SEEN AND HEARD: PUTERAEON, VANHELGD, MISERY INDEX, DAWN OF DEMENTIA, FALL OF THE ALBATROSS

Here we have another round-up of new music to recommend for your aural pleasure. I’m splitting this quintet with one of our other writers, Austin Weber. I’m introducing the first three items, and he’s got the other two after that. Here we go:

PUTERAEON

I’ve massively enjoyed this Swedish death metal band’s last two albums, The Esoteric Order (2011) (reviewed here) and Cult Cthulhu (2012) (which I miserably failed to review). They’ve now completed another Lovecraftian-inspired album entitled The Crawling Chaos, which will be released by Cyclone Empire on April 25 and features chilling cover art by Christoffer Fredriksson. The band recently released an official video for the album’s third track, “Path To Oblivion”, and I caught up with that today. You should catch up with it, too.

The music is like a hard-charging phalanx of ghouls and golems, a ghastly and galvanizing gallop of gore-strewn gruesomeness. The crypt door has been flung wide open, and all manner of unholy, undead things are coming for your teeth.

The band’s Rune Foss and Jonas Lindblood filmed and edited the video themselves and did a nice job with it. Watch and listen next.

www.puteraeon.com
www.facebook.com/puteraeon

 

 

 

VANHELGD

Sweden’s Vanhelgd have also completed work on a third album, though in this case it will be my first exposure to their music. The new one is entitled Relics of Sulpur Salvation and includes cover art by the band’s frontman Mattias ‘Flesh’ Frisk, who has also done artwork for bands such as Ghost, Maim, and Entrapment.

The album’s third track, “Where All Flesh Is Soil”, was uploaded for streaming today. The song is part dirge and part rapacious assault, but the buzzing tremolo melodies that flow through it uniformly drape the music in a heavy pall of bleakness and dread. Sitting somewhere near the intersection of Swedish death metal and black metal, the song is both atmospheric and ripping — and really good.

Relics Of Sulphur Salvation will be released May 26 on CD and digital — by 20 Buck Spin in North America and by Pulverised outside NorthAm. 20 Buck Spin also plans to release the album on vinyl worldwide, and there will be a cassette version released via Sweden’s Ljudkassett. Check out the song below (in either a YouTube stream or a Bandcamp player)

https://www.facebook.com/vanhelgd

 

 

 

 

 

 

MISERY INDEX

As we previously reported, Baltimore’s mighty Misery Index will release their new album, The Killing Gods, on May 27 via Season of Mist. One song (“Conjuring the Cull”) premiered a couple weeks ago at this location and today brought us a second advance track: “The Calling” — and it’s yet another herald of what’s shaping up to be a 2014 standout. There are some grade A freight-train rhythms in this song, plus a truly jaw-dropping snare attack, a flurry of jabbing fretwork, a swarming guiitar solo, and a thoroughly infected melody. So good…

To pre-order The Killing Gods, visit Season of Mist’s website. For more on Misery Index, visit their Facebook. The new song is streaming exclusively at that noted extreme-metal taste-maker Revolver. So, go HERE to listen.

 

 

DAWN OF DEMENTIA

(Austin Weber wrote this next introduction)

In 2012 Lafayette Indiana death metallers Dawn Of Dementia made an instant mark on the scene with the release of Residuum, a mindblowing effort that, as the band admitted, was influenced by the hyper-melodic and intricate riffing tendencies of Son Of Aurelius. Now, two years later, they are getting close to the release of their first full-length.

They’ve given us the first taste of this new release with “Earth Reciprocation”, a song that maintains their previous aggressive melodic approach supplemented by rich, frenetic bass playing sprayed overtop, but they have upped the ante considerably from the sound of their last effort. The new song shows Dawn of Dementia channeling a more cutthroat rage that could be compared to Cognizance, while at the same time delivering a more mature and progressive approach, songwriting-wise. The song also throws in some nifty solos, orchestral additions, gurglier growls than before, and a fitting instrumental piano-laced intro.

Though losing some members between their last effort and now, they sound no worse for that loss, organically progressing quite well even with fewer members now in the band. The song also gets a big boost from the inclusion of the always superb Hannes Grossmann fueling the song with his complex, precise drumming.  I asked the band and they told me that, as of now, he will appear on three of the tracks, with the rest of the drum recording still in process. Stay tuned, because the band told me they will be airing another new song in the coming months!

 

 

 

photo by Nik Vechery

FALL OF THE ALBATROSS

(Austin Weber wrote this next introduction, too)

A few months back I was fortunate enough to see and write about a talented band called Fall Of The Albatross who played my hometown with Cryptodira, a band I’ve written about and whose music we’ve premiered here before. I’ve witnessed few live acts capable of pushing the envelope as far as these guys do. They craft some seriously difficult and constantly shifting music and then play it so smoothly live, as if it weren’t the insane and hard-to-play music that in fact it is. Here are a few live videos that will give you a glimpse into the unique, jaw-dropping music that Fall Of The Albatross create.

 

 

 

Fall Of The Albatross are probably the best instrumental metal band you haven’t heard of yet, and this post serves as a notice that a new song of theirs will be premiering here at NCS on 4/20. So try to remember that, especially those of you who on that day will be lost behind a hazy wall of smoke too thick to remember that a righteous jam is being unleashed upon the earth!

https://www.facebook.com/fallofthealbatross