DEATH RITUALS: DESTRÖYER 666, INVERLOCH, PESTILENTIA, VENEFICIUM, SXUPERION, VERRÄTER, BLEAK, PERCUSSOR

 

You may have already guessed from the title of the post that it includes a shitload of new music — and I still haven’t exhausted the new discoveries that I want to write about, not by a long shot.

The last few days have indeed brought a typhoon of new metal that’s intensely good. In this post I’ve collected recommended new songs that are especially dire and destructive, which is why I’ve chosen a different title than the usual “Seen and Heard”. At some point this weekend I’ll bring another post that gathers together the rest of what’s been kicking me in the teeth.

DESTRÖYER 666

I’ve been eagerly awaiting the new album (Wildfire) by these Australian marauders, and at last we now have a song to stream, fittingly titled “Live and Burn”.

 

Photo credit: Ester Segarra

Man, those riffs… those snarls… those shrieking dive-bomb solos… black thrash that’s making Lemmy smile somewhere…

Wildfire will be released by Season of Mist on February 26. Pre-order here.

https://destroyer666.bandcamp.com/album/wildfire
https://www.facebook.com/destroyer666page/

 

 

 

 

 

INVERLOCH

I resisted the temptation to give you the cliched warning that the music in this post “is not for the faint of heart”, because if you were a pearl-clutcher you wouldn’t be hanging around a place like this to begin with. But goddamn, this next song is stupefying.

It comes from the debut album by Australia’s Inverloch, whose ranks include two former members of Disembowelment, a band that made its mark back in the early ’90s. The album’s name is Distance | Collapsed and it’s due for release by Relapse on March 4.

The song is “Distance Collapsed (In Rubble)”. It starts like a rushing freight train, full of distorted tremolo-picked savagery, thundering drums, and ghastly vocal malfeasance. But when the pace drops and the groaning doom descends, it’s like a sinkhole opening beneath your feet, your future collapsing into a pit of bubbling tar. Outstanding.

http://inverloch.bandcamp.com/track/distance-collapsed-in-rubble
https://www.facebook.com/InverlochOfficial/

 

 

 

 

 

PESTILENTIA

Pestilentia are a black metal band from Belarus whose debut album Rotten was released in 2011, followed by a couple of splits and a couple of EPs. In this new year California-based Final Agony Records has announced that it will release a new Pestilentia LP named Where the Sun Dies, with killer cover art by Alex Shadrin at Nether Temple Design.

Below you can check out a track from the album named “Crimson Harvest”. It’s unstoppable. The high-speed blast-beats and hammering bass provide a jet-fueled drive train that will take control of your pulse. The writhing riffs and rippling leads exude an aura of misery and decay, with a bleak melody that’s affecting. The strangulating vocals are beastly. Even when the band drop a short, eerie interlude into their murderous maelstrom just past the half-way point, it works. Love this.

https://www.facebook.com/finalagony/

https://soundcloud.com/finalagony/pestilentia-crimson-harvest

 

 

 

 

 

VENEFICIUM

New Zealand has produced an impressive array of compelling black/death/doom bands (e.g., Diocletian, Witchrist, and Sinistrous Diabolus) and now one more beast from that beautiful land comes our way.

Veneficium is a new group whose three-song EP (title unknown to me) will be released on tape later this year by Iron Bonehead (and btw, though the artwork above appears on the band’s FB page, I don’t believe the artwork for the EP has been disclosed yet).

The one song that recently appeared on Soundcloud is “Mefetic Exhumations” and man, it’s a gargantuan monstrosity of overpowering black/death tumult, with passages of corrosive doom-drenched death that rumble like a bulldozer slowly pushing mounds of corpses into a deep trench. Horrific, inhuman vocals are what you want for this kind of music, and that’s what you get. This is supremely promising.

https://www.facebook.com/veneficiumabyss

 

 

 

 

 

SXUPERION

I’ve only recently become acquainted with Sxuperion despite the fact that over the last five years the band has produced two full-length albums and a handful of shorter releases. It took that long for me to figure out that the band’s sole member is the drummer for Valdur and Weverin — both excellent groups in their own right.

What brought Sxuperion to my attention is the video I’ve embedded below for”Vibration I”, which is one of five Sxuperion tracks on a split released last September with a Nebraska black metal band named Verräter.

“Vibration I” has a dark, mesmerizing, ambient introduction and then the drums begin to blast, and the music heaves ahead on the back of a massive repeating riff that vibrates with malignant power. There are other guitar hooks lying in wait ahead, along with the shimmer of ambient waves and gruesome, cavernous vocals.

I’ve also embedded the Bandcamp stream for the entire split. It deserves more space than I have given it. All the Sxuperion vibrations are transfixing amalgamations of black, death, and ambient music with an otherworldly atmosphere — just as often hypnotic as they are pulse-quickening and savage.

Although Sxuperion is what drew me to this split, I found the three Verräter tracks well worth the time, too. Their music is more in the vein of raw, bestial black metal — racing conflagrations of flailing riffs, hurtling drums, nimble bass, and hair-raising shrieks — but laced with grim atmospheric melodies that give the songs character and heighten their appeal and staying power. And the variety in the third track (“Deny Peace (Pleasure In Pain)”) proves that the band are capable of doing more than burning everything to the ground.

https://bloodymountainrecords.bandcamp.com/album/verrater-sxuperion-split

 

 

 

 

 

 

BLEAK

Last March I wrote some deranged words (here) about a slaughtering self-titled EP by a band from Syracuse, NY, named Bleak. Two days ago Bleak released a new single on Bandcamp named “Bury Me Alive”, which will appear on the band’s next EP, Songs For Cowards (to be released by Prison Tatt Records).

The music is catchy, but it lives up the band’s name, and to the song’s name as well. The vocals are the raw tirades of a mind melting down and the music is a hard-to-classify amalgamation of styles that’s heavy and hard-hitting. And catchy. And full of hate.

http://ihatebleak.bandcamp.com/album/songs-for-cowards
https://www.facebook.com/bleakhate/

 

 

 

 

 

PERCUSSOR

To finish up this post, I have some acoustic New Age music.

Nah, just fuckin’ with you. But after you took a look at that awesome cover art, you knew that already, didn’t you? What I really have is more musical death worship.

This time it’s embodied in the title track to an album called Disturbing Reality by a band named Percussor, whose members come from Philadelphia and Wilmington. The album will be released on February 5 by Horror Pain Gore Death Productions.

I’m really digging this song — it’s a meat-grinding, bone-splintering, brain-pulping piece of dire and dynamic death metal that proves to be very infectious. Really vicious vocal tirades and an array of very seductive little guitar flourishes enhance the magnetic attraction of all the great riffs.

To pre-order Disturbing Reality on CD, go here. To pre-order a digital download of the album, use this link:

https://hpgd.bandcamp.com/album/disturbing-reality
https://www.facebook.com/PercussorMetal/