SEEN AND HEARD: BLACK JESUS, DEATHEMBER, COGNITIVE

As we confront the brink of the weekend, what I have for you here are three new songs that are a hell of a lot of vicious fun for your earholes.

BLACK JESUS

Today CVLT Nation premiered five tracks from an album by a Melbourne, Australia band named Black Jesus. I’m not sure whether the album includes more tracks and I have no idea at the moment when or how the album will be released. But I started listening to it as soon as I saw this description: “The Black Jesus sound is a melting pot of 80’s Punk/ Hardcore & D-Beat pioneers Discharge, meets From Enslavement to Obliteration era Napalm Death and Entombed’s Left Hand Path. It is entirely unpretentious, completely exhilarating, and has a nasty ‘f* off’ attitude to match.”

I was in kind of a rush to get this round-up done, so I haven’t listened to all the tracks that are streaming, but I sure as fuck like what I’ve heard so far. Take the title track, for example. It puts a charge into the old brain stem right from the get-go with a mess of sawing riffs, scalding vocals, and delicious drum swarms. You definitely do get that Discharge / Entombed feel, but when the song passes the 2:00 mark it turns into a freight train chugfest that will give you some serious neck sprain. Damn, this is a blast.

Check out the title track below and go here for the rest of the songs. If I find out how to get the album, I’ll update this post.

UPDATE! As of today (March 15), Black Jesus have uploaded the entire album to Bandcamp for streaming and digital download. The link is below, as is the full album stream.

https://blackjesussaves.bandcamp.com/album/everything-black-everything-dead
https://www.facebook.com/TheTrueBlackJesus
http://blackjesussaves.bandcamp.com/track/fucked-live

 

 

 

 

DEATHEMBER

I reviewed this Swedish band’s most recent album, Going Postal, last May. Turns out there was a bonus song included on a limited edition of the disk that I didn’t have on my review copy, but today the band uploaded it as the soundtrack to a music video that includes footage from their headlining tour of India in February of this year. The song is named “By Damnation”, and it will be released as a single as well.

When I reviewed Going Postal, I hypothesized the existence of two strains of “groove” metal, one that’s primal, relatively stripped-down, visceral, generally mid-paced, and melodic, and another (see Meshuggah) that’s more rhythmically complex, highly syncopated, speedier, and less melodic.  And I thought that Deathember’s music represented a cool intersection of the two, tapping into the infectious, primal appeal of the first line, but also incorporating unusual rhythmic patterns and technically demanding instrumental interaction of the kind that’s closer to the second line. The same could be said of “By Damnation”. Check it out:

http://deathember.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Deathemberband

 

 

 

COGNITIVE

By coincidence, New Jersey’s Cognitive are another band whose last release I also reviewed last May (here). It was a debut EP entitled The Horrid Swarm. Today I learned that they’ve uploaded a new song to ReverbNation named “Regurgitated Existence”, which is drawn from their forthcoming self-titled debut album. Remembering how brain scrambling that EP was, I decided to see what was up. What’s up is that Cognitive still know how to make a big hearty brain scramble with all the trimmings.

The song is part tech-death, part brutal slam, part death/grind explosion, part guitar freak-out. It splits the skull, cleans out the grey goop with a serrated knife, and fries it up in a pan of butter and peppers. The song also features guest vocals by Ray Mazzola of Full Blown Chaos. It’s a nice coincidence that “Regurgitated Existence” appeared the same day as the new Aborted song, because there’s a kindred spirit here. Listen to “Regurgitated Existence” below, and after that you can hear excerpts of other tracks from the album. It can be pre-ordered here.

https://www.facebook.com/Cognitivenj