Sunday’s usually aren’t big days for news about the release of new metal. But this morning brought my bleary eyes a few revelations (and no, I haven’t foreseen Armageddon). One discovery concerns a Norwegian band called Hellish Outcast who we’ve featured here before. The other came via an e-mail recommendation from ElvisShotJFK – a reader who’s been with us since early days at NCS. It’s a slice of instrumental metal from a German band called Nimbatus, whose entire discography happens to be available at no charge.
This music is all really good, despite being on nearly opposite poles of the metal sphere. So, I thought I’d throw this post together on the spur of the minute. For those of you who couldn’t be bothered to wade through that book-length post we put up a bit earlier today, all you’ve got to do with this one is just close your eyes and listen.
HELLISH OUTCAST
The last time we checked in with this band (about a month ago), they’d just released an official music video for a song called “Face Forced Down”, which appears on their debut album, Your God Will Bleed. (Go here to check out that video.) We thought that song was a crushing aural onslaught by some dudes who know what the fuck they’re doing: Thebon (Keep of Kalessin‘s vocalist), Mads Lillevedt (a/k/a Alkolust, the drummer for Byfrost), bassist Max Morbid (BREED), and guitarist Martin Legreid (66Crusher). As of this morning, we’ve got two more new songs from the album to set our heads on fire. (more after the jump . . .)
The new songs are called “The View So Disgusting” and “Hubris”, and you can listen to them via the SoundCloud player just below.
“Hubris” is a grisly, mid-paced stalker with pounding rhythms and it occasionally spits guitar fire in your face. It includes a massively irresistible slab of headbangable convulsion in the middle section, plus some truly demonic Thebon vocals.
“The View So Disgusting” kicks the pacing up a few notches into a rolling gallop, with jabbing, staccato guitar leads and Alkolust’s crushing drumwork propelling this smoking machine inexorably forward. The song includes a very cool, off-tempo instrumental break, too. It’s been rockin’ my world this morning.
Go ahead, let these babies drill some holes in your skull, and see what comes out. Or goes in.
HELLISH OUTCAST DEBUT TRACKS by Hellish Outcast
Hellish Outcast is due to play at Lithuania’s Devilstone Festival on July 15 and at UK’s Bloodstock Festival on August 14. They’re hunting for a label smart enough to release Your God Will Bleed.
NIMBATUS
Nimbatus is a one-man project from Freiburg, Germany. If you visit any of the Nimbatus web pages, you’ll see the sounds described as “instrumental songs that translate darkness and sadness into music.” Maybe not the best come-on one could imagine, but I relied on ElvisShotJFK’s pitch — that the Nimbatus albums are very well done and had found their way onto his heavy rotation playlist.
The debut album is called Cyclus One and was released on April 2010. It includes 8 songs conceived between January and March 2010. The second album, Cyclus Two, was released on November 13, 2010, and also contains 8 tracks. And as of March 20, 2011, we have the third album. Try to guess the name.
All three albums are available for free download at the Nimbatus Bandcamp page (here). Since this is a spur-of-the-minute post, I haven’t listened to all three albums. In fact, all I’ve done so far is listen to the first two songs from the third album – “Numb Celebration” and “Fractured Vision”.
“Numb Celebration” is slow, grim, shrouded in darkness. It’s plenty heavy, but man, the reverberating melodic guitar lead in this song is fucken sweet. The rhythms and tempo on “Fractured Vision” are more dynamic, and the music is a mix of the ethereal and the brutish. The guitar tone shimmers and squalls, weaves dreamy patterns and hammers home driving riffs.
Like ElvisShotJFK, I come to most instrumental metal with skepticism, expecting a high risk of boredom. But based on these songs, I think Nimbatus is worth more time. Maybe Elvis will let us know how the new stuff compares to the first two albums. Here’s a widget that’s streaming those two songs and more.
Enjoy the rest of your fucking Sunday.