Groza
As I mentioned yesterday I’m flying to Iceland tomorrow to be present at Ascension Fest. I need to figure out what to pack, decisions like whether I should bring one change of underwear and socks for the week or 7. I’ve noticed from past Ascensions that people there don’t smell as bad as at U.S. festivals, so maybe more than one change, eh?
I’ve also got a couple of premieres to write for posting tomorrow before I leave, and some clothes to wash, and I might should spend some time with my spouse, to increase the iffy odds she’ll still be here when I get back.
So, even though it’s been two weeks since the last time I did this Sunday column and therefore I have an especially mountainous pile of new music to choose from, this will have to be short — at least in terms of my own words.
GROZA (Germany)
You should already know that Groza are great. They have a third album named Nadir coming out on September 20th via AOP Records. It is certainly not their nadir. Judging from the song and video below, it’s closer to a pinnacle.
“Dysthymian Dreams” has three phases. The first one is a breathtaking firestorm, made even more exhilarating by the band’s stage performance in the beautifully filmed accompanying video, but it’s also emotionally moving in a different way, a monument of desperation and tragedy as well as a conflagration.
In the second phase, you get an oxygen mask and a chance for your heart to gentle its beating with the gentle, sublime music and haunting spoken words before you stroke out. The third phase? Burn again!
https://save-it.cc/aop/nadir
https://groza-blackmetal.bandcamp.com/album/nadir
https://www.facebook.com/grozaband
SPECTRAL WOUND (Canada)
Spectral Wound have a new album on the way. When Andy Synn reviewed their last one here he started this way:
“There’s not going to be any lengthy introduction or wordy preamble to this one. Just a simple, definitive statement. Spectral Wound are a phenomenal band and A Diabolic Thirst is a phenomenal album. ‘nuff said.” (Of course, he did say more.)
After I saw Spectral Wound at MDF this year, I spewed this on social media: “No asses will be dragging after Spectral Wound. White hot mayhem with just a few moments of (duh) spectral haunting.”
After hearing the first advance track from the new full-length (“Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal“), the proprietor of the Machine Music site put it on his latest weekly list of songs he liked, writing this:
“Canada’s finest are back with their mid-paced, deceptively melodic catchy anarchy. Markedly more melodic this time around, I think, and that much more infatuated with traditional shall I dare say ‘rock’? The result, at least as far as the first single goes, is a celebration of everything metal going down a straight line, one somewhat bent by, again, their just incredible ear at writing songs that stick and at the same time subvert. FFO: Shotunes.”
What should I add? How about this: Yes indeed, prepare to rock out — with devils — and to get screamed at; to be swept into a roiling sonic vortex even as the snare rocks on, and to be jolted hard; to spin and swirl and perhaps to levitate; and to get lots of hooks jammed into your head.
Spectral Wound‘s new album is Songs Of Blood and Mire. It will be released on August 23rd via Profound Lore.
https://spectralwound.bandcamp.com/album/songs-of-blood-and-mire
https://www.facebook.com/spectralwoundcontramundi
INCESSANT (Ireland)
The Dublin trio Incessant are following up their debut EP Perennial Umbra with a new one named Entropic Aeons, set for release on July 26th by Repose Records. My next choice today is “Of Disillusion and Doctrine,” the first advance track from the new EP.
Prepare for a roiling and ravishing typhoon of danger and destruction, replete with harrowing howls and unchained sky-high wails, but the mix also includes rocking grooves, feral chords, and glittering melodies with an exotic Eastern air. It’s a hell of a thrill-ride that would, upon reflection, have gone well right after that Groza track.
https://incessant1.bandcamp.com/album/entropic-aeons
https://www.facebook.com/IncessantIRL
CONCRETE WINDS (Finland)
Up above I quoted from the Machine Music site’s latest weekly list of favorite new songs, and I’ll do it again here, because this next song was also on that list:
“Concrete Winds sit atop the intersection between the rampaging, loose war-ish metal of bands like Archgoat or Diocletian and the vast, pulpy abattoir floor that is grindcore and maybe even goregrind. Everything is, perhaps a better way to put it, fucking gross and yet so driven and pissed and riffy that it’s almost ridiculous. It would, in fact, would have been rediculous had it not been so fucking sick. FFO: Stabbing people with your pointy musical instrument.”
The song in question is “Infernal Repeater”, and you’d best prepare for… sheer sonic madness. If you find guitar work more crazed somewhere else this year, let me know. The drumming, the bass-work, and the vocals are also certifiably nuts.
The song is from Concrete Winds‘ third album, which is self-titled and will be released on August 30th by Sepulchral Voice.
https://www.hrrecords.de/SEPULCHRAL-VOICE_1
https://concretewinds.bandcamp.com/album/concrete-winds
https://www.facebook.com/aggressivenoisetorment
OPPRESS. (UK)
In another one of these columns I’ve already provided a truncated review of the fabulously named second album by Oppress. — The Subtle Art of Turning Gold into Shit — which came out in early May. More recently, Oppress. released a video for one of the tracks from that album, and that’s what you’ll find next.
Consistent with the song’s name (“Miscreant“), the video is a fast slide-show featuring mug-shots of criminals across time, some better known than others, and other less obvious photos and footage. The band explain that it “is no mere video”: “It is a vermimancy, a conjuring of energies, of energies that dispose towards error, mistake, miscreance, towards degeneracy, decadence, decay; towards the worm.”
As for the music, prepare for a twisting and twisted adventure, one that’s dissonant and demented, hallucinatory and unsettling, frenzied and freakish, paired up with truly deranged and macabre vocals. The video makes for a fascinating match.
https://oppress667.bandcamp.com/album/the-subtle-art-of-turning-gold-into-shit
https://www.instagram.com/oppress._official/
VANQUISHMENT (U.S.)
The Vanquishment trio hail from Bellingham, Washington in the far northwest of the U.S. Consistent with the latitude of that town, their exhilarating formulation of melodic back metal shares qualities with Scandinavian predecessors.
Which is to say it’s capable of being both icy and fiery, warlike and heroic, tragic and triumphant, sometimes as sweeping as the soundtrack to an ancient saga and sometimes as primal as a defiant battle-march into the jaws of death, or the frenzies of a blood-lust. Through it all, the drumming is lights-out, the bass is nuanced, and the vocals are absolutely scorching.
The name of their debut EP, released on May 15th, is Dogfights, and thematically it does seem to drawn upon themes of aerial combat, a more modern warfare than that launched by barbarous Vikings and their gods, which is what the music brought to my mind.
Indeed, the lyrics on the opening song were written by a retired U.S. Air Force officer who spent 2,000 hours in fighter aircraft (I found a fascinating wartime story about him here).
https://vanquishment.bandcamp.com/album/dogfights
https://www.facebook.com/vanquishmentband
XHELAT (Germany)
My last musical pick for today is another debut EP, which as you can see has a most unusual piece of cover art for a black metal record (it was created by Cologne artist Lisa Bergsteiner). Self-titled, it was just released yesterday by Vendetta Records. I quickly paid attention because of the label and because the band’s lineup includes three members from Ultha and one from Laere, along with bassist Uwe Bielz.
These two songs, “Blood Oath” and “Asura“, provide an interesting amalgam of mind-altering eeriness and earthiness. In the first song, the dense buzz of hornet-swarm riffing is itself strange, but the shrill wailing and quivering guitar-leads are stranger still, and the ragged roars and howls sound like pure torment and strangling wretchedness. The rhythm section provides the visceral, blood-pumping grounding, while everything else doses the mind with frightening psychoactive substances that chill the blood.
A damned scary song that one. “Asura” is more mesmerizing and sinister, slower-paced and leagues more ominous, and the drifting wail of the guitar in that one sounds exotic and seductive, You might almost let your guard down. But there’s pounding and jolting to come, and head-spinning frenzies, where the gleaming guitars sound like the glorious revels of djinns. The vocals, however, still sound like the tortures of a great beast.
An absolutely fascinating, indeed transfixing, pair of songs. I sure hope we’ll get more from Khelat.
https://vendetta-records.bandcamp.com/album/xhelat
https://xhelat.bandcamp.com/album/s-t
GREAT LAKES DUNGEON SIEGE (U.S.)
To close, I have a piece of news about a forthcoming festival I wanted to share despite the fact that we make almost no effort at NCS to publish comprehensive news about fests, tours, or shows (there’s too much of that and too few of us). I’m sharing about this one because one of seven festival co-organizers is our friend Jon Rosenthal, and because we know a little something here about the struggle it takes to get a new underground festival off the ground.
The name of this particular fest (the inaugural edition) is Great Lakes Dungeon Siege, and it’s scheduled to take place on October 18th – 20th at Stan’s Room at Piere’s Entertainment Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana. As the name suggests, its musical focus is Dungeon Synth. The listed performers are:
Coniferous Myst, Nest, Cernunnos Woods, DragonKeep, Sombre Arcane, hermit knight, Hedge Wizard, Mortwight, Dungeontroll, Wraith Knight, Pumpkin Witch, Alkilith, Redhorn Gate, Jenn Taiga, Vaelastrasz, The Oracle, Mors Vitaque, Elminster, Sorrowmoon, Elyvilon, Obsidian, Unsheathed Glory, Nahadoth, Vanhellig, Valen, Moonkissed Spires, and Fanged Imp.
The festival has also launched a Kickstarter page, the objective of which is described there:
“The purpose of this Kickstarter is to raise funds to help cover venue fees and pay the union staff we’ve hired, but also to cover travel costs, vehicle rentals, and stage materials, pay our artists an equitable share of raised funds, and to help secure a future for the Great Lakes Dungeon Siege. As this is our first foray into putting together a festival, we want to make sure we can continue to bring the finest of dungeon synth to the Midwest.”
There are some attractive rewards for pledges of financial support, ranging from patches, stickers, and totes to compilation cassettes, shirts, festival passes, and bundles, the grand prize of which includes monogrammed swords, signed by Great Lakes Dungeon Siege artists. For more info and tickets, check the links below.
https://www.etix.com/ticket/p/57664789/great-lakes-dungeon-siege-fort-wayne-pieres-entertainment-center
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/glds/great-lakes-dungeon-siege
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558276689529