SEEN AND HEARD: IMMOLATION, ENGULFED, TOMB MOLD, EKPYROSIS, SHADES OF DEEP WATER

 

For this mid-week round-up of new discoveries I have news about the next Immolation album, excellent advance tracks from three albums coming out early next year, and a full stream of one fine album released yesterday. This collection of items is heavy on the death metal, and it’s also heavy on eye-catching cover art.

IMMOLATION

In a September interview Immolation’s Ross Dolan explained that the band’s new album was finished except for the mixing, that the artwork was done except for a few inside pieces, and that the album would be released early in 2017. I haven’t seen any official announcements about the album since then, but yesterday Bristol Deathfest (here) and UKEM Records leaked some news and the cover art (above) by Pär Olofsson: The name of Immolation’s new tenth studio album is Atonement, and the release is expected on February 24, 2017.

 

 

The album will be released by Nuclear Blast, and here’s the track list:

1. The Distorting Light
2. When The Jackals Come
3. Fostering The Divide
4. Rise The Heretics
5. Thrown To the Fire
6. Destructive Currents
7. Lower
8. Atonement
9. Above All
10. The Power Of Gods
11. Epiphany

UKEM Records already has a live pre-order page here (which includes all the info I’ve just relayed to you):

http://www.ukemrecords.co.uk/product/immolation-atonement/

And by the way, Immolation is co-headlining Bristol Deathfest, which will take place on April 16-17, 2017, in Bristol, UK. More info here:

https://www.facebook.com/bristoldeathfestuk/

 

 

 

 

 

 

ENGULFED

I saw this fantastic cover art weeks ago before knowing very much about the release that it would accompany. It was created by New Zealand’s amazing Nick Keller. It appears on a debut album called Engulfed In Obscurity by a Turkish death metal band named Engulfed. The band’s line-up includes current or former members of such groups as Decaying Purity, Burial Invocation, Diabolizer, and Deggial. The album will be released in February by Hellthrasher Productions on CD, with a vinyl edition coming in April or May through Blood Harvest Records.

Yesterday the band released the title track, and when I heard it I felt like my brain had been cooked with a blowtorch. It has an old-school flavor, and it’s absolutely ferocious. It delivers utterly malignant, meat-grinding riffs, sadistic soloing, horrifying howls, and a viciously pummeling drum performance. It drives at a rampaging pace for most of its length, but includes morbid breaks in the torrent of destructiveness that the band use to infiltrate your head with dismal melodies that deepen the song’s crypt-like atmosphere.

Absolutely Grade-A stuff here… this album has vaulted to a prominent place in my “most anticipated” list for 2017.

https://www.facebook.com/engulfedtr/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TOMB MOLD

I wrote at the outset that this post was full of eye-catching pieces of album art, and here’s another. This one is a disgusting piece of filth (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) excreted by Yuri Kahan (of Funebrarum) for the debut album of a Toronto-based duo (guitarist/bassist Derrick Vella and vocalist/drummer Max Klebanoff) who call themselves Tomb Mold. It follows a pair of demos released earlier this year (one of which — The Moulting — was actually written and recorded after the forthcoming LP) and it’s set for release on February 3 by Sweden’s Blood Harvest Records.

Below you can become embroiled in the first advance track from the album, a monstrosity called “Clockwise Metamorphosis”. The song is undeniably bone-mangling and gut-ripping, but it’s a dynamic, twisting and turning piece of horror. The grooves in the song are titanic, the soloing is hot enough to bubble the skin, and the song is produced in a way that gives it vibrant clarity without detracting at all from its power.

A bunch of pre-order options are available here:

https://bloodharvestrecords.bandcamp.com/album/primordial-malignity-12lp-cd

Tomb Mold on the Web:
https://tombmold.bandcamp.com
http://decibelmagazine.com/blog/2016/9/15/tomb-mold-interview

 

 

 

 

 

 

EKPYROSIS

Yes, the parade of eye-catching cover art continues, this time with eyeballs, skulls, and a strangulation, crafted by the hand of César Valladares for Asphyxiating Devotion, the full-length debut by Ekpyrosis from Milan, Italy. Spain’s Memento Mori plans to release the album on January 23.

Two days ago the first advance track from the album infected YouTube. Its name is “Profound Death”. Ekpyrosis identify such bands as Incantation, Sadistic Intent, Demigod, and Grotesque as their influences, and the song does indeed give off foul whiffs of those reanimated corpses.

As the vocalist growls his deep, monstrous proclamations, the song alternately charges ahead in a destructive feeding frenzy and then lurches, crawls, and stomps. The music is eminently electrifying, satisfyingly skull-smashing, and pungently putrescent. And I have to give an extra round of applause for the gut-vibrating bass twang that briefly rears its head in the song’s back half.

Yes indeed, one more album that deserves a place on my nightmarish most-anticipated list for the early months of 2017.

http://memento-mori.es
https://www.facebook.com/ekpyrosisband/
https://ekpyrosis.bandcamp.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SHADES OF DEEP WATER

One more piece of eye-catching cover art, this time created by Leonore Molter. It adorns an album-length compilation with the mouth-filling name of Syvien Sävyjen Universumi/The Desolation by a one-man Finnish band named Shades of Deep Water. The album was released yesterday by the German label Dunkelheit Produktionen and it’s available on Bandcamp.

Sadly, I don’t have time to prepare an adequate review of the album, but I do think it’s well worth your time. It’s a compilation of two EPs (which explains the title) that were originally released in 2015. The first three tracks come from Syvien Sävyjen Universumi, and the final two appeared on The Desolation.

The music is a beautifully crafted amalgam of dark musical styles with doom at its core. The sorrowful guitar melodies are powerfully seductive, the drum and bass tones are staggeringly heavy, and I’m very happy to report that the vocals are of the cavernous, horrifying variety.

Treat yourself to the opening track, “Universe”, and if you’re like me you’ll become immediately hooked. More dismal delights await you after that.

https://dunkelheitprod.bandcamp.com/album/syvien-s-vyjen-universumi-the-desolation