MUSIC: Wiggly Air, by Kurt Gottschalk

Apparitions of the Eternal Earth. On their monolithic 2022 debut, Eyes Like Predatory Wealth, the Houston, TX trio Apparitions set forth a slow burn with three tracks running, in sequence, 10, 20 and 30 minutes. The fire has been spreading ever since. In 2023, they issued the digital-only Semel, with three poundingly untitled tracks, and this month comes Volcanic Reality (CD and download from Deathbomb Arc March 24). The band tends toward drone, with Igor Imbu’s modular synthesizers blending in with guitarist Andrew Dugas’s carefully sculpted feedback, crafting a platform for Grant Martin’s pulverizing drumming. Predatory Wealth was a pandemic project, with each member recording tracks separately and the results more layered than they were synchronized. With Semel and Volcanic Reality, they sport the blisters of a live band. The new album feels more invasive, less expansive. Four of the five tracks are less than 10 minutes, with one falling under two, although the album does conclude with the rapturous 18 minutes of “As the Last Lights Depart.” Without vocals, the tracks are wide open to interpretation (or unthinking immersion for that matter), but the band drops references to Black Sabbath, composer Krzysztof Penderecki and writer Georges Bataille in discussing their work. The title of the new album is meant to suggest the volatile relationship we have with our not always hospitable planet. Earth is a vast and noisy place. Apparitions conjure earthquakes and landslides, where only phantoms can hear them.

Teeth to the Sky, the new album by Seattle’s Guiltless (CD, LP, cassette, download out March 7 from Neurot Recordings), has somewhat more corporeal, carpe diem concerns. Guitarist/vocalist Josh Graham—who, like guitarist Dan Hawkins, comes from A Storm of Light—describes the band’s first full-length as being about living your life to the fullest on a dying planet and amidst “humanity’s propensity for chaos.” Such positive messaging might not altogether come clear in the music, however. Guiltless falls closer to the mainstream of metal than does Apparitions, with such conventions as lyrics (through frayed throat and demonic whispers) and playing to common rhythms They beat out the eight, mostly midtempo tracks on the album quite satisfyingly with little by way of soloing or showboating. The songs are sold on arrangement and uniformity, with smart and sometimes (surprisingly) subtle touches and deviations. Teeth to the Sky is a singular, guiltless pleasure.

A much starker picture of enduring metallic themes comes from Portland’s Decrepisy, whose second album, Deific Mourning, takes on the simple, maybe even mundane, aspects of mortality, addressing battles not of the metal sort against Baphomet or Gamera or armies of Vikings but against the unromantic and ultimately unimportant end we all must face. Guitarist Kyle House, the band’s primary member, conceived the album while enduring destabilizing neural issues and facing an uncertain future. He wrote and played much of the music, bringing in Acephalix bandmate D.G. Butler to write and perform the vocals, with a fair bit of synthesizer and vocals by Leila Abdul-Rauf adding to the atmosphere. That said, Deific Mourning is hardly a bleak record, at least on the surface. What Butler’s lyrics are is hardly clear, but his growls and strained screams march along with the chugging riffage quite amiably. House jettisons between black metal and crust-beat punk and rock-god guitar fills (courtesy Jonny FOD Quintana) with quick dexterity. With all due respect to where the album is coming from, it’s kind of a fun house of styles seen in wavy mirrors and black light, with jump scares breaking the head-banging—fun if you like that kind of thing. Genre puritans or those resistant to the setting from the outset, well, they won’t be listening long anyway. Their loss. Deific Mourning is kind of a blast.

New Wax, Old Bags. The British trio HotWax has released more than enough songs as EP’s or standalone singles to make up an album over the last four years, notable among them being “High Tea” and “Phone Machine” from 2023’s Invite Me Kindly. Now, at last, they’ve come around with Hot Shock, their first full-length (CD, LP, download out March 7 from Marathon Artists), a packed half hour of hard-edged, tight rock with plenty of attitude and pop hooks and sometimes psychedelic grunge leanings. The super catchy songs are given kick by the firm insistence of Tallulah Sim-Savage vocals, layered and supplemented by bassist Lola Sam’s backing. They sometimes call to mind L.A.’s Death Valley Girls hitting with a harder punch. While the songs feel direct and no nonsense, the lyrics are intriguingly oblique—apologetic, alienated, occasionally angry and waxing poetic. “In Her Bedroom” begins as a third-person story, a man stealing a woman’s money and secrets while insisting he needs her, before switching to the first-person for the chorus: “Take her from me / I’ll keep your secrets.” Like much of the album, the meaning is misty but the mood is clear.

Meanwhile, it only took 40 years for the first album from Bag People. They self-released a cassette demo in 1983 and a 7” through Joey Records (which, along with a single by Tortilla Factory seems to be the label’s entire catalog) and that’s apparently about it from the fierce punk/no wave five-piece until now. The self-titled collection (LP, download out from Drag City March 28) collects a dozen songs from their brief run, culled from a recently uncovered collection of cassette tapes. The album’s a mixed bag, not in terms of quality—it’s a solid collection and the sound is surprisingly good for tapes sitting in a shoebox (or wherever they were) for four decades—but in terms of the number of angles they come at the songs from. A fantastic urgency is at play, an intensity grounded in the knotted guitars of Carolyn Master and Gaylene Goudreau and the force of Diane Wlezien’s voice. There’s some slow grind, some fast pummel, some angular noise and some solid (post?) punk ravers, and an adrenaline-soaked tune called “Instrumental” with a remarkable display of wordless vocals. Bag People formed in Chicago but moved to NYC in the early 1980s, and the new collection concludes with a track recorded live at CBGB’s, a year before they threw in the towel. Members went on to play together in Of Cabbages and Kings and with Glenn Branca. Here we hear the fury of their youth, in all its wanton glory.