In considering what to do for this weekly roundup of new songs and videos I felt like a rabbit surrounded by wolves at every point on the compass rose, scrambling and darting this way and that. Too many wolves, not enough space to escape. Wild-eyed, here’s what I decided to do.
CAINITES (Italy)
The cover art for Cainites‘ new album is a very good clue to the music in the album’s first single, “Darkness Awaits“. The feverish riffing, which rings and swarms, is an evil, hungering manifestation, and you can feel its famished heart beating in the drumwork as it snarls and gasps.
But the song is a shapeshifter. The music mysteriously soars and haunted singing (haunted, but still sinister) comes around the corner, and around another corner the music rings like chimes and the creature sings again, forlorn. More changes come, with fast-throbbing guitars and beleaguered doom-ish chords.
Quite a multi-faceted song, with plenty of hooks (including the singing), and it arrived with an excellent video. It’s the opening track from Revenant, which will be released by Scarlet Records on June 21st. The album’s concept is described this way:
Revenant is a concept album about an old Orthodox priest who became a vampire against his will. A controversial, cruel and yet fascinating character, oscillating between a sense of abandonment by the divine and the manifestation of a faith that is still present, with continuous pleas to God to stop him from his relentless bloodshed – yearning for a redemption that cannot be reached.
https://scarletrecords.bandcamp.com/album/revenant
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557511479684
DUSKWALKER (Canada)
My next pick is a full-throttle dose of infectious nastiness called “Crippled At The Core“.
It delivers thrashy death metal packed with crazed and brazen riffage, feverishly squirming leads, vigorously galloping and maniacally brutalizing drumwork, and a noxious combination of strangled-gargoyle snarling, gruesome growling, and a bit of breeeee.
It also delivers some viciously throbbing riffs, like pistons pumping on high-octane fuel, in case your legs need to jump harder. Also, feel free to bark the song’s title in your head (or out loud if you’re alone), right along with the hollow roaring of it in the track.
The song is from an album named Underground Forever, due out on July 26th via Black Lion Records.
https://music.blacklion.nu/Duskwalker
https://duskwalkerblacklion.bandcamp.com/album/underground-forever
https://www.facebook.com/DuskwalkerOfficial/
ENEMY XIII (U.S./Germany)
In the lyric’s of Enemy XIII‘s new song “Blood Drunk“, which you’ll witness in the lyric video below, they revel in the prospect of the world burning, and heaven too engulfed in flames. They also do sound drunk on blood.
As for the music, it’s a bracing combination of bounding punk beats, head-moving stomps, blast-beat bursts, grim and grisly riffing, and larynx-lacerating, madhouse howls. It doesn’t last long, but long enough to pump your head and give your face an evil, fuck-the-world sneer.
They call their music “SkiMaskBlackDeath Metal“, blurring the lines between black metal, hardcore punk, crust, and dbeat. The song was mixed and mastered by The Fall (Michał Stępień from Mgła and Hauntologist). It’s from a forthcoming EP named We Know Where You Sleep.
https://enemyxiii.bandcamp.com/track/blood-drunk
FULL OF HELL (U.S.)
When’s the last time you had a nightmare about a hooded demon slowly pulling the heart out of your chest? What, never? Well, after you watch and listen to this next video you might have it tonight.
“Fractured Bonds to Mecca” would definitely be nightmare fuel even without the video. The music throbs and booms, growls in the low end, queasily swirls like psychoactive vapors, and screams high above. The primitive electronics at the end add their own throbs, in a way that’s also unsettling. And I haven’t yet mentioned the vocals, which are equally monstrous.
This is from Full of Hell‘s new album Coagulated Bliss. It was released by Closed Casket Activities on April 26th. Listen to all of it at Bandcamp, if you dare.
https://orcd.co/coagulatedbliss
https://fullofhell.bandcamp.com/album/coagulated-bliss
https://closedcasketactivities.com/collections/full-of-hell
https://www.facebook.com/fullofhell
GOREBRINGER (UK)
With a name like Gorebringer, I was expecting gore/grind or perhaps some kind of gore-soaked brutal death metal. But what I discovered through the band’s new single “Ants” turned out to be more surprising — a melodic black/death amalgam.
The rocket-propelled music is indeed powered by obliterating drum fusillades and segmented by explosive percussive blows, but the venomous vocals scream like vampires and roar like bears, and the tremolo’d riffing creates electrifying and soaring swirls of sound, deliriously dervish-like and devilish. The soloing is even more delirious and exhilarating.
The lyrics are worth reading at Bandcamp. The protagonist tells of being hollowed out by ants in an “orgasmic feast,” and left ready to serve their Queen by bringing fresh meat “To feed the thousands that will grow / Into millions!”
The song is from Gorebringer‘s upcoming album Condemned to Suffer, projected for release in October 2024 by Great Dane Records.
https://greatdanerecords.bandcamp.com/album/ants
https://www.facebook.com/Gorebringer
HAUNTED PLASMA (Finland)
Okay, get ready for more singing now, and for your legs to bounce again.
This next song is from an outfit that includes some notable names, and what they’ve created with “Machines Like Us” is a hybrid of post-punk/New-Wave grooves and synths, glittering guitars (and a few grimly slashing chords), and smoothly seductive singing with an infernal air. The singing gets scarier as the song proceeds, and so do all the surrounding sounds. It comes with a cool video too.
Those notable names are Juho Vanhanen (Oranssi Pazuzu, Grave Pleasures), Timo Kaukolampi (K-X-P), Op:l Bastards), and Tomi Leppänen (Circle, Aavikko, K-X-P). The vocalist is Mat McNerney (Hexvessel, Carpenter Brut, Grave Pleasures/Beastmilk). Other guest vocalists on Haunted Plasma‘s album include Ringa Manner (Ruusut, The Hearing) and Pauliina Lindell (Vuono, Dust Mountain).
That album, named I, will be released by Svart Records on May 31st.
https://orcd.co/machineslikeus
https://hauntedplasma.bandcamp.com/album/i
https://www.svartrecords.com/en/product/haunted-plasma-i/12339
https://www.facebook.com/p/Haunted-Plasma-100064487333162
THANATOTHERION (U.S.)
As has been true for the last year or so, I, Voidhanger Records recently announced multiple albums in one fell swoop, this time three of them slated for a June 7 release, and published songs from each of them at the same time. One of those is my next pick in today’s collection.
This project, Thanatotherion, is the solo work of Shelby Lermo (of Ulthar, Naughtskeid, and Vastum) in his guise as “Ominous Droning“, accompanied on the forthcoming debut album by percussionist Jason Bursese (of Black Fucking Cancer).
That album, Alienation Manifesto, is described as “a creature of fast and devastating black thrash metal that crosses the Lovecraftian visions of ULTHAR, the icy grandeur of early EMPEROR and the destructive fury of ABSU.” In its thematic conceptions, it’s utterly nihilistic when it comes to human beings — and utopian in the case of all other life — looking forward to the day when humanity becomes extinct, “a post-technological life in which new species can finally thrive in balance, free from the human plague.”
As advertised, this head-spinning first single from the album, “Nuclear Womb“, is ominous and furious, twisted and pernicious. The vocals are a combine of scalding shrieked derangement, cold-hearted roars, and demented distorted words. The guitars constantly veer, alternately moaning, convulsing, and cavorting in spasms of eerie and dissonant delirium, most delirious of all in a frantic soloing seizure.
Paradoxically, all the twisted musical motifs have a way of getting briefly stuck in the head as they emerge and resurface. And the music also rises up in manifestations of sweeping, hideous splendor. Not to be outdone, the bass is a nimble frolicking presence and the drumming is lights-out, and no more wedded to staying in the same place as anything else in the song.
Alienation Manifesto will be digitally released on June 7th, and an LP vinyl edition will be released on August 30th.
P.S. I understand that Alienation Manifesto was written entirely during the course of chemotherapy and radiation that Shelby Lermo underwent for throat cancer in the summer and fall of 2022, and that it was recorded over the following year; the treatment was successful and I’m told that the vocals for this album were the first thing he did once he healed and got his voice back.
https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/alienation-manifesto
https://metalodyssey.8merch.com/
https://metalodyssey.8merch.us/
ZELENAYA (U.S.)
Anyone who’s visited these Saturday roundups even semi-regularly knows that I have a habit of throwing curveballs at the end, and I’m doing it again now. Even my alphabetizing of the selections by band name didn’t create an obstacle.
What’s up next is a new album simply named Folk Songs just released yesterday by a Brooklyn-based collective who call themselves Zelenaya. All four of the members — Veronica Dougherty, Melanie Closs, Caryn Havlik, and James Kogan — perform vocals. The only instruments identified in the credits are drums (Caryn Havlik) and baritone guitar (James Kogan), though I can hear keys as well, which occasionally mimic orchestral instruments. Their music is described this way:
NYC’s Zelenaya merges the haunting vocal harmonies of Eastern European polyphonic folk singing with the intensity of sludge, doom, and death metal. The combination pays homage to the traditions, magic, and stories transmitted in these songs, while reimagining their context and form.
The album includes 12 songs, drawn primarily from Ukraine but also Poland, Serbia, and Georgia. The multi-part vocal harmonies are the centerpiece, with the words sung in the original language of the songs (including Yiddish). As forecast, they draw upon old folk traditions from Eastern European regions, and they’re riveting to hear.
Also as forecast, the band often carry the music forward with hard-hitting drums and hard-charging riffage, or cause the songs to crash and slash, to dance and whirl, or to grieve with heads down (and some of the guitar arpeggios sound bluesy or psychedelic as well). The adaptation of the folk songs to heavy metal stylings proves to be very impressive, and the metal-oriented performances sometimes reach jaw-dropping heights of technical skill and prog-influenced embellishment.
The pacing and the moods of the songs vary, sometimes jubilant or fierce, sometimes beleaguered or mournful, and sometimes heroic or simply devastated. They’re arranged on the album in a way that makes the most of the emotional contrasts, and many of the songs embody those contrasts within themselves (e.g., “Letila Zozulia” and “Hora Za Horoyu“, which are two I’d recommend if you just want to begin by sampling what the album offers).
The one word I’d choose to sum up the album is… captivating. Very easy to be caught up and carried away by it. (It was recorded live with Colin Marston at Menegroth, The Thousand Caves.)
https://zelenaya.bandcamp.com/album/folk-songs
http://instagram.com/zelenayamusic/
COMPILATIONS
It’s not as if you don’t have enough to listen to already, whether from what I and the other NCS slaves have been recommending or from your discoveries elsewhere, but that isn’t stopping me from providing links to a total of… 87 more songs. LOL.
That’s how many tracks are included on three new label compilations that caught my eye this week. I’ve listened to some of these songs, either before or after the compilations appeared, but no… I haven’t listened to all of them, and I probably won’t have time to ever do that. But they do make for a convenient way to go exploring, and the first and third ones below are “name your price” downloads.
FIADH
https://fiadh.bandcamp.com/album/from-dreams-to-living-things-ii-brawling-sparrows-brilliant-moon
NOBLE DEMON
https://nobledemon.bandcamp.com/album/noble-demonic-metal-chapter-4
TERRATUR POSSESSIONS
https://terraturpossessions.bandcamp.com/album/terratur-compendium-mmxxiv