Ii won’t completely regurgitate what I wrote in the intro to Part 1 of today’s round-up. Suffice to say that I’m just spitting up a couple of tracks at a time today rather than leave a long blank space in what’s happening at the site. Part 1 leaned hard into doom, and the songs below should appeal to devotees of death (metal).
EXSANGUINATION
After a self-titled debut last year, Massachusetts-based Exsanguination are gearing up for the June 11 release of their debut album, Spectral Hymns. I haven’t had a chance to let the entire album bleed all over me, but the two songs I’ve heard so far (which you’ll find below), are damned good.
Neither of the tracks reaches the three-minute mark, but nevertheless they make a solid impact. By a hair, “Lords Without Thrones” might be the more maniacal of the two — an electrifying onslaught of HM-2-powered riffing, granite-hard bass, skull-fracturing drumwork, and wild screaming vocals. The song is also home to some bludgeoning grooves and a spectacular solo that somehow seems both ecstatic and anguished.
The soloing fireworks appear early in the second song, “Blood Ocean“, which discharges moaning and boiling chords, gut-punching chugs, and savage growls. The galloping pace of the track slows, as a prelude to another solo, this one a grief-stricken thing. Both songs are highly infectious and ought to make listeners hungry for more.
Spectral Hymns will be released by Horror Pain Gore Death Productions.
PRE-ORDER:
https://hpgd.bandcamp.com/album/spectral-hymns
EXSANGUINATION:
https://www.facebook.com/Exsanguination-Band-Page-102090508113659/
SEWER FIEND
I snapped to attention when I stumbled across the cover art for this UK band’s forthcoming EP, Echoes From The Cistern, and then promptly tracked down its first single, “Pulsating Mass of Worms”, which had its premiere six days ago at CVLT Nation.
The song is a crawling monstrosity of death/doom that miserably moans and radiates disease, with eerie flickering tones swirling around this rotting leviathan of sound. But the band do periodically pick up the pace (the monster begins staggering and weaving), and in those moments the riffing grows more crazed and then later hammers. In the more crushing and crawling episodes, a chiming lead guitar creates a feeling of heartbreak. But evidently no heart beats in the chest of the vocalist, whose ghastly and gagging growls are cavernous and whose wild howls seem possessed.
In a nutshell, with this song Sewer Fiend do an impressive job of both creating a horrifying atmosphere and bludgeoning the listener into a gory paste.
Echoes From The Cistern will be released by Sewer Rot Records (North America) and Dry Cough Records (EU).
PRE-ORDER:
https://sewerfienduk.bandcamp.com/album/echoes-from-the-cistern
https://www.drycoughrecords.com/