Soft Kill - Metta World Peace (2023)

Soft Kill is a post-punk / shoegaze one man project from Chicago. I enjoyed its previous releases and often considered reviewing one of them, but felt maybe it was a bit too generic. But Metta World Peace is a different beast. The post-punk / shoagaze with a prevalent The Cure influence is still the core of the music, but this time the songs are also built around hip-hop beats (with a few MCs as guests) and it works extremely well, making it the most memorable Soft Kill album. We already knew hip-hop producer sampling shoeagaze worked fine, Metta World Peace is proof shoegaze/post-punk artist using hip-hop beats and samples can produce great results too. Really addictive album that I can't recommend warmly enough!

The Bandcamp page.

 

Circle of Ouroborus - Thurisa (2022)

Circle of Ouroborus keeps on releasing new stuff very fast, and this one called Thurisa, is one of the three he released last year. While on Aavikon Varjo he experimented with short keyboard /ambient oriented songs, and Autuala was closer than his usual to "normal" black metal with a focus on epic atmospheres, Thurisa sits somewhat in the middle, sounding between a drugged and depressed Emperor and a black metal tribute to The Cure (expect it's sung in Finnish!). And I think it's the most interesting and convincing album of the three. Good and singular stuff as usual from Circle of Ouroborus.

Dälek - Respect to the Authors EP (2019)

Respect to the Authors is the new Dälek release (on Exile on Mainstream records), a six tracks EP. It provides a nice sample of their trademark sound, old school MCing and beats over some shoegaze / indus / noise atmospheres, with some moments more strong on the groove and rhythm (especially the really good title track) and some others more on the nostalgic atmopsheric side. Nothing surprising if you know them, but really good stuff as usual.

Dalek's Deaverse website page.

Circle of Ouroborus - Vangin Laulu (2018)

Usually the Circle of Ouroborus have a classy cover art, I don't know what happened with this one for Vangin Laulu, released last year... Anyway, what matters is that the music is as good as usual in this album with the "classic" Circle of Ouroborus sound (not an album with many folk/acoustic parts) with the melancholic atmosphere and a mix of black metal, shoegaze and post-punk/new-wave (think The Cure at his gloomiest). As usual it is finely crafted and works very well. Another excellent album from Circle of Ouroborus.