Genre/Influences: Body-Pop, Industrial-Pop, Dark-Pop.

Format: Digital, Vinyl.

Background/Info: “Lapland” is the second album by Total Chroma. This solo-project  based in Vancouver (Canada) is driven by Isku ‘Robert’ Katerwol (also involved with projects like Wire Spine, Weird Candle ao). The opus features ten songs and is meant as ‘an exploration of Katerwol’s Sami lineage’.  

Content: The songs are definitely driven by Electro-Pop revealing a dark and harsh exposure. That’s why I’m referring to Industrial-Pop music. A few songs feature female, guest, vocalists injecting a graceful touch to the work. 

+ + + : I like the atypical Electro-Pop which is composed with Industrial sound treatments creating a tough production. One of the songs “Mind In Stasis” featuring guest vocals by Carrellee sounds as one of the most danceable cuts. I also want to mention “Northern Lights” reminding me now and then of Mr.Kitty.

– – – : The album is missing a few more highlights so in the end I got the feeling there’s more potential in this project than featured on the album.

Conclusion: Electro-Pop music for darker souls.

Best songs: “Mind In Stasis featuring Carrellee”, “Northern Lights”, “Red State featuring Devours”.

Rate: 7.

Artist: www.facebook.com/totalchroma

Label: www.negativegain.com / www.facebook.com/NegativeGain Read the news on ‘Lapland’.

About Total Chroma

Total Chroma is the solo project of Vancouver, British Columbia musician Isku ‘Robert’ Katerwol, also active in Wire Spine and Weird Candle. He debuted the project with “Body Relics” on 2 February 2021 through Negative Gain Productions, a nine-track album featuring “Mutation,” “I Dream of Fire,” and “Solitude.”

Total Chroma returned on 10 October 2023 with “Lapland,” a ten-track album released through Negative Gain Productions on digital and vinyl LP formats. The record explores Katerwol’s Sami lineage and features guest vocalists Carrellee and Devours.

Inferno Sound Diaries

I have been working for over 30 years with Side-line as the main reviewer. My taste is eclectic, uncoventional and I prefer to look for the pearls, even if the bands are completely unknown, thus staying loyal to the Side-Line philosophy of nurturing new talents.

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(Photo by Jim Louvau) 3TEETH are back with “Merchant Of The Void”, the first of a series of monthly singles leading up to their upcoming full album release via Century Media. “Merchant of The Void” follows the previously released track “Paralyze” (featuring Ho99o9).

The track is accompanied by a video from one of Hollywood’s leading animators, Matteo Santoro, who grew up with 3TEETH frontman Alexis Mincolla. You can watch the video for “Merchant Of The Void” below.

Frontman and creative lead Alexis Mincolla says this about the new single: “Amidst the numbing pulse of hypermodernity, the insatiable appetite of data commodification devours our sense of meaning. The undead march of materialism eventually renders the human subject an automaton, desperately grasping for the ephemeral junk 2.0 to fill the abyss of existential emptiness. The self devolves into a mere echo, a ghostly spectre caught in the whirlwind of techno-capital acceleration, the very essence of its being devoured by the machinery of its own weaponised desires. If the future eludes your vision, fear not, The Merchant of The Void is standing by and eager to sell it to you. Welcome to the cold descent into the black hole of total absolute commodification. In the words of William S. Burroughs, ‘The junk merchant doesn’t sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.'”

To lay the foundation for the new material, 3TEETH migrated to the deserted quiet of Joshua Tree, escaping their hometown of Los Angeles for a fresh perspective. The material is currently being finalised with an extended team including sound designer Mick Gordon (best known for his work on the gaming phenomenon “Doom”), who produced several of the tracks along with producer Nick Rowe and mixer Sean Beavan (NIN).

3TEETH first manifested in 2013, releasing their self-titled debut album the following year. In 2017, the album “shutdown.exe” followed. Working alongside producer and mixer Sean Beavan (NIN) at their new label home, Century Media, 3TEETH continued with “Metawar” (2019).

3TEETH is comprised of Alexis Mincolla (vocals), Chase Brawner (guitars), Xavier Swafford (keyboards and synthesiser), Andrew Means (bass), and Nick Rossi (drums).

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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The debut album “Donewiz” by the post-punk/darkwave band, Grieving Sea is out today via the Italian label Brucia Records. Especially for the occasion we can exclusively offer you a full album premiere. The project marks the first musical collaboration between Void (Feed Them Death, Pseudodoxia) and Giorgio Barroccu (Derhead), both co-founders of Brucia Records. Brucia Records offers a vast spectrum of genres ranging from black-metal to doom, from heavy-psych to dark-ambient.

“Donewiz” also features a few special collaborations: Sarah Townley (The Sun and The Mirror) created a cello performance on “In The End”, whilst Danish avant-garde musician and multi-instrumentalist artist Trine Paaschburg (Mouth Wound) collaborated on vocals duetting with Grieving Sea’s vocalist Void in “So Pure”.

“Donewiz” is the medieval name of Dunwich, once a busy port situated along the Suffolk Coast in the UK which gradually disappeared under the waters due to numerous storms affecting the region since the end of the 13th century.

The band explains the album: “Musically we wanted to create something genuine and real, somewhat resemblant of what we would have wanted to listen to if we could teleport ourselves back by 30 years, when music was emotional and uncomplicated. Therefore we have tried to obtain a very lo-fi type of production and delivery, augmenting mistakes rather than covering them up or polishing them. Lyrically, the album is not a concept album per se, however the intention was to narrate the inevitability of trauma and grief through the metaphor of extinction and natural calamity, finding similarities between the drama of our incommunicability towards each other and that of our incumbent death and tragedy as taught by history itself.”

A track by track rundown can be read below, check out while listening to the songs below. The album is out as download, limited edition 6 panel digifile CD and regular CD. You can order via Bandcamp.

Track by track

“Death In, Death Out”

The song is mostly piano driven and has a somber pace: the idea was to set a melancholic mood from the outset. The lyrics lament our incapability as humans to feel empathy, be it towards animals or other humans.

“Fall, Fall Again”

More of a traditional post-punk number, very lo-fi and with a simple structure. The lyrics cover again the theme of the inevitability of tragedy, exposing our inability as adults to accept our fall for fear of feeling pain, and so preventing us from healing and moving on.

“A Vacuum”

Also presents similarities to post-punk musically, whilst lyrically covering the themes of our inability to find similarities in both one another as also patterns and parallels in our history – affected as we all are by a sort of convenient blindness towards the lessons of our past.

“So Pure”

Another piano track, sung in duet with danish avant garde artist and multi-instrumentalist Trine Paaschburg (Mouth Wound). The contrast created by the delivery of both voices seems to create a remote and melancholic dialogue between two lost parts, lamenting the disappearance of something simple and pure.

“And In The End”

This one starts slow and simple musically, with only acoustic guitar and vocals, slowly building up tension with the collaboration of Sarah Townley from Heavy Psych / Drone band The Sun and The Mirror playing cello in this track.
Lyrically, it is is a sum of the previous parts, essentially coming to terms with the inevitability of pain and pondering whether the deaths we are grieving for, our past scars or even our future are at all real.

“The Sea Devours”

The lyrics are about the fact that we can try and conveniently see history as a tide destroying the shores of our lives, but in reality, we were always part of it, waves of a bigger tide and essentially crafting our own destruction.

“My Soul In Dunwich”

Musically, it is the mirror image of “Death in, death out” however played on strings – it also contains most elements present in previous tracks as it unfolds and progresses towards the end. The lyrics here explore the notion that the division between “them” and “us”, as in those who destroy and those who are destroyed, is irreconcilable. However there is also hope for those who are destroyed already, waiting from beneath the waters to celebrate for the inevitable extinction of the “un-humankind”.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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Artoffact Records has announced the signing of Vancouver-based act Devours aka Jeff Cancade. He brings – and we quote the label – the sound of a queer DIY punk channelling love for The Presets, Fischerspooner, and Britney Spears, mixed with vintage Nintendo themes into fiery, confessional bedroom electro pop anthems.

After releasing a debut LP called “Late Bloomer” in 2016, which detailed Jeff’s experiences coming out as gay and finding his place in the Vancouver arts community, Devours scored slots in Vancouver’s Khatsahlano, Music Waste, and Fringe festivals. The project also recently toured Eastern Canada with Mint Records recording artist Kellarissa.

After experimenting with an electronic pop-rock sound that laid the foundations, Cancade found the Devours sound by mixing in disco, funk, and 80s video game sounds with a political and nostalgic fury.

Devours’ sophomore album, “Iconoclast”, will be released worldwide on Toronto-based Artoffact Records on March 8th.

You can already listen to his previous album below.

Bernard - Side-Line Staff

Chief editor of Side-Line – which basically means I spend my days wading through a relentless flood of press releases from labels, artists, DJs, and zealous correspondents. My job? Strip out the promo nonsense, verify what’s actually real, and decide which stories make the cut and which get tossed into the digital void. Outside the news filter bubble, I’m all in for quality sushi and helping raise funds for Ukraine’s ongoing fight against the modern-day axis of evil. Besides music I’m also an SEO and AI content flow specialist and have an interest in everything finance from stocks to crypto. There is music in everything!

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