Flipping from MF DOOM to We Lost The Sea on the listening front is crazy. But extremely enjoyable. #hiphop #metal #postrock #postmetal
We Lost the Sea – A Single Flower Review
By Dear Hollow
How do you follow up an album born from tragedy? While the Sydney collective We Lost the Sea began as a mammoth post-metal band with standout releases like Crimea and The Quietest Place on Earth, renowned for uncompromising weight and tantalizing patience, the tragic death of vocalist Chris Torpey silenced them, taking its teeth in the process. Grief embodied its 2015 album, not devastating for the notes and tempos that commanded it, but rather what it symbolized. Comprised of instrumental elegies to failed acts of heroism and sacrifice, Departure Songs served as both a beautiful post-rock album with an intriguing theme and a knack for instrumental hooks, as well as an homage to Torpey.
Because of this, 2019 follow-up Triumph & Disaster was doomed for disingenuousness, regardless of its quality. We Lost the Sea set out on its own path in a concept album devoted to apocalypse via climate disaster, employing many of the same tricks with more bite, but to an unfocused and inconsistent degree that landed its singles in EOY territory but its supporting cast as mediocre at best. Six years later, we’re graced with A Single Flower, an ode to revolution and defiance in its trademark groove and crescendo-laden patience. Much of it lands in Post-Rock 101, in line with the likes of Mono, God is an Astronaut, and Eluvium, with steadily building crescendos as the backbone while twinkly guitars guide the journey to crunchy metallic explosions, with some ugliness for contrast. While nowhere near the likes of its early discography, A Single Flower is a welcome improvement, as We Lost the Sea distances itself from its tragic past.
If A Single Flower is Post-Rock 101, then opener “If They Had Hearts” is the syllabus. Nearly nine minutes of steadily building twinkling, with its ugly metallic hit at the end of it all being an easy highlight. But by and large, the cuts that rely on this formula run the risk of being a weaker version of “A Gallant Gentleman” from Departure Songs, (“Bloom (Murmurations at First Light)”), that their solid songwriting and gentle crescendos are derailed by excessive length’s meandering consequences. Otherwise, appearances of anachronistic instrumentals add a jolt of confusion, such as electronic beats (“Everything Here is Black and Blinding”) and industrial harshness (“A Dance With Death”). Then there’s the elephant in the room that closer “Blood Will Have Blood” is twenty-six minutes long, which is too long despite however rebellious and driving its almost punk-like rhythms suggest.
Flowery textures are post-rock’s kryptonite, but tension between harmony eeriness is where it succeeds – and A Single Flower is no exception. While the textured plucking is a motif that courses through nearly every moment, riding the line between haunting and sanguine is a signature that elevates it. This taut dynamic gives the album a much more nuanced dynamic that recalls Godspeed You! Black Emperor, with its climactic and chaotic metal apexes recalling the collisions of agony and beauty that acts like Milanku or Audrey Fall (“A Dance With Death,” the conclusion of “Everything Here is Black and Blinding”). Terse drumming and textures of noise add to that thread of ugliness that adds contrast to the more crystalline movements, a constantly shifting palette (“Blood Will Have Blood”).
We Lost the Sea has released an imperfect album that successfully distances itself from the shadow of its more iconic past. Incorporating more of a metal presence than Departure Songs while streamlining the effort beyond the inconsistent Triumph & Disaster, A Single Flower manages to balance meditation and urgency neatly. It has its moments of post-rock paper-thin crescendo-core, and there are choices within that end up being head scratchers – and I would be remiss to neglect the album’s dummy long hour and twenty runtime – but We Lost the Sea finally feels like who they wanted to be beyond tragedy and its aftermath. Thus, A Single Flower owes its staying power more to what it represents than the instruments its contributors jam on. It suggests a good trajectory – and sometimes that’s all you need.
Rating: 2.5/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Bird’s Robe Records
Websites: welostthesea.bandcamp.com | welostthesea.com | facebook.com/welostthesea
Releases Worldwide: July 4th, 2025
#25 #2025 #ASingleFlower #AudreyFall #AustralianMetal #BirdSRobeRecords #Eluvium #GodIsAnAstronaut #GodspeedYouBlackEmperor #Jul25 #Milanku #Mono #PostRock #PostMetal #Review #Reviews #WeLostTheSea
THE OCEAN COLLECTIVE (Alemanya) presenta nou àlbum en directe: "The Ocean | Audiotree from Nothing" #TheOceanCollective #ProgressiveMetal #AtmosphericSludge #PostMetal #Juliol2025 #Alemanya #NouÀlbumEnDirecte #Metall #Metal #MúsicaMetal
Stone From The Sky, groupe français qui mérite bien plus de reconnaissance. Un post rock qui lorgne vers le post métal, n'hésitant pas à emprunter l'intensité du doom.
C'est impactant, lourd et pourtant des breaks résonnent, au loin, comme un rayon de soleil qui franchit des nuages bien sombres..
tarde à démarrer et à se poursuivre suite à ce qui semble être des problèmes techniques… ("les touches sont cassées" :)
- on s'enfuit donc voir la fin de Heave Blood & Die dont le #postmetal post-rock m'a convaincu, un bon concert
- passage exprès devant Enola Gay dont je n'ai pas aimé le style rap-metal/rap-punk. Il est temps d'aller se reposer
Le samedi
- la journée commence tranquille avec des trucs plutôt poppy, passage devant Wasia Project et Almost Monday
- et ça enchaîne avec le (...)
Sometimes I struggle with all the new releases and forget some beautiful albums released only a few months ago. This is one of those I should listen more often. Chelsea Murphy has an amazing voice.
Dawn of Ouroboros – Bioluminescence
https://album.link/d/650854121
In this excerpt from Spotlight On, musician Terence Hannum of the band Locrian details the recording processes behind their landmark album The Crystal World and the challenges new bands face in today's less focused music industry.
Check out the full conversation on the latest episode of the Spotlight On podcast: https://www.spotlightonpodcast.com/terence-hannum-revisiting-locrian-the-crystal-world-drone-metal/
Our hood, our rules about last weekend(s) photo dump
Free ARL3CCH1NO-music on various platforms... Linktree in bio
By Thus Spoke
Can you guess what genre Acidsloth plays? Yes, that’s right, it’s thrash! Ok, no, obviously not, it’s stoner doom—what else with a name that’s a portmanteau of a drug and a notoriously slow-moving animal? Kicking1 around since 2021, Kraków’s Acidsloth already have two LPs to their name, but it’s their third that they bestow the honor of being self-titled. The reason is that this time, they’re a “full band” (to use their own terminology), totaling eight(!) musicians, five of whom perform vocals. In this sense, Acidsloth is kind of their debut. With a charmingly against-type depiction of their token animal, and the promise of “Eyehategod-level aggression mixed with Conan’s heaviness and Electric Wizard’s psychedelic weight,” Acidsloth are out to show they mean business.
Acidsloth’s more-is-more approach to vocalists sees them hand the mic to a new player on (almost) every track.2 This is a cool and unique way to inject a bit of flavor into what is an infamously monotonous subgenre, as we swap between the shriekier (Julia Markiewicz, Radosław Bury), hoarser (Jan Gajewski, Mateusz Zborowski) and the growlier (Patryk Kozera) interpretations of the sludge scream. Beyond this, their compositions follow a common trajectory, often beginning with atmospheric, slightly ominous plucking and spending most of their time brooding in distorted sludgy chugs to a sedated beat. It’s certainly solid (in literal density as well as aesthetic quality), and sometimes it’s even slick thanks to some beautifully-timed transitions and an elusive solo. But as a whole, it fails to have the weight it needs to support its posture.
The thing about having different vocalists on different songs is that it’s quite important to be able to hear them well enough to appreciate their individual skills. Unfortunately, Acidsloth’s vocal track is so low in the mix compared to the instrumentation that the shouts and screams are often lost in the fuzz and bang of guitar and bass drum (particularly on “Float” and “Sin”). Given this, you’d hope the riffs would make up for it, but here too, Acidsloth fumble the ball. Outside of two pretty sweet solos (“Hole,” “Puke”) the guitars only hint at interesting melodies with some hanging plucks (“Hole,” “Free,” “Puke,” “Satan”), and interspersed passages of up-or-down-tempo strumming (“Float,” “Satan”). There are little moments of brilliance where it seems Acidsloth finally finish coming up and deliver—brutal, sledgehammer sludge screams (“Float,” “Free”); that solo (“Hole”); groovily-tapping post metal tension (“Free,” “Satan”); moody liquid plucks (“Sin”). But it’s at these times when Acidsloth’s odd compositional habits truly hamstring what strength they gained. Frequently, songs switch gears midway, and then again, and yet manage to reprise the least-interesting elements of monotony; the cool parts not given time to command the space they deserve (“Hole,” “Free,” “Sin,” “Puke”). The worst case is “Free,” which could have Amenra-esque levels of bite and solemnity, if the mid-tier galloping sludge didn’t smother the harrowing howls, and the anticipatory build that interrupts it set the tone instead.
Doom of any kind, and sludge for that matter, is at heart designed to be uncomplicated, but its presence—whether through emotional depth or sheer magnitude—is what makes it powerful. Alternatively, maybe it can just make you feel good with some psychedelically lush soundscapes. Acidsloth has no presence beyond its literal noisiness, and there’s but a glimmer of color in the melodies. The near-inaudibility of the vocalists is made worse by the frequent use of reverb, and what is either multi-tracking or group shouts (their muddiness makes it hard to tell). The music isn’t “boring,” as such, it’s just draining to listen to, as all the best riffs, screams, and good use of rhythm and atmosphere are quite quickly ironed over with a return to the plod and a sheen of humming feedback. One thus ends up walking away with the unfair impression that there’s simply nothing going on in the entire record. Even in active listens, I struggled to cling to the positive vibes.
As a stoner doom album, maybe Acidsloth is standard fare, but I would like to think not. As a sludge album, it fares better, thanks to an emphasis on chunky—albeit mostly dull—riffing and the fact that at least some of the vocalists seem to have promise. Acidsloth are finding their feet as an ensemble, and if they can pool their assets, I think they could make something pretty juicy. Hopefully, they make the move faster than the animal they’re named for.
Rating: Disappointing
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Willowtip
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: June 20th, 2025
#20 #2025 #Acidsloth #Amenra #Conan #CultOfLuna #DoomMetal #ElectricWizard #Eyehategod #Jun25 #PolishMetal #PostMetal #Review #Reviews #SelfReleases #Sludge #StonerDoom
A Public Service Announcement
Free ARL3CCH1NO-music on various platforms... Linktree in bio
Saturday!
#AmKreuz!
#Amenra! #Live.
!!! Fucking yes !!!
Show me a ( #metal ) band that rocks more in 2025!
#music #postmetal #blackmetal
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvN8...
Amenra - Heden & .Am Kreuz. (l...
Plus qu'un simple split, "KOLLAPSE GRAVA" est une véritable collaboration entre 𝗞𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗮𝗽𝘀𝗲 et 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝘃𝗮 qui ravira tous les amateurs de lourdeur post-hardcore...
https://www.coreandco.fr/chroniques/kollapse-grava-kollapse-grava-10451.html
First @venera.band.offical practice went surprisingly great some finetuning here and there, but we're getting ready... slowly
Album Of The Day
CYPRESS HILL - III - Tempels Of Boom
Best summer soundtrack
ARL3CCH1NO-music on various platforms... Linktree in bio
#NowPlaying We Lost The Sea - A Single Flower This is the album I've most been looking forward to. Dark and brooding. #metal #postmetal #postrock #sludge
THUMOS (Estats Units) presenta nou àlbum: "The Trial of Socrates" #Thumos #ProgressiveDoom #PostMetal #Juliol2025 #EstatsUnits #NouÀlbum #Metall #Metal #MúsicaMetal #MetalMusic