(Andy Synn picks out four more albums from last month you may have overlooked)
As always, thinning this column down to just four artists/albums was a hellish job, with the likes of Amarok, Inherits the Void, Perversity, Swelling Repulsion, Umbra Vitae, and Vomit the Soul all ending up (sadly) on the cutting room floor.
But that shouldn’t stop you checking them out… just maybe give the four bands featured in today’s column a look/listen first, and then come back, ok?
ASEETHE – THE COST
The Cost is Aseethe‘s fourth full-length album, yet somehow this is the first time we’ve actually written about them properly… which is particularly surprising when they clearly swim in the same caustic sonic swamp as the likes of Body Void, Churchburn, and Primitive Man (all of whom we’ve covered before here at length).
What separates them from the above artists – and, in turn, positions them somewhat more in line with bands such as Cowardice and Cavernlight – is that Aseethe have a real knack for employing doomy ambience and desolate negative space (the fantastic, nearly fifteen-minute title-track, for example, contains multiple passages of broodingly minimalist melody and eerie, almost ethereal, atmosphere amongst all the disgusting distortion and punishing percussive patterns) alongside their sludge-soaked heaviness.
Don’t get me wrong, tracks like “The Air Is Caving In” and the spiteful “Last Time I Do Anything For A Fucking Friend Ever” are as nasty and as gnarly as they come, all ugly, abrasive riffage and vicious, venom-spewing vocal invective, but the band’s use of droning noise and ambient emptiness serves to expand and enhance their sound in ways which simply hammering at their instruments alone wouldn’t be able to achieve.
Climaxing with the soul-crushing Sludge-Doom of “Irrelevance” – whose anxiety-inducing opening minutes eventually give way to an asphyxiating array of churning riffs and hefty, heaving drums which only seem to get harsher, and heavier, as the song goes on – The Cost definitely isn’t what you’d call an easy listen, by any means (though it does have its moments of bleak, haunting beauty) but it’s certainly a rewarding one all the same, if you have the patience and willingness to pay the price.
HUNTSMEN – THE DRY LAND
Let me be clear about something straight away – if The Dry Land doesn’t end up appearing on numerous “Best of the Year” lists come December… well, I’ll be very surprised.
Sure, the band have always been good (even if some of their previous material has divided opinions at times) but by shifting their sound slightly towards a three-way mix of Black Metal, Post-Metal, and Doom – think Agalloch meets Anathema, Panopticon by way of Porcupine Tree, Warning via Wayfarer – all tinged with proggy embellishments and infused with an arcane Americana, they’ve crafted their best album yet.
From the glorious, galloping opening of “This, Our Gospel” (eight masterful minutes of rich, resonant guitars and vibrant vocal harmonies, majestic, multi-layered melodies and moody, introspective interludes) to the final ringing chord of cathartic, doom-laden closer “The Herbsight”, this is the sort of album which practically demands to be referred to as a “journey” (cliché as that may be) in the way it ebbs and flows and wanders dreamily (yet never without purpose) across vast vistas of sound and space.
Between these two poles Huntsmen take us to the majestic mountains of “Cruelly Dawns”, where soaring vocals carry the listener to the peak of the band’s impressive and imposing metallic power, and the haunted valleys of “Lean Times”, whose sombre, acoustic-led introduction eventually builds to a heart-wrenching, soul-stirring finale, after which the stunning strains of “In Time, All Things” (which features both some of the heaviest riffs and harshest vocals as well as some of the most moving melodies and spellbinding singing on the entire album) somehow takes things to an even higher level.
It truly is a little slice of magic (made up of multiple magical moments, including the gorgeously gothic melodic melodrama of “Rain”) that thoroughly deserves all the praise and attention it’s been receiving.
SECT – PLAGUES UPON PLAGUES
While I’m still a big fan of Hardcore (and have been ever since I first got into the Alternative/Extreme scene), over the years I’ve found myself becoming less and less connected to the “community” around it (for various reasons which I won’t bother getting into here).
Thankfully my love of the genre has always been about the music, first and foremost, which is why I’m always on the lookout for new bands to connect with… although somehow I’ve managed to overlook Sect (whose line-up includes members of Cursed, Undying, Earth Crisis, Racetraitor, and more) until now.
Plagues Upon Plagues, however, is as good a time as any to get onboard the bandwagon, as the band’s songwriting skills and their sense/use of dynamic (as made instantly clear by the slow-burn mix of melody and aggression which makes up opener “No Uncertain Terms”) are absolutely second to none.
Sure, you could equally heap praise on tracks like the in-your-face “Drowning In Sorrows” and the gruesomely gloomy “Inventory” for their punishing, take-no-prisoners approach – and they definitely have their place on the album, don’t get me wrong – but it’s the subtleties (such as the doomy darkness and morbid hooks of “New Low” and the brooding undercurrents of “#ForeverHome”) which really make this record shine.
Concluding with the sheer sonic weight and claustrophobic atmospherics of “Six Black Lines”, Plagues Upon Plagues actually reminds me a lot of Zao‘s masterful The Crimson Corridor from 2021 in the way that the band use space and contrast, with a heavy focus on mood and pacing, to maintain their mesmerising momentum, yet it’s also more than strong enough to stand on its own without these comparisons (or any comparisons to the previous works of each band member), and will hopefully find an audience, and a fanbase, all of its own.
THANATOTHERION – ALIENATION MANIFESTO
One thing that’s become clear, observing the (relatively limited) coverage which Alienation Manifesto has received over the last month or so, is that no-one is quite clear how to categorise this band’s sound, as while it has a proggy and unorthodox Black Metal base there’s also a number of other extreme and esoteric elements and influences thrown into the mix.
This, perhaps, shouldn’t be a huge surprise though considering that Thanatotherion is the solo-project of Ulthar‘s Shelby Lermo, who brings a similarly warped and twistedly technical sensibility to tracks like the malevolent, mind-warping “The Raven and the Box of Stars” and the savage, shapeshifting “Wilczyca”.
Still, to my ears at least, there’s no question that Alienation Manifesto definitely leans more towards the Black Metal side of the spectrum – just take opener “Red Cathedral”, for example, whose skittering, blasting drums (courtesy of Black Fucking Cancer‘s Jason Bursese) and seething, bile ‘n’ brimstone stained guitars practically reek of blackened fury – even if some of the more complex riffs and contorted chord-shapes might not sit quite right with the purists.
That being said, there’s a strong strain of Emperor-derived DNA in this album’s genetic make-up (explosive second-half highlight “Nuclear Womb” owes a fair bit of both its visceral instrumental intensity and its inhuman atmospherics to Prometheus in particular) while the inclusion of some sinister, and suitably John Carpenter-esque synths during eerie interlude tracks “Orb” and “Lament” should also help win over some of the doubters.
And, if not? Well, there’s always the crippling catastrophism of “Codex Crepusculum” – just under twelve minutes of hybrid Black/Death heaviness, all infused with an aura of creeping dread, that’s as monstrous, and as murderous, as the album’s mutated cover art – which suggests that what we’ve heard so far isn’t even the band’s final form!