One of my favorite subgenres of music has always been ambient techno. Chain Reaction, Basic Channel, AFX (early Aphex Twin), B12 and Biosphere are responsible for shaping my interests in not only percussive electronics but ambient music as a whole. As we all know, these days ambient artists end up making techno and techno artists end up making ambient. Well, this Seattle producer has offered up the best hybrid I've heard yet.
Icy and haunted drones made with ebowed guitar, loop pedals, viola box and reverb units are stretched ever so slowly with a pulsating spine of the most subtle 808 percussion I've ever heard. Sometimes just a buried bass kick and sometimes a hi hat that is hardly there, these rhythms create a perfect interplay with the lush ambient soundscapes. This is minimalism at its finest in any accessible realm.
The narrative is a deep, mature and almost holy melancholy that I find difficult to stop listening to.
I must admit that my introduction to these Seattle Doom / Thrash Metal dorks was at church. Yep, I was having to sit through the "Hells Bells" anti-rock music lecture and slideshow that so many poor kids my age were also forced to pay attention to. Well, the result was an obsession for things like occult imagery, booze, images of naked girls hanging from crosses, Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" video, Bon Scott passed out facedown in his own vomit, and an odd affinity for the face of Anton LaVey, founder of the Church of Satan, which is burned into my subconscious for all eternity.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, Coven was a pretty ridiculous yet awesome band. Everything was tongue in cheek except for the killer shredding and decent vocals. I mean how satanic is a lyric like this?
"Pulsating steel, protruding from my thigh
She who spreads is she who dies.
Long as my arm and five times as thick,
You'll die at the end
Of my iron dick."
With songs like "McDonaldland Massacre" and "6669", I'm thinking fathers should have been more concerned with their daughters keeping their pants on backstage at Coven shows than losing their teenage souls to the Lord of Darkness. These dudes were the Pub Rock of Thrash.
Regardless, get amped on this batch of bitchin' riffs and a deadly blend of Thrash and Doom.
Recommended if you don't like Forced Entry, Metal Church or The Accused.
