SEEN AND HEARD: LAGO, FREYA, SATYROS, AND NYLITHIA

Herein: an assortment of new music and one new video I discovered over the last 24 hours from a couple of bands previously featured at NCS and a couple of newcomers.  Varied and interesting stuff all the way around.

LAGO

This band from Phoenix is one of the newcomers. According to Metal Archives, they released a five-song EP (Marianas) via Pale Horse Recordings in 2010, which I haven’t heard yet, and then last month they released a new two-song demo entitled Tyranny. Last night I saw a recommendation of Tyranny from one of my Facebook friends and decided to give it a spin. Sure glad I did.

On Tyranny, Lago deliver something that sounds like a cross between old-school Morbid Angel and late-stage Behemoth, plus interesting elements that you won’t find in the music of either of those bands, such as the noodling bass notes and incredible guitar solo in “The Tyranny of Men”.  Both songs are rhythmically dynamic (and rhythmically compulsive) and expertly played. And the vocals are also deep as ocean trenches and monstrous, in the vein of something like Disma’s Craig Pillard (though some banshee shrieking also makes a brief appearance in the second song).

This is really fuckin’ impressive stuff!

Tyranny is available for download on Bandcamp for a minimum price of $2. It was sure as hell the best value I’ve gotten for $2 in a long time. The band’s debut EP is also on their Bandcamp site for $5. Have a listen to Tyranny below.

http://lagometal.bandcamp.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LagoMetal

FREYA

When Earth Crisis initially broke up in 2001, Karl Buechner formed a band called Nemesis, which he later renamed Freya. Over the last decade, Buechner and an evolving line-up of comrades have produced three albums, and today I saw that they’ve now signed with French label Deadlight Entertainment for release of a fourth later this year, Paragon Of The Crucible.

Accompanying this news was the debut of a track from the new album named “Paragon of the Crucible”, which features a guitar solo by Paul Waggoner of Between the Buried and Me. I’m really enthralled by the song. It’s a reminder (at least to me) that in the right hands, the conventional tropes of metalcore can still be put to good and creative use.

The song is both heavy and progressive. It’s jolting at the start and then makes an unexpected transition into something quite moody and beautiful. As the song progresses it continues to evolve and transform, anchored by those jolting verse riffs and Buechner’s fiery, harsh vocals. And the melody is quite memorable. Check it out below.

http://www.facebook.com/freyaband
http://www.deadlight.fr/

SATYROS

Germany’s Satyros are one of the two bands in this post who we’ve previously featured. Their 2011 album Riven was one of my favorites of that year, as explained in this review. I also included one of its tracks on our list of 2011′s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs (here).

Satyros are now working on their third album, but last August they started an endeavor that they named the Open-Anthology-Project as a vehicle for releasing songs that will not be part of future albums. As I wrote when I first saw this, I think it’s an interesting way for bands to create and distribute music that may not fit their usual style or for other reasons may not be selected for use in a future album or EP.

The first work in the Satyros Open-Anthology Project is an EP named The Dirt of Ages,. When it originally appeared last August, it consisted of three songs not included Satyros’ previous works. Yesterday I found out that the band have now added a fourth track to the EP — a remixed (and transformed) version of a song from Riven named “Traumhallen”, which the band have named “Pylê Oneirôn”.

Plucked strings are joined by electro beats and synthesizer melody, and the result is a cool twist on the original track.

The entire Dirt of Ages EP, now with four tracks instead of three, is still available for free download here. I’m including both the original and remixed versions of “Traumhallen” below.

http://www.facebook.com/satyrosband

NYLITHIA

Last September, we had the pleasure of debuting a song called “Hyperthrash” by a riveting ensemble of maniacs from Vancouver who go by the name Nylithia. They’ve been slowly creating an album, releasing one song at a time on Bandcamp, with the ultimate objective of compiling them into a full-album release on CD. “Hyperthrash” is the most recent of the four songs released so far.

Today I saw that Nylithia have just released a video for “Hyperthrash”, and it provides a good excuse for me to remind you how great that song is, and how fuckin’ hard these dudes jam. No need for me to re-write what I’ve already written: “What do you get when you combine blazing speed, mind-blowing intricacy, head-slapping grooves, and creative song construction? You get Hyperthrash. This ain’t no retro-thrash. It’s thrash from some accelerated parallel universe. It’s a balls-to-the-wall, fret-burning, drum-shredding, neuron-twisting explosion.”

The video is pretty off-the-hook, too.

http://www.facebook.com/hyperthrashmetal
http://nylithia.bandcamp.com/