SKELETAL SPECTRE AND WEAPON

I was just about ready to call it a day here at our metallic island, but then I discovered two songs that have just gone up for streaming, and they hit me so hard upside my head that I just had to put together one more post.

SKELETAL SPECTRE

I really fuckin’ enjoyed this multi-national band’s last album, 2011′s Occult Spawned Premonitions (reviewed here). The band includes an extraordinary extreme female vocalist named Vanessa Nocera whose many projects I’ve covered so zealously here that suspicions of stalkerism wouldn’t be out of place. But that’s not all. The band also includes  Roger “Rogga” Johansson of Ribspreader and Bonegnawer fame (and about 100 other projects, too), and as far as I’m concerned Rogga is death metal royalty.

So, needless to say, I’ve been watching Skeletal Spectre pretty closely as they move forward toward the release of their next album, Voodoo Dawn. I’ve previously posted about the album’s stunning cover art (Adam Geyer), as well as a track called “Bone Dust” that became available for listening late last year. But today brought yet another song. This one’s named “Black Augury Hollow”. If you’re lucking for truly ghastly, pestilential, maggot-infested, beautifully executed, old-school death metal that stomps and romps with an infusion of d-beat energy and a lot of chainsaw distortion, you really need to hear this.

And hey, at the risk of coming off even more stalkerish than I already have, Vanessa Nocera sounds fuckin’ sick. I continue to be amazed by the sounds she’s capable of producing.

Voodoo Dawn will be released by Pulverised Records. I believe the release dates are May 27 in Europe and June 25 in the States, and the album is up for pre-order on Amazon already. For now, get into “Black Augury Hollow”.

 

WEAPON

I shouldn’t have to tell readers of this site who Weapon are, but just in case, they’re a band now based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, who specialize in a slaughtering (and musically surprising) combination of black and death metal. They greatly increased their international profile with last year’s Embers and Revelations album, and today I discovered the happy news that Daemon Worship Productions will be releasing a compilation of Weapon songs under the name Naga: Daemonum Praeteritum. The due date is May 31.

Naga gathers together the three Weapon releases that preceded their first full-length album: The 2004 demo Within The Flesh Of The Satanist,  a 2005 EP named Violated Hejab, and a 2008 EP entitled Para Bhakti… Salvation. The music has been remastered by Lars Broddesson of Marduk and the compilation features the killer cover art you see above by Naas Alcameth of Colorado’s Nightbringer. It’s also going to include a 24-page booklet with photos and a detailed bio by the band’s leader Vetis Monarch.

I’ve been following Weapon for a while, but I’d never heard any of the music from those pre-album releases . . . until today, when I found a Bandcamp page for Naga that includes two songs.

“Naga” (from the first demo) begins with a creepy, occult instrumental opening and then explodes into an utterly raw, filthy, flame-throwing piece of chanted homage to the snake deities of Indian legend. “Para Bakhti… Salvation” is an electrifying dose of thrashing black metal with a down-tempo mid-section that calls up the melodies of Vetis Monarch’s Bangladeshi homeland. It’s better-produced than “Naga”, but still sounds bestial. Both songs are below.