GONZO’S HEAVY ROUNDUP, OCTOBER 2023

(With October now behind us and November well on its way, our friend Gonzo returns to NCS with reviews of some October releases that made a very positive impression.)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about all the ways music connects us as a people. The metal community is, more often than not, a refuge for this kind of thinking. It’s especially noticeable when everything else in the world starts to suck.

A couple of weeks back, I saw Blackbraid open for Wolves in the Throne Room. The former’s unapologetically indigenous approach to their music was, and always is, a great reminder of how heavy music isn’t just for one group of people. It’s for everyone. Hearing such music in a live setting, in the company of other like-minded humans, was refreshing. It reminds me why I make time to write about this shit in the first place.

And I know I’m not alone in saying that it’s all too easy to go down a doom-scroll rabbit hole these days. Between that sense of existential dread and the aforementioned gratitude for metal, I had plenty of inspiration for this month’s roundup. I was right – it turned out to be a real fucking doozy.

(As I’m typing this, at least one person is secretly jotting down “Doom Scroll Rabbit Hole” for the name of their one-man psychedelic black metal project.)

 

 

SOUND OF THE DAMNED, ATORNERLUNNANGA

When you think of Greenland, what comes to mind first?

If you said “death metal,” I’d be very shocked. But a young group of ambitious musicians from Nuuk – the country’s capital – are looking to change that.

Sound of the Damned is a death metal monster that waves the genre’s war-torn banner proudly. Listening to the band’s debut album Atornerlunnanga, (roughly translated to “don’t molest me” in Greenlandic) it’s clear that these guys live, eat, and bleed death metal. Their recent performances at Iceland’s Arctic Waves gave me a firsthand look at how much work they’ve put into crafting songs that bring forth the heaviness of a calving glacier falling into the sea.

Through and through, Atornerlunnanga is an album that consistently decimates the listener. The eponymous opening track begins with layers of atmosphere until the crushing guitar duo of Sebastian Enequist and Josva Møller breaks down the door. By the time the riff evolves into a mid-paced syncopated crunch, I dare you not to be hooked.

The broad menu of songs on the album vacillates between English and Greenlandic. I imagine that’s a strategic decision to make the songs more widely accessible to lands beyond the great white north, but in the end, it’s not consequential: The music on Atornerlunnanga is as heavy and thoroughly composed as anything you’re likely to hear all year. “Tartarus,” “When I Go Blind,” “Inuk Uummarit,” and “My Monster” sound like a band that’s already surpassed the “finding our footing” stage and has already broken into whatever’s next. Their goal? “Copenhell,” said Enequist after completing a particularly bruising set last weekend in Reykjavik.

I can’t wait to be there to see that set myself one day.

 

 

CARNATION, CURSED MORTALITY

Belgium’s Carnation started off in 2018 with a no-bullshit death metal album (Chapel of Abhorrence) and haven’t looked back since. Their third album Cursed Mortality not only continues the trend for them but raises the bar.

The sheer face-scraping brutality you’ll hear throughout Cursed Mortality is the kind of sound that made me fall hard for death metal some 30 years ago. Nothing quite scratches that primal itch like a guitar that sounds like heavy welding equipment beneath vocals that sound like said equipment being heaved into a blast furnace.

“Herod of Demise” gives you a few short moments to ready yourself before the onslaught of death that fills the eight songs on Cursed Mortality. Sound-wise, Carnation fall somewhere between Baest, Entombed, and Grand Cadaver. The band’s generous use of the ol’ HM-2 pedal shreds hard, while vocalist Simon Duson sounds like the Belgian version of Corpsegrinder. “Metropolis” was the first cut I heard from the album when it was released as a single, featuring a massive pit-friendly breakdown and fiery choruses. “Replicant” surprises with clean vocals for its opening seconds but wastes no time in throwing your haggard ass back in the pit shortly after.

https://carnation.bandcamp.com/album/cursed-mortality-2
https://www.facebook.com/CarnationBE/

 

 

WAYFARER, AMERICAN GOTHIC

No way was I leaving this one out.

Now that enough time has passed since the release of 2020’s stellar A Romance with Violence, I can safely say I’ll use it as the barometer for the rest of the Coloradans’ blackened Western folk metal output.

In other words, my expectations are pretty fucking high for these guys.

But even without the lofty standards I’m now holding them to, American Gothic is the sound of a band still hitting their peak. A band as talented as Wayfarer, though, just kind of starts at their peak and keeps challenging themselves, leaving most of their peers in a dust-drenched rearview mirror.

Listening to American Gothic makes me feel like I’m living in a different century. It’s like the band traveled back in time to sit in shady saloons in one-horse towns and saw some truly unexplainable shit – enough to fuel the concepts and sounds for music that simply doesn’t sound like anything else today.

While many of the tracks throughout Violence and those that predated it had no shortage of blast beats and ferocious tempos, Gothic is content to sit in more mid-paced territory. That doesn’t mean they’ve dialed down the ferocity by any stretch, though – “The Thousand Tombs of Western Promise” gets us going in the same way “The Crimson Rider” did, just three minutes shorter and fewer time changes.

“The Cattle Thief” picks things up to an appropriate gallop. Clocking in at a few seconds over nine minutes, it’s the longest song on the album, but I dare you to notice the length at all. It’s an engrossing sonic affair that makes you want to take an adventure to some remote land that’s devoid of people and full of natural wonder that may or may not want to hunt you for sport.

More searing hooks and ferocious growls make up the rest of the album’s DNA, most notably on “To Enter My House Justified” and “Black Plumes Over God’s Country.” Oddly, the highlight of the album might be the mournful dirge of “A High Plains Eulogy,” which has nary a scream or growl to be found in it.

Wayfarer is one of those bands that I hope never stops making music. They’re a creative force that has few peers in heavy music today, and American Gothic is yet another testament to their unparalleled talent.

https://wayfarercolorado.bandcamp.com/album/american-gothic
https://www.facebook.com/wayfarercolorado/

Like what you hear? Follow my best-of-2023 playlist for selections from everything you’ve just read, and a whole helluva lot more.