To my surprise, I found time to compile this mid-week round-up. It’s not quite as long as these things usually are, consisting of only four advance tracks from forthcoming releases, but it will make the next one I do that much less bloated. The music I chose is stylistically diverse, but all of it brings an electrifying intensity. Might be something on here you’ll want to add to your wish list.
DRAWN AND QUARTERED (U.S.)
Seattle’s beloved Drawn and Quartered are returning with their eighth album, Congregation Pestilence, preceded by the just-released single, “Rotting Abomination (The Cleansing)“. It’s indeed rotting and abominable, and also a mouth-watering feast for death metal ghouls.
Let the drumming elevate your pulse, let the maniacally shrieking lead guitar put shivers in your spine, allow the filthy, roiling riffage to mangle your guts, succumb to the gargantuan monstrosity of Herb Burke‘s voice… actually, I’m not asking, because these are things that will happen naturally as you become overwhelmed by the macabre splendor of this obliterating and supernatural piece of ghastliness.
Congregation Pestilence will be released on July 2nd by Krucyator Productions.
PRE-ORDER:
https://krucyator.bandcamp.com/album/congregation-pestilence
DRAWN AND QUARTERED:
https://www.facebook.com/drawnandquartered/
ERDVE (Lithuania)
The Lithuanian experimental sludge band Erdve are also making a welcome return, with a new album entitled Savigaila (“self-pity”). As the band explain, the name of the first song from the album — “Lavondėmės” — “is a word describing Livor mortis, also known as hypostasis, which is an accumulation of stagnated blood causing a purplish red skin colour of a deceased body. This song and video is a metaphor for inner stagnation and an overwhelming effort to overcome it”.
What a rushing juggernaut of demolishing sound this song is. Even when it’s not rushing and is instead bludgeoning and seething in derangement, it still sounds massive and obliterating. Sensations of tension and turmoil boil within these grinding and gouging maelstroms, and the wretched insanity of the vocals just makes the experience even more unnerving. Even when eerie melodic glimmerings ring out in the midst of the song’s most brutalizing hammer-fests, they don’t undermine the music’s apocalyptic impact.
Public health warning: You might be a few inches shorter after this thing finishes clobbering you.
Savigaila will be released via Season of Mist on July 23.
PRE-ORDER:
https://shopusa.season-of-mist.com/band/erdve
ERDVE:
https://www.facebook.com/erdvelt
EUTHANIZED (Canada)
I attempted to sum up this Victoria, BC band’s 2018 EP, Riches Among Refuse, this way (here): “The music hammers, whirls, bounces, crawls, and brawls, and it’s all nasty as hell. There’s a primitive, feral, stripped-down quality to the songs, but the song-writing is very good, and there’s an authentic spirit in this time-warp trip to the proto-extremity of decades long gone, in the vein of Bathory, Darkthrone, Hellhammer/Frost, and Sabbat. I eagerly bought this….”
I’m also quite likely to buy the band’s new four-song, 16-minute, demo whenever they’ll let me, at least based on the title track, “Sanguine Spectacle“. The filthy riff that opens the track, coupled with pounding drums, generates a dismal, morbid atmosphere. The song begins to scamper like a punk, and the guitars writhe and shiver in sinister and lascivious tones, accompanied by the kind of wild, reverb-saturated vocals that make me think of a famished vampire arisen in his crypt, to find himself surrounded by a glorious sea of defenseless pulsating throats. The music also becomes a boiling mass of vicious lunacy, and there’s a fiery, trippy guitar solo in the mix too. Welcome to hell (it sounds like the demons are having a blast).
Sanguine Spectacle will be released on June 30 by Helldprod (cassette tape). The title track is available now as a digital single:
SINGLE:
https://euthanizedbcbm.bandcamp.com/album/sanguine-spectacle
HELLDPROD:
https://helldprod.bandcamp.com
https://helldprod.com/shop/
EUTHANIZED:
https://www.facebook.com/euthanizedbcbm
USHANGVAGUSH (U.S.)
I was tempted to check out this final song when I read that Massachusetts-based Ushangvagush (the work of a single person) is a “first nations band” and that the title of this song, “Siguapatign“, is in the native language of Miq’maw.
The uber-distorted guitars come storming in dense waves, and vehemently slash, backed by drumming that hammers and blasts. There’s a feeling of fierce defiance in the music, and it’s amplified by the raw, blistering quality of the vocals. But as the drums skip and rumble the music becomes forlorn as well as grim — and it also becomes soaring and sweeping, though laced with pain. Through all the changing moods, the passion in the music is so intense that it’s breathtaking
The name of the album is Mntu. It will be released by Vigor Deconstruct on August 1st.
PRE-ORDER:
https://ushangavash.bandcamp.com/album/mntu
USHANGVAGUSH:
https://www.facebook.com/ushangvagush