Last week I came across a verse from American poet and novelist Charles Bukowski that begins this way: “our public hell creates a / private hell and / there is no hell / except on / earth.”
Hell is a realm that exists in human imagination and belief too — a place in parallel to earthly existence or what comes after life. That is one way it exists on earth, even if it has no other existence, in addition to the public and private hells Bukowski wrote about — the hells that human beings make for others and for themselves.
I’m thinking about all these hells today, the realms of demons and the realms of human depravity and anguish, because I happened upon a sequence of new black metal songs and videos that I can only think of as hellish in one or more of those ways. Those songs fill up a lot of today’s collection.
But I only quoted part of Bukowski‘s verse. After positing that there is no hell except on earth he wrote:
once you accept
this premise
you will be free to
exist
on your own terms
and you will never
know loneliness
and death will be as
nothing.
consider yourself
blessed in the
dark.
There’s some music in today’s collection that aligns with that strangely utopian conclusion too.
ACOD (France)
Yesterday ACOD returned with another song from their forthcoming album Versets Noirs. This one is their cover of Samael‘s “Black Trip“.
Accompanied by a video that’s loaded with occult imagery, the song is definitely diabolical — hard-punching and heavy-grooved, with scorch-the-earth and chanting vocals, writhing and frenzied riffage that channels exultant delirium, and swirling synths that shine with luciferian light.
Versets Noirs 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/
ANTIFLESH (Poland)
The next song, “Kres Istnienia” (“The End of Existence”), presents hell in a different dimension. I’m tempted to call the music “hell-doom”.
In the opening, ringing and moaning notes trace a dismal melody that slowly begins to take root. Those black roots burrow deeper even as brutal pounding beats and scarring chords arrive. Beastly roars and wretched screams arrive as well, along with a trilling lead-guitar that sounds like feverish weeping, amidst cataclysmic upheavals in the low end. This is the hell where hope goes to die, miserably wailing at the end.
The Antiflesh album Hosanna will be released on June 14th by Theogonia Records.
https://theogonia-records.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AntiFleshband
ASPERNAMENTUM (Sweden)
The next song, “Epiphanies of the Night’s Light“, delivers furious demon-shrieking and a frantically growling bass; sensations of fiendish, whirling delirium; a slower passage of infernal mysticism (both grim and bright); and a few moments of simmering poison before the song elevates into sulfurous glory, with drums that both race head-long and methodically chop like an ax on the souls of the damned.
The song is from an EP named Primal Judgement Manifesto that will be released by Soulseller Records on May 17th.
https://soulsellerrecords.bandcamp.com
http://soulsellerrecords.aisamerch.com
https://soulsellerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/primal-judgement-manifesto
https://www.facebook.com/aspernamentum.official
DAUÞUZ (Germany)
Hail the return of the German black metal miners, Dauþuz. Their newest descent below the surface is an album named Uranium, so-named because thematically it concerns the former uranium mining that took place in East German areas — dangerous and desperate work to be sure. And here is hell of a human making.
The album’s first single, “Wüst die Heimat“, is a good example of what makes the music of Dauþuz distinctive. Often cataclysmic in its turbulence and in the sweeping scale of its wrenching melodies, and with vocals that scream and cry out with shattering intensity, the music takes the breath away and sinks the heart.
But as the pacing pounds and the earth rumbles, heroic voices sing with passion, though the music remains despairing. They fervently sing again in the song’s ravishing crescendo, where a fiery, flickering guitar seizes attention in the midst of a grand catastrophe.
Uranium will be released by Amor Fati Productions on April 30th.
https://shop.amor-fati-productions.de/en/
https://dauthuzbm.bandcamp.com/album/uranium
https://www.facebook.com/DauthuzBM
DRAUGNIM (Finland)
“Traitor’s Crown” might not sound hellish at first — more haunting and elegantly intriguing instead — but give it time.
Soon enough, an earthquake shakes at the furious pace of a rocket; the riffing blazes and writhes in terrible grandeur; crazed snarls come for the throat; panoramas of red celestial melody cascade above momentous booming percussion; the sound spins like devils in delight and waltzes like hell’s lords in their best finery. Almost like massed horns, peals of glorious melody ascend and slowly slither — and transform into fanfares of agony and hopelessness.
Actually, the whole song is elegant as well as the kind of experience that sucks the wind from your lungs, but yes, still hellish, especially when the mood of the music transforms into a soundscape for the world’s end.
The song is from Draugnim‘s new album Verum Malum. It will be released by Naturmacht Productions on April 26th.
https://draugnim.bandcamp.com/album/verum-malum
https://www.facebook.com/draugnim.official
EX CINERE (U.S.)
This next song, an epic-length one named “Ācennan“, evokes other aspects of the Bukowski verse with which I started today’s column.
The music is entirely instrumental, with a prominent role for synths, and as you might guess from its length, it changes as it unfolds, but on the whole it’s jaw-dropping in its extravagance.
It’s panoramic and deeply melancholy at first, then erupts like sonic vulcanism — drums blasting, the bass hurtling, and guitars flashing in searing frenzies. The panoramic layers also transform into brilliant cascades of pain and despair.
The composition constantly pulls and pushes the intensity without warning, slowly spilling out grief in its softer moments and then detonating vast and devastating cataclysms, like the earth being violently shaken apart and oceans and skies igniting in fire. Back and forth it goes, an extended experience of terrors and mourning — with brief glimpses of massed yearning and celestial wonder along the way.
In one of those softer moments near the end, the clarion-clear ring of the notes channels a kind of wistfulness, a remembrance of things lost but maybe not yet completely out of reach, and in the combustion that follows, the layered guitars gloriously ring and soar, shiver and wail — with a mood that’s open to interpretation — followed by a final phase of grandeur and delirium, which might be triumphant and might be the final shattering.
Ex Cinere is the solo work of Joe Waller from Sarasvati, whose past work also includes tenures with Adora Vivos and Amiensus. He writes: “Ācennan is dedicated to my teacher, my closest friend, whose wisdom and guidance has provided the insight, discernment, and understanding necessary to find the way through the obstacle.”
https://excinere.bandcamp.com/album/acennan
HÄSSLIG (Spain)
After the spectacle of that last long song, I thought I’d follow it with something closer to the ground, something more feral. Fortunately I was able to do that without altering the alphabetical order of today’s selections — and without departing from today’s themes of hell.
The Sentient Ruin label introduces the album that’s the source of the next song this way:
The work of enigmatic Spanish recluse D.B. (of Negativa and Délirant), Apex Predator subjects the listener to over 30 minutes of barbarous necrotism. A sickening and cruelty-worshipping audial delirium inspired by punk-infused black metal, Oi! and post-punk bands like Bone Awl, Cruel Master, Ildjarn, Ritual Knife to metastasize a disorienting and trance-like defilement of triumphant sonic squalor.
I offered similarly over-the-top verbiage when reviewing Hässlig‘s 2021 record Guillotine.
“Slaves” is the first single from the new record. Mind-scraping punk chords and pumping beats join with ragged and raging screams to get the blood throbbing, and hell yes, it’s a feral romp but it does indeed sound cruel and carnivorous, and as bleak as the title suggests it will be.
Apex Predator will be released by Sentient Ruin on May 3rd.
https://sentientruin.bandcamp.com/album/apex-predator
https://hasslig.bandcamp.com/
MACHUKHA (Ukraine)
We can find hell in every corner of the world, the worst of it in places where people are being maimed, slaughtered, and starved in vast numbers, with no real hope of relief. Ukraine may not have the worst of it, but undeniably is having hell visited upon itself too.
So, Ukraine was on my mind when I picked this next song and video. They’re from a Berlin-based Ukrainian band named Machukha (“stepmother”), from an album named Mochari that’s described as an exploration of “the human capacity to withstand atrocities and continue surviving day by day”. This particular song was written by the band’s vocalist Natalya at a time when she was experiencing unexplained seizures followed by hours of inability to move.
The startling nature of the video for “Bezpliddya” is one big reason why I included it in today’s collection. I think it’s better that I not try to provide a preview of it.
As for the song itself, Natalya howls like a wounded wolf and screams in agony while the burning riffage inflicts its own pain and torment, backed by heavy bass pulsations and rattling percussion. The song relentlessly ratchets the tortures and the tension until it reaches a point of mental and emotional collapse.
You pushed me into hell
Now witness how I burn,
In the jaw of shattered bones
Those that seemed long gone to dust
The album will be released by Consouling Sounds sometime this coming summer.
https://consouling.be/release/mochari
https://www.machukha.com/about-us
https://machukha.bandcamp.com/track/bezpliddya
https://www.facebook.com/machukha.stepmother/
NAXEN (Germany)
For my final offering of hell today I chose a lyric video for a song named “To Writhe In The Womb Of Night“. The music strikes like a massive thunderstorm in which the lightning swirls in anguished madness. The madly swirling melodies are submerssive and unmistakably distraught, but no less tortured than the screaming tirades that expel the hopeless and frightening words.
The pacing and the riffing eventually morph, but the song throws no life preservers to listeners. It has us in a grave and continues shoveling the dirt, even when a conflagration breaks out all ’round and even when the ground becomes saturated in seas of agony and the words become chanted.
The words really are strikingly grim and eloquently nihilistic. You might even detect a last connection with Bukowski‘s verse from the opening of this long column.
The song is from Naxen‘s album Descending Into A Deeper Darkness, which will be out on May 3rd via Vendetta Records.
https://naxen.bandcamp.com/album/descending-into-a-deeper-darkness
https://www.vendetta-records.com
https://vendetta-records.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/naxenbm