On My Turntable: Vreid, The KLF, Snares, YOB, Tombs

London winters are shitty

Amid the murky gloom of the grisly London winter, I warm myself by raking through the dying embers of the musical year just gone.

I love pecking like a vulture on the carcass of year-end lists, yanking out the gems I missed like so many scraps of bloody intestine .

Of course that’s in the very limited time I have left after doing my best to suck every last drop of pleasure from Trap Them’s Darker Handcraft and the Balaclava record.

I am seriously addicted. Darker Handcraft is utterly narcotic in its intensity: blissed out on buzzsaw guitar.

Anyway. On my (metaphorical) turntable this week are Vreid, The KLF, Snares, YOB and Tombs.

Balaclava – Crimes of Faith

What next, death metal bands called "Bobble Hat"?!

Happy new year gentle men and women, lovers of the heavy.

Gotta love serendipity.

Picked almost at random from the Southern Lord website in a bid to sate my hunger for crusty metal, Balaclava has barrelled into my life without warning and wrenched me from my festive meat coma with an almighty slap around the chops.

Crimes of Faith may be billed as “hardcore punk [played] with severe intensity” but that is selling this cracking little gem far short.