SEEN AND HEARD: SUFFOCATION, TOMB MOLD, CERULEAN, GHOROT, MĀNBRYNE

Happy Monday to one and all. It can’t hurt to wish for that, even if the odds aren’t high, especially on this particular Monday. But rather than stop at empty wishes, I also have some news and new music that might improve the day.

SUFFOCATION (U.S.)

I detest clickbait, but well, this first item is very close to that. I’ve not yet seen an official announcement of a new Suffocation album, only the surfacing of the cover art at the top of this page and a notice on Metal-Archives that a new Suffo full-length named Hymns from the Apocrypha will be released by Nuclear Blast on November 3rd.

Very briefly this morning a song from the album called “Seraphim Enslavement” surfaced on Suffocation‘s YouTube channel (here), but now it’s not available for streaming. It was there long enough for M-A to note that the song is 04:26 long.

Surely official news will soon surface along with that song stream, especially because Suffocation will be embarking on a big North American tour in early November with Incantation, Skeletal Remains, and Stabbing. The locations linked below probably provide the reveals.

UPDATE: “Seraphim Enslavement” is now officially released, along with a video you can find here.

https://www.facebook.com/suffocation
https://www.instagram.com/suffocationofficial
https://www.facebook.com/nuclearblastrecords

 

 

TOMB MOLD (Canada)

This morning provided another surprising announcement, an official one this time, but again no music yet. The news is that 20 Buck Spin will release a new Tomb Mold album named The Enduring Spirit this coming Friday. Not a lot of advance notice, and I haven’t seen any pre-order links either — but you can see Jesse Jacobi‘s mind-boggling cover art up there.

Pre-orders start for all physical formats will also begin on Friday morning, with a release date of October 13th for those.

https://www.facebook.com/tombmold
https://20buckspin.bandcamp.com

 

 

CERULEAN (U.S.)

Now for some actual music, of a particularly demented and “avant-garde” variety, courtesy of the Arizona/California band Cerulean.

This is a single called “Carrion Angel“. It doesn’t go where you might think it will go, given the dismal, gritty, clanging bass notes and eerie, slightly queasy guitar tones that slowly ring at the outset, eventually coupled with echoing abyssal roars.

I suppose that’s an effective foreshadowing, because it already sounds a bit demented and dangerous, but it’s nothing compared to the sheer lunacy that eventually explodes.

Those roars turn to screams, the drums lose their minds, and the guitars double down on dissonant noise, blaring like weird sirens, and darting and whirling in shrill frenzies

There are also some rapidly jabbing grooves in the music, along with feverishly undulating bass notes, riffing that sounds like a drill-bit spun up to penetrating speed or swarms of hornets, sinister reverberations, a little squealing solo, and dismally wailing chants. Plus a lot of other stuff.

The intricacy of the music is head-spinning, and goes off in so many unpredictable and unsettling directions that it may leave your mouth hanging open. Another equally wild single surfaced in June with the same cover art — and like this one, you can find it at Bandcamp.

They’re both from a five-song EP named Carrion Angel that’s set for release on October 27th. Not surprisingly, it comes recommended for fans of DEATHSPELL OMEGA, IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT, GORGUTS, SUFFERING HOUR, and THANTIFAXATH.

https://ceruleanblackmetal.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/CeruleanBlackMetal/

 

 

GHOROT (U.S.)

Next up I’ve chosen a video for “Dredge“, the crushing and crazed debut single off this Idaho band’s second album Wound.

After just a brief moment of wilderness beauty in the video, Ghorot then take a wrecking ball to those pastoral scenes with doses of excruciating feedback, fuzz-bombed doom riffage, monstrous growls, and blood-letting shrieks.

The music is heavy and heaving, pounding and pernicious. It’s laced with trippy psychedelic squeals and wails out of the throat of the guitar and further doses of ruinous vocals from the throats of all three members of the band.

An occult ceremony seems to be happening in the video, and the music sounds damned occult too, creating hallucinatory sensations of terror at the same time as it pounds the living hell out of your addled skull.

Near the end it starts rumbling like a big freight train out of Hell, capped by a long yowling and screeching solo that doubles the song’s dose of narcotics and hallucinogens.

Wound will be released on October 6th via Lay Bare Recordings, King Of The Monsters Records, and Transylvanian Recordings.

https://ghorot.bandcamp.com/album/wound
http://facebook.com/ghorot

 

 

MĀNBRYNE (Poland)

I have barely enough time for one more new song, and it’s one from a Polish band that includes members of Blaze of Perdition, which I found thanks to a link from Miloš.

The song’s opening captivated me with its mournful folk melody, traced through sounds of acoustic strumming and what might be an accordion. Having succumbed to that, I was present for the shift of the music into sinister slashing chords, subterranean bass undulations, and rumbling and tumbling drums.

The words spew forth in rabid, unhinged screams, and the music becomes more rabid too. The guitars blaze in a searing mass of violent derangement, and the drums blast like a weapon (but they keep time too).

The music suddenly stops and starts, and then comes in rolling and roiling waves, and the trill and moan of misery-soaked guitar melodies flow through them, creating anguished emotional intensity in the midst of all the other harrowing intensity in the song.

The name of the track is “Piach I niepamięć” (“Sand and Oblivion”). It’s from an album named Interregnum: O próbie wiary i jarzmie zwątpienia (“Of the Test of Faith and the Burden of Doubt”), to be released by Malignant Voices (CD/Merch) and Terratur Possessions (LP/MC/Merch) this autumn.

https://malignantvoices.bandcamp.com
https://www.terraturpossessions.com
https://terraturpossessions.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/manbryne
https://manbryne.bandcamp.com

******

I wrote the following words with the intention of starting today’s column with them. But I know you didn’t come here to read those thoughts. You came here for the metal, and I found some to recommend. But I also hate to waste words, so….

Today somewhere between 20 and 30 million Americans have no living memory on what happened in New York City on September 11, 2001, because they hadn’t yet been born. That’s a good thing. The event led to two pointless wars and vastly more death and lifelong damage than the event itself immediately caused. It’s better to know it only as “ancient” history.

But of course a lot of us actually did live through the terror of it, and the many horrors of its aftermath, and for us none of that is easy to forget on this anniversary, even those of us who experienced the traumas remotely or only by witnessing the trauma inflicted upon friends and loved ones.

And I don’t mean to suggest that forgetting is the right thing to do. Remembering and honoring those who have been lost or physically or mentally maimed is necessary and right. Using the memories as fuel for more hate and violence is wrong, though you can be damned sure that’s the way some people will choose to use them. I would rather mourn, and hope for some lessons learned from the lunacies of humankind, and hope for less lunacy in our future.