SHADES OF BLACK (Part 1): DEATH VOMIT, EASTERN FRONT, FŌR, FÓRN

This is another weekend round-up of recommended new music. A particular kind of new music. The kind that will wreck your head on the shoals of savagery and cast your soul into outer darkness. This collection turned out to be so large that I divided it into two parts; the second part will appear soon. The bands are presented in alphabetical order, which is about the only kind of order you’ll find here.

DEATH VOMIT

NCS supporter Utmu pointed me to the first song presented here. It comes from Gutted By Horrors, the debut album of a Chilean band named Death Vomit that’s due for release on July 1, 2014, by the Spanish label Xtreem Music. The song is “Indestructible Abominations”. It’s a noxious cloud of utterly destructive black/death war metal, whose gargantuan grinding riffs spread a morbid melody like the plague while the vocalist renders inhuman echoing howls and soul-devouring roars. Attractively obliterating music.

I’m including a stream of the song in two different players. The album will be available for order on CD at the Xtreem Music site. Based on past experience, I’m guessing Xtreem will eventually put the album on their Bandcamp page (here) as well.

http://deathvomit.bandcamp.com
http://www.xtreemmusic.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

EASTERN FRONT

UK-based Eastern Front’s 2010 debut album Blood On Snow was really good. At last, they’ve finished a new one — Descent Into Genocide — which is now due for release on July 28 by Candlelight Records. Like the first album, it will explore themes from World War II, such as the 1941 Babi Year massacre that’s the subject of the album’s title track. Recently the band posted an excerpt of one of the new songs to their ReverbNation page. The sounds of an air raid siren launch “Retribution Sky” and the music then begins to rampage, with rolling waves of ominous melody and skin-splitting shrieks. I’m frustrated that the clip is so short, but I’ll take it anyway.

http://descentintogenocideboxset.bigcartel.com/product/official-eastern-front-descent-into-genocide-boxset
http://www.reverbnation.com/easternfront
https://www.facebook.com/EasternFront

 

 

 

 

 

FŌR

I reviewed this Swedish band’s cataclysmic 2013 debut EP Blakaz Askǭ Hertô early last fall. Yesterday I learned that FŌR will be releasing a split with Sheol (an awfully good UK band) via Iron Bonehead, and that another split with a Canadian band named Garrotting Deep is apparently also in the works. But in the meantime, they’ve unveiled a single called “Nauðiz Ana Theke Fuir” that will appear on a forthcoming compilation later this summer — Cosmic Death Trance Vol. I — to be released by Ceremonial Void.

According to an interview of the band, FŌR is the Proto-Germanic word for “Fire”, and the name was chosen to “invoke the essence of Múspellsheimr and awaken the black flame within” — Múspellsheimr being the Old Norse word for one of the Nine Worlds and home to the fire jötunn. The band have further explained that the name of the new song “is an invocation of the rune Nauðiz and it’s conjuring black spells of horrendous wisdom.”

The music’s heavily distorted, corrosive riffs create a dense cloud of sustained radioactive decay, the drummer striking the slow beats of a funereal procession, the vocalist disseminating foul, cavernous proclamations — and then the drummer begins firing like a machine gun and the riff bombs begin exploding mercilessly,  one after another. It’s poisonous, skull-splitting music and comes highly recommended.

Even better, the new single is available for free on Bandcamp:

http://theravenouschasm.bandcamp.com/track/nau-iz-ana-theke-fuir

 

 

 

 

 

FÓRN

Fórn come to us from Boston. They put out a self-titled debut EP last year consisting of two songs and they’ve finished a new one named The Departure of Consciousness. I heard two of the new songs yesterday, one of which just premiered at Invisible Oranges. That one is the opening track, “Dweller on the Threshold”, and it has really grabbed me by the back of the neck with big calloused hands.

The massive riffs and gargantuan drum beats pound like a slow-moving avalanche of utter doom. The vocalist roars, howls, and shrieks like a figure from the upper echelons of a demonic pantheon. The seductive melody peals forth like the notes of giant funeral bells until the song explodes in moving waves of tremolo’d fallout, only to collapse in a final catastrophic sinkhole of doom, the music ringing in the mind long after silence comes. Fantastic, and fantastically unnerving.

“Dweller on the Threshold” is exclusively streaming at this location, so you must go listen to it there:

http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2014/06/premiere-forn-dweller-on-the-threshold/

 

The Departure of Consciousness will be released by Vendetta Records in late July or early August. Fórn has a Facebook page here and a Bandcamp page here. This promises to be something special.