SHIT SEEN AND HEARD: SONNE ADAM, ERUPTED, SILENT PATH, AND REIGN OF THE ARCHITECT

Collected in here are items I randomly happened upon last night while browsing the internest and checking out links sent in by our ever-vigilant readers.

ITEM ONE

Sonne Adam are an Israeli death/doom band whose 2011 Century Media debut, Transformation, garnered a lot of critical praise. It was also one heavy motherfucker. Yesterday, I saw the news that the band’s first two-song EP, The Sun Is Dead, has been released by Van Records as a 7″ vinyl with that new cover art you see above.

Sonne Adam are also now working on a new EP to be entitled Doctrines of Dark Devotion, and yesterday they started streaming (for a limited time) a rough mix of a new track called “Bestow the Crown of Death”. Shit sounds heavier than oceans, darker than your worst nightmares. Guitars grinding on HM-2 overdrive; awesome reverberating vocals, deep as trenches and cracked like the windows in an abandoned warehouse; eerie guitar instrumentals swirling above the massive grinding noises underneath.

This is a very cool song and makes me tumescent for the new EP. Stream it right after the jump.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/53153366″ iframe=”true” /]

(Thank you Utmu for the tip about this new song.)
 

ITEM TWO

I really can’t get enough of this album cover by Simon Palmer. I first spied it back in January when there was no music from the album to hear, just the news that Abyss Records was going to be releasing the debut full-length by Sweden’s Erupted — In the Grip of Chaos. And then I used it again in a later post when the first track from the album started streaming. And now I’m using it again because yesterday Erupted unveiled a teaser video with clips from other brutal death metal songs on the album.

I’m still liking the grisly, grinding guitars, the nice groove, and the gurgling gut-deep vocals — and gimme some more a that snare tone!
 

 

ITEM THREE

I saw that an underground Canadian label named Hypnotic Dirge Records has released an album by a one-man band based in Tehran, Iran, named Silent Path. The man is Saman Nu, who apparently has created other works under the band name Ekove Efrits. This Silent Path album is called Mourner Portraits and was originally recorded in 2009, but is now getting an official release.

I confess that one reason I checked this out is because of the controversy swirling around the authenticity (or lack thereof) of a one-woman black metal band named Janaza, which claims to be from Iraq (see the background on this controversy here). Whether Janaza turns out to be the real deal or a hoax, Silent Path is creating black metal in a place that must be at least as inhospitable to black metal as Iraq.

The music I’ve heard so far from Mourner Portraits is excellent. It’s dense, atmospheric, and mesmerizing. It joins together the beautiful and the disturbing, combining both clean and brutally rancid vocals, both sweeping/ringing guitar chords and radioactive emissions that would set off Geiger counters. Some might call it depressive black metal, some might call it a mix of blackened/ambient/doom. Whatever the label, I’m really enjoying this:

THIS is the Bandcamp link, where the album can be downloaded or ordered as a CD with a 16-page booklet.
 

ITEM FOUR

ITEM FOUR

Reign of the Architect are a prog metal band started by Yuval Kramer, producer and guitarist for an Israeli Prog-Metal band called Amaseffer and Mexican drummer Mauricio Bustamante. For the creation of their first album, they recruited a collection of Israeli vocalists, Greek keyboardist Nina Vouraki, and a slew of guest appearances, including vocalist Jeff Scott Soto (Yngwie Malmsteen, Journey, and more), bassist Mike LePond (Symphony X), and keyboardist Joost Van Den Broek (Ayreon, Star One, and more).

Reign of the Architect are planning two related concept albums, with the first one (Rise) due later this year. Above is the cover art for that album, created by the super-talented Eliran Kantor. Recently, they posted two singles to YouTube, “Distant Similarities” and “We Must Retaliate” (which features Jeff Scott Soto).

Both of them are fairly far away from my usual stomping grounds — because they include a lot of classic “heavy metal” clean singing (along with growlies and choral voices) and much instrumental (and vocal) bombast, but I’m digging the music nonetheless. It’s heavy, catchy, multi-textured, and really well-produced. Of course, there are many guitar solos — and they are well worth hearing.

Here are band links, and below that are the two new singles (and thanks again to Utmu for the tip about this band).

http://www.facebook.com/ReignOfTheArchitect
http://www.reignofthearchitect.com/