SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: KILLING SPREE, RÅDDEN REKTALVÆSKE, ODIO DEUS, MELTED BODIES

Getting a late start today. Went on a bit of a bender yesterday. Paying for it today. Lots of new stuff to get through, my mental trawler forging through frothy musical waters. Still frothy, even after my mid-week roundup (4 songs, but could have been 14). Thought that sacrificing complete sentences here in the intro might help accelerate things. Now, to hit the accelerator harder:

KILLING SPREE (France)

A rarity for me to include a cover song in these roundups, and even more rare to start with one. But this isn’t an ordinary cover. It shot lightning into my nerves and simultaneously scrambled my brains like swirled eggs on a hot pan. The live, unedited video (“filmed in the historic trenches of the Maginot Line in Alsace”), is quite cool too.

The song being covered here is Morbid Angel‘s “Rapture“, from their ’93 album Covenant. That original song is captured here in a video, if perchance you’ve never heard it. Time has not dulled its appeal.

Killing Spree‘s cover is still recognizably that song, but it’s performed with naught but drums, vocals, and… a suitably distorted saxophone.

Grégoire Galichet‘s full-throttle yet acrobatic drumming is electrifying, and even more so because we get to see what he’s doing.

Matthieu Metzger‘s saxophone deliriums are equally thrilling, and the tuning is such that if you were just listening you might not identify which instrument is causing all the siren-like wailing, the brazen blasts, the sonic gnashing of teeth, the menacing yowls, the squeals of deranged delight. In place of Trey Azagthoth‘s eye-popping guitar soloing, Metzger delivers his own saxophone freakouts, also eye-popping but even more mind-bending.

Metzger‘s vocals cap off the barbarity with bleeding-raw howls, and even though he’s got to take his mouth off the instrument to vent those, the avalanche-inducing drumwork ably fills the space.

You might recognize Metzger as a member of Klone and National Jazz Orchestra. You might recognize Galichet from Deathcode Society and Glaciation.

Killing Spree‘s “Rapture” cover is intended to draw attention to their debut album, Camouflage!, which will be released on September 13th by Klonosphere/Season of Mist. However, I don’t see “Rapture” on the album’s track list.

https://orcd.co/killing_spree_camouflage
https://www.facebook.com/killingspreetrio

 

 

RÅDDEN REKTALVÆSKE (Denmark)

I discovered this next EP, which shot up on August 1st via a burst sewer pipe, thanks to someone else’s new-music roundup, i.e., this one by the proprietor of Machine Music. He summed it up thusly:

Sometimes all a man needs is to drag one’s knuckles across a HM-2 wasteland and puke. This debut EP from the Danish and goreish Rådden Rektalvæske is brutal and it feels fucking great. I expect great things. FFO: Vomit.

That summary punched lots of my buttons, and so I listened to what these Danes had done on the cleverly named Dansktop i Drop-Tuning (based on my researches, it appears that “Dansktop” means “Danish top” and seems to be a Danish genre of cheery pop/folk music that a lot of people seem to hate).

All the song titles are in Danish, and so are the lyrics. Using time I don’t have, I ran them all through Google Translate. Just to give you a taste of what I found (trust me, you don’t want the full meal), here’s the English rendering of the words to “Morbid Vrangvending af Menneskekrop” (“Morbid Inversion of the Human Body”), the first song following an intro track that’s part spoken words and part torture-chamber screams:

I slowly move my hook up into your rectal hole
Through the intestines and organs, out of your oral passage
Sticking me in the corner of your mouth, pulling yourself
Through the morbid bloody walls of your intestines

That song is only a minute long. There’s another one that lasts 13 seconds. The rest aren’t long either, but longer than those. Collectively they discharge mauling and mangling guitar distortion, gut-rumbling bass maneuvers, skull-rattling drum convulsions with a vivid pop, ghastly leonine roars, and additional sprinklings of demented spoken words and wretched screams.

The music writhes and screeches, churns and chafes, ruthlessly jackhammers and stomps like an afflicted brontosaur. Rådden Rektalvæske are clearly having fun creating these hideous musical monstrosities, and their deathly goregrind fun turns out to be infectious.

https://raadenrektalvaeske.bandcamp.com/album/dansktop-i-drop-tuning
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61552634752179

 

 

ODIO DEUS (Norway)

To put my cards on the table, I checked out this next song because its subject matter was of particular interest to me, for reasons I need not go into here. But it turned out that the music also struck the right chord and seemed like a well-placed follow-on to that EP up above.

This song, “The Con Man“, is about Joseph Smith, the self-professed “translator” of The Book of Mormon and thus the founder of the LDS Church (commonly known as the Mormon Church). As you’ll see from the accompanying lyric video, it’s not a very admiring view of him. It’s in line with the themes of the album as a whole that includes it. That album, entitled Spiritual Syphilis, is described as follows: “The central theme of the album is to unveil the inherent ‘evil’ embedded in organized religions, particularly those led by fanatical leaders.”

In keeping with the words, the song is furious (especially the scalding vocals), and also humongously heavy. The music is ominous and foreboding, then ripping and racing. There’s a nimble and nuanced bass in the mix, along with hammer-headed drum work and tremolo’d riffing that seethes and scorches.

Eventually the song takes a slower and much more dismal turn, accompanied by nightmare howls. It builds again from there, driven by an increasingly feverish guitar progression and absolutely unhinged vocal hostility. In the song’s closing minutes it’s both hellish and head-hooking, and affords one more chance for you to chant “LIES!” along with the raging vocalist.

Spiritual Syphilis is the debut album of this Norwegian trio. It was released in June of this year by the Wormhole Death label. Musically, it’s described as “a fusion of traditional Norwegian and Swedish black metal, heavily influenced by the American death metal scene.” I haven’t heard it yet, but plan to do that soon, based on this song.

https://orcd.co/spiritualsyphilis
https://www.facebook.com/Odio-Deus-Official

 

 

MELTED BODIES (U.S.)

I didn’t plan to include any singing in today’s collection, but it turned out that this closing song has some in it. But don’t think I’m about to get soft — the singing here is unusual, and it also abruptly explodes into the kind of jet-fast screams that’ll make you think you’ve suddenly started bleeding from every pore.

Other aspects of the song will also make your ears bleed, and cause bleeding on the brain. But it will also cause your muscles to jump like electrodes have dug into the tissues.

The industrial-strength pounding sounds like mallets applied to emptied steel drums. Other instrumentation skitters, sizzles, and screeches, sometimes rhythmically, sometimes in paroxysms of violence. Little bits of fast-dancing and sinuously-slithering electronica emerge, along with jazzy arpeggios and sounds of demolition machines plowing through bedrock. But the grooves are always waiting around the corner to jump up and make you jump.

The video is also extremely cool, just as bizarre as the song. It was directed by Melted Bodies; produced by Melted Bodies and Zach Smith; shot by Zach Smith and Melted Bodies; and edited by deathscott.

I’ve been trying to figure out who Andy Hamm‘s extravagant singing reminds me of (someone from the ’80s), but I’ve failed. I do quite like it.

The song is called “Bloodlines“. It’s from this L.A. band’s second album, The Inevitable Fork, which will be self-released on October 18th.

https://meltedbodies.bandcamp.com/album/the-inevitable-fork-lp
https://linktr.ee/meltedbodies
https://www.facebook.com/MeltedBodies/