seven years HTRK (pronounced Hate Rock) have been together, only two effective releases have come to light - Marry Me Tonight and this year's Work (Work, Work). Furthermore, the tragic suicide of band member Sean Stewart has rocked them to their very foundations.

However, it is apparent that Nigel Yang and Jonnine Standish - the two remaining members of HTRK - find the band a platform for expressing their own sense of what is happening in the world. Attacking a world viewpoint of indifference, Work (Work, Work) is darker and icier than Marry Me Tonight, yet much of this was planned before Stewart's untimely passing. Yang and Standish are quick to note Stewart's distancing himself from the traditional bass and gravitating towards more electronic based digital manipulations, especially after his time in Berlin. The culmination is a work that manages to unsettle, unnerve, yet connect - all of which are major attractors to the duo, and indicates that not only did they hit their intended mark, but that HTRK as an entity will go on.

HTRK will be playing in Brisbane for the first time, taking over the newly-formed Bridge Club on November 26. Ably supported by Nite Fields, Lakes and Secret Birds, this promises to be a stellar night of oscillating noise.

HTRK - Ice Eyes Eis
HTRK - Eat Yr Heart