SEEN AND HEARD: CULT OF FIRE, CLERIC, HOT GRAVES, AND GEHENNA

Here’s the second part of my effort to collect worthwhile new music discovered over the last 24 hours. You can find Part 1 via this link. All the music in this Part is different, but all of it is just fuckin’ evil.

CULT OF FIRE

In May I gave a laborious description of how I had found the Czech black metal band Cult of Fire. It started with a shirt. It ended with a track from the band’s 2012 debut album Triumvirát that was included on a free comp from Demonhood Productions. As reported in that earlier post, Cult of Fire are now signed to the German label Iron Bonehead for release of their next album (which should be coming in 2013). Yesterday, I found a stream of the first advance track from the album.

I’m unable to write or pronounce the name of the album or the song, but I can show you what they look like: The song is “मृत्यु का वीभत्स नृत्य” and the album’s name is “मृत्यु का तापसी अनुध्यान”.

I took a chance and put those titles into Google Translate and, lo and behold, it turns out the language is Hindi. The song title translates to “ghastly dance of death” but Google Translate failed me when it came to the album name. I did find this statement about the album by the band: “It’s a homage to the Goddess Kali, the Aghoris, the funeral rites in India and its close surroundings.”

You may think at first that the song is simply a raging torrent of scything guitars and thundering percussion, but then the Indian-influenced melody begins to writhe its way through the storm. The storm eventually breaks, to be replaced by the tolling of deep notes and the reverberation of ringing chords before the storm resumes. It’s a riveting piece of music, and the impassioned vocals claw like death incarnate.

http://www.cultoffire.cz/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cult-Of-Fire/101579073262511

 

CLERIC

In April I reviewed the first three tracks to surface from Gratum Inferno, the debut album by Dallas-based Cleric, which is being released September 26 on vinyl by Tofu Carnage Records (order-able here). Since then the entire album has gone up for streaming at CVLT Nation, and even more recently the band debuted a music video for “Through the Starless Abyss”.

It’s kind of old hat for a band to be filmed playing a song out in the countryside. So what did Cleric do? They played outside at night, in the middle of a ring of fire — literally, they’re surrounded by a bonfire as they execute the song. Bravo to director Shane Connelly of Photon Flood for producing something that’s so interesting to watch, and bravo to the band for gutting it out inside this mini-inferno. The song is . . . beastly good.

https://www.facebook.com/666cleric666
http://clericdeath.bandcamp.com/

 

 

 

HOT GRAVES

It’s been about six months since we got the last platter of murder from Florida’s Hot Graves, the Fashion Victim EP that I gleefully reviewed at this location. But these d-beat deathrash drunking metal punks haven’t been idle. Yesterday they served up a new demo track for free download at Soundcloud by the name of “Witch Hammerspell”. It will keep you off-balance. The tempos don’t stay in one place for very long, growing increasingly speedy as the song grows increasingly vicious and filthy from its slow, melodic starting place.

Killer riffs, white hot soloing, corrosive vocal bile . . . what more could you want?

https://soundcloud.com/hot-graves/witch-hammerspell
https://www.facebook.com/HOTGRAVES666

 

 

GEHENNA

This Norwegian band have been around since the mid-90s, but their releases have been separated by long periods of apparent inactivity. Their last album WW appeared in 2005. Now, eight years later, Indie Recordings will be releasing a new full-length named Unravel (which can be pre-ordered here in advance of its mid-October release). From what I’ve read, the band started as a black metal group, then moved into death metal territory, and then moved back again toward their black metal roots on that last release.

Recently, Indie began streaming one of the new songs, “The Decision”, which I finally heard earlier today. Based on this track, the band may be moving in new directions again. This track is slow, stately, and soaked in an atmosphere of gloom and doom. The plodding thump of the drums and the distorted scowl of the guitars conjure plague times, the air choked with the miasma of sickness and the stench of rotting corpses. Give it a shot below.