SEEN AND HEARD: ÆVANGELIST, AHAB, BLACKOSH

 

I’m again backlogged with new music that I haven’t had a chance to send your way this week. I’m hoping I’ll have time this weekend to compile a few more collections, but to make a start here are three new songs that I hope you’ll make time to hear.

ÆVANGELIST

Yesterday the void-faring Ævangelist entity released a head-spinning 14-minute track on Bandcamp. Entitled “Abstract Catharsis”, it was originally recorded in 2013 for a four-way split that never came to fruition, and as far as I can tell, it hasn’t previously been made available for listening.

Those who are familiar with Ævangelist already know that no two of their releases (or, for that matter, individual songs) sound completely alike. “Abstract Catharsis” preserves the overarching otherworldly ambience and predatory ferocity of much of the band’s sound, but this one incorporates a lot of other different and very interesting elements.

 

 

Along with deranged swarms of alien guitar notes and grim, buzzing riffs, “Abstract Catharsis” also includes fascinatingly unpredictable (but gripping) drum rhythms and progressions and a repeating bass motif that gets its hooks into your brain and hangs on, plus a variety of vocal ravings that sound like an entire menagerie of demonic beasts was recruited for the recording.

There’s an improvisational and experimental quality to much of this long song — and it simply boils with arcane energy. It comes so close to splitting apart at the seams, as if the denizens of a monstrous asylum were about to break their bonds and scatter across the landscape in an explosion of mayhem. But the compulsive drum and bass rhythms continually reach out and keep the tumult tethered — if only barely.

Near the end, the vocals turn low, clean, and very sombre, with a shimmering ambient melody that seems like a deep breath after all the unhinged exuberance that precedes it.

If I had to try to sum up the feeling of this thrilling song in two words, these are the ones I would choose: abstract catharsis.

https://aevangelist.bandcamp.com/album/abstract-catharsis
https://www.facebook.com/aevangelist.official

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AHAB

Well, somehow we still haven’t managed to review the fine new album by Ahab, though we did manage to publish Grant Skelton’s interview with the band’s vocalist/guitarist Daniel Droste. In the meantime, Ahab have released another new song from the The Boats of The Glen Carrig (via Decibel), which I learned about yesterday thanks to a message from our friend eiterorm.

This new song is the album’s opening track, “The Isle”, and it is presented in the form of a video from the studio. The slow, wistful beginning of the song is absolutely beautiful, but — as you know it will — the music turns grim and heavy, as Droste’s chameleon-like voice drops from his arcing tenor down into the depths of an ocean trench. But even as the music slips its coils around your throat and begins to tighten them, it remains mesmerizing (and there’s a clean guitar solo in the song that’s sublime).

In a word, amazing.

https://www.facebook.com/AhabDoom

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BLACKOSH

Blackosh is the name of the new project started by Petr “Blackie” Hošek, a founding member of the early Czech black metal band Root, whose first recordings were in the late ’80s, as well as other bands such as Crux and Entrails. Blackosh has recorded a debut album named Whores, Booze & Black Metal, and it will be released by Germany’s Iron Bonehead Productions on tape in September, with a vinyl 12″ version coming on November 27.

All the songs on Whores are in the Czech language, and one of them is now streaming. Its name is “Peklo nás baví”. Google Translate tells me this means “hell is fun”, and this is one of those rare times when I suspect the translation is absolutely correct.

The vocals are just plain crazy, and certainly don’t stay within the usual black metal framework. The riffs are a blurring buzz-storm, the drumming a virtually non-stop fusillade of blast beats. The whole song is almost over before it starts. I’m not even sure I can explain why, but I like it.

www.blackosh.com
www.facebook.com/Mr.Blackoshmusic