I don’t know why I bother counting, but I have 23 new songs and videos on my listening list from what surfaced over the last 7 days, not to mention all the ones that were on there before. But I need to keep this round-up short, because there’s a premiere coming up, but maybe I’ll get a second one finished today after that.
DÅÅTH (U.S.)
No chance I would have missed the new Dååth single digitally released yesterday by Metal Blade, because I got timely enthusiastic messages about it from both DGR and TheMadIsraeli. But I would have paid attention anyway, since seeing their name again revived a ton of fond memories from the first decade of the new millennium, back when they were taking the metal world by storm.
The new song, “No Rest No End“, is the first new single from this Atlanta-based band in a dozen years. The band’s line-up still includes guitarist Eyal Levi and vocalist Sean Z, now joined by Krimh Lechner on drums and Jesse Zuretti handling orchestration, synth, and guitar, with Dave Marvuglio providing session bass. And in addition to all those talents, the song includes guest solos by Rafael Trujillo (Obsidious, ex-Obscura) and Spiro Dussias.
Altogether, these gents create an epic experience in symphonic grandiosity and gut-busting groove, with frenetically swirling and slashing riffage, plentiful doses of keyboard extravagance, howling vocal madness, and head-spinning guitar soloing. It’s over-the-top, to be sure, yet the band also manage to insinuate melodies of gloom as well as grandeur, along with a sublime instrumental finale.
https://www.metalblade.com/daath
https://daathofficial.bandcamp.com/track/no-rest-no-end
https://daathofficial.com/
http://facebook.com/daath
7 H.TARGET (Russia)
Speaking of blasts from the past, here’s another band we used to write about back in their hey-day, when they released three albums from 2012-2014. Like Dååth, we haven’t heard from them in a long while, but they’re now returning with a new full-length, this time on the Willowtip label.
So far they’ve released two songs from Yantra Creating, both of them with videos, and the one below is the most recent of those. The imagery of barely clad young bodies writhing about both on the ground and above it, along with other mystifying and demonic visuals, may keep your attention all by themselves. Of course, not being a dirty old man, I coolly assessed it from a purely objective point of view.
As for the music, the band prove they’ve not grown tired of megaton bludgeoning, freakish fretwork contortions, or subterranean bellows and gurgles. Brutish hammer blows and bunker-busting detonations co-mingle with discordant guitar fevers that scream, writhe, and whine in agony, all of it delivered with destabilizing tempo changes galore. Oh, and at the end, as the credits roll, they abruptly decide to get cosmically dreamy….
Willowtip will release Yantra Creating on February 24th.
https://7htarget.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/7htarget
SARCOPHAGUM (Australia)
To conclude this abbreviated round-up I chose a just-released single by Sarcophagum from Sydney, whose line-up features members of Golgothan Remains.
What you’ll first encounter on “This Wrought Creation” is a mind-altering mixture of shrill, demented guitar spasms that build tension and unnerve the mind, then followed by a torrent of pummeling drums, enraged growls, and even more violently deranged riffing. It has a typhoon-like impact, and even when the rhythm section administer a more methodical beating the dissonant guitars still broil like insanity over a high flame, or ring out in chiming and quivering tones of dismal agony.
The music’s dramatic ebb and flow will keep you on the edge of your seat as the band create elaborate episodes of dementia, catastrophe, misery, and wraith-like eeriness. When the song fires on all cylinders, it’s traumatically destructive. When it slows, it raises the hairs on the back of the neck, perhaps especially in the track’s nightmarish finale.
Credit for the mastering goes to Greg Chandler at Priory Recording Studios. The session drumming, which is pretty spectacular, was written and recorded by Robin Stone.
https://sarcophagum.bandcamp.com/track/this-wrought-creation
https://facebook.com/sarcophagumband