Well, though I feared that partying last night might make today a wasteland for me, an incipient cold kept me away from the party. The only silver lining from missing that birthday party is that I had a clear enough head to pull together this column, which includes reviews and streams of two new albums and two new songs from full-lengths that are on the way — the theme of which is that “Variety is the spice of life!”
HERESIARCH (New Zealand)
Heresiarch‘s new album puts me in mind of a stunning mountain that seizes attention from far away, looming by itself like a daunting edifice above mundane surroundings, like a Rainier or a Fuji or a Kilimanjaro. Only as you get closer do the details begin to stand out too.
Edifice is indeed the new album’s name, and we’re drawn to it initially from far away, the distance being the seven years that separate us in time from their first album, Death Ordinance, which still looms in the memory. Unlike the mountains named above, however, this one is erupting, and through its vulcanism is re-configuring as the explosions occur, the earth shakes, and the lava flows. In that way, new details take shape in the harsh crags, to leave new memories.
The volcanic power of the music continuously dominates, though other violent metaphors also easily come to mind when listening — visions of mechanized warfare on a titanic scale, or veering tornadoes on a rampage.
That’s the impact of booming detonations and obliterating percussive discharges, of dense writhing and eviscerating riffage and massive low-frequency undulations, of deliriously screaming solos and beastly gutturals, imperious snarls, and unhinged screams. Ferocious jackhammer jolts and pavement-fracturing pile-driver blows add to the sensations of sonic devastation.
But in the midst of the violent upheavals and the obliterating chaos, or between them, reconfiguring details begin to emerge. The high whine of the rapidly oscillating riffs morph into sounds of massed agony; warped clanging chords drag like corroding chains across hopeless dungeon floors; shrill, eerie radiations channel debilitating fear and wailing pain; and ominous droning or warbling tones add to a spreading supernatural atmosphere.
Those last comments mark one of the new memories about the album. It is indeed “atmospheric”, in the sense of being unearthly and deeply chilling, in addition to spawning those visions of devastating chaos (fittingly, there’s a song here, a very short one, called “Mystic and Chaos”). It’s also marked by many rapid twists and turns — shifts in mood as well as momentum — and a degree of elaborateness in the sensations (including the jaw-dropping drum performances and judiciously deployed electronics) that’s usually missing from what used to be called “war metal”.
The constant twists and turns prevent the album from becoming sensory overload, which it easily could have been. Rather than numb the senses, the music electrifies the nerves from start to finish.
Speaking of the finish, the penultimate song represents the biggest shift: “Hubris and Decline” is downright apocalyptic in its near-hallucinatory rendition of emotional degradation and downfall.
Following that, the closer “Militate Pyrrhic Collapse” renders a different kind of collapse, a final brutish beating and barbaric lashing that also spreads plague without cure — and then maniacally convulses and morbidly wails and moans like the final agonies of a dying world.
That might be the most relentlessly dynamic and multi-faceted song on the album, which is saying something, and one last chance to experience the unhinged fury of the vocals and the breathtaking convolutions of the drumming before another dose of unearthly electronics takes the final seconds of a stupendous record.
Edifice was released on April 12th by Iron Bonehead Productions. A full stream begins below.
https://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com/album/heresiarch-edifice
https://ironbonehead.de
https://heresiarch.site/
https://www.facebook.com/heresiarchband/
https://www.instagram.com/heresiarch.official/
MAREA (Italy)
I have poor impulse control. And so although I had mapped out other plans for this column in advance, I decided to add this next song at the last minute. I added it thanks to an urging from Rennie (starkweather), who found it yesterday on the Bandcamp page of Masked Dead Records, a page he explored after my roundup of new songs yesterday included a song from another album (Miserabilist Blues by Boleskine House) that will be released next week by the same label.
This song, “Sidereal“, comes our way from Marea, the solo work of M.B., joined here by session drummer Alessandro Mori. The music is piercing and deeply penetrating, a union of harsh sizzling chords that are dense and dismal and glittering tones that ring like miserable chimes. Despite the roaring and caustic intensity of the vocals, that amalgam of sounds, backed by a steady snapping beat, is almost dreamlike.
However, as the drums grow more animated, the riffing begins to seethe and boil, backed by a lumbering bass, and the vocals shoot upward in wrenching falsetto screams. The riffing and drumwork become even more crazed, swarming like insects and blasting like weapons, but joined by a slowly slithering lead-guitar, lower in range, that sounds hopelessly forlorn.
Before it’s done, the song will give your head a good hard jolting too, a penultimate phase just before the lead-guitar mewls in pain, in the midst of massive pounding, sandstorms of harshness, and the union of wretched howls and cauterizing shrieks.
There’s also a lyric video for the song up on YouTube, and I’m including that below. The words are as hopeless and haunting as the music.
The name of Marea‘s new album is The Silence Of Rust. It’s set for release on May 17th.
https://maskedeadrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-silence-of-rust
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557421798672
RITES OF REGRESS (Norway)
Now we come to a different formulation of blackened doom metal than the one offered by Marea. What I’m recommending next is Dust, the debut album from the Norwegian quartet Rites of Regress.
What stands out most from the opening song alone (“Ciernie“) is just how humongously and stupefyingly heavy the music is, and how corrosive the brutally down-tuned guitar tone is. The band stomp like some mountain that has come to life and extruded legs, and the vibrating reverberations sound like something so radioactive it will spawn tumors overnight
The heaving, hammering, and grievously moaning riffs are steeped in moods of catastrophe; the vocals are raw and ragged, cracking in their agony; the pounding rhythms will make you feel weak in the knees; and the drum fills sound like gunfire just outside the vulnerable hovel where you’re trying to shelter in place.
Rites of Regress don’t vary much from those cataclysmic sensations in the next three songs, but just enough to prevent monotony. They introduce vocal samples here and there. Here and there they also shift into a higher gear and sound more bestially imperious when they do. In “Pętla“, the music also devolves into a filthy cesspool of degradation; and the feral heaving grooves of “Do końca w czerń” might put you into a full-body lurch.
The main vocals somehow sound even more like aural manifestations of viciously lacerated flesh the more you hear them, though they also sound strangled and roar in rage. The words, in all the songs but one, are in Polish. You can find them at Bandcamp.
Dust was released by Third Eye Temple on March 11th. They recommend it “for fans of Thorr’s Hammer’s Dommedagsnatt, Grief’s Come to Grief era, or their subsequent gifted followers like Primitive Man or Love Sex Machine“.
https://ritesofregress.bandcamp.com/album/dust
http://www.thirdeyetemple.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ritesofregress
MOISSON LIVIDE (France)
After that last album I thought I ought to end with something more directly in the vein of black metal, but as you’re about to discover, other musical blood-types also flow through the veins of Moisson Livide. After being stomped into a pool of goo by Rites of Regress, this next song will get your heart vigorously beating again too.
As you might guess once you know that the Antiq label will be releasing the band’s debut album, Sent Empèri Gascon, the song below includes the bright ring of ancient folk music. That’s how “La Sèrp d’Isavit” begins, with the faint shimmer of keys backing the lively and engaging notes, and then the band boldly carry the melody forward over lightspeed drums and pulsating bass-lines.
But they also execute many turns, bringing in a diabolical heavy metal riff and demonic snarls, and also morphing the main melody so that it too sounds more delightfully devilish but no less bright. In addition, a chorus of singers adds to the music’s jubilant moods, which are highly infectious.
Feelings of menace and mystery also surface in the song’s softest moments before we re-join the whirling dance and the infernal carnival, accented by the frolicking tones of old instruments which might include an accordion, pipes, and a flute, and a thoroughly exhilarating solo.