SEEN AND HEARD: GOATWHORE, EXHUMED, ATEIGGÄR

Goatwhore – Photo by Stephanie Cabral

 

This Tuesday roundup of new music will be shorter than usual, but hopefully you’ll still find it sweet. Without further ado…

GOATWHORE (U.S.)

Goatwhore have a well-deserved reputation for being one of the hardest-gigging bands around, and every one of the half-dozen times I’ve seen them they’ve played as if it would be their last show. You always get your money’s worth from these dudes when they hit a stage. But somehow they found time amidst all the touring — no doubt aided by the pandemic shutdown — to punch out a new album where, once again, angels will fear to tread. The title of this one is Angels Hung From The Arches Of Heaven.

It’s been a five-year wait since Vengeful Ascension, and Goatwhore have made up for that with 47 minutes of music. The album also includes the work of a new bass player (Robert “TA” Coleman) and it’s the band’s first production with Kurt Ballou who worked along with producer Jarrett Pritchard in his second effort with the band.

There’s two songs out in the world from the album at this point. The most recent one just popped up today. Entitled “Death From Above“, it’s loosely based on the “Nachthexen”, or Night Witches, a group of female Soviet aviators in a bomber division deployed in 1942. The song flies like the wind (or like a dive-bomber), all pistons pumping and fingers flying across the frets. The song’s got some brazen chords and head-butting grooves in it too, as well as to-be-expected super-heated vocal ferocity.

The previously released song, “Born of Satan’s Flesh“, which arrived with an exhilarating video, is just as hard-charging, and if anything even more deranged. But there are some grim moods in the music, and feelings of pain and confusion as well. Of course, it will also slug your guts, thrash you like a fiend, and pop your eyes open with a soloing spectacle by Sammy Duet.

All hail Goatwhore!

https://metalblade.com/goatwhore/
https://www.facebook.com/thegoat666

 

 

EXHUMED (U.S.)

Today also brought us a song named “Drained of Color” from a new album by Exhumed. The lyrics are inventively grisly and gruesome, and the accompanying video directed by Nikko DeLuna gets grisly and gruesome itself.

As the credits roll, we’re greeted by classical chamber music with a sinister and foreboding air, but soon enough that’s replaced with riffing that sounds like an electronic bone saw slicing through flesh, drums that gear up into battering mode, and a tandem of horrid screams and hideous bellows. It’s an eviscerating musical madhouse, but delivers its fair share of jolts and wormy, squirming guitar embellishments, plus some freakishly swirling and swooping solos. Classical symphonics return at the end, just in time for one last murder.

Exhumed‘s new album is named To the Dead, and it’s set for release by Relapse Records on October 21st.

http://bit.ly/exhumed-tothedead
http://orcd.co/exhumed-tothedead
https://exhumed.bandcamp.com/album/to-the-dead
https://www.facebook.com/ExhumedOfficial

 

 

ATEIGGÄR (Switzerland)

Savagery has been the hallmark of the first three songs in today’s collection, and I saw no reason to move away from that at the close — though what we have next is a much more multi-faceted affair. What comes next is a song named “Die Nacht droht fyschter mir“ (This dark night threatens me) from a debut album by this Swiss duo entitled Tyrannemord.

The album is described as an “account of the assassination of Leo Armenius, the fifth of his name and ruler of the Byzantine Empire occurring in the palace chapel of St. Stephen during midnight mass in the year DCCCXXX”. The song below is based on a story described this way:

“A traitor has been sentenced to death by burning at the stake. The night before the execution, the Emperor who sentenced the agitator is tormented by a ghost appearing in his dream, proclaiming his imminent murder. When checking on the prisoner, the Emperor finds him sleeping peacefully in his cell, dressed in precious garments, his guard lying at his feet. The roles have reversed, the Emperor, still roaming free, has become a prisoner of his own fate”.

The song thunders and grand waves of dire melody race across the top in scathing waves, accompanied by harrowing, echoing roars. But the band morph and maneuver, continually switching up the drum rhythms and tempos, introducing choral voices and chant-like singing, bringing in creepy synths, and twisting the riffs in peculiar and mysterious ways that seem to signify the influence of the supernatural.

The song reaches blazing heights of frightening glory and discharges stunning explosions of booming percussion and writhing or hellfire-spewing guitars. So many other things happen that it’s like a trip through a nightmarish labyrinth.

Tyrannemord will be released on October 28th by the Eisenwald label, and thanks go to Miloš for prompting me to check it out.

https://ffm.bio/ateiggaer
https://ateiggaer.bandcamp.com/album/tyrannemord