Whirl- Distressor (2010)

One of my favorites from last year, Whirl is a shoegaze band from California. I didn't know much about Whirl (other than the fact that they're excellent) before reading up on them to do this post. It turns out the guitarist from Whirl is also in Deafheaven, the black metal/shoegaze/post-rock band whose album Roads to Judah I posted a while back. Not really surprising as one band is straight-up shoegaze and the other has serious shoegaze proclivities, but awesome nonetheless. If I had to compare Whirl to any band from the late-80's/early-90's shoegaze scene it would be Ride. Like Ride, Whirl cultivates a swirling, kaleidoscopic wall of guitar. Of the 6 tracks on this EP (excluding the intro track), half are perfectly executed, slow-moving shoegaze. However, the other three tracks are where Whirl are at their best, in my opinion. The tracks "Blue" and "Meaningless" are more up-tempo, sounding like catchy-as-shit indie rock with wall of sound guitars. "Child" pairs the meandering shoegaze Whirl excels at with a heavy riff that reminds me quite a bit of My Bloody Valentine.

Beware, this album is extremely habit-forming. 

Whirl on last.fm



Get it here.

Gems: Leave, Blue, Meaningless, Child

Deafheaven- Roads To Judah (2011) METAL ALERT

I ignored this for a few weeks, even after it had made its way on to a number of reputable blogs. The reason being it was released by Deathwish (Jake Bannon from Converge's label) and other than the Converge and Trap Them releases, I haven't cared much for Deathwish's output over the past few years. How to describe this...post-black metal? No, plenty of blast beats, tremolo picking and harsh black metal vocals. Blackgaze might be more accurate. I'm not usually a big fan of genre-mashing, most of the time it doesn't work. However, black metal and shoegaze seems like a pretty natural combination as both often feature wall-of-sound like guitar work. Anyway, this is pretty awesome. An interesting combination of straight black metal drumming, tremolo picked black metal riffs with dreamy shoegaze undertones and quiet post-rock buildups that break into blast beats and straight forward black metal riffs. Interesting.

Deafheaven on last.fm



Get it here.

Gems: Violet, Unrequited, Tunnel of Trees.