Gnod: Chapel Perilous
Gnod's last two albums, the arresting The Mirror and Just Say No to the Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death Machine, were pure blasts of outrage, more interested in searing the flesh off your face in their outrage than in waxing philosophical like their earlier works. Chapel Perilous manages to bring the best of both words into its pitch black hallways, and the result is astounding.The album is bookended by two enormous slabs of sheet metal in closer "Uncle Frank Says Turn it Down" and opener, the incredible "Donovan's Daughters" which builds in ugliness over its 15 minutes into a stunning denouement. Seriously, "Daughters" could be my favorite Gnod song, and one of the best songs I've heard in a long time; it transports you into another realm, coiling and mutating and swallowing you whole. The songs that make up the middle of the album, the trilogy of "Europa", "A Voice From Nowhere", and "A Body", are similar to their earlier work: more experimental, mostly instrumental, mysterious and labyrinthine. These two halves, taken together, are about the closest to a 'beginner's guide to Gnod' as you can get, and it's such a strong album that it's more than just a good primer. Like with Sunn O))), Chapel Perilous feels like a terrifying religious ceremony...enter the Chapel in chaos, prostrate yourself before its dark core, and leave a changed person.
The Black Lips & The Khan Family: Play Safe
And now for something totally different, for a really good cause. Play Safe is a pairing of ultra-catchy garage rock revivalist King Khan with his Khan Family, and the sleazy fun of The Black Lips. It's an EP made in collaboration with Viva con Agua de Sankt Pauli, a German nonprofit that is trying to get clean water to needy regions of the world like South America and Africa. It's a great cause, but how's the record? Short and amazingly sweet, from garage scuzz to girl group cuteness over the course of just about 10 minutes. Play Safe's songs will get lodged in your brain long after you put the record down, and you'll just want to give it another spin. Like Tony Molina's records, Play Safe shows that you can cut rock music down to its purest essence and come out with something that much stronger.
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