SEEN AND HEARD: DEATHCULT, SERPENTRANCE, FŌR, COGNITIVE

Here are a few new things that have been wrecking my ears over the last 24 hours.

DEATHCULT

Yesterday I posted (here) a new song by the Swiss band Bölzer, and today I begin this round-up with music from another Swiss band. This one is named Deathcult and it happens to include one of the members of Bölzer (guitarist/vocalist KzR, who also now seems to be the vocalist in Witchrist).

Deathcult released a four-song demo in 2012 that I haven’t yet heard, though it’s available on Bandcamp, and earlier this year Me Saco Un Ojo Records released a new vinyl EP entitled Pleading for Death… Choking on Life (copies are still available there and elsewhere).

On Saturday a Facebook status pointed me to a song from the EP named “The Drunkard In the Sky”. Its length falls between 11 and 12 minutes. Its mood falls between the somber and the spine-chilling. The spare, eerie, even beautiful introduction gives few clues as to what happens when the song begins to slash and gallop — it becomes a rifftastic romp of ghastly old-school death metal with raw, rancid, van Drunen-like vocals — or when it crawls like a man whose limbs have been shattered with stones. Really excellent.

https://www.facebook.com/DeathMetalCult
https://invictusproductions666.bandcamp.com/album/demo-mmxii

 

 

SERPENTRANCE

I know almost nothing about this band, except the fact that their music kills. They joined Facebook three days ago (I became their 60th “like” today). Their page doesn’t say where they’re located, nor does it provide the names of the members. I know about them only because I saw that a FB friend of mine liked them — and I thought their name was cool so I checked to see if they had any music up for listening. They do — one song.

The song is “Obeisance To the Antiquity of Sin”, and it’s simply massive, exuding a thick, suffocating atmosphere of malevolent horror. Noxious clouds of distortion shroud everything except the penetrating squeal and squall of the guitar solos and the riveting snap of the snare drum. The vocalist’s echoing roars and ferocious howls come from deep in a dank crypt. When it’s slow, it’s catastrophically doomed, a window into the void. When it’s fast, it’s obliterating.

The track is a “name your price” download on Bandcamp (link below). I’m including both the Bandcamp stream and the YouTube stream of the song.

http://serpentrance.bandcamp.com/track/serpentrance-obeisance-to-the-antiquity-of-sin
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Serpentrance/243700699154518

 

 

 

 

 

FŌR

I could paraphrase the concept behind the band FŌR, but I suspect something would be lost. So let’s have the words of the band:

“FŌR is devoted to the Germanic black witch Gullveig, and her Thursian bloodline of ravenous hordes of wolves and werewolves. The music’s concept is based upon the sacred bindrune, Ulfhamir, and pursues to invoke the black wolf spirit within. To awaken the savage beast and invoke the dark vile blood from her veins. The eitr of Niflheim itself. The wrath of monstrosities that dwell within the night behind the trees in the shadow. An invocation of pure lycanthropic wisdom.”

At some point this year Iron Bonehead Productions will be releasing a split by FŌR and a UK death metal band I like a lot named Sheol. FŌR’s contribution to the split is a song named “To Envisage A Fuliginous Sun”. All that’s available for streaming is a sample from the song, little more than a minute of music. It has made me lycanthropically wise. I think you’ll understand why I included it as a follow-on to the Serpentrance song.

https://www.facebook.com/theravenouschasm

 

 

 

 

COGNITIVE

I reviewed this New Jersey band’s debut EP (The Horrid Swarm) last May (here), and in March of this year I featured a new song named “Regurgitated Existence” that’s due to appear on their self-titled debut album. Now they’ve started streaming yet another new song, this one entitled “Blood Hungry”.

“Blood Hungry” drives hard and fast, except during brief moments when it drags like a corpse-laden plague cart or stomps like a mastodon. It’s a deft mixture of barbarity and technically adept instrumental ebullience. Sort of like a tarantula swarm.

European fans can order the new album here, and it will be released in the U.S. next month.

https://www.facebook.com/Cognitivenj