Hull of Light
As you may know, the core cadre of NCS slaves (including me) spent chunks of May attending metal festivals in Seattle and Baltimore. In my case, this disrupted my usual efforts to pull together roundups of recommended new music. The backlog of missed opportunities is now gargantuan, leaving me confused about how in the world to pick things for this Saturday’s SEEN AND HEARD column.
Somehow between now and then I’ll figure out what to do, but I decided to get a modest head-start today by writing about two fairly recent EPs. I had thought I might get this done before becoming immersed in festival revels, but alas, I didn’t. Rather than just abandon the idea, however, I’m returning to it now.
HULL OF LIGHT (International)
The first EP initially caught my attention because of the extravagance of the talent that went into making it. As reported at Hull of Light‘s Bandcamp page, the multi-coastal collective consists of “cosmic cowboys and cowgirls with members from Megason, Suffering Hour, Zeresh, Underground Spiritual Game & Sleepwalker [夢遊病者]“.
Although only initials are used in naming the lineup, you can figure it out with a bit of investigation. The Bandcamp page also explains that the five participants were “brought together “in kinship for Machine Music MK V”, which refers to Volume V of the Milim Kashot compilation series released last November by the Tel Aviv-based music website Machine Music. If you check out the lengthy (and extraordinary) track list for Volume V (available here), you’ll see that track No. 2 comes from Hull of Light.
The suggestive name of Hull of Light‘s debut EP is Gilded Liminal Shrines. It consists of four tracks, each of them a single word beginning with “S”: “Sun” (the song that appeared on MK V), “Soul”, “Savage”, and “Sanctuary”. The identified instrumentation includes vocals (two of them), drums, “Right Guitar”, “Left Guitar”, “Upright Bass, Bow”, and Electrophones.
This is, to make an understatement, unconventional music, best heard by adventurous minds.
The word “kaleidoscopic” also springs to mind, because the songs include so many moving parts of so many musical colors, constantly spinning, falling into place, and spinning again. In “Sun” those sounds feverishly flicker and warmly hum, kept on track by the steady rhythmic snap of the drums and backed by a cacophony of wild howls and ravaging screams. The time passes before you know it.
The other three tracks are equally multi-faceted and equally fascinating. The jazz and prog-rock backgrounds of some of the participants contribute to the experience, as do the metal backgrounds of others. The results are often hallucinatory (“psychedelic” might also be a fitting word), and capable of becoming entrancing despite how vibrantly multi-textured, unexpected, and experimental the sounds are.
And yes indeed, the sounds are vibrant, produced in a way that allows each sparkling and musing ingredient to be clearly picked out across the channels. The vocals also turn out to be varied, with ghostly singing in the mix along with the goblin tirades. While the drumming includes some electric fills, it mainly provides an organizing groove while all the other instrumentation frolics and muses.
I could attempt to say more if I had a deeper background in some of the beyond-metal stylistic elements that play such a prominent role in the EP (it brings back memories of some things I used to listen to in the ’70s but that was obviously long ago), yet hopefully I’ve said enough to serve the main purpose — which is to get you to listen to this.
https://hulloflight.bandcamp.com/album/gilded-liminal-shrines
ZEIT (Germany)
The second EP I want to recommend today is from an old favorite of mine, the German trio Zeit. In their most recent releases they’ve been musically branching out from their black/sludge metal roots (or maybe “experimenting” is a better term). As they explain on the Bandcamp page for this newest EP, Grollwerfer:
As it’s tradition our latest EP once again ventures into a new direction. After Funeral Doom and Grindpunk we explore the vast lands of Death Metal….
We took four classic ZEIT-songs and reforged them into a new style inspired by our love for bands like BOLT THROWER, ILLDISPOSED, KATAKLYSM and OBITUARY.
In doing that re-forging, Zeit also modified the original songs’ names, which is appropriate because they really do sound like brand new songs — and very good ones they are.
Vibrant gun-shot drums and a prominently hefty bass anchor these four songs, with gritty growls and lycanthropic howls savagely expelling the words. Meanwhile, the riffs are scarred with abrasion and themselves carry a crushing weight, while also spinning up into bouts of circle-saw evisceration and slashing viciousness.
Zeit bring dynamism into each song, shifting the tempos and rhythmic patterns, and they give each song its own changing personality. “Grollwerfer” is grim and bleak, then mean and marauding. “Bodenfresser” is brazen and bounding, a feral and electrifying romp that’s damned catchy but also begins to sound dismal and despairing.
On the other hand, “Funkstille” hammers and jolts, with riffing that punches, moans, writhes, and claws, creating a galvanizing experience that’s intense, dark, and disturbing. And to conclude, Zeit bring “Sternenklar“. As I hear this one, it’s a rumbling black-hearted tank attack of a song, ominous and oppressive and capable of chewing up any concrete barriers placed in its path, augmented by a pulse-pounding drum performance — but it also drags like a wounded leviathan.
No telling what Zeit might do next. With this EP they prove they’re capable of doing just about anything they want, and doing it well.
https://rumsdiezeit.bandcamp.com/album/grollwerfer
https://www.facebook.com/RumsDieZeit