SEEN AND HEARD: BARBARIAN SWORDS, DARKTHRONE, LAIR OF THE MINOTAUR, SEAR BLISS, THOU

Another big week for new songs and videos from some very good bands. I wasn’t able to pull together a mid-week roundup, so we’ve got a lot to cover today and tomorrow. Without further ado, let’s begin.

BARBARIAN SWORDS (Spain)

We start today’s alphabetized collection with B, which stands of course for Barbarian, as in Barbarian Swords, and a song of “true nihiilistic black doom” off their new album Fetid.

With “Cherokee Firestorm” Barbarian Swords bring bruising beats and sandstorm riffing with a dismal mood, but then set fire to the music with searing chords, flickering leads, and jolting grooves, all of it accompanied by maniacal screams.

The music descends into dismal moods again as the pacing slows to a stagger, with the guitars oozing pain and despair as the drums drop bombs and the vocals spew venom and vitriol. The pain in the music builds until it becomes shattering, a chorus of wrenching, wailing calamity on a vast scale.

Fetid is set for release by Base Record Production on April 26th. It was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Javi Félez at Moontower Studios, and Juanjo Castellano made the frightening cover art.

https://www.facebook.com/baserecordproduction
https://www.facebook.com/barbarianswords
https://barbarianswords.bandcamp.com/

 

 

DARKTHRONE (Norway)

Next we have an animated video for a song called “Black Dawn Affiliation” by an up-and-coming Norwegian band named Darkthrone.

It sounds like this band might have some black metal among their influences, though the song has a skull-rocking beat to go along with the scratchy and sizzling pulsations, the slithering frenzies, and the blaring chords in the riffage, along with the overall bleakness and diabolical vocal ugliness of the song (which eventually gives way to haunting wails).

Judging by this song, Darkthrone might be a band worth following. It’s the first and only single from their new album It Beckons Us All, which will be released by the up-and-coming label Peaceville Records on April 26th.

https://darkthrone.lnk.to/beckons
https://www.facebook.com/Darkthroneofficial/

 

 

LAIR OF THE MINOTAUR (U.S.)

It’s been a few minutes since we had a last record from Lair of the Minotaur — however many minutes make up the nearly six years that have elapsed since their two-track EP in 2018, or the 14 years that have come and gone since their last album, Evil Power. What we have now is the second of two singles they’ve released this year.

In the case of “Six Days in Hades“, you’ll get a text-book case of primitive brute-force pounding, vocals that sound like wolverines on fire or throats clotted with blood, and guitars that dismally whine and snarl while the rhythm section use their humongous implements to hammer you deep into the ground. A nasty piece of work, but one your reptile brain will adore.

https://lairoftheminotaur.bandcamp.com/track/six-days-in-hades
https://www.teepublic.com/user/grindhouseinc

 

 

SEAR BLISS (Hungary)

We haven’t had to wait as long for a new Sear Bliss album as we have for a new Lair of the Minotaur album, but six years is nothing to sneeze at, fully long enough to leave Sear Bliss fans famished for something new — and now we have something new.

What you’ll find next is a lyric video for “The Upper Worlds,” the first single off this band’s new album Heavenly Down. Above racing drums and gargoyle growls, the music presents cascades of splendor and distress, expansive and feverish.

The band have also (thankfully) not mis-placed their trombone during the lost years, and the peals of its august fanfares make an exhilarating song even more electrifying, but also more stately and magisterial, and they create a sharp ceremonial contrast with the deranged seizures in the fretwork and the crazed galloping of the drums.

Heavenly Down is set for release by Hammerheart Records on June 28th. The cover art was made by created by Kris Verwimp.

https://searbliss.lnk.to/heavenlydown
https://www.facebook.com/searblissband

 

 

THOU (U.S.)

Emotional darkness is one of the hallmarks of many variants of extreme metal. In the case of Thou‘s music, that darkness has just been especially penetrating — bone deep, as it were. And they’ve always known how to fracture bones and challenge minds too.

The final song in this Friday roundup is “I Feel Nothing When You Cry“, and it demonstrates both of those aspects of Thou‘s music (and some others). This one feels like an earthquake and a typhoon happening simultaneously, with the kind of heavy upheavals in the low end that feel like the earth shaking itself apart, and the kind of searing intensity in the riffing and the vocals that feels like a conflagration burning out of control.

The rattle and snap of the snare provides something to hang onto in the midst of the sonic cataclysm, but you’ll need your own oxygen mask. Under the circumstances, the lyrics are surprising:

“Surrounded by my solitude. Alone in the dark never felt so good.”

I am a rock in a sea of chaos: settled, subdued, unmovable, impervious. Muscles unclenched, blood flows freely, anger exhaled, peace inhaled deeply. I am a rock in a sea of chaos: determined and strong, unreachable, impervious. Day after day I’m secure within my room. I am impervious. Day after day I’m sealed within my tomb. I am impervious. …when I’ve walked in the garden, when everything’s quiet…

I am a rock in a sea of chaos.
I am impervious.

The song is from Thou‘s upcoming album Umbilical, which will be out on Sacred Bones Records on May 31st.

https://lnk.to/Umbilical
https://www.instagram.com/thou_band/
https://thou.bandcamp.com/