SEEN AND HEARD: INIQUITOUS SAVAGERY AND SCHAMMASCH

I hope everyone had a good weekend. I spent a large part of my Sunday listening to Ulver’s just-released new album more than once (featured here). I think it’s very, very good, but just as it suited a Sunday extremely well, I felt the need for something else with which to face this Monday. Something with teeth and claws, and maybe some bleeding flesh dripping from its jaws. You know, something that would help me get my game face on for the new week.

Mission accomplished. In my searches last night, I came across music from five bands and I’m dividing up what I found between two posts, in the order in which I found the music. All the bands are new to me, except the last one in the second post.

INIQUITOUS SAVAGERY

This Scottish group produced an EP in 2012 named Compelled By Perverse Immorality. I haven’t heard that one, but last night I did hear a new promo single entitled “Propagating A Pestiferous Enmity”, which comes with cover art by Mike Majewski of Devourment (“touched up” by Tom Bradfield, who also mixed and mastered the thing).

This is a mighty fine offering of brutal slamming death metal. It has all the basic ingredients down pat — the hammering riffs, the prominent snare drumming, the brutish rhythms, the grotesque guttural vocals. On top of that, it really turns on the after-burners just as often as it delivers the big, methodical, sledgehammer blows. And it’s not completely atonal either. I certainly won’t use the word “finesse” to describe the music, but I will use the word “flair”. 

If you like what you hear and you happen to live in the U.S., you’ll have a chance quite soon to see this band on stage. During September they will be part of the REAWAKEN IN FLAMES US TOUR, headlined by one-man wrecking machine Shawn Whitaker (Insidious Decrepancy, Viral Load) and also including Genocaust and Psychiatric Regurgitation. You can see the dates as they now stand in the flyer below the new song — which is next.

https://www.facebook.com/iniquitoussavagery

 

 

SCHAMMASCH

Schammasch were another new name to me. They’re a quartet based in Switzerland with one album to their credit, 2010’s Sic Lvceat Lvx. Through a Facebook tip by their countrymen in Zatokrev, I had a listen to a new Schammasch song named “Golden Light”, and I’m really digging it. It also helps with the getting-on-the-game-face thing.

The music is a mix of cold black metal and heavy-as-girders death metal. It begins with a chiming guitar arpeggio, the melody of which eventually points the way to the shroud of doom and depravity that will come. And when the song really kicks in, it’s like a kick to the gut — simply crushing. A sombre, ominous melody flows through the music, and the band turn up the hellfire under the cauldron before they’re done. The song has an air of infernal majesty, and I’m really liking the immense, feral vocals, too.

“Golden Light” is the eighth track from a forthcoming album named Contradiction. I’m now watching for that.

https://www.facebook.com/SCHAMMASCH