OVERFLOWING STREAMS: AT THE GATES, BEFORE THE DAWN, WOMBBATH, FRACTAL UNIVERSE, SEEMING EMPTINESS, IMPURE WILHELMINA, HESPER PAYNE, CULTES DES GHOULES, GRAVE MIASMA, VILDHJARTA, PERTURBATOR, MAGGOT CROWN

 

It’s been a long time since I resorted to this Overflowing Streams format for spreading the word about new music I’ve enjoyed, but last week seemed more even more insane than usual — just a ton of new tracks were revealed by old gods, new gods, and assorted minor demons. As bloated as the following collection may seem, it’s still far from complete — I’ll include a few more in tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK column.

Without further ado, here we go with lots of sights sounds and not many words, though I do encourage you to add your own in the Comments.

AT THE GATES

Speaking of old gods, I might have included the news about Darkthrone album No. 19 (Eternal Hails), but there’s no music yet, so I’ll wait. You can peep the cover art here. But among the old gods, At the Gates did give us a new song, and I had to lead with it.

Dark sorcery at first, racing and jolting later, with doses of fire and fury, and taking wing into ominous clouds…

Album: The Nightmare Of Being
Release date: July 2nd

 

 

 

 

BEFORE THE DAWN (Finland)

What a nice surprise, Tuomas Saukkonen gathers a reunion with Lars Eikind and Juho Räihä to record a new single, which will be included in a reissue of 2007’s Deadlight (that will include some other bonus tracks too). We get heart-swelling, blood-pumping sounds, a Lars/Tuomas vocal duet in the chorus, and a gorgeous extended solo by Juho….

Album: Deadlight – II Decades Of Darkness
Release date: July 9th

 

 

 

 

WOMBBATH (Sweden)

Just a teaser reel here rather than a complete song, but since it’s Wombbath I couldn’t resist. The reel provides a startlingly multi-faceted display of dark menace, attacking ferocity, harrowing and haunting grandeur, bone-mangling punishment, and sounds of fear, defiance, and despair (among other things)… damned excited for this already.

Album: Agma
Release date: ???

 

 

 

 

FRACTAL UNIVERSE (France)

This is for those in the mood for musical hair-spin turns, as long as you don’t mind some crooning and dreaminess and saxophone soloing along with the growling and groove and fretwork ebullience… (crooning and saxophone make another appearance in the next track in this round-up too).

Album: The Impassable Horizon
Release date: June 25th

 

 

 

 

SEEMING EMPTINESS (Germany)

This one is crushing in its heaviness, bone-breaking in its percussive assaults, gloom-shaded but entrancing in its melodies… and the soloing (both guitar and saxophone) is tremendously good. And I guess I should warn you again that there’s singing along with monstrous growls and cauterizing howls…

I’ll also note that this song comes from the first Seeming Emptiness album that includes other musicians besides the mastermind Kevin M. — with Tobias Netzell on vocals, his brother Christian on drums, and Laurence Jonathan writing the lyrics.

Album title: Bliss Entombed
Release date: May 30

 

 

 

 

IMPURE WILHELMINA (Switzerland)

Well, since I’ve already crossed well over the line into clean singing and will be self-flaggelating for my sins, I might as well really earn the punishment. This song has such an invigorating pulse (many of them, in many forms) and more changing moods than you might expect at first (things get particularly feverish and foreboding at the end)…

Album: Antidote
Release date: May 21st

 

 

 

 

HESPER PAYNE (UK)

In this cursed musical tale the band don’t waste any time putting your heart in your throat, with a grand yet perilous fanfare, skull-busting percussion, and grotesque growls… but man, do things proceed from there in unexpected directions… venturing into eerie, spectral realms, sonic asylums of madness, haunted theaters where chilling narratives unfold (and where a wondrous piece of guitar sorcery gets a spotlight), and charnal pits of dread and doom.

The vocal textures are also as varied and theatrical as everything else, and include a guest appearance by Roberta Wilkinson of Geologise Theatre (I’m told that is a science communication duo who write broadway-style songs about geology and earth science!).

(This is a single released on April 28th.)

 

 

 

 

CULTES DES GHOULES (Poland)

Surprise! Here we have a complete release instead of an advance track, even if the release is only a two-song escapade. And what a diabolical escapade it is — full of screams, wails, demented laughter, and gnashing of teeth, and twisted, unpredictable course changes in tempo and sound, all of them carrying us through a hellish, hallucinatory dimension where the devils have become expert in shattering sanity into shards… This band continue to earn their name.

EP: Deeds Withot A Name
Release date: April 30

P.S. The ghoul cult released a second EP on the same day — a three-track affair named Eyes of Satan. Haven’t heard that yet, but you may see some words about it in tomorrow’s column.

 

 

 

 

GRAVE MIASMA (UK)

Terrific cover art, which you’ll see in the YouTube stream. The song (which premiered at Cvlt Nation) is pretty terrific too. The name of the album effectively captures the visions summoned by this extravagantly morphing new track, perilous to both body and mind.

Album: Abyss of Wrathful Deities
Release date: May 14th

 

 

 

 

VILDHJARTA (Sweden)

Not a band I’ve thought much about in ages, with their lone album now ten yers old. They still bring the punishing atonal grooves on the new song below, this time paired with sounds of dissonance and derangement (and bits of darting electronica). Don’t think I’ve ever seen a male pole-dancer before, so that’s an interesting twist….

Album: måsstaden under vatten
Release date: ???

 

 

 

 

PERTURBATOR (France)

The album title and the cover art are properly evocative of the music in this next song… which is lustful and ritualistic, thrusting in its body-moving beats, orgasmic in its spurting and swirling gleams, and mysteriously dreamlike…

Album: Lustful Sacraments
Release date: May 28th

 

 

 

 

MAGGOT CROWN (U.S.)

For those who might be thinking there was too much singing and dreaminess in some of the items in today’s collection (or too much cyberpunk), this last track will cheer you up — a short, sharp, feral discharge of roiling and screaming guitar barbarism, rabid vocal bellowing, and jet-fast drum obliteration, undergirded by thundering upheavals in the low end. “War Is Peace” will beat you to a pulp and then eat you alive. (The album, btw, was inspired by Orwell’s 1984.)

Album title: Cryptic Immoral Secure
Release date: May 22nd