From midnight on Thursday to midnight on Friday we received 221 e-mails about recent and forthcoming heavy metal releases. That’s not counting the e-mails that were just trying to sell us clothing or physical editions of records that have been out for a while, or to announce tours and shows, or to promote music that’s utterly foreign to anything we cover here (no idea how we get on some of these distribution lists).
That’s what Bandcamp Fridays do to our in-box, and the same thing happens on social media. It’s no longer surprising. Bands and labels know that lots of metalheads wait for these days when more of the money they spend will go to bands and labels. But it sure as hell makes me feel like I’m drowning when I look for things to include in Saturday roundups following Bandcamp Fridays.
And that’s not counting all the new songs and videos that were already on my plate before Friday arrived.
Of course, I couldn’t check out all the songs and full releases that were the subjects of those 221 e-mails, or even all those on my list that had come out over the last couple of weeks. No point in trying to explain how I made choices, because I’m not sure I understand myself. But I still picked so many that I’ve had to resort to this “Overflowing Streams” format, which doesn’t include album art or as many words as the usual “Seen and Heard” column.
LIGHT OF THE MORNING STAR (UK)
Prepare for scarring chords both dismal and dismayed, the sinister glitter of flickering leads and ringing keys, great booming and rocking drums, diabolical proclamations, and frightening screams.
A muscle-moving and unearthly experience that’s seductive in its atmosphere, but feels like the seduction of something with gleaming red eyes and hungry teeth.
The song: “Burial Chamber Cold”
The EP: Wings in the Night Sky
Release date: October 4
Label: Debemur Morti Productions
https://lightofthemorningstar.bandcamp.com/album/wings-in-the-night-sky
https://dmprd.com/lotmsEU
https://dmprd.com/lotmsNA
https://www.facebook.com/lightofthemorningstar
MAMMOTH GRINDER (U.S.)
Prepare next for a song that heavily throbs and sounds like agonized wraiths in the upper reaches, and one that viciously jitters and humongously pounds, fronted by deathly roars. The riffing, drenched in acid and rough like sandpaper, also roils in madness, and a crazed but clarion-clear guitar solo amplifies the delirium.
The song: “Undying Spectral Resonance”
The EP: Suffer as One
Release date: November 15
Label: Relapse
http://bit.ly/mammothgrinder
http://orcd.co/mammothgrinder
TELESTERION (location unknown)
Prepare for a sequence of sonic hallucinations, strange and unsettling but wondrous visions made of sound, both futuristic and primitive and seemingly calculated to induce revelatory and chilling dream-state reveries.
It brings layered synths that create shining or warping astral drifts; the drone of something that resembles a slightly up-shifted didgeridoo; ringing warbles of ancient plucked instruments; the wails of horn-like tones, tormented strings being bowed, or distorted flutes; booming and rhythmic ritualistic drums; and occasionally, voices that intone deeply or gasp.
Maybe this is something like what happened to the minds of ancient oracles who inhaled the fumes at Apollo’s Delphic temple.
The EP: Thesmophoria
Release date: September 6
Label: Snow Wolf Records
https://telesterionmusic.bandcamp.com/album/thesmophoria
FÓRN (U.S.)
Two songs next, one shorter and the other very long.
For the first, prepare for fevered electro-throbs and ghastly howls, momentous detonations and spreading sheens that shiver, and crystalline ringing tones that sound like Eastern sorcery.
For the second, prepare for titanic stomping riffs, jagged like barren crags, and gunshot drums coupled with gruesome roars and cauterizing screams; but also soft meandering guitar harmonies that ring and wail, lonely and musing, and wail even more stridently and miserably when the cataclysmic stomps come down again, ruthlessly cratering the earth below.
The songs: “Pact of Forgetting” and “Soul Shadow”
The album: Repercussions of the Self
Release date: October 18
Label: Persistent Vision
https://forn.bandcamp.com/album/repercussions-of-the-self
https://www.facebook.com/Forndoom
JADE (Int’l) / SANCTUARIUM (Spain)
Two more songs up next, one from Jade, the other from Sanctuarium, both of them off a forthcoming split.
In the case of Jade‘s “Cascade” prepare for the piercing ring and reverberation of an anguished melody, undergirded by pavement-fracturing blows, and then for a paroxysm of scalding riffage and clobbering percussion, fronted by monstrous roars.
That gripping melody wails again, and undergoes its own convulsion, a prelude to the song’s descent into deeper gloom, its infliction of jolting blows, and also its blooming into a soaring crescendo of yearning. A remarkably multifaceted, viscerally gripping, and emotionally stirring song….
In the case of Sanctuarium‘s “Malodorous Osteophagy in Acrimony” prepare for a drift down a foul sewer, with something gigantic pounding on the pipe and something else vampiric screeching above the poisonous effluent.
But that’s just softening you up for a primitive, toxic-toned riff that sounds like pistons pumping, as well as brutally throbbing bass-lines, knee-capping drum blows, and the ghastly reverberation of macabre growls. It will get your head lurching, but those hideous vaporous things will come back to screech at you, and the riffage becomes a roiling froth of filth too.
Before the end, tortured souls seem to moan and cry, creating an unexpectedly heartbreaking experience in a song that’s so foul and ferocious, and that feeling persists even when the song ramps up again.
The songs: “Cascade” and “Malodorous Osteophagy in Acrimony”
The split: The Sempiternal Wound
Release date: September 13th
Label: Pulverized Records
https://emperorjade.bandcamp.com/album/the-sempiternal-wound-split-w-sanctuarium
https://www.facebook.com/jadestonemask
INIQUITOUS SAVAGERY (Scotland)
Prepare now for thuggish, organ-rupturing beatings and fusillades of war-zone weaponry, complete with maniacally squealing strings, murderously slashing chords, weirdly contorting fretwork-dementia, bursts of percussive athleticism, and gut-deep growls and gurgles. Brutal death metal that’s more dynamic and crazed than the average.
The song: “Casualty of Diabolical Trial”
The album: Edifice of Vicissitudes
Release date: November 22
Label: Willowtip
https://iniquitoussavagery.bandcamp.com/album/edifice-of-vicissitudes
https://www.facebook.com/iniquitoussavagery/
SLEEPBOMB (U.S.)
I met Tim Gotch and Charlie Hernandez at a metal festival a long time ago, too many years to remember. Since then I’ve continued running into them at festivals, too many times to remember. I’ve enjoyed every encounter because they are two of the nicest people I’ve ever met in any setting, unassuming but interesting, and genuine lovers of music.
At some point I asked them whether they made music, because they never volunteered it, and discovered that yes they do, in a Bay Area collective called Sleepbomb.
If you’re not familiar, what Sleepbomb does is, to say the least, unusual: They focus on making “psychedelic doom” scores for pre-existing genre films, including the German Expressionist silent masterpieces, as well as movies like Night of the Living Dead and Conan the Barbarian. And when they perform, it’s often against the backdrop of the films.
Sleepbomb‘s latest release, in late 2023, was their score for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (on Loolarrow Records and Consouling Sounds). Their next album is entitled The Sleeping Dead, a selection of excerpts from their score for George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. A video for one of those excerpts, “It Was A Good Plan“, is what’s next in today’s collection.
(In the video, Charlie is on the far right and Tim is on the far left. You’ll also see Claire Hamard (Keys and Vocals) and drummer Robert Johnson.)
Prepare for a mesmerizing experience made of ringing and shimmering notes and steady bass-and-drum pulses, but also prepare for the music to swell, soar, and sear — and to batter, gouge, and heavily heave — becoming an order of magnitude more intense and desperate, even though the track’s hook-laden central melody remains the gripping through-line as it cycles over and over again. By the end, things become catastrophic (and your neck might be getting sore by that point too).
https://sleepbomb.bandcamp.com/track/it-was-a-good-plan
https://www.sleepbomb.com/bio
https://www.facebook.com/Sleepbomb
CONTRITION (U.S.)
The Chicago supergroup Contrition are returning with a new EP, and this week we got a stream of its opening track.
With just a brief overture of gossamer-light shimmering, Contrition create a dense whirling vortex of scathing riffage around hammering drums, rabid snarls, and berserk screams. The music also heaves and claws, simmers and seethes, and dismally throbs, but ultimately breaks out in a raging and ruinous rampage.
The song: “Not Today”
The EP: Pariahs
Release date: October 18
Label: Disorder-Recordings
https://contritionchicago.bandcamp.com/album/pariahs
https://www.facebook.com/contritionchicago
EVERTO SIGNUM (Portugal)
My next selection is just a teaser, only a partial song. I don’t usually spend your time on such things, but I’ve already heard the full song as well as a lot of the album from whence it comes, and based on that I’ll be hosting some premieres for the record in the future. So, that makes this a justified teaser.
Prepare for waves of searing riffage way up in the stratosphere and the clatter of rambunctious drums, both of which become much heavier and more intense, with an earthquake happening in the low end and the guitars blazing and screaming up above….
The song: “Genesis”
The album: Beastiary
Release date: November 1
Label: Monumental Rex
https://evertosignum.bandcamp.com/album/beastiary
https://www.facebook.com/evertosignum
HORIZON IGNITED (Finland)
Another good video is next, and it closes out today’s collection.
As for the music, prepare for a sprightly and dancing melody at the outset, backed by dreamy keys, but that melody soon becomes surrounded by skull-busting drums; deep, heavy, flesh-scraping riffage; tortured, larynx-shredding screams, and ravenous growls.
The contrast between that bright darting keyboard melody and the jolting heaviness in the low end persists, but you’ll get some singing in the mix too, as well as a union of all the harsh vocal expressions and an elevated sheen of synths.
The song: “Beneath The Dark Waters”
The album: (no title yet)
Release date: 2025
Label: Reaper Entertainment