UTMU’S VISIT TO MOJO 13

(Welcome NCS reader/commenter/suggester-of-great music, Utmu, with his first guest post at this site.)

Hello everyone, this is my first full-article contribution to NO CLEAN SINGING—that’s right, after submitting a good number of bands and news articles to Islander and posting comments for quite some time, I’ve decided to get off my ass and really contribute something substantial to the site. So, to get on with what this post is about . . .

I recently went to the Wilmington, Delaware date of the excellent Occupation Domination 2012 Tour at Mojo 13 headlined by the mighty Origin and supported by a killer lineup, including the likes of Cattle Decapitation, Decrepit Birth, Aborted, Rings of Saturn, Battlecross, and Face of Ruin. As much as I may like or love some of those bands, I don’t plan on talking about them in this article. Instead, I’m going to give you information on some relatively local and generally unknown bands who played before Face of Ruin and the other aforementioned groups. You can find all of the bands’ Facebook pages at the bottom of the article.

MARCH TO VICTORY

What we have here is a magnificent melodic death act from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. These guys have been tearing up the local and East Coast music scenes since 1998, releasing a handful of material, including one demo, two EP’s, and a full-length called Frostburg 666, the first metallic assault of theirs to be released by a label, Born of Chaos Records. I also plan on reviewing Frostburg for you all at some point.

March to Victory started out as a straight-up black metal band and progressed into what I would say has become a melodic death metal group based on the change of style from Frostburg 666 and previous songs to the new single “Your End”.  In fact, since they have a “new” vocalist, Ron Evens (who, by the way is a really cool dude), they’re now harnessing a growl instead of a rasp, so in my opinion they’ve taken a big step into Amon Amarth territory with this new song. You can stream “Your End” exclusively on Vampirefreaks.com, where you can also stream two other tracks that are on the EP’s as well as a fifth track called “Pure Fucking Hatred”, which is from a 1998 demo, and what seems to be an early version of a song off the full-length called “Funeral Blizzard Beast”.

Just a heads-up, I was having some trouble with the player on that site — the play time would grow progressively with plays. For example, the first time I listened to “Your End” the play time was eighteen seconds and the second play had a time of around one minute and seven seconds. The song I’ve had Islander embed has lyrics that are pretty unconventional for a blackened death song; they’re based in politics.

These guys have some great music ,and I’m glad I got to see them on Occupation Domination. They added a much-needed touch of blackness to the tour. Below you can find a link to a fun interview where you can learn of the band members’ influences, general sound, their stance on -core music, cuddling in metal, and most importantly… LLAMAS!

SAPREMIA

Sapremia, which Dictionary.com defines as “blood poisoning caused by the toxins produced by bacterial putrefaction, as in gangrene”, is the brutal name of a three-piece old school death metal act hailing from West Deptford, New Jersey. They were created in the 1990’s and released two demos, which were later remastered after a decade-long hiatus and were gathered into a compilation album called Subconscious Existence. The next year Sapremia released an EP titled Hollow on Open Grave Records and in the following year dropped a full-length dubbed With Winter Comes Despair on the same label. Incidentally, With Winter has some awesome artwork, which depicts a tree that I wouldn’t be in a rush to climb.

This band seems to be a local legend, and it’s easy to understand why when you hear the pummeling old school rawness of Sapremia. I wonder why these guys didn’t blow up with the rest of the death metal bands in the nineties; they certainly have a nice sound and put on a pretty good show. It’s also worth noting that people who have been in well-known bands, such as Justin DiPinto (ex-Mortal Decay, ex-Malevolent Creation, ex-Pyrexia) and Brian Valenty (ex-Mortal Decay) have played with Sapremia.

In addition to all the information I’ve provided above, the band is slated to put out an album entitled Autumn’s Moon in the late summer or early fall of this year via Butchered Records; I will be looking forward to listening to some material off of the forthcoming release and if I hear of any news regarding Autumn’s Moon I will be sure to inform you all in some way.

Also, if any musicians in the area of Pennsylvania, Delaware, or New Jersey are interested, the band is looking for a guitarist; if interested, contact sapremianj@yahoo.com.

ALUSTRIUM

Alustrium is a band I would have to call “modern” death metal; they’re certainly not deathcore, but not necessarily a throwback to the late eighties and early nineties either. It sounds a little techy to me, although I’m not saying they’re outright tech death since I’m generally not good at telling what’s technical and what’s not unless the sound is blatantly obvious like Origin or Suicide Silence. These guys got their start in 2008 as a band called Syndicate, which apparently had members joining and leaving constantly; eventually, Syndicate recruited a new guitarist who introduced some stability to the band and went on to form a new band under the name Altered Image in November of the same year.

Sadly, with the death of frontman Greg Bono, the band reformed under a new name, Alustrium, and by the end of the next year was signed to Toil Records. Alustrium released their full-length album An Absence of Clarity in 2011, and below you’ll find the music video for the song “Degradation” from that release.

Now here are Facebook links for all of the bands:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/March-To-Victory/100171910031328
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sapremia/63761224445
http://www.facebook.com/Alustrium