AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE: GALVANIZER — “SANGUINE VIGIL”

 

Let us speak first of the tones of the music on Galvanizer’s debut album, Sanguine Vigil, because they are so delicious. Two of them are prominent.

The first is the deep, gut-rumbling, smoke-spewing, chain-sawing grind of the guitar. You know that tone. It sounds as if you could set the speakers next to a block of concrete and watch with a smile as the music vibrates it into a pile of gravel. You might also imagine it sending a web of fine fractures through your skull, like the appearance of a windshield that’s been crazed by an errant rock kicked up from the highway in front of you.

The second prominent tone in the music is the snap and crack of the snare drum. It’s as sharp and hard-edged as the guitar tone is murky and corroded. It sounds like an ax biting into wood, or the rapid fire of a handgun.

 

 

There are other vibrant tones in the music… the deep thrumming sound of the bass… the noxious, guttural grotesquery of the vocals… the muffled whump of the bass drum… the eerie, dismal moaning of the melodic leads….

But of course, all these attractive tones ultimately wouldn’t amount to much if they weren’t deployed in well-written and well-executed songs, but here they are. And the songs on Sanguine Vigil also match up exceedingly well with this band’s name — because they are GALVANIZING.

The opening track “Mood For the Blade” comes out of the gate in a full-throttle, titanically toned barrage, and the album as a whole rarely lets up after that. The songs are compact, each one an electrifying death/grind rampage, each one spliced with grooves. The music rips, romps, and pounds… and sometimes (but not often) it drops into a grisly, staggering lurch. And draped over the whole affair is a morbid mantle of horror.

When we premiered the album’s opening track earlier this year, I commented that “these three dudes may look young, but they clearly have a mature command of the brand of death metal they’ve chosen to embrace”. I can call them young because I’m probably older than their parents, and the music does have the kind of spirit and surging power that recalls the early glory days of a lot of other precocious young death metal barbarians from decades past. But on the other hand, the music also displays the kind of confidence and skill that you’d expect from seasoned practitioners of this gruesome art.

 

And with that introduction, we invite you to enjoy the full stream of Sanguine Vigil. The album will be released on February 28 in a CD edition by Everlasting Spew Records, and a vinyl edition will be coming later this year via Me Saco Un Ojo. There’s also some cool related merch on offer:

 

 

The cover art, by the way, which is also featured on that shirt, was created by the famed Turkka G. Rantanen, who did indeed do the cover art for Demilich‘s classic albums from the early ’90s, and dozens of other revered metal releases as well.

Check the links below for pre-order info and to stay abreast of further news leading up to the release.

Pre-order:
https://everlastingspewrecords.bandcamp.com/album/sanguine-vigil
https://everlastingspew.com/25-pre-orders
https://www.mesacounojo.com/shop/

Galvanizer on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/GalvanizerBand/