In the dozen years of this site’s existence we’ve had fewer than a dozen days (including weekends and holidays) when we posted nothing new. Yesterday was one of those. I’ll spare you the excuses, which were numerous, but I still felt guilty about it. So I’m trying to make up for that void today.
In gazing upon my long list of songs I wanted to recommend, it occurred to me that most of them were variations of black and blackened metal, so I decided to focus on those and leave other genre variants for another day.
There’s a lot here, all of them tracks from forthcoming releases, and so I’ve truncated the introductions and mostly omitted the usual artwork. I begin with bigger names and then drift into more obscure ones.
PANZERFAUST (Canada)
First up is “The Far Bank at the River Styx“. Prepare for a booming and bludgeoning experience that catches fire and becomes intensely exhilarating (though there’s anguish in the melodies too).
The album is The Suns of Perdition – Chapter III: The Astral Drain, set for release by Eisenwald on July 22nd.
https://panzerfaust.bandcamp.com/album/the-suns-of-perdition-chapter-iii-the-astral-drain
https://www.facebook.com/PANZERFAUST.BM.OFFICIAL
GAEREA (Portugal)
Staying at a fever pitch of intensity, my next recommendation is “Salve“, which comes with a video. Prepare for a wild, battering whirl, an explosion of savage ecstasy that’s capable of sending your mind spinning, but incorporates feelings of magnificent menace and shattering affliction as well.
The song is off the upcoming album Mirage, with a release date of September 23rd through Season of Mist.
https://shopusa.season-of-mist.com/band/gaerea
http://www.facebook.com/gaerea
TOMBS (U.S.)
“Murder Legendre” is the last single from Tombs‘ forthcoming Ex Oblivion EP. This one features a guest appearance by Dwid Hellion from Integrity. Prepare for a bleak and haunting dream, a funeral of sound that’s hypnotic and chilling.
https://som.lnk.to/TombsExOblivion
https://www.facebook.com/TombsBklyn/
DARKREVERIE (Switzerland)
“Ignis” means fire and passion, and that’s the name of this next song by Darkreverie. Prepare for a battering and bounding romp, packed with swirling, slithering, blazing, and manically darting riffs that sound like electrifying sorcery, and the kind of savage snarls that want your throat between their teeth.
The track is from a new album named Paura, to be released on October 7 by the Kazakh label Careless Records.
https://carelessrecords.bandcamp.com/album/paura
https://darkreverie.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/darkreverie666
MO’YNOQ (U.S.)
This formidable North Carolina band are returning with a new record named A Place of Ash (with a September 23 release date), and the first advance track is “Throes of Ardent Disposition“.
Prepare for an overpowering, no-holds-barred assault of heavy, hurtling propulsion, unhinged screaming, and a roiling calamity of multi-layered vortextual riffing that sucks the wind from the lungs — and then steadies into an experience that radiates heartbreak and agony (and is still breathtaking even then).
https://moynoq.bandcamp.com/album/a-place-for-ash
http://facebook.com/moynoq/
HETROERTZEN (Chile -> Sweden)
Next up is “I am Sickness, I am Death“, which is paired with a shadowy and sulphurous video. Prepare for a frightening experience that warrants the song’s title, i.e., a deluge of riffs that radiate disease and despair, and seem borne from a supernatural plane, coupled with bestial but imperious growls and maddened, ghastly screams. Sickening, unbalancing, yet weirdly seductive.
The song is included on a new Hetroertzen album entitled Phosphorus Vol I, to be released by Listenable Records on September 16th.
https://shop-listenable.net/en/210_hetroertzen
https://www.facebook.com/HETROERTZEN
SPECTRUM MORTIS (Spain)
My next recommendation is “U Anne Dugga“, an advance track from this Spanish band’s new album Bit Meseri – The Incantation. Prepare for a towering monstrosity of dire and dreadful sound. The riffs malignantly seethe, and the vocals are frighteningly hideous, but the song also moans in misery, eerily glitters as chilling spoken words emerge, and rises in fanfares of blanching grandeur, like the herald of apocalypse.
The album will be released by Listenable Records on September 30th.
https://spectrummortis.bandcamp.com/album/bit-meseri-the-incantation
https://www.facebook.com/spectrummortis
HERBSTLETHARGIE (Germany)
Time for one last selection, “Von Herbst zu Winter“. The music rings with crashing waves of heart-swelling melody that seem to hearken back to a long lost age, and thunders like massed hooves. The intensity is dramatic, and so are the vocals, which are raw and wounded. But the song is multifarious in its fascinations, incorporating pinging and glimmering tones and violin strings that are mesmerizing, sometimes bright and hopeful, and sometimes haunted.
The song comes from a debut album by this solo atmospheric/depressive black metal project named Melancholie im Blattfall, which is set for release by Northern Silence Productions on September 9th.
(Thanks to Milos for pointing me to this magnificent track.)
https://herbstlethargie-northernsilence.bandcamp.com/album/melancholie-im-blattfall
https://www.facebook.com/Herbstlethargie