Skullflower - Desire For A Holy War

Our review
Customer reviews
Press release

5...according to our Ant on Thu 01 May, 2008.

I listened to the latest Skullflower crusher 'Desire For A Holy War' CD on the way into work this morning. Man did that wake me up. What we have here is Matthew Bower pushing his strings to the limit for a monolithic album that's like the soundtrack to the apocalypse itself. I imagine a hall of mirrors in a dense fog being shattered by the wall of pure sonic energy and then the feedback rebounding of each shard of broken glass onto the next. If you're into the recent Hototogisu stuff then this'll be right up your street. It's like a big storm with weapons of mass destruction going off. Sometimes pretty harsh but there's lots of subtle key changes and dare I say it melody underneath the layers of caustic feedback. It's like the voice of god himself. Bloody brilliant.

SKULLFLOWER "Desire for a Holy War"
Desire for a Holy War is mayhem piled on top of mayhem piled on top of
squalls of caustic feedback. Furies spitting oaths of shrouded vengeance
from ancient tongues. Plague riders dealing death on mounts of venomous
ether, hooves pounding the wild earth. Matthew Bower may have reached a
watershed with last year's Abyssic Lowland Hiss (Heavy Blossom) but it is
with Desire that he has come to conquer. Never has Skullflower sounded so
severe or remorseless.

URSK SERIES
Utech Records has invoked a connate soul in visual artist Stephen Kasner to
develop a second fine art series of cd releases for the label. The series
will comprise nine volumes of 750 copies each over the course of 2008
beginning in April. Kasner has committed the bulk of his next year's output
to painting original and exclusive canvases. His subject matter has yet to
be disclosed, but the artist has spoken in general terms of a new direction
he wants to explore in his work. A package unique to the series has been
designed to highlight Kasner's residuum and the accompanying music.

The foundation of the series is the belief that a visual device can bind a
disparate body of music in a meaningful way. The genesis of this idea was
first explored with photographer Max Aguilera-Hellweg in 2007 and the result
was Utech Record's acclaimed Arc Series. Fruit borne from that venture has
led to this stab at further examination. Kasner immediately saw value in the
theory and agreed to help cultivate and refine it.