Blaze of Perdition – photo by Justyna Kaminska
My day job is in an extended period when it’s leaving me alone. This is a double-edged sword for my unpaid work at NCS. I’m able to notice a lot more new songs and videos, but that also leaves me feeling overwhelmed. The flood of new stuff is insane, and equally insane is how much of it is good.
A lot of listeners are so wedded to specific sub-genres that they’re unimpressed by much of what falls outside their solemn vows. I guess I’m wedded too, but am very much a polygamist and feel the need to give all the brides, even the ugliest ones, their fair share of attention.
OK, that was gross, but the point is that I’m enamored of metal from many sub-genres (the more extreme ones), as today’s large roundup demonstrates (though I still think power metal wears too much makeup and flashy clothes).
BLAZE OF PERDITION (Poland)
We join Blaze of Perdition‘s new song “W kwiecie rozłamu” (“In Rupture’s Prime”) in media res, layered guitars wailing like apocalyptic sirens, drums thundering, the vocals screaming and raw. It’s a distressing calamity in progress, and still distressing when the drums slow, the bass steps forward, and near-psychedelic moods emerge.
Waves of agony roll on in the tidal chords and in dissonant weeping notes, though the vocals remain bestial, like a hybrid of vampire and lycanthrope gone mad with hunger. A song that’s disturbing in the extreme, but transfixing in its emotionally shattering intensity.
The song is from Blaze of Perdition‘s new album Upharsin, set for release by Metal Blade on April 19th.
https://www.metalblade.com/blazeofperdition/
https://blazeofperdition.bandcamp.com/album/upharsin
https://www.facebook.com/blazeofperdition
CAVE (U.S.)
Jared Moran has many guises (including Acausal Intrusion). One of them is the band Cave, and in that guise he has created a third release, an album-length atrocity named Cave III. Lest you think I’m too loose with the word “atrocity”, listen to the first single, “Enchanted Tendencies“.
Predictably, given the author of the music, it follows no straight path and is packed with fascinating twists and turns at every instrumental position, but it brazenly and relentlessly assaults the senses from beginning to end.
In the low end, it often sounds like a brutal junkyard trash compactor at work, mangling metal, though the bass also woozily weaves and ecstatically bounces. Elsewhere, dissonant notes writhe, scream, and cavort; horrid roars well up from abyssal depths; and the sharp-toned snare goes off like a handgun that’s become sentient — and lost its mind.
Yes, an atrocity, but a delicious one….
Cave III will be released by The Centipede Abyss on April 25th.
https://centipedeabyss.bandcamp.com/album/cave-iii
CORPUS OFFAL (U.S.)
Corpus Offal is a new Seattle-based band that has risen from the stinking corpse of Cerebral Rot, a repulsive new outfit composed of Cerebral Rot’s lead guitarist/vocalist Ian Schwab and guitarist Clyle Lindstrom, along with the new rhythm section of Jesse Shreibman (Bell Witch, Autophagy) on drums and Jason Sachs (ex-Demoncy) on bass. Their first output is a just-released two-track demo.
Gird your loins, take your anti-emetics, and prepare for bowel-loosening bass-lines, riffing that sounds feverishly ill when quivering and rotten to the core when crawling, crypt-level gutturals and rafter-level howls, and plenty of percussive dynamism.
The songs alternately convulse in pestilential seizures, stomp like hulking golems, weirdly moan like warped sirens, screech and contort in decibels of dementia, and are thoroughly twisted and foul all the way through.
Demo 2024 was released digitally and on tape on March 22nd by 20 Buck Spin.
https://20buckspin.bandcamp.com/album/demo-2024
HIDEOUS DIVINITY (Italy)
Hideous Divinity‘s fascinating new video for the song “More than Many, Never One” begins with a rapier-pointed comment: “Not a single frame of this video was computer generated. It is all about chemistry, physics, blood….”
Credit for surging and swirling fluid dynamics in the video, which are both astonishingly colorful and abysmally dark, both mesmerizing and frightening, goes to Dema Novakova at Eclypso Studio. They fit extremely well with one of the standout songs on Hideous Divinity‘s just-released new album Unextinct, a song highlighted in my friend DGR‘s laudatory review of the album.
https://hideousdivinity.lnk.to/Unextinct
https://www.facebook.com/hideousdivinity
INSECT ARK (Germany)
As you may know, Insect Ark is the Berlin-based duo of American artists Dana Schechter (SWANS) on bass/lap steel/synth/vocals, and drummer/percussionist Tim Wyskida (KHANATE, BLIND IDIOT GOD). On June 7th Debemor Morti Productions will release their fourth album, Raw Blood Singing, and my next selection is its first single, “Youth Body Swayed“.
The song is a striking combination of contrasting sensations — brittle pinging keys and brutally abrasive dragging tones; the sultry and smoky wail of Schechter‘s voice and slow, bone-smashing kick-drums; high-toned scrapes and swirls of fretwork pain; and morose muttering harmonies — simultaneously crushing and ethereal, spellbinding and soul-shaking.
https://insectark.bandcamp.com/album/raw-blood-singing
https://linktr.ee/insectark
http://facebook.com/InsectArk
THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT (Netherlands)
We’ve already trumpeted about previous singles from TMDC‘s new album The Demon Who Makes Trophies Of Men (most recently here), which will be released on April 5th, and now we have to bring out our warped trumpet again because they’ve recently revealed a second song, along with an animated video made by Aimed & Framed — which, as in the case of Hideous Divinity‘s new video, makes the point that no AI was used in its creation. And the band themselves also proclaim: “This single is a fist in the face of artificial intelligence.”
In the case of this horrifying but exhilarating new song, “Commanders Encircled With Foes“, the band indulge their more industrial and electronic interests while creating sinister and diabolically demented moods, inflicting pile-driving punishment, and interweaving the voices of women with crocodile growls, bear-like roars, and mad-house screams. The song is also home to some catchy-as-hell riffing and butt-moving grooves, and a devilish guitar solo.
There’s also more than one message in the music, which you’ll probably figure out when you listen and watch.
https://monolith-deathcult.bandcamp.com/track/commanders-encircled-with-foes-2
http://www.monolith-deathcult.com/
http://www.facebook.com/monolithdeathcult
ОБРІЙ (OBRIJ) (Ukraine)
With The Monolith Deathcult having fired up our heart-rates, it was a nice bit of synchronicity from the alphabetizing of today’s lineup to bring a follow-on song that keeps the heart-throttle wide open.
“Жовтий князь” (The Yellow Prince) wastes no time doing that, with drums driving like pistons, massive HM-2-toned riffage feverishly charging, and a gigantic bass throbbing. There’s fury as well as high octane in the song, expressed through a screaming lead guitar and bloody raw vocals that scald the ears, and it will also get your muscles reflexively jumping when the music rapidly chugs like a giant jackhammer.
On the other hand, the guitars also brutally moan, wail, and blurt in harmonies of misery, giving those scraped-raw vocals a different connotation. And that’s followed by an electrifying soloing spectacle which launches a final sonic tank attack.
https://obrij.bandcamp.com/track/–32
https://www.facebook.com/obriymetaluzh/
ORECUS (Sweden)
Next up is a well-made performance video and new song from the Swedish band Orecus, a song of enraged disgust called “All Traitors Bleed the Same“.
There’s plenty of rage and disgust in the music as well as the lyrics, a kind of seething incipient violence in the jittering yet pulsating riffage and a clobbering determination in the drumwork, coupled with guttural growls, furious snarls, and maddened howls.
The riffing also begins to sound like boiling poison as it flows in searing waves, elevating the music’s intensity and its sense of despair, and it’s driven even harder by blasting drums and megaton detonations. But the humongous grooves in the song are never far away, so get your neck loose….
“All Traitors Bleed the Same” is from the band’s second full-length Dreadnought, which will be released on April 5th. Five of the songs feature guest appearances — by Björn Strid (Soilwork), Filip Danielsson (Humanity’s Last Breath), Joe McGlynn (Man Must Die), Kevin McCaughey (Ion Dissonance), and Peter Wichers (ex-Soilwork).
https://orecus.bandcamp.com/album/dreadnought
https://orecusofficial.com/
https://www.facebook.com/orecusofficial
TEN TON SLUG (Ireland)
The come-on I saw for this Irish band’s debut album Colossal Oppressor included references to guest vocals by Memoriam/Bolt Thrower frontman Karl Willetts and cover art by Adam Burke, and that, plus the band’s name, was enough to catch my interest. And then I saw the cover art — sure enough, Mr. Burke created a 10-ton slug, or maybe more like 100 tons.
But what of the music? I’d never heard this group’s previous EP releases, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. What I discovered (and you can now discover) through the album’s first single “Mindless and Blind” was music both head-hooking and bowel-loosening.
The bass does sound like some big undulating and throbbing creature, but the darting and swarming riffage is far more feverish than the movement of any slimy gastropod, the drums hit with knee-capping force, and the furious screams and roars sound truly pissed-off.
As the song unfolds, it’s maniacal intensity builds, and then the fretwork begins to worm and slither, roil and writhe. But this is a heavy-grooved thing too, and it will give your spine a vigorous jolting in the midst of all the freakish fretwork machinations, skull-cracking beats, and humongous bass excavations.
Maybe we should think of this as a window into the inner life of the slug….
https://tentonslug.bandcamp.com/album/colossal-oppressor
https://www.facebook.com/TenTonSlug