Surfacing form the deep depths of Carrboro, NC is Cold Cream with their newest addition to the music world, “Cold Cream II”. As a psych-punk band, these folks have all the sounds you could desire: catchy vocals and beats; screaming; grounded, realistic lyrics.
In terms of members, Cold Cream claims “exes of Pipe, Superchunk, Bat Fangs, Flesh Wounds, Spider Bags, and Entez Vous” to be a part of this band (as stated on their Bandcamp bio). The band has Clark Blomquist (drums, synth), Laura King (bass), Ron Liberti (guitar) and Mara Thomas (vocals).
Cold Cream released the album on February 1, 2024, and it features eight tracks with a run time of about thirteen minutes. FCC warning: there are curse words and foul language in a few of the tracks on this album.
Alrighty I picked three songs to dive into a little bit. “Cactus Wife” has the most classic punk and indie rock vibe to it. It’s a pleasant reminder of other NC bands like Archers of Loaf that have been ruling and inspiring artists for over thirty years. “Decorate the World” also a similar upbeat punk rhythm to it if you enjoyed this track.
Here, we are able to find the most psychedelic inspired track on this album. The wavy reverbed vocals sink in like teeth into an ice-cream bar. It’s not pleasant for some, but I love it. The heavy drums have a rainy pitter-patter meant to keep your feet movin’.
A lovely title has to have a lovely sound, right? This track slams and thrashes the most (in comparison to the other tunes on this album).
Last Bite
As I’ve been writing these articles and posts for the last few months about NC music, I keep finding more hope and new bands to latch onto. I grew up being jealous of other states with exemplary music scenes like Philly or Seattle. Now I am beginning to find bands and sounds that have existed for some time, but finally want to unearth themselves to my ears.
I’m excited for the young bands coming onto the scene too. A few that I’ve written about like Babe Haven and smattering of other hardcore bands, are slowly getting pushed into the limelight because of their amazing talents.
Cold Cream is a another one of these bands (comprised of music veterans) that should be able to foster the growth of more unique NC sounds to come.
Pitch a tent by a local dive bar and sleep all night to the sound of the beer plonking on the rain cover,
Greg Mendez at the Cat's Cradle on February 14, 2024.
Valentine’s Day is a day of reflection. We reflect on the people in our life that we love, have loved, and will love. Stories of varied pasts are brought to mind, and we reflect on the stories we will make in the future with our favorite people. In the thick air of this sentimentality, I could not think of a more suitable act to see on this contemplative day than Greg Mendez.
A stalwart member of Philadelphia’s indie music scene, Greg Mendez’s singer-songwriter style music is marked with acoustic instrumentation, effective melodies, and thick emotions that lend themselves to an atmosphere which gladly accommodates a variety of feelings for a variety of audiences. Like many singer-songwriters in his category, and with his autobiographical and acutely personal songwriting, Greg’s music draws obvious comparisons to Elliott Smith; however, a deep dive is not necessary to find that he has carved out his own immediately recognizable niche.
Arriving at the entrance to the Cat’s Cradle Back Room, I noticed Greg at a short distance, partially obscured, treating himself to a quiet moment during the final moments of the opening act’s performance. This is when I immediately understood that this set would be an intimately nuanced evening.
As he and his partner walked on stage, one could sense Greg’s nervousness about beginning his performance, and the handful of attentive members of the (still somewhat chatty) crowd held respectful consideration for his hesitation. After some supportive pats on the back from his partner who joined him on stage, Greg picked up his acoustic guitar, found his seat, and with his head down, prepared to present his experience in the lusciousness and pain of life.
A hush promptly fell over the crowd as he started playing, intuitively, without an introductory word or notice.
The personal and dramatic energy of the narratives told in his songs were, unlike many similar artists, not lost in the allure of live performance. In fact, the connection to Greg’s lived reality felt viscerally tangible. The emotions were raw, and you could almost physically feel them coursing through the audience in waves. The notes of Greg and his partner’s deeply fervent and stunning harmonies pulsed throughout the space, making it unbearable to even consider looking away. In the fleeting moments between the ends of Greg’s songs and the passionate applause of the audience, I’ve never felt more deafening silence come from so many people.
As the set progressed, Greg quickly became more comfortable with his stage presence, quietly riffing on “thank you” and “you’re welcome” with audience members between songs. The tone of the performance may have slightly loosened, but the sense of admiration from the people in the crowd never remotely faltered, and the songs felt as impassioned as they did from the start.
Greg never skipped a beat, never had a crack in his voice, and always stayed true to the songs. During “Rev. John”, the half-opener to his self-titled album, I at first thought that Greg was playing the organ melody from a mysterious backing track because of how thoroughly identical it sounded to the studio recording. Peeking over the heads of the audience, however, I was surprised to see that Greg was hunched over his keyboard, playing the melody himself. The guitar parts throughout the set were just as eerily accurate to the studio versions as well, despite the lack of some of the additional instrumentation found on the album.
At the end, I walked outside on an emotional high, truly unable to come to terms with the fact that the set was already over.
Considering the straightforwardness and minimalism of the music, it was an unbelievably outstanding performance. I have never experienced such sensitive, intuitional power come from a single artist and his supporting musician as I did that night.
Our daily love is rarely as evident as it was on Valentine’s Day at the Cat’s Cradle.
Evilgiane, member of the Surf Gang Collective, has been on my radar since about 2021, when I took note of his excellent collaborations with an underground rapper which resides in North Carolina, BBY GOYARD. In the years since then, he’s become kind of a juggernaut in the underground rap music scene, having collaborations with more mainstream artists like Earl Sweatshirt, PinkPantheress, Kendrick Lamar, and Baby Keem. This 2024 release keeps us acutely aware that despite the fame, he’s still got his ear tuned towards the new breakthrough artists of the scene, just like the years before.
The mixtape is full of choice collaborations with on-the-cusp artists like Nettspend, Harto Falión, Bear1Boss, Rx Papi, xaviersobased and Woesum, to name a few. The picks here prove he’s still primarily a voice for the lesser-known talent that can utilize his refined production skills to make memorable and revisitable tracks all throughout the tape, albeit with some misses here and there.
All in all, this mixtape is quite well made and definitely deserves a listen if you’re an underground rap aficionado. 7/10
karl koyomi and 999 Heartake Sabileye’s Daune Sounds
999 Heartake Sabileye’s production on this mixtape is absolutely fantastic, and their involvement in this project is what keyed me into listening to this. I learned of them while making my HexD set for part of a 3-hour HexD marathon with DMC Woodstock and chalcopyrite, but to hear they’ve taken to producing was a welcome surprise. The production here is absolutely fantastic, and you can tell by honing their craft on avant-garde genres like HexD and Mashup, they’ve got their finger on the pulse of what makes abstract hip-hop click.
The rapping from karl koyomi is nothing to scoff at either, yet I can’t help but feel it kind of takes a backseat to the interesting experimentation 999 Heartake Sabileye performs all throughout this EP. It’s a bit disappointing to me that a collaboration like this is limited only to 5 tracks, being a little under 15 minutes worth of music (a complaint they address at the end of the EP), but it ultimately means that this ep will not overstay its welcome by any stretch of the imagination.
I really recommend this EP to anyone who wants some abstract hip-hop that won’t be anything like that which you’re used to. 8/10
ericdoa’s DOA
This album was probably the one i felt the most conflicted on. When I think ericdoa, I feel his brand over the last few years has been heavily hyperpop-tinged trap that straddles the line between guilty pleasure and genuine passion. However, this energy wasdrained from this new project, leaving a moreso corporate-friendly pop-rap project that will definitely get streams, but feels less confident, in a ways. It’s not as artistically authentic as his prior releases, and reeks of label involvement in my opinion, or that’s what i thought at first.
As the project goes on, I see glimpses of the production that ericdoa initially captivated me with in the years prior, but they are sparse and few and far between. I’m not entirely opposed to hyperpop artists switching genres, like as Jane Remover, Frost Children and glaive have done before, it’s just that I’ll be more likely to compare the differing projects with each other. If they don’t compare favorably, that’s just how it is, I guess.
I’m sorry to say that bar the few flashes of brilliance this record contains, most of it is painfully dull compared to his earlier work. 4/10
Bi-weekly brief write-ups on new music I find searching the “North Carolina” tag on Bandcamp.
2/5/24
Song: “Sweet White Pine”
By: Jodi Jones
From: Carrboro, NC
In her recent EP titled “Balladeer,” Jodi Jones channels the rich heritage of folk-singers in Pennsylvanian Appalachia. In her words, “Sweet White Pine is a song I’ve written about the legend of the White Woman of Murphy’s Bar, Susan Hilbish, whose tragic death at her own hand haunts the village of Shamokin to this day.” The track features beautiful vocals over a simple folk guitar melody. Jones’s interpretation of the tall tale encompasses a range of emotions to unveil a sinister ending.
The track starts with a fuzzy rattle of what sounds like a spray paint can & segways into a monotonous buildup of bass, drums, and a sprinkle of keys. Said instruments meld with fuzzy electric guitar and angsty lyrics- softly delivered. Nail Biter is Cor de Lux’s first single after the release of their 2023 album, titled “Media”.
The track starts with a silly flute riff and lofi chillhop drums but quickly evolves into an effervescent dream/bedroom pop track. Vocals are reminiscent of Jerry Paper. Sound likely inspired by artists like Paper & Mild High Club, with a smooth vaporwave-esque twist. Pretty guitar, bass & synth melodies.
I love heavy music. And as someone who is far from a genre purist, I love heavy music that experiments with the “hardcore” label. Music that challenges what hardcore can be is extremely special to me.
I’ve talked about bands that subvert the archetype of “hardcore” before. In November of 2023, I covered Agabas, a band that blends the chaos of metal with jazz.
This week, I’m covering a band that not only fuses genres, but is doing groundbreaking work to elevate the Black community in the hardcore scene.
The Future of Hardcore
Zulu is a black-fronted hardcore punk band from Los Angeles. Formed by multi-instrumentalist Anaiah Lei, the band takes a leaf out of the powerviolence playbook, presenting a raw and aggressive distillation of hardcore punk.
What makes Zulu different from other hardcore acts, however, are the samples of funk, soul, reggae and spoken word woven into their music.
Cover for “Our Day Will Come” by Zulu
For example, the track “For Sista Humphrey” features a heavy guitar-drum duo and guttural vocals before abruptly transitioning into a soft soul melody. In “52 Fatal Strikes,” rage gives way to serenity as a brief classical instrumental jumps in.
While the contrast sounds jarring, it works.
By injecting black-pioneered genres into their music, Zulu imbues their sound with a distinct and unwavering identity. This is especially important when one considers that Zulu’s lyricism is all about elevating Blackness and empowering Black individuals.
You see tension, aggression
Only anger
I see peace
Community
Black joy is divinity
“Our Day is Now” – Zulu
However, as Lei said in an interview with Kerrang! in 2022, the band’s connection to Black culture shouldn’t stand as their only defining feature.
“…when it comes to bringing in a band where all of us are Black, that is an important thing but also people make it a lot bigger than it is,” Lei said. “I guess only because it’s not the norm, and that is what’s the issue. It should be very normal.”
Zulu’s central aim, according to Lei, is to experiment freely within the scene and create a space for others to do the same.
“The one thing I wanted to do with this project was be myself entirely,” Lei said.
Both EPs feature a melange of rigorous hardcore interspersed with samples from speeches, spoken word, rap, soul music and other historically Black genres.
Zulu’s first full-length album, “A New Tomorrow,” came out in 2023. The album features several singles the band released in 2022 and early 2023.
Cover for “My People…Hold On” by Zulu
The album’s opening track, “Africa,” features a bright classical arrangement before the proceeding track, “For Sista Humphrey,” fades in with a hellish guitar and vocals. A similar pattern continues throughout the album, with hardcore tracks contrasted with peaceful, slow-moving melodies.
Thematically, this poses an interesting narrative. As the band’s lyricism suggests, this contrast illustrates the dual narratives surrounding Blackness: the imposition of an aggressive, violent nature versus the reality of peace, community and creativity.
I’m looking forward to seeing the direction of Zulu’s future projects and seeing them live, since I missed their last live show.
"Convicted" album art for Cryptic Slaughter's first full length release.
Wave after wave of inundating drum beats and hyper focused riffs shoot through my ears. I can’t stop whipping my head up and down. I wanna thrash and hit bodies in a pit just to feel the pressure of the music like Cryptic Slaughter is screaming about. Music that makes my ears want to melt; music that careens off the edge of highways into the abyss of night; music that creates fissures running through skin and bone – this is the type of sound people look for when we aren’t given enough answers.
Cryptic Slaughter is one of the earlier thrash and crossover bands to make sounds like this. Starting out in the mid 1980’s, the band jumped onto the scene with a demo, “Life in Grave”, which cemented their early success. The band’s punk sounds combine perfectly with their hardcore attitudes.
Their first full length release, “Convicted”, was pressed and released by Metal Blade Records in 1986. Cryptic Slaughter thrived on the road and in the studio for a few years before dying as all young bands do with differences of opinions. They resurfaced a few times since dissipating but soon after disappeared back into the grave (Interview from Voices from the Dark Side).
Cryptic Slaughter, at the time of “Convicted”’s release, had Bill Crooks (Vocals), Les Evans (Guitars), Rob Nicholson (Bass, Vocals (backing)) and Scott Peterson (Drums) as members of the band. The youngest member of the band at the release of the album was about sixteen years old and the oldest weren’t more than a few years older than that. Cryptic Slaughter was just a bunch of kids making waves in the metal scene.
I wish this album would take me back to the time when it came out. I want to experience how the sounds of heavy drums quaked and rattled the foundations of the venues. I want to feel the rage and pain of everyone in attendance. “Convicted” has a bunch of tracks that make me want to let my fists and legs and body work into the crowd.
Specifically, “M.A.D.”, “Lowlife”, “War to the Knife” and“Reich of Torture” all exhibit the best of berserker inducing noise. They won’t quell the frustrations that so many in attendance like to exhibit at shows. These tracks encourage friendly violence (and that is only a thing in metal/ hardcore). It’s violence you know will be forgiven. Violence and anger at the unjust systems and actions of those holding the reins.
The most interesting (and ahead of their times) tracks on this album foreshadow the rise of thrash metal.
“Life in the Grave”
This track in particular feels brand new for being released in 1986. If you placed this in the hands of an artist making similar noise today, I would absolutely call this modern metal.
“Little World”
Quick to anger riffs and sadistic drum beats ring in my ears even after the music is paused.
“Sudden Death”
Graphic suicidal lyric warning. The opening is dynamite. Gnarly explosive drums issue out earthquakes and aftershocks still coursing through my bones. This track feels so much like early grindcore with punk vocals and lyrics.
Walking Free from the Prison
“Convicted” stands the test of time. Epic chaos ensues once you hit play. Cryptic Slaughter’s echoes and sharp head pains are a welcoming embrace throughout this piece of music history. I will be checking out Cryptic Slaughter’s later work over the next few weeks to see how their sounds changed throughout their short life. I’m glad I don’t need to ask where the bands making music like this now are at because we just gotta search for them. It’s not too difficult to do a little digging. Also websites like Chosic can help find similar sounding tunes with just a quick search.
Eating ashes dulls the senses and lets you experience soulful pleasure (don’t eat ash),
It’s been a while since the last one of these, hasn’t it? Tragically, the start of 2024’s been pretty dry for new electronic releases, but here at WKNC, we push through to find only the best. Here’s a few that have been added to rotation in the past month!
Yeah, this album is IDM, but Spencer Hodo plays around with what that means. Most notably is the amount of ambient techno influence on it – tracks like “follaiseach” lean hard into that territory, while still keeping some more straight-up IDM tracks, like “absorball.”
Regardless of what genre it is, “deafness” feels mechanical, with just enough ominousness to make an album that deserves its cover art. It’s a strong album, and good for those who like their electronic music on the more technical side.
Shygirl – “Club Shy”
Genre: House, pop
Tracks Added: “thicc,” “f@k€,” “4eva,” “mute”
Shygirl isn’t reinventing music in this EP, but it’s a solid 15 minutes of club-ready bangers. It’s house-y, fun, and most importantly danceable, and while a little more straightforward than some of her previous music, it’s a worthy addition to Shygirl’s discography.
“Thicc” is my personal favorite track, and exemplifies a lot of what I think is best about this release. It’s perfect to put on at just about any party, unless you go to really weird parties where you stand in complete silence or something.
cluli – “CLUECORE!”
Genre: Hyperflip
Tracks Added: “tf we gon do in our thinking chair,” “i was never book smart im clue smart,” “they besties”
Yes, we added a song that samples both Jay Eazy and the line “sticking out your gyatt for the rizzler.” But also, consider: it is, in fact, good.
Cluli brings their own take on the popular-if-you-are-a-very-specific-type-of-person microgenre of hyperflip here, leaning more into the “brostep-indebted extreme production bangers” side of things rather than the “meme sample-heavy” side, though it still brings plenty of the silliness. The result is a potential new classic, and a new artist to look forward to new releases from.
Conclusion
New music is always awesome, and these are no exception. Watch out for them playing on WKNC!
