“Tenterhooks” is an exceptional word, even though I’m confident I’ve never used it in any conversation and even though it hasn’t appeared in a single one of our 15,889 life-to-date posts before this one (a suspicion confirmed by a computerized search of our entire site).
In its original meaning, which dates back to at least the 1600s, a “tenterhook” was a hooked nail used to affix washed woven fabrics to a wooden frame called a “tenter”, on which the woolen cloth could dry outdoors — stretched, straightened, and under tension. But, as The Font of All Human Knowledge tells us, “By the mid-18th century, the phrase on tenterhooks came to mean being in a state of tension, uneasiness, anxiety, or suspense, i.e., figuratively stretched like the cloth on the tenter.”
Why did this word pop into my head today? Well, because some of the music below put me on tenterhooks, and expressing those feelings in any other way would seem slightly drab by comparison, when the music itself is definitely not drab. (By coincidence, “drab” is another old English word dating back to the 1600s which also had something to do with woven cloth; it was the name for undyed, homespun wool with colors that were dull brown, yellowish, or gray.)
THY CATAFALQUE (Hungary)
This weekend I finally caught up with the video for Thy Catafalque‘s new single “Mindenevő“, a Hungarian word that means something like “omnivorous” or “omnivores”. It both surprised me and left me smiling like a fiend, because it’s the most demented and devilish song Thy Catafalque have released in a long time, and the beautifully made video suits it extremely well.
As Season of Mist has written, “‘Mindenevo‘ is consumed with humanity’s self-destructive appetite, fueled by mechanized blast beats and distorted downpicking that recalls the fiery black metal from which Thy Catafalque was originally forged in 1998.” But those aren’t the only qualities of the music that make it sound diabolical.
In the video, Chef Tamás lays out a luxurious spread of food for his four cold, aloof, and elegantly attired guests. The food looks delicious, but almost from the start something doesn’t seem quite right, either in the video or in the music, and it becomes increasingly wrong as time passes. Indeed, this is the song in today’s collection that first made me feel on tenterhooks.
The lilting opening melody, fashioned with old acoustic instruments, seems to invoke the exotic mysteries of The East, but then the music begins hammering and deliriously swirling, and we get to hear Tamás Kátai using his vicious snarls and cutting shrieks (his usual extraordinary singing guests have no main role in this song, though they do prominently appear elsewhere in the album).
After a burst of blasting, the music builds an uneasy tension with a sinister, ill-sounding sonic haze and big percussive booms. Eerie ringing and rippling tones emerge as the music batters and scythes. When the dinner guests begin a menacing singing chant, it sounds infernal, putting me in mind of the band Ghost chanting the names of Satan in “Year Zero”, even though Thy Catafalque‘s characters are voicing other words.
A fretless bass mercurially muses, setting the stage for the stiffly mannered diners to begin gorging themselves like gluttonous beasts, and then to squabble under the disapproving gaze of their host. In tandem with that disgusting display, the music soars and cavorts like a mad orchestra, accented by a crazed guitar solo, full-bore percussive assaults, and enraged vocal barbarity.
The music provides an aftermath too, a sequence of slowly ringing tones, dancing keys, and seductive humming tones.
In addition to conventional metal instruments, the song includes performances on acoustic guitar, fretless bass, Oud, Bouzouki, Baglama, French horn, clarinet, and contrabass. The words to the song are also quite morbidly horrifying; you can find them printed at YouTube, in the original Hungarian and translated into English.
The song is the second single off Thy Catafalque‘s twelfth album, XII: A gyönyörü álmok ezután jönnek, which will be released on November 15th by Season of Mist.
https://orcd.co/thycatafalquexiiagyonyorualmokezutanjonnek
https://thycatafalqueuk.bandcamp.com/album/xii-a-gy-ny-r-lmok-ezut-n-j-nnek
http://www.facebook.com/thycatafalque
ANOMALIE (Austria)
In another one of these columns approximately one month ago I shared “Perpetual Twilight,” the first single from a new Anomalie album named Riverchild, and some thoughts about it. Last week brought us another advance track from the album, accompanied by a video.
This new one, “Awakening“, has a brief, dismal overture and then races and rages, with drums hurtling and guitars roiling. Yet the soaring fanfare-like melodies are distressing, as are the raw and wretched vocals and the feverish leads.
Grim clanging chords and piercing, anguished arpeggios, backed by tumultuous beats, create sensations of tension and pain, and as we watch the video’s protagonist begin to self-destruct and then lose himself to an overdose, the music’s high-powered intensity bursts open again, battering and burning as medicos try to revive him.
The protagonist steps outside his own prone body, and he sees beauty in nature and memories of a better past as the vocals shift into high-flown harmonized singing — but the music has become dismal and distraught again. The protagonist has flat-lined… but you’ll guess from the song’s title what happens at the song’s bitter end. (And you’ll also understand why the song and the video kept me on tenterhooks.)
Riverchild will be released on November 1st by AOP Records and Kátai.
https://artofpropaganda.bandcamp.com/album/riverchild
https://mvdb2b.com/
https://www.facebook.com/The.Anomalie.Experience
ANGANTYR (Denmark)
The next song, “Magtløse korskyssere“, is the creation of Angantyr, a Danish solo project that’s been around since 1997, with six albums to its credit so far. Based on google’s translation of the Danish lyrics, the song is about lying, and the dissolution of lying’s power.
The song both burns and sweeps right away, surging ahead on the drive of high-powered percussive pistons and scathing the senses with immersive waves of razor-wire riffage and terrorizing screams. As those piercing and scalding waves rise and fall, the music intensely channels both agony and anguish, and a kind of desperate pleading.
The distraught emotional intensity of the music is almost overpowering, even when the snare shifts into a popping chop and the riffing segues into an even more agonized and deranged mood.
Fair warning: the song never relents, never grants any reprieve from its severity. It’s shattering from start to finish. Now maybe you’ll also see why I continued thinking about tenterhooks while listening to it.
“Magtløse korskyssere” is the first single from Angantyr‘s seventh album Indsigt, which is set for release on November 1st. Thanks to Miloš for pointing me to the song.
https://angantyr.bandcamp.com/album/indsigt
SPIDER GOD (UK)
After becoming fascinated by Spider God‘s 2022 album Fly in the Trap, I managed to overlook (as far as I can remember) all the many releases they made during 2023, including their next album The Killing Room and an EP named Fau5tu5 – Soul Music, which appears to contain 16 tracks of roughly a minute a piece.
Since then these prolific and musically quirky Brits have readied another album, and the first single they fired from it is named “Starcrüsher” (I’m guessing they had their tongues in their cheeks when they added the umlaut). In writing about the song, they say they added elements of “2000s metalcore” to their brand of “hyper-melodic black metal”, making reference to the influence of bands like Norma Jean, Underoath, and Zao.
“Black Metalcore” is the label they’ve slapped on “Starcrüsher“, but I don’t think you should put too much weight on that. The song does have a breakdown, but I’m more inclined to call it “Big Band Black Metal” (for reasons I’m about to explain).
Spider God explain that on the new album “live strings are introduced for the first time to create a symphony of madness,” but what stands out about the song to me are blaring musical blasts that resemble Big Band horns.
Other things stand out too: the thoroughly compulsive throb of the bass; the head-rattling effects of the drumming; the absolutely rabid ferocity of the rapidly barking vocals; and the way those horn-like melodies exultantly sway and soar in the choruses.
The rampant madness of the music does diminish and become more menacing in the breakdown, but mainly because the pacing has briefly slowed. Afterward it ignites into delirious glory again in the finale, where the drums give us some blasting at last.
I doubt that Spider God is a favorite of the “trve and kvlt” crowd, because they seem to have way too much fun in their music, and this song is definitely a hell of lot of highly infectious fun (it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’ll see it again on a certain NCS list near year-end). To the extent I was on tenterhooks in listening, it was only in wondering whether it might self-immolate before reaching the end.
Spider God‘s new album is entitled Possess The Devil. It’s due for release on November 15th by Repose Records. I don’t intend to overlook this one.
https://spider-god.bandcamp.com/album/possess-the-devil
https://www.reposerecords.com/
https://www.facebook.com/spidergodband
ACID COFFIN (U.S.)
“Acid Coffin is a “Blackened Encrusted Grindcore project from the nuclear crater that is the Eastside of Indianapolis, Indiana.” That’s the succinct presentation made by this duo (guitarist Jon Daily and vocalist Erick Rodriguez) on the Bandcamp page for their debut EP Nyctohylophobia. (I’m calling it an EP because although it includes 7 tracks, the whole thing’s over after 16 1/2 minutes.)
When you listen to the EP you’ll understand who blasted that nuclear crater into Indianapolis. It was the music of these two marauders! But the main crater they’ll leave is the place where your functioning mind used to be.
The foundational ingredients of their sound are rampaging speed, heavily mauling riffage, berserk bass permutations, ravenous howls and roars, and hair-raising screams. But that’s just the foundation. They also bring in lots of rapidly changing fretwork, including weirdly whistling leads, geared toward twisting listeners’ minds into strangely deformed shapes, as well as doses of what sounds like monstrous singing.
All of that happens in just the riotous first song, “Reborn in the Darkness“, which by itself proves that Acid Coffin‘s brand of “Blackened Encrusted Grindcore” is much more fiendishly elaborate than you might expect from that genre label. They reinforce that conclusion in the songs to come.
Sure, they inflict brutish piledriver-like beatings and race like battering and blaring slaughtering machines, but they also cause the music to drag and moan. All that happens in the second song, “Suffering Conveyed“, which they then follow with a 57-second burst of crazed and freakish mayhem named “Emptiness“, and then the hallucinatory and haunting “Grave Equality“, complete with chanted singing but also with groaning chords, feverish ticking notes, enraged howls, and a bizarre convulsion of sound at the end.
It’s very tempting to keep going track-by-track, because Acid Coffin do something different in every song, constructing different and unexpected experiences upon those foundations mentioned above, and packing each of these brief tracks with a mutating plethora of head-spinning changes, to the point where I’m tempted to replace the band’s own genre label with “Avant-Garde Blackened Death/Grind”.
https://acidcoffin.bandcamp.com/album/nyctohylophobia-2
https://www.facebook.com/acidcoffinband
https://www.instagram.com/acidcoffinband