SEEN AND HEARD: SICKENING AND MARDUK

 

Things have been busy around our metallic island, and I’m afraid I still haven’t been able to catch up on all the new songs and videos I want to hear that have rolled out over the last week. But rather than just throw my hands up in surrender, I at least want to call your attention to two new tracks I heard this morning that brightened my day. And by “brightened”, I mean “blew it to smithereens”.

SICKENING

Man, times flies. More than four years have passed since our last (and only) mention of this band from Firenze, Italy. Four years ago I posted about a song from their then-forthcoming second album (Against the Wall of Pretense), likening it to “the demonic offspring of some unspeakable three-way orgy among Suffocation, Dying Fetus, and Devourment.” Now, Sickening have finished recording a third full-length entitled The Beyond, which is described as a concept album based on the 1981 horror movie of the same name directed by Lucio Fulci.

Today the band premiered one of the new songs, “…And then new light”. Take a look at the cover art for the album up above and then try to imagine what produced that devastation. Then multiply the destructive force of whatever you imagined by 10, and you’ll be getting close to the hammering brutality of the song.

The drums realistically sound like heavy automatic weapons fire, the riffs resemble mammoth pile-drivers working in tandem, the lead guitar machinations sound thoroughly alien, and the stygian gutturals are as filthy and vomit-filled as you could want. Obliterating music.

The Beyond was mixed by Stefano Morabito at 16th Cellar Studio in Rome and will be released on March 10, 2015, by Amputated Vein Records.

https://www.facebook.com/sickeningofficial

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MARDUK

As we’ve been reporting every chance we get, Sweden’s Marduk have a new album named Frontschwein that’s due for release in Europe on January 19 via Century Media Records. Today a second track from the album premiered. This one is named “Wartheland”. I thought I couldn’t get more eager for the album, having heard the first advance track (“Rope of Regret”), but I was wrong.

“Wartheland” is both electrifying and sombre, devastating in the power of its attack and yet memorable. It’s another sign that Frontschwein will be a reconnection of sorts with the glories of Panzer Division Marduk, but the song’s warlike trappings are accompanied by a grim melody and a dark and doomed atmosphere that shows another side of the band’s sound.

https://www.facebook.com/Mardukofficial