Can’t you read plain English? It says “Labor Day”. It doesn’t say “Holi-Day”. So I’m just following the prescribed agenda, and laboring.
Because I unexpectedly agreed to write a whopping four premieres yesterday, I had no time to begin rounding up a selection of songs and videos that surfaced this past week. Leaving that until today has resulted in another massive collection, again featuring too many bands to name in the post title.
As it happens, the majority of the new music you’ll find below is accompanied by videos. It also happens that almost all of the new songs are high-speed devastators. This isn’t entirely by accident, because many of them were recommended in our NCS group by DGR, who tends to prefer musical riots over other forms of audio entertainment. And once I’d gotten into that kind of groove, I tended to stick with it in choosing from among other possibilities I checked out.
ARCHSPIRE (Canada)
We’ll start with a new lyric video for a frantic new song by Archspire, in which vocalist Oliver Rae Aleron goes faster than a cattle auctioneer and the rest of the band spits a variety of bullets even faster — but then abruptly the song gets dreamy.
DGR wrote in our group: “There was no way this one wasn’t going to be a single, not with the way this song is built in its back half. Do not be shocked if this winds up in the most infectious nominations”. True that.
Archspire‘s new album Bleed the Future is set for release on October 29th by Season of Mist.
https://www.facebook.com/Archspireband
BEYOND GRACE (UK)
Yesterday our friend and NCS stalwart Andy Synn and his band Beyond Grace performed their new album Our Kingdom Undone at the Nottingham venue J.T Soar, supported by Luna’s Call as the opening band. The sets were live-streamed by Prosthetic Records, and in case you missed it Prosthetic has preserved the show on their YouTube channel — and I’m including it as the next item in today’s collection. Should you wish to move immediately to Beyond Grace, skip ahead to the 50-minute mark.
This new album was released yesterday by Prosthetic.
https://www.facebook.com/wearebeyondgrace
BLOOD RED THRONE (Norway)
Back in the fast lane we go with the next lyric video. Keep up if you can, while BRT blitzes your brain and batters your vertebrae in a ferocious frenzy — and throw in a mind-magnetizing solo before they’re done. It’s electric and contagious!
The song is from Imperial Congregation, an album to be released on October 8th by Nuclear Blast.
https://www.facebook.com/BloodRedThroneOfficial
CARNIFEX (U.S.)
No reason to slow down now. Carnifex got all their jackhammers and pile-drivers out and working in this next song, plus fluid jets from an eerie flamethrower and a demonic vocal performance.
The new Carnifex album, Graveside Confessions, is out now via Nuclear Blast.
https://www.facebook.com/CarnifexMetal
CHOKE ME (U.S.)
This is just one song from a new EP named Hauntology, but if you let the player continue running you’ll get mauled and mangled by the whole thing. The selected song is a screaming and obliterating fury, turbocharged in its momentum, insectile in its fretwork, and mutilating in the speed and barbarity of the drumming. But like a few of the other high-speed attacks in today’s collection, there’s an exotic melodic interlude, albeit a very brief one.
https://www.facebook.com/ChokeMeBand/
DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT (Germany)
The next video (directed by Guilherme Henriques) comes from a German band much-beloved around these parts. The song combines fiery and feverish riffing (both guitars and bass) with riotous blasting and scorching screams, but modulates the hurricane-strength fury with moods of anguished desperation, crushing grief, and sweeping tragic grandeur. Watching the protagonist go through a sequence of meltdowns amplifies the music’s emotional intensity, which is damned intense already.
“Morgen” is from the band’s forthcoming fifth album Noktvrn, which will be released by Season of Mist on November 19th.
https://www.facebook.com/derwegeinerfreiheit
DESALMADO (Brazil)
The next video (made by Walter de Andrade) is also a gripping and mysterious one to watch. The song’s intensity is also sky-high. The chords blare and jolt, the drums thunder and rip, the vocals seem capable of cauterizing wounds with their no-holds-barred fury — and the music itself has a wounded sound, a feeling so bleak that it becomes shattering.
The song is from this Brazilian death/grind band’s new album Mass Mental Devolution, set for release on October 8th.
https://www.facebook.com/desalmado.band
GRAND CADAVER (Sweden)
“Grim Eternal“, the new song by this conglomerate of guitarists Stefan Lagergren (Expulsion) and Alex Stjernfeldt (Novarupta, Let Them Hang), drummer Daniel Liljekvist (ex-Katatonia), bassist Christian Jansson (Pagandom), and vocalist Mikael Stanne (Dark Tranquillity), is well-named. The massive, mid-paced, chainsaw riffing is indeed grim, and heavy enough to vibrate the soles of your feet. Augmented by vocals of demonic viciousness, the music becomes increasingly frenzied and jolting, but without abandoning those feelings of dejection and distress.
The track is off Grand Cadaver‘s debut album Into the Maw of Death, which will be released on October 29th by Majestic Mountain Records.
https://www.facebook.com/grandcadaver
HELLDRIFTER (Germany)
Aaaaand… we’re off to the races again with this high-energy gallop from Helldrifter, a pulse-pounding, fleet-fingered dose of melodic death metal marauding that’s fueled with pure adrenaline.
“Feed the Fire” is a single that’s now available on most digital platforms. But it’s from an album named Lord of Damnation that’s also out now, released in late August.
https://www.facebook.com/Helldrifter
MALICHOR (Australia)
I couldn’t resist checking out Malichor‘s new two-track EP after seeing the cover art and the Lovecraftian title. Once I heard it, I realized how well it would fit in the midst of all the other blazing songs included in today’s round-up. Both tracks here are such rocket-fast, white-hot thrashers that they’re capable of sucking the wind from your lungs, especially when the berserker soloing fireworks go off (and the crazed-beast vocals are tremendous).
https://www.facebook.com/malichor
MAN MUST DIE (Scotland)
Well, we’ve been eagerly awaiting this next song (which is featured in yet another video) for a long time… and it does not disappoint. Like so much else in today’s collection, it’s a wild and furious ride, faster than a cheetah with a rocket in its ass and packed with jolting twists and turns. There’s some singing in this one, coupled with the furious teeth-bared howls, plus tendrils of despairing and despondent melody.
“Bring Me the Head of the King” is a stand-alone single — but the band have signed with Distortion Music Group (founded by Kataklysm frontman Maurizio Iacono) for the release of a new album in 2022. Hallelujah!
https://www.facebook.com/ManMustDie
MULDROTHA
“Red in Tooth and Claw” also fits beautifully with most everything else in this round-up — no surprise, since it was also recommended by DGR. The band keep their feet jammed on the gas pedal as they administer a savage beating. The track relentlessly fires like a phalanx of nail-guns while the vocalist screams his explosive tirades about an inch from your face.
Muldrotha features members of Fallujah, Decrepit Birth, and The Zenith Passage. The song is from their sophomore EP, Slowly To Forget and To Be Forgotten, set for release on September 24th.
https://www.facebook.com/Muldrotha
PORTRAYAL OF GUILT (U.S.)
This Texas band’s new song is a monster that lumbers and stomps, heavier than an elephant herd. Yet it also includes slowly ringing arpeggios that are unnerving in their eeriness. Muttered words are interspersed with maddened snarls. Sounds of lunatic guitar-seething writhe around clobbering rhythms of titanic proportions… and then the silence of the void opens up like a vast maw.
The song is off an album named Christfucker, which will be released on November 5th by Run For Cover.
https://www.facebook.com/portrayalofguilt
WHITECHAPEL (U.S.)
The next song is again in keeping with the overarching themes of today’s round-up — fast and hammering music, with a ferocious vocalist who goes as fast as the instrumentalists, and with glimmering melodic overlays that channel dark and dolorous moods. I should mention that the song surprisingly also includes moody singing in one of the sections where the band aren’t doing their best to slug you senseless.
Whitechapel‘s new album Kin will be released by Metal Blade on October 19th. It includes the work of drummer Alex Rudinger, who is now an official member of the line-up.
https://www.facebook.com/whitechapelband
WORMWITCH (Canada)
Another video! And in this play-through we see three of the string-slinging members of Wormwitch riff their way through another intense track off the band’s new album. The pacing ebbs and flows, pulling the listener through various shades of emotional darkness. The sounds swing and swirl, swagger and slash, wail and waft, and blaze like bonfires beneath the moon.
The new Wormwitch album, Wolf Hex, is out now.
https://www.facebook.com/wormwitch
ZEALOT R.I.P. (U.S.)
To close, I’ve picked yet another video, this one for a track off the debut album by Zealot R.I.P. (a band whose line-up includes members of Pig Destroyer, Darkest Hour, CombatWoundedVeteran, Frodus, and more). It’s a trippy video, and “Covered in Flies” is a pretty trippy (and sludgy) song as well. It has a lurching, stomping, and crawling momentum, and those changing rhythms are accompanied by larynx-lacerating vocal intensity and by raucous and emotionally ruined noise that’s almost hallucinatory in its effect — including a point at which it becomes an insane mass of abrasion, followed by a final cruel beating.
Two more tracks from the record are also streaming now, and you can check out both of those in the Bandcamp player below. They’re both noisy rampaging heavy-hitters, but with a more pronounced hardcore punk style. Despite their riotous intensity, both are also as bleak as a sucking chest wound. It’s also clear from the run of the Bandcamp player that all the songs feed into each other, and that the juxtaposition of the song in the video right after those other two tracks was a good design choice.
The album, The Extinction of You, will be out on September 10th via Three One G.