SEEN AND HEARD: ESKHATON, EMBALMED, VAULT WRAITH

In my last stream-of-consciousness post I explained that I spent the last three days on the road working. I was able to spend some time conducting my usual surveillance of the interhole in an effort to find new music, but  didn’t have enough time to do much actual listening or writing. Instead, I added to my ever-growing list of things to check out later. I made a small dent in that list this morning and came up with some discoveries I thought were worth passing on.

ESKHATON

Eskhaton are based in Melbourne, Australia. They released a debut album named Nihilgoety in 2012, which I haven’t heard (it’s available on Bandcamp). Their second album is entitled Worship Death, it features killer cover art by Cesar  Valladares, and it’s due for release by the dependable Chaos Records on April 21. Last week a song from the new album began streaming on Eskhaton’s Bandcamp page, and I’ve got it for you here.

“Skeleton Shrine” is a goddamn vicious rampage of bestial blackened death metal. Subtlety and nuance are not the hallmarks of this style of metal — you go to it for the electric jolt it puts through your brain stem and the malevolent destructive force of its atmospherics. “Skeleton Shrine” delivers all that, and the flamethrower burst of the guitar soloing plus the complex tumbling of the drumwork put the icing on this poisonous cake.

http://eskhaton666.bandcamp.com/album/worship-death
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eskhaton/140670182642032

 

 

 

EMBALMED

Last fall I wrote about a veteran Texas band named Embalmed and an advance song I had discovered from a then-forthcoming album entitled Brutal Delivery of Vengeance. Last week I learned that the album is now out via Dark Blasphemies Records and is also available on Bandcamp. I also found out that the band have released an official video for the album’s first cut, “Regiment of Death”.

The song packs a visceral punch, joining a phalanx of jagged threshing riffs to a regiment of massive grooves. Seriously, you’d have to be paralyzed not to move to this song. It delivers a lethal dose of death metal brutality in a very infectious package. I’m looking forward to making my way across the battlefield of the entire album. Check out the “Regiment of Death” video and the full-album stream below.

http://embalmed.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/embalmed.texas

 

 

 

 

VAULT WRAITH

Vanessa Nocera’s vocal talents are so impressive that she’s involved in a multitude of extreme metal projects — and I haven’t yet found one that I didn’t love. To that long list of bands, which includes Howling, Loathsome, Skeletal Spectre, Scaremaker, and Wooden Stake, one more must now be added. The new band’s name is Vault Wraith, and in this one she has teamed up with a dude named Willie Wardlaw from a band called Death Curse.

Last week they put up a debut track for listening on YouTube by the name of “Cauldron Countess”, which I’m really enjoying. It’s a different style from most of Vanessa’s other project, a hard-rocking, doomy number driven by some classic heavy metal riffing and a bounding bassline, with more than a little King Diamond influence. The vocals veer on a dime from clean singing to hair-raising banshee shrieks. More news about the band will be forthcoming, but for now, check out “Cauldron Countess”:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3uKgxolFtM