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What they heard was what they
got ... Or so they thought
Why bother reading these - come to a gig instead or maybe not, who cares?
Anyway, they liked us better than Entombed, pre-90's Sepultura, Big Black,
Life of Agony, Vision of Disorder, Killing Joke, Carcass, Beyond Dawn,
Fear Factory, Voivod, Atheist and Meshuggah... Or they didn't really know
how to describe us, stylistically. Read/Listen/Think.
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September 6th 2003 www.pit-of-doooom.com live review
The Locust, Orthrelm, No Place to hide, Single Unit
Fabriken, Oslo, 6/9 2003
The night started with Are Mokelbost, aka, Single Unit, as the name suggest, he is a solo act. Single Unit is electronic music and he is challenging this genre. He wants to giving the music a meaning, more than just being a form. On his CD ?Family of forces?, we get tunes. They are twisted, fucked up and wired, but they are still clearly tunes. Live they are used as material for the set, like a library. As a fragment or striped down to a beat, they pop up, as a catch, moulded together with new stuff covered with impro noise. Hints of different kinds of music balanced with abstract sounds, constantly and rapidly changing, keeping it interesting all the time, but staying within some limits making it easy to follow.
The sound level was a little bit low and a ripped cord cut the set in two, otherwise perfect.
Local band, No Place To Hide, also suffered from weak sound. Seeing the a while ago in a small club I know that loudness is an important factor. Grove metal gone death, either with a heavily syncopated riff, statically repeated over and over again or with rentless blast beats, they force the audience into obedience. Being tight as hell and ecstatic screaming/ growling makes this very easy to like.
Orthrelm are an American guitar/ drum duo. A beat and a fast guitar lick in the high register, repeated a couple of times, then a new beat and lick, repetition, new beat and lick, repetition. This is the formula, the music keeps building and the playing gets more frenzied.
Trance music, Hendrix, Andrwe Cyrille and William Hooker, Buckethead, Sonic Youth, I don?t know what their references are but that was some names that went through my mind watching the set. Neither could I figure out if this was improvised of written music. This was really intense and demanding, towards the end some people had enough and reacted hostile, shouting and giving the band the finger. Most of the people I talked to afterwards liked it thou, and I was one of them. (Now later I know this music is composed all the way throug. This makes it even more awsome!!!)
Next was the headliners, the Locust, wearing funny insect super hero costumes. They fast, spazy hard core, with key boards and high pitch screamed vocals. The songs are short, built up of multiple parts; a blast, some crazy drums, a sci-fi key board sound, a blast, the end.
The music confusing, disrupting, confronting. They are kidz of the metropolis high speed mass media society. Its perfectly performed, but in the end some thing is missing out. It becomes only a show off in complex structuring and an overload of information. I think The Locust could would win a lot if dropping the ironic image and front the things they like, and be honest about it. Now...where is my AC/DC tape? |
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THE METAL OBSERVER - CD-Review - NOPLACETOHIDE - Zukunft
It took seven years until NOPLACETOHIDE attempted a new album and with "Zukunft" they created a continuation to their debut "Vergangenheit", released in 1995. The long break was caused by some line-up changes and so they were ready to do a new effort in 2001.
It would be a waste of time to write about that, because primarily it is important that the band still exists and that they have now a second record. Though, this 5-Track Promo here convinces up from the start but it also shows that the time doesn't stood still and the sound of the Norwegians has changed a bit. They are more noisy and sick and it's not uncommonly that one will have bands like NEUROSIS, BREACH or WILL HAVEN in his mind when he listen to this sound. They kept up the progressiveness of the first release, but their thrashy influences disappeared partly or you can hear them only in the background.
But then they suply the listener with pretty dirty riffs and grimly sounds into psychopathical shelves, which is only known of the aforementioned bands. But NOPLACETOHIDE don't make the mistake to change their style quickly to gather the laurels, which they deserve, no, it seems that the guys from the North have found their very own style and passed their "Vergangenheit". It would be very regrettably if they hadn't made any progress throughout the years.
If the album can stand the quality of these five tracks, then one can speak already of a convincing record. It's not known, when this record will be released officially because they try hard to find a suitable label and for now, they have again paid the production by themselves. But it would be very sad, if this band wouldn't get a fair chance, the necessary support and the access to more fans. (Online January 25, 2003) |
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THE METAL OBSERVER - CD-Review - NOPLACETOHIDE - Vergangenheit
The debut of the Norwegians NOPLACETOHIDE had been released already in 1995 and if you spend much time with "Vergangenheit", you will wonder why the band is not very famous. Perhaps, the reason for that is the ruling of Black and Death Metal in Norway and bands of other styles have problems with coming out of the underground.
It took nearly six years until the band released their first full-length album and for the band founding in 1989, they offered a lot of demos and gigs in the underground. In a technical view, the Northmen are all apart from being averagely and their preferences for extreme Thrash Metal can't be denied. But they are far away from being another retro-Thrash combo, because the material on "Vergangenheit" is too progressive and complicated. You need some patience to catch the single songs but when you deal with them, earlier dissonances will be clear.
One can't complain about the sound of the self-prduced album, although one wishes a bit more differentiated production from times to times. But regarding the strictly limited budget, the songs have a punishing and perfectly suitable sound, though. Besides the musical diversity, the vocals also suit perfectly into the sound and so, Espn T. Hangard is always trying to use his vocal chords as variable as he can. With "Yearning", a saxophone is added to the Metalsound and it creates a strange atmosphere.
One just can hope that NOPLACETOHOPE will get into the limelight with their second release, the quality of their work can't be any hindrance. (Online January 25, 2003) |
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Noplacetohide - Zukunft, noize magazine review
Hmm... seems like a rude mixture has hit my mail box. These days, the latest CD of norwegian metallers Noplacetohide reached me in cold Germany, and I gotta say that the bands music is fitting the trist scenario of fall weather in october. The band is existing since 1989 and has somewhen in the past released their first album "Vergangenheit" and is now releasing the sequel called "Zukunft". What the guys around singer Hzez are presenting is a weird hybrid out of different metal styles as well as some decent noise core stuff. Even if the album opener (I dunno its title because of the crazylayout of the CD-coverage) is coming around as groovy and drum-orientated as Sepultura in their "Roots"-time, much of the other songs are very monotonous, in some moments more melodic, in others very noisy and aggressive, but all in all pretty spacy, repeating many verses and riffs to the max and having a pretty rude but not growling vocal performance. The guitar work of guitarist Brun is in many moments pretty hard, especially when coping with material that is resembling the work of Dino Cazares of industrial legend Fear Factory. "Zukunft" is an album that is very difficult and demanding, nothing to listen to when you´re diving your bath tub. I am very disrupted about this CD. On the one hand it´s a pretty cool sound the norwegian band is delivering, on the other I guess that their sound is a bit too spacy to really let one approach their material intensively. But one thing is for sure: the album all in all is a pretty good one. Listen before buying |
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Kamelot
I have yet to find a bad true Metal band out of Norway. Past reviews of Sea Of Dreams and Godsize for example just soldify my remarks towards Norway being a contender in the Metal genre and not just looking into the Black Metal part of it. Noplacetohide is more on the extreme Thrash and Hardcore side but have so much melody without making it watered-down. "Vergangenheit" is a pretty sophisticated 9-track release (I'm assuming this is a re-issue due to many bands never had website addresses on their cd's back in this year, but I could be wrong!) since this band is old school to begin with being around since 1989-1990 and could be another unsung hero that can save Metal. They have an anti-Grunge attitude but their melodic parts are reminiscent of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam but deliver a Thrash punch of old Metallica, No Return with some ferocity of the newer bands like Killswitch Engage and Pissing Razors without sounding like Pantera.
The new 5-song promo for the upcoming "Zukunft" is even heavier yet! Almost a Crowbar sludge sound with the very outspoken vocal delivery; the band is just incredible and for anyone to pass them up is total sacrilege. People need to voice their opinion on qality bands like this or we are going to go through another year of bad signings. Noplacetohide would be a great commodity over here in the U.S. or on any established label; I stand by that statement! |
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Hellfrost Zine 1998 ("Vergangenheit" reviewed)
Norway's No Place To Hide are without a doubt the most unique thrash band I've heard in a long, long time. A totally moving sound - hard to describe but very powerful and extreme - crashes through my speakers walls. The bands that come to mind when I attempt to make comparisons are Voivod, (early)Danzig, and Coroner. Now that is an interesting mix, and it proves to be. I just can't get over how refreshing this is... simple but adventurous (there's even a song with a saxophone!), multi-influential but fucking HEAVY. Opposites tend to collide with No Place To Hide. Mellow accoustic passages are as unexpected as the grindcore tantrums vocalist Espen Hangard will occasionally produce. The foundation is thrash, and it can be as heavy and aggressive as death metal without relying on excess distortion. Lyrics are very abrupt, though random they can be quite insightful. Even though it was recorded back in 1995, it hasn't seen much American distribution so write to get your own copy of this masterpiece called Vergangenheit.
99/100 |
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Noise Level Critical september 1997 ("Vergangenhei
This Norwegian four-piece claim on their biography to be influenced by Thrash and Death Metal, but I'd personally call them more a Hardcore Metal band than Thrash or Death. Having said that, it's not all full-on aggressive Hardcore. The band mix it up with some slower, more melodic guitar parts on songs like the title track and "Inverted." Vocally it's a mixture of raw-throated Deathcore shouts and, less frequently, toned-down emotional moans. The vocals in particular remind me of bands like Life of Agony and Vision of Disorder, in that they vary from a quite melodic style to a very aggressive one.
The music is often quite experimental, with some Keyboards and Saxophone parts which are hitherto unheard of in the Hardcore genre. There are plenty of Thrashy and Groove-laden riffs as well, accompanied by some hyperfast drumming. The bass, though, seems to be lost in the mix. I'm sure it's there somewhere, contributing to the backbone of the band's sound, but it rarely comes to the forefront of the music.
If you've read some of my other reviews, you'll be aware that I'm not a huge Hardcore fan. However, this is something I can get into because the band have experimented with some less extreme ideas both musically and vocally, which makes for a more original sound. A nice, interesting album all in all, which should be followed up towards the end of this year. It will be interesting to see what the band come up with next time around.
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Terrorizer #8 June 1994 (Demo review)
Well, it makes a change hearing something from Norway that isn't connected with black metal. Actually, this band are quite hard to define. There are plenty of industrial elements to their sound, with the guitars of Morten Fagerland and Espen T. Hangard coming across in that way, especially in songs like 'S.A.L.T.'. There is a kind of KILLING JOKE texture to those guitars. The vocals have a lot in common with an industrial combo, too.
It's not all industrial influences though, and there is plenty of grinding power and death metal overtones to mingle in. The band have versatility and have just supported CARCASS in February, and I have the feeling they could support many different kinds of bands, even some in the indie field.
They are also quite well known in Norway, having formed in 1989 and they had a track on the CD sampler that went out with 'Rock Furore' magazine, which reached 10.000 people. Their second demo is obviously gonna' attract a lot of people's attention. If it has attracted yours then send off $6.00 for this high quality tape.
Russ Smith
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Elysium #4 1995 (Demo review)
These Norwegians' metal has a healthy artsy/crank-avantgarde overtone, with a lot of unusual arrangements and solutions in the songs. I quite like it, and unlike most of the similar type of bands they also possess a good dose of sheer power, bordering on even industrial shades at times. The music and the band seem like a well thought-out and visionary whole, so it all can be considered an all round positive experience. Calm, personal and brisk modern metal, not far from their landmates Beyond Dawn. The tape has 5 longish tracks, a good sound and a neat folded sleeve.
Mikko Lappalainen
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