Art of Burning Water - Between Life and Nowhere

I never expected to enjoy Art of Burning Water's Love You Dead anywhere near as much as I did. In fact, it ended up being one of the best records I heard that year and so, when my brother text me asking if there was anything I wanted for Christmas, I sent him a link to this record which he kindly bought for me. It might be the least festive record I own.

I never quite got into this album as much as I did Love You Dead, I'm not sure why. There are certainly fewer doomier, sludgier moments here - Between Life and Nowhere has a lot more thrash and hardcore going on. At 20-minutes long, they don't leave themselves much time to do anything slower, although Voivodian Solutions to Die Kreuzian Problems does get a bit of a groove going towards the end, as does the follow-up, Alesha. I say that, but I can't say with any certainty which song is which, as they decided against putting any spaces in the grooves between tracks - something I can't decide is awesome or really annoying. I certainly think "that's badass" when I look at it, but curse them when trying to work out which song I'm listening to; the former happens more than the latter.

I still only own two AoBW records, but I'd definitely buy more if I ever saw them. I guess I'm just going to the wrong shops.

Format: 12", insert

Tracks: 10

Cost: free, new

Bought: Gift

When: 30/12/16

Colour: Black

Etching: none

mp3s: none

Art of Burning Water - Love You Dead

I bought this record on something of a whim - I don't think I'd ever heard or seen The Art of Burning Water before, but I knew the name for some reason. It was £5 in All Ages, which seemed like a bargain, so I decided to chance it; wherever I'd heard their name, it was in such a light that I thought they'd be worth listening to (the more I think about it, there was some connection to a friend of a friend's record label possibly. I think I knew they were relatively local, somehow).

I mentioned the purchase to my friend Sarah who said "you might like it. It's very crust-punk", which was a term I've never heard used for music, just about the older punks people seem to complain about at Fest. It meant I went into the first listen of The Art of Burning Water slightly sceptical about whether I'd actually like it, which isn't the best of starts.

Despite that initial worry, I've spent most of the second half of 2016 absolutely loving Love You Dead. My usual go-to albums at work tend to be instrumental and calming, but I've found that sometimes I need the exact opposite in my day, and this album does that perfectly. After a brilliant intro about the revolution, the album let's you know exactly what's going to happen for the next half an hour with a huge wall of heavy guitars and blistering drums. Every now and again, it settles into groove, which is the closest you get to a reprieve other than turning the record over. The vocals aren't my usual style, but in this context I love it. The songs are fairly hard to tell apart, except for the lengthy, sludgier Nicaragua at the end, although you don't really notice whether you're listening to three 4-minute songs with slight gaps between or one 12-minute song. But then again, I'm not listening to these guys expecting to hear a perfect single - I play it to hear 30 minutes of brutal, intense noise and ticks that box very firmly.

Format: 12", folded sleeve
Tracks: 8
Cost: £5 new
Bought: All Ages
When: 25/03/16
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no