RANDOM MIND FUCKERY: DEADBORN AND MUKNAL

I had other plans for additional posts today, but those plans went up in smoke because of interference from my fucking day job. Either that or I smoked the plans by mistake.  It was one or the other. Anyway, those projects will have to come to fruition tomorrow. But I felt I ought to do something more for this Monday beyond the three reviews with which we started the day. This is what I came up with.

DEADBORN

Fans of rapid-fire, merciless death metal along the lines of Hate Eternal will want to pay attention to this band. They’re from Germany and they include a former vocalist and drummer from Necrophagist (Mario Petrovic and Slavek Foltyn, respectively) and a lead guitarist (Kevin Olasz) who used to be with a band called Jack Slater.

More than four years have passed since their album debut (Stigma Eternal), but they have a new one coming out in April on Apostasy Records called Mayhem Maniac Machine. It was recorded with producer Christoph Brandes, who has been kind of an in-house engineer for Necrophagist. With all these Necrophagist connections and an album name like Mayhem Maniac Machine, I felt compelled to check out the one song from the album (“Bionic Abomination”) that has been released for streaming so far.

That was a wise choice. Actually, it was more like dumb luck, which of course is the only kind of luck I have. The song kicks ass and takes names and then stomps all over you with cleated boots while setting your hair on fire. Of course, I liked it and thought it worth sharing, so here it is:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/36174174″ iframe=”true” /]
 

Deadborn has a Facebook page here.

MUKNAL

I know next to nothing about this band. I found out about them from JGD on The Living Doorway blog, who provided a link for download of their 2012 self-titled EP. JGD doesn’t seem to know much about them either. Here’s his pithy summing up:

“All I can tell you is that they are from the US and that there’s an “astral” flavor to their murky and abyssic DM – it’s drenched in cosmic reverb and sounds like it’s been stewing for centuries in a befouled atmosphere.”

Once again, for me those words were like the temptation of rotting meat to flies. I downloaded the music and soaked in it until I began to look for a snack of rotting meat. At that point I decided perhaps I should stop listening.

It does have an astral flavor to it. Spacey sounding, reverberating guitar tones spiral over muffled, distorted guitar grinding and muffled, frantic drumbeats. The vocals are gruesome, of course, and they echo.

Ugly?  You bet your ass. Disorienting and claustrophobic to the point of moderate nausea?  Yessir. Absolutely effective in creating an atmosphere of occult doom and horrific dread?  Oh yes.

“Cruciation”

[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/01-Muknal-Cruciation.mp3|titles=Muknal – Cruciation]

“Rotten Genesis”

[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/02-Muknal-Rotten-Genesis.mp3|titles=Muknal – Rotten Genesis]

“Eidolon”

[audio:https://www.nocleansinging.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/03-Muknal-Eidolon.mp3|titles=Muknal – Eidolon]
 

And if you didn’t find any of the music in this post entertaining, you can always look at this, which Devin Townsend circulated through a tweet today with the caption “a touch of class”, because we’re all about the class here at NCS.