I know nothing about Revolutionary Girl Utena at all, so I'm not certainly the target audience for this. I certainly do like what Seazer was cooking on Terayama's works, though, and that is why I checked this out. Really cool prog rock, with symphonic elements, electronics, and choirs. If I were a Utena fan and decided to give the lyrics a proper read, this would've probably been even better. Epic!!!!!!!!!!!!

Being material taken from live performances recorded on April 20th & 29th, 1999, this is basically a live mix of early Venetian Snares essentials and some other bangers from that era. One hour of killer hardcore and breakcore made on an Amiga. There's even a bit of noise here!

Pia-Noise is a collaboration between Masami Akita and French pianist Nicolas Horvath, meaning this album gives you something that's rarely found on Merzbow albums, a piano. Being made in June and August 2021, it's easy to see it as a soundtrack for the pandemic or just a picture of the world overall—a display of our worries. On the Merzbow side of things, you have the static and synth bleeps you would expect with even our old friend radio returning. Horvath's piano ... read more

Lots of different synth blips and bloops and loops going into your ear. On the first track the noisy side of things is more reserved to the background, but on the second one it's at the front. Just another decent Merzbow record.

Harsh, but not a pure aural assault due to the electronic elements and stuff, the recording quality gives it a bit of a haunted feeling. Decent.

Noise Mass is essentially a reissue of 1994's Hole with a missing track and two new ones in its place, Voicematrix Pt. 1 & 2, bookending the album. As the titles suggest, they make use of vocal samples, twisting and distorting them. I don't know what else I can say about this one; it's the usual 90s Merzbow harsh goodness. Well, there was some Morse code on track two, and the longest track is Kraft-Ebings Dick. What a title!

Just an usual harsh noise cut from Merz, nothing new—it's a wave of noise. A little metallic with its sounds and it has some nice textures. Kakapo Talk has the most bird-like sounds, I guess? Takata Takata's title is very fitting, as there is this clanging loop. That's all I have to say.

Avant-prog, Japanese folk, enka, choirs, and spoken word poetry are woven together, making you feel like you're living in the country. Seazer's soundtrack is a great match for Terayama's movie, Pastoral.

Night of the Bloody Tapes was such a good album that it got a sequel nearly 20 years later. Only two tracks this time, with a total runtime of 36 minutes. Just like before, the walls have a lot going on behind the rumbling static, though I wouldn't call them as hellish as before—I guess it's fitting as it's the dawn, not the night.

While Full of Hell & Merzbow was a good grindcore album, it didn't really have much Merzbow. Sister Fawn, which is basically a companion album, is more so noise with metal in it—the drums, guitars, and (some) vocals are there; they just are part of the noise. Some of these tracks also have an industrial edge. I certainly like this one more than the "proper" collaboration.

Crunchy as fuck, so much so that this might as well be a recording of you being crushed inside that boat on the cover. There are these outbursts every so often that sound like someone/something screaming. I guess that sums up both Wolf Pack and Blechholler pretty nicely. The latter is a collaboration with Mania, and while maybe that screaming part doesn't apply to it as much, it is the better track. 1 hour of wall noise, my beloved.

Enough Vomir listening; time to check out someone else. I picked this one for two reasons: it's short (40 minutes), and it's popular/well-liked. Four brutal and quite dynamic walls with plenty of layers underneath the crackle doing their thing—it's hell as an album. That part at the end where it gets even LOUDER is the cherry on top.

I'm currently not planning to listen to Bull of Heaven or any projects inspired by them, but this has fucking Dan Hentschel on the cover so I needed to tap in. Three tracks, but they make up one. Cool atmospheric EAI/Ambient piece, it starts off dark (those buzzes later on only strengthen that in my opinion), but then it turns ethereal when those heavenly sounds kick in. Love all the different sounds popping in and doing whatever. Bonus points for Daniel George Hentschel.

A fitting soundtrack for an insane cyberpunk movie. Industrial soundscapes, screaming, a little drone, add in some rock, only thing missing is a ton of vomit.

With the short track lengths (tracks rarely go beyond the 1-minute mark) and all the insanity, this might as well be just a single 20-minute-long track. Tracks range from crazy breakcore to sounding like an excerpt from a Merzbow album. Throw in samples and references that prove that someone is a bit too online, and you're golden.

That Kawai MS710 demo intro is beautiful. Sludgy (and at times psychedelic) riffs are played for a track's entire length, and dogshit edgy lyrics are weirdly delivered with a Swedish accent. Throw in a trumpet here and there too. Some of the lines here are golden, and some are pretty fucking vile (though I still can't take them completely seriously with how Peter says things). Production could've been better, and it does drag a bit sometimes. Absolute filth, in a good way. (There ... read more

Everything about this album is dirty, from the instrumentals to the lyrics. The repetitive riffs are pretty killer, and Peter is still spouting crazy shit with his Swedish accent, although this time he's a bit quieter in the mix. I love when they bring out the horn.

While Masami and Lawrence English have already collaborated before on Achromatic, that one also had Jamie Stewart in the mix. Eternal Stalker is the most (dark) ambient Merzbow album I've heard in a while; his noise blends beautifully with the field recordings English is bringing to the table. It's like you're sitting in a factory. (Well, the field recordings were made at a factory complex.) Maybe throw in Tarkovsky's Stalker in there too, seeing the album's title. A ... read more

Thanks to @parannemi for the rec! Great two psychedelic jams - basically 40 minutes of soloing, but it's really good so I can't complain. Don't you love hearing the same thing in the background while a dude goes crazy on the guitar?

"The tracks are the identifications in these two animals and their biorhythms, also considering the relation between the Bird and the Geon, and the Worm and his Angelic origin."

Merzbow's track is dedicated to the pigeon. It has some ambient droning (you know what I'm talking about if you've heard tracks like Spirulina Blue), but the noise sounds like Masami left a lawn mower running for the most part. Not really interesting.

QDOR takes up the Worm, and they bring an ... read more