“South of Denim” by TRIUMPHS

Dunedin’s heavy viscosity sludge rockers TRIUMPHS return with an epic second album called “Computer Man” – available in a few months as a double 12″ LP. Here’s the shortest song “South of Denim”

If you like the crushing tones, twisting riffs and pile-driving drums of “South of Denim” you’ll love the whole album.

TRIUMPHS is guitarist John Bollen and drummer Mathew Anderson. “Computer Man” follows their excellent 2015 debut “Beekeeper​/​Bastardknocker” and it seems to have more of everything. As you would expect it’s mostly crushingly heavy, yet the album is also full of moments of sublime transcendent calm – try the start of the title track and the start of the 10 minute epic “Twang of the Void”.

In places the album is as menacingly dark and doom-laden as death-metal, as precise and patterned as math-rock, as adventurous as post-rock, and sometimes even as trippy and atmospheric as psychedelic rock. TRIUMPHS instrumental exploration of these various styles is complex but crafted with personality and always much more than an exercise in technique.  It’s an album that belongs in a wide range of record collections.

“Witches of the Hex” by HEX

Day 19 of NZ Music Month comes from Wellington’s doomy spell-casting trio HEX and the self-explanatory “Witches of the Hex”

“Witches of the Hex” is from the 5 track mini-album “Calling to the Universe” which is tagged, with some precision, as ‘pagan, folk, metal’.

There’s a bit more to it than that, as you’ll discover on this song, where they stir in some shoegaze and the sublime Gothic dream-pop of that exultant chorus to add to the power of the concoction.

HEX is GG Van Newtown, Kiki Van Newtown and Liz Mathews. As Kiki explains: ““Calling to the Universe” is heavy, but with lots of layered vocals. Our riffs tend towards Black Sabbath, but our vocals are more like Enya.”

Read more from the Noisey interview here.