SEEN AND HEARD: VORGA, MOURNING DAWN, CHAPEL OF DISEASE, EXITIUM SUI

Oh look, what a surprise, another roundup!

After months of posting 3-5 musical features a day, we’re in a bit of a lull here. Life has thrown boulders at some of our writers and I think others are focusing on year-end lists. I’m still writing premieres every day of course, but still feel compelled to try to have more than just one or two of those as the sole content of our site on a given day, and I happen to have had more time than usual for roundups over the last week or two. So, here’s another one!

Most of these are “hot off the presses”. I think they will all cause you to catch your breath or your breath to catch, albeit in different ways.

VORGA (Germany)

I had to start with the song “Voideath” so I could stick Adam Burke‘s fabulous cover art for Vorga‘s new album Beyond the Palest Star at the top of this page. Can you blame me?

The music is a match for the artwork, and vice-versa. Though scratchy, the guitar in the intro still rings, and the keys glow like the light from a distant star. But the music also then rushes and blazes like a rocket. It blasts, jolts, and slugs too, in addition to gloriously glittering and exultantly soaring into the stratosphere and beyond.

It’s all geared to take your breath away, including the incinerating vocal tirades, but with moments to bang your head silly and a couple of captivating solos in the mix as well.

Beyond the Palest Star will be released sometime next year by the most excellent Transcending Obscurity Records. Pre-orders will begin on December 1st. Here’s Vorga‘s statement about the album:

The intention with this record was to capture more of the expansive loneliness of the cosmos and to bring more atmosphere into the music while retaining the same feelings of desperation and aggression heard in the previous record. A more cinematic experience that pushes harder into the minds eye. While the record does reflect on a number of different themes from suicidal depression, religion or the state of the world we live in, Beyond the Palest star is ultimately a record about the loneliness everyone feels inside their own head and what that feels like reflected against the backdrop of our desperate and broken world.

https://transcendingobscurity.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/VorgaBand

 

 

MOURNING DAWN (France)

At the risk of producing listener whiplash I chose “Blue Pain“, the first single from Mourning Dawn‘s new album The Foam of Despair, as the next entry in today’s roundup. The chorus goes like this:

Its in my head
Its in my head they say
The ghosts of the brave
Concealed in blue pain

Oh yes, the music is blue, but not dull. The beats rock, the bass punches, the guitars glimmer and shine, and the vocals cry out with hair-raising intensity — even though the riffing is heavy, dark-shaded, and grim.

As the drums tumble and the voices extravagantly scream, the shimmer of the guitars begins to sound demented and distressing, and they ring as if weeping. The soloing elevates into an anthem of tragedy, and may pull your heart behind it into your throat.

The song comes with a video of the band performing, with as much wrenching passion as the song itself provides.

The Foam of Despair will be released by Aesthetic Death and Tragedy Productions on the 12th of January.

https://mourningdawn.bandcamp.com/album/the-foam-of-despair
https://www.facebook.com/MourningDawn
https://aestheticdeath.bandcamp.com/

 

 

CHAPEL OF DISEASE (Germany)

More whiplash to follow, with “A Death Though No Loss“.

Here, the frantic darting and swirling of a guitar solo and the grand chords behind it kick up the voltage right away, and the turbine spins higher with a big bass pulse, hammering drums, and barbarous vocals. That attention-grabbing lead guitar continues seizing attention with its reprise of the opening — and I would have been happy if that just kept happening for the rest of the song, but there’s a sharp digression…

… one in which the song becomes much softer and mesmerizing, though the guitar is a sprightly presence there too, and leads us on a merry chase through ’70s prog-rock territory before the song accelerates again and you get another solo made for a big packed arena full of bouncing people with their invisible oranges held high.

It’s a hell of a thing, and they’re still not finished, but you’ll get no chance to breathe easy from there to the end, especially with a big bear growling at you in rage.

The song is taken from the album Echoes Of Light, which will be released by Ván Records on the 9th of February. It was at recorded and mixed Q7 Studios with Michael Zech (The Ruins Of Beverast, Secrets Of The Moon), with mastering by V. Santura.

https://van-records.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ChapelOfDisease

 

 

EXITIUM SUI (Australia)

Where the hell to go from that fantabulous Chapel of Disease spectacle? That was the question. But since whiplash is the order of the day, I went to a new song from Exitium Sui, the solo project of Chris Gebauer from the now re-born Deadspace.

You’ll get a clue from the song’s title — “Forlorn” — and indeed, the grand organ chords, orchestral strings, and dreamily plaintive piano keys that begin the song create the mood of a majestic funeral. That mood persists, but the ensuing percussive detonations sound like a bombing run has hit the cathedral, and the harrowing abyssal roars would make any choirs cower in fear.

If anything, the music sweeps with even greater grandeur, saturating the senses, but not so much as to obscure the affecting piano melody or the agonized immensity of those monstrous bellows. The effect is both elegant and wholly crushing.

Obviously, Exitium Sui has returned to the realm of funeral doom, but on “Forlorn” it sounds like the world ending in terrible glory, the heavens crying out as everything below fractures and falls.

“Forlorn” is the opening track on an EP named Endless that will be released on December 3rd. Grebauer created the painted cover art too. On two other songs he’s joined respectively by guest vocalists R.F.S. (Wendol/Kintsukuroi) and Nick Magur (Irreparable/ex-Greytomb/ex-Adamus Exul).

https://exitiumsui.bandcamp.com/album/endless/
https://www.facebook.com/Exitium-Sui-100142918258451/