For Judge Schreber's Avian Choir, "Bleed":

"This record is a little outside what I usually cover in these roundups, but I wanted to give it some attention because 1. releases like LBB’s Popped Music on Iron Lung have clarified that some hardcore punks can get down with experimental and avant-garde music and 2. I fucking love it and can’t stop listening to it. Judge Schreber's Avian Choir is a very large ensemble: according to the label’s description, “15 bowed string players, a heavy metal rhythm section … and … overdubs on reeds and guitar.” There are no vocals and the four tracks here aren’t pop songs, rock songs, or even avant-metal songs, but a hybrid of experimental orchestral / chamber music and heavier, metal-informed drone music. The only things I’ve heard that it resembles are the 70s Belgian group Univers Zero and the Japanese composer / playwright J.A. Seazer, but I’d be surprised if too many Sorry State readers are jamming those. Anyway, the music on Bleed is expansive, encompassing spacious drones, skittering, insect-like organic rhythms, mournful and moody microtonal harmonies, heavy rock riffing, and wide open, Ornette Coleman-meets-Darkthrone sonic catharsis. While it’s wildly creative, it never feels difficult or arcane. I think that’s because this record doesn’t trample over the boundaries between genres, but offers us a window into an alternate universe where those boundaries don’t exist. If you’re an adventurous listener with an ear for this kind of wide-angle, symphonic grandiosity, I encourage you to pick this up."
Daniel Lupton, Sorry State Records

"If you heard this coming out of a passing car, you’d be halfway home before your groceries hit the ground. But when you approach it intentionally, the effect is one of startling rapture."
Harris Wheless, Indyweek


For Savage Knights:

". . . [Savage Knights] ground out a crazy blend of drone, avant-funk-n-Jazz. Imagine an airplane stuck in takeoff intensity for several minutes while your heart beats faster and faster until, all of a sudden, it’s quiet again but nothing feels calmer. This was that. Perfect, really."
Gordon Lamb - Vice

“Savage Knights are an excellent avant-jazz / rock (as distinct from jazz-rock, please) outfit, who can flutter thru a beautiful 12-minute Eric Dolphy tune and then drop right into a gnarly Melvins sludgefest.”
Ross Grady - trianglerock.com

“[Savage Knights] delivers on charts that slink and melodies that simmer across all burners.”
Grayson Currin - Independent Weekly

“The out-bound jazz of Raleigh's Savage Knights slinks through dark alleys with a Can T-shirt on, shaking hands with the ghosts of Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Charles Mingus on the way to a record store that treats Zorn and Ribot like best-sellers.”
Grayson Currin - Independent Weekly

“Savage Knights is a top flight instrumental ensemble that fuses a wide range of sound... Drawing on jazz influences (Ornette Coleman/Eric Dolphy) and heavy metal (Slayer), yet filtered by the sensibilities of Eric Satie and Bela Bartok, Savage Knights weave quite a tapestry.”
Bluecat - Leo Weekly

“Raleigh, N.C.’s Savage Knights create compelling instrumental music that blends the noirish intensity of a Tarantino soundtrack with Ethiopiques-style harmonies, splashes of Moog, droning horns and dissonant explosions.”
Jack Silverman - Nashville Scene

“...Savage Knights, an instrumental ensemble known for its deep grooves, tight writing and improv skills. The group's influences include everything from krautrock, free jazz and metal to punk, 20th century classical music and Ethiopian pop.”
Bill Friskics-Warren - The Tennessean.com

“Savage Knights are from Raleigh, and they play an awesome amalgam of freaky skronk-jazz and kinda sludgy metallic grind-rock.”
Ross Grady - Triangle Rock


For Hardface:

"Swing blows up distorted samples into zonked-out clouds of noise. Pence alternates between horns, cutting through the haze like an ocean liner through an ice sheet."
Harris Wheless, Indyweek

For Reflex Arc:

"Maybe you weren't paying attention and then suddenly they're both making sounds and moving, and it's by turns lyrical and goofy and dangerous and sinuous and explosive and disciplined and something is happening at the far end of the room or something is happening under your chair, relationships forming and dissolving, and then it's over.” -Richard Butner

"It's never been so great being uncomfortable" - Maggie Brannon, White Gregg (Knoxville, TN)

"that's some hipster weirdo faggot shit" - unknown bystander, during In Spectrum collaboration at FLAG (Raleigh, NC)

"seemed to both baffle and delight onlookers" - Patrick Tutwiler, WRAL (Raleigh, NC)

"indecipherable freakout great" - David Ford Smith, Indy Week

“words and sentences are too tame to describe what it’s like” -Patience, performing artist (Chapel Hill, NC)