SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: ACOD, ISCHEMIC, LOCKTENDER, LOKA, NECROT, NEVER THE DEAD, PAIN, POPIOŁY, SHADOHM

Like yesterday, I had enough time to compile a very big roundup of new music for this Saturday. It includes two full EPs and seven individual songs, most of them from forthcoming releases, presented in alphabetical order by band name.

Like yesterday, there’s so much to hear here that I’ve attempted to cut back on the usual volume of impressionistic words so I can finish this before I turn into a pumpkin. Also like yesterday, I think there’s a lot of variety in the music I picked.

Unlike yesterday, I decided to focus on more obscure names from different corners of the metalverse.(P.S. For newcomers here, there will be yet another roundup tomorrow, focusing on black metal and its kindred.)

 

ACOD (France)

For the first song and video I chose “The Son of a God: The Heir of Divine Blood“. Prepare for exceedingly dramatic music that makes many twists and turns, from phases that batter, blaze, and roil to others that are slower and more sinister, or more melancholy, with keyboards occasionally leading thrilling dances overhead or wafting like magical fumes, and a piano rippling near the end. The harsh vocals also change repeatedly, eventually chanting the song’s title in gloomy tones.

As for the very well-made video, expect vigorous hirsute leather-clad men and beautiful but grim-faced black-robed witches and an occult coronation featuring a participant who probably doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into.

The song is from the upcoming album Versets Noirs, which is framed throughout around encounters with witches. It will be released by Hammerheart Records on April 26th.

https://acodband.lnk.to/versetsnoirs
https://acod.bandcamp.com/album/versets-noirs
https://www.facebook.com/acodband

 

 

ISCHEMIC (Canada)

Apart from previously favorable experiences with the music of Toronto’s Ischemic, I was drawn to these next songs by the title of the album they come from: Condemned To The Breaking Wheel. We all know that feeling, don’t we?

In the case of the album’s currently streaming title track, prepare for another twisting and turning experience, this one more than 9 minutes long. It’s a ruinous, hard-charging death-metal wrecking machine, with Isabelle Tazbir‘s savage howls and cold, gutting roars in command, but it also includes fiendish darting and slithering riffage and stupefying sledgehammer blows — and eventually it marches us into a mass grave of doom, with Isabelle screaming in tortured tones, the music oozing agony, and the kick-drum pounding our guts. Condemned to the breaking wheel, indeed.

Let the player below continue running and you’ll hear the frightening second song, “Rust and Bones“, which is even more harrowing, borderline-deranged, and catastrophic than the title song. The album is set for release on April 5th.

https://ischemic.bandcamp.com/album/condemned-to-the-breaking-wheel
https://www.facebook.com/Ischemic/

 

 

LOCKTENDER (U.S.)

Our old friend deckard cain wrote about Locktender back in 2014 and, stupid me, I forgot about them in the following 10 years, reminded only earlier this week via a link to their new EP from JR (thank you sir!).

Locktender have a very interesting concept. For each of their releases (that I know of) they focus on the works of a particular artist — a writer, painter, or sculptor, for example — with each song interpreting a different work by the artist. The new EP, Sage: I, was inspired by paintings of the same name as the songs by Kay Sage, an American surrealist who died in 1963 at the age of 64.

In Locktender‘s music this time, it’s hard for me to tell you succinctly what to prepare for, even in genre terms, because the experiences within each song are so different. Depending on where you are, the sounds may be lonely and haunted, weary and wailing, titanic and crushing (no bones shall be left unbroken by the end), raw and ragged, or delirious in its illness.

The vocals alone are utterly shattering; the music is a moving calamity. It might bring you close to tears, from heartbreak or pain. It definitely won’t leave you as it found you.

https://locktender.bandcamp.com/album/sage-i
https://www.facebook.com/locktenderband

 

 

LOKA (Finland)

I was attracted to this next song by the album’s cover art, which reminded me of a Beksiński piece, albeit a more colorful and impressionistic version of the Beksiński style. It didn’t prepare me for the music within “Jumalpää“, the first song from the album that’s now streaming.

Prepare for music that’s humongously heavy and emotionally scarring, brutally primitive and mentally mutilating. There’s a pulse in the music, like a heart that chooses when to beat, along with machines operating as torture devices and vocals that are just fucking searing in their raw, unhinged wretchedness. Before the end, the experience becomes more violent, the mechanized entities more frantic in their ruinous work.

The song comes with a body-horror video. Don’t watch it unless you have a strong stomach. It’s ruthlessly effective in capturing the madness and degradation in the music.

The track is from an album by this Finnish trio named Kuningas Raivolle, which will be released by Sonic Rites Records and Iron Corpse on April 29th.

https://lokapulse.bandcamp.com/album/kuningas-raivolle-2
https://www.facebook.com/lokapulse

 

 

NECROT (U.S.)

After that last song, it occurred to me that it would be nice to follow it with something that would act as a defibrillator. Fortunately, though I’m going in alphabetical order, that’s just what I have for you.

The cover art by Marald Van Haasteren is a good clue about what’s coming, even if you weren’t already familiar with Necrot‘s brand of death metal. Prepare for twisted, serial-killer exuberance in the riffing, pure ugliness in the vocals, fast-switch drumming that will activate your fast-twitch muscle fibers, doses of rampaging destructiveness that sound like a tunnel-boring machine gouging through bedrock, and a weirdly wailing melody that culminates in a weirdly wailing solo.

“Cut the Cord” is from Necrot‘s new album Lifeless Birth, which is set for release by Tankcrimes on April 12th.

https://tankcrimes.bandcamp.com/album/lifeless-birth
https://www.facebook.com/cyclesofpain

 

 

NEVER THE DEAD (Sweden)

Håkan Stuvemark is a man of many projects, and one of them is Never the Dead. Under that banner, with a changing group of contributors, he’s put out 5 singles since 2020, and the latest of those is the next song in today’s collection. On this one, “We Were Never Born (And We Will Never Live)“, he’s joined by his Wombbath bandmate, drummer Jon Rudin.

Prepare for romping, chainsawing death metal with head-moving grooves, bestially ravenous vocals, spectral wisps of keyboard melody coming and going up in the rafters, and an equally spooky guitar solo. The song’s got a lot of bounding feral energy, but manages to be creepy too.

https://wombbathofficial.bandcamp.com/track/we-were-never-born-and-we-will-never-live
https://www.facebook.com/neverthedead/

 

 

PAIN (Sweden)

I am a fan of Pain, though you need not be a masochist to enjoy the music. To the contrary, Pain is fun. Witness the following song and video for the song “Go With the Flow” off Pain‘s new album I AM.

I was going to watch the video even if I hadn’t been a fan of Pain once I saw that, along with Pain mastermind Peter Tägtgren, it includes Swedish actor Peter Stormare (whose extensive resume includes performances in Dancer in the Dark, Fargo, Prison Break, and The Big Lebowski).

Prepare for a dose of ’80’s synth pop, and I’ll leave the rest of the intro to Mr. Tägtgren:

“It was an idea I had for a while to write in more of that direction, so I was taking out analog synths and going crazy, and of course I needed to come back to a catchy Pain chorus. [The] hardest part was to write lyrics to the song, and to figure out what style to use to sing. The lyrics are about me, always being negative and the need to let things go when they don’t go as planned, and brush it off and move on.”

I AM will be released on May 17th by Nuclear Blast.

https://www.painworldwide.com/iampain
https://www.facebook.com/OfficialPain

 

 

POPIOŁY (Poland)

Next up are two songs from the debut album by the Polish black metal band Popioły. The album isn’t new — it was digitally self-released in 2020 — but I only came across it recently because of an impending physical release by the Old Temple label, and I thought it worth some acclaim here.

The first of the songs, “W Chmurach Jowisza“, seized my attention through the unusual combination of extravagantly wailing vocals, like something recorded in the domain of a lost tribe, and absolutely thunderous and flame-throwing instrumentation. Eventually, the nasty growls and howls break out of their cage, along with musical digressions into hellishly abysmal and near-hallucinatory realms. The drumming throughout is jaw-dropping.

The other song, “Eskalacja Przemocy“, which is also a diabolical head-spinner, gut-buster, and bone-breaker, reinforces my desire to catch up with the whole album. The name of that album is Purposeless Through Meaning. It will be released on CD and cassette tape by Old Temple on March 11th.

https://oldtemple.bandcamp.com/album/popio-y-purposeless-through-meaning
https://www.facebook.com/PopiolyHorde/

 

 

SHADOHM (Poland)

To close today, I picked a complete EP named Through Darkness Towards Enlightenment that was released just yesterday by the Selfmadegod label, coincident with its premiere at Decibel. Apart from the proven tastes of that label, I was induced to listen by the cover art (which to my addled mind also nicely connected to the cover art at the top of today’s collection) and by the report that Shadhom is the project of drummer Pawel Jaroszewicz of Antigama and Obscure Sphinx (and a former recording and/or live member of Vader, Decapitated, and Hate), plus a small collective of talented friends.

Sadly, I’m almost completely out of time, and so all I can offer by way of preparation is the suggestion that the EP will appeal strongly to fans of Meshuggah, and to note that: keyboards add to the mechanized and futuristic aspects of the music; there’s anguished singing in the mix along with very unhinged and unsettling harsh expressions; and you may need orthopedic therapy after the EP finishes pounding the living crap out of you. Also, “Ripped Apart” turns out to be goddamned obliterating.

The cover art, by the way, was created by vocalist Adrian Meissner and Michal “Xaay” Loranc.

https://selfmadegod.bandcamp.com/album/through-darkness-towards-enlightenment
https://www.facebook.com/shad.ohmBand/