ON THE WAY: ROTTING CHRIST, CONAN, KHTHONIIK CERVIIKS, UR DRAUGR

 

As a result of finally finding a few hours yesterday to use in exploring music (for the first time this week), I’m again deluged in new things I’d like to tell you about. To avoid overburdening your patience, I’ve split my discoveries into two posts for today. The focus of this one is announcements of new albums that don’t yet have any music streaming. But because I hate to post anything on the site without some sounds, the last item is a fantastic new song.

ROTTING CHRIST

We’re very big fans of Rotting Christ around here, and so this announcement from two days ago was especially exciting. I’m just going to quote the statement from Sakis Tolis:

After more than a year and a half of deep soul searching, and 4 grueling months in the studio, I can proudly announce that we have finished recording the new Rotting Christ album. It’s eleven new songs, with eleven different and unique stories influenced by rituals and myths from all around the globe. All of these new creations are mystical journeys into hidden knowledge under the name Rituals that will release on the 12th of February, 2016.

Rituals is the darkest and most personal-sounding Rotting Christ album that we’ve ever made, and you’ll be able to hear it very shortly. Stay tuned brothers & sisters!

The album will be released by Season of Mist, and yes, we will stay tuned.

https://www.facebook.com/rotting.christ.tr

 

 

 

 

 

CONAN

I’m a latecomer to the music of Britain’s Conan, but instantly became a believer after hearing the immensity of their caveman battle doom at this year’s Maryland Deathfest. Yesterday, thanks to a tip from our friend Utmu, I learned this news about their next album:

It will be entitled Revengeance and it’s scheduled for release by Napalm Records on January 29, 2016. The cover art for the album was also revealed, and as you can see, it’s awesome.

The style of the artwork seems familiar to me, but I’ve searched, and none of the announcements about the album bothered to identify the artist. If I find out, I’ll update this post.

https://www.facebook.com/conandoom

 

 

 

 

 

 

KHTHONIIK CERVIIKS

If the name Khthoniik Cerviiks is new to you (in addition to being an insuperable challenge at spelling bees), I strongly advise you to explore (below) the vicious wonders of Heptaedrone, their debut demo from last year, about which I spilled many words on our site in addition to premiering a track.

The announcement I saw yesterday was that Iron Bonehead plans to release the band’s first full-length album in February 2015, bearing the title Serologiikal Scars: Vertex Of Dementiia. (Iron Bonehead will handle the vinyl edition, NecroShine Productions will release it on CD).

And… the cover art was also unveiled. I happen to think it’s great, but I’m once again in the dark about who created it. Once again, if I find out, I’ll update this post.

https://www.facebook.com/IronBoneheadProductions

 

 

 

 

 

 

UR DRAUGR

Now it’s time for an announcement that I can also pair with new music.

Like Khthoniik Cerviiks, Ur Draugr is a name that readers of our site should know, given how often I’ve written about this band from Western Australia. Their last release was an EP named The Wretched Ascetic (reviewed here), which consisted of the few songs that the band was able to recover from an intended album-length collection that was victimized by a catastrophic hardware failure.

Now (as previously reported here), the band have completed work on another full-length collection of songs that will be released under the title With Hunger Undying. Earlier this week brought the announcement that ATMF will release it on December 7, and we also got the premiere of the album’s first track, “Fertile Crescent”. The band describe the concept of the song as follows:

“Fertile Crescent” opens the album; a concept piece that follows the ascent of man to civilization through agriculture, and the subsequent forsaking of nomadism and sinister concentration of religious and political power that inevitably followed.

As Ur Draugr have done in the past, they’ve created a song that’s as disorienting as it is richly multifaceted — but this track may be the best I’ve heard from them yet. It burns hot as a shrieking acetylene torch at the beginning and then falls into a nightmarish trance before exploding again. Melodically dissonant, and with a multitude of strange needling riffs and rippling bass notes (plus an alien-sounding solo), “Fertile Crescent” repeatedly coils the tension to the breaking point — and just as often glides into the creation of dark celestial panoramas anchored by riveting drum rhythms. Before it ends, the song also transforms into a monster of sledge-hammering groove and ominous drone, just as it later becomes the stuff of beautiful narcotic dreams at the finish.

You have to stitch a lot of genre terms together to come close to what Ur Draugr are doing here — black metal, death metal, progressive metal, avant garde, and more. It’s distinctive, it’s imaginative, it’s black as night, it’s heavy as hell.

https://www.facebook.com/urdraugr