(written by Islander)
We’re creeping toward the end of 2024, not too far away from the time when the denizens of our miserable site and the visitors who come slumming here will begin focusing on year-end lists. But there’s still more than two months to go before we ring in 2025, and a lot of new music is still coming out, and will come out.
I was brutally reminded of that fact when trying to sort out what to recommend today, especially because a short vacation prevented me from making as big a compilation last week as I usually do. By the time I had sorted out what I thought would be worth exploring with you today, I had 16 picks, far too many to cram into a single column.
So, I divided this giant collection into two parts. Rather than try to figure out what kind of musical flow might make sense, I took the easy road and alphabetized everything. This post is roughly the first half. Roughly the second half will arrive tomorrow, barring some personal catastrophe. And I have ambitions to bring forth another SHADES OF BLACK collection tomorrow as well, but we’ll see. Might be a case of biting off more than I can chew.
In the meantime, chew on these choices. Most of them in this two-parter are singles, but with a few complete releases in the mix.
ALKYMIST (Denmark)
We begin with a band whose evil music has hooked me in the past, and I was further tempted by the grotesque thumbnail image accompanying their new video for a song called “The Scent“.
The shifting imagery in the video by Mikisoq H. Lynge, which includes excerpts from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, is both fascinating and disturbing. So is the music. It’s a hallucinatory collage of monstrous lead-weighted riffage, spleen-rupturing drumwork, screeching guitar convulsions, eerily shimmering tones, and a mix of gritty, sinister singing and hellish howls. The gut-plundering music moans and writhes, gouges and drags, quivers and throbs, and feverishly sears.
Yep, still evil….
“The Scent” is the second single from Alkymist‘s third album UnnDerr, which will be released on November 15th by Indisciplinarian.
https://orcd.co/thescent
https://orcd.co/unnderr
https://indisciplinarian.com
https://indisciplinarian.bandcamp.com/album/unnderr
https://www.facebook.com/alkymist
https://www.instagram.com/handofthealkymist
AN-XUL (Italy)
Moving further on in the alphabet we come to another A-band, this one a new satanic black metal entity whose veteran lineup includes L. Plaguer (Xpus, ex-Unholy Land) on bass and vocals, M.T. (Mortuary Drape, Dark Redeemer) on drums, and A. Nacht (Xpus, Dark Redeemer) on guitars. They have a self-titled debut album on the way via Chaos Records, and the song below is its first-revealed track, one that exhorts us to “Abandon God“.
The drum overture for the song will get your leg jumping right away, and then the eerie and abrasive guitar harmony which joins in will start playing havoc with your mind. It presents a combination of strange warbling, whining, and sizzling tones that quickly seizes attention, and as it starts warping in a greater frenzy it doesn’t let go, even as the drums start furiously hammering and the vocals explode in rough and ravenous growls.
Those fretted sounds are dense, dominant, and all-enveloping, and as they change and chime they begin to sound sorrowful, even desperate, but continually spin up into deranged and deleterious swarms. The effect is magnetic, even magical. Can’t wait to hear more.
Chaos Records will release An-Xul on November 29th. The stellar cover art is the work of Mike “The Engineer of Death”.
https://chaos-records.bandcamp.com/album/an-xul
https://www.facebook.com/An.XulOfficial/
AUTGER (Russia)
As I’ve written before, it doesn’t really matter what mood I’m in — when I see that something new has arrived from this unconventional and unpredictable Russian project I’m going to check it out, and then find out if it suits the current mood or changes it.
The newest Autger single, “Ataman“, is preceded by an excerpt from Dante’s Inferno, in the Canto where he encounters Virgil as his guide-to-be. Autger refers to the music as “our Shakespearean-type theatre with the neo-medieval audio tragedy, which reflects the Spirit of the Age”.
It is a chilling, haunting performance. Backed by a throbbing tick, quavering organ tones slowly swell, piano chords gently ring, and a voice gloomily wails. A heavily pounding pulse emerges, those ticking percussive sounds grow more animated, and the organ ebbs and flows, nearly falling silent while a voice dimly speaks. The chilling spell deepens, and the music also pulses again, before mystically drifting away.
You probably shouldn’t listen to this right before bedtime.
https://autger.bandcamp.com/album/ataman
https://www.facebook.com/avtger
https://instagram.com/avtger
BESRA (Finland)
As it happens, the alphabetizing next brings something to shake you out of Autger‘s chilling reveries, and another video, one that mixes lyrics with mystifying images.
In “Equilibrium“, Besra bring clattering and battering beats, grim and growling riffage, and torrid screams. The music, though damned heavy, throbs with a feverish pulse, pierced through by shimmering and searing lead-guitar and keyboard lines and segmented by a soft and scary mid-song interlude. It’s both a big bruiser and a manifestation of the ethereal.
The song is the title track to a new Besra EP that’s set for release on November 1st by Suicide Records.
https://suiciderecordsfinland.bandcamp.com/album/equilibrium
https://frontl.ink/qdvvb99
https://instagram.com/besra_band
https://www.facebook.com/besraband
CANIS DIRUS (U.S.)
These Minnesota black-metal dire-wolves return with a new album that will slip under the wire just before this aging year turns into a new one. The song below is its first single (and album opener), “Once Cursed Path Glistens in the Sun“.
It drops us into the experience with no warning, an experience of dire and dismal riffing that frantically sizzles, methodically chopping beats, tumultuous double-bass, and crazed snarls and shrieks.
As the quivering riffage rises, descends, and repeats, the music’s feelings of degradation and illness dig deeper, though the band also intersperse that with intriguing instrumental diversions. Following a very bleak guitar bridge, the drums start blasting and strident proclamations issue forth.
The viciously burrowing guitars and screaming vocals return, but in a softer phase the guitar rings and beckons, and maybe there is where the path glistens in the sun — but it’s a sun that eventually begins to burn and blister in the music. The riffing then swarms like ants at war; shrill sounds celestially cascade overhead; the path remains cursed.
The name of the new Canis Dirus album is By the Grace of Death. It will be released by the Bindrune label (LP) and Alte Seelen (CD) on December 21st.
https://bindrunerecordings.bandcamp.com/album/by-the-grace-of-death
https://www.facebook.com/canis.dirus.5
CENTINEX (Sweden)
After four fairly obscure names the alphabet brings us one that’s well-known and venerable.
What you’ll find next is a video for one of the two songs on a just-released Centinex single. Before I heard it, I read a comment from the band’s Martin Schulman that “As You Die” in a way represents “a new beginning for the band, not only by working with new business partners but also by exploring a somewhat new musical direction”. What could that mean?
Well, though the roars are mighty and the slashing riffing is still rough enough to tear up asphalt, the song hits these ears as a mean punk-rock romp, and I’m totally fine with that.
As You Die was digitally released on October 25th by Black Lion Records. The two songs will be released on digipack CD on November 8th.
https://orcd.co/centinex-as-you-die
https://cenitnexblacklion.bandcamp.com/album/as-you-die
https://instagram.com/centinexofficial
https://facebook.com/centinexofficial
DEFEATED SANITY (Germany)
I’ll take any chance I can get to see Defeated Sanity in action, and the next video gives us that chance. It shows the band in a rehearsal space tearing their way through “Accelerating the Rot“, the third single from their forthcoming seventh album, Chronicles of Lunacy.
The rot is definitely accelerated — mauling and mad, howling and hideous, slithering and slamming, and packed with lots of tempo changes and fun and freakish instrumental adventures along the way. Not just listening but actually getting to see the performers go nuts like this and yet somehow stay locked-in is a huge bonus.
Chronicles of Lunacy will be out on November 22nd via Season of Mist.
https://orcd.co/defeatedsanitythecroniclesoflunacy
https://defeatedsanity.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/DefeatedSanity
https://www.instagram.com/defeated_sanity_official
THE GREAT OLD ONES (France)
To close out Part I of this Saturday collection, the alphabet brings us to the the lead single off an upcoming album from The Great Old Ones named Kadath. They explain: “Kadath presents the journey of Randolph Carter in the Dreamlands, inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s 1943 novella: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.”
This first song, “Me, the Dreamer“, is a long one, just shy of 11 minutes, and it comes with a visualizer. As you might expect, especially if you know this band’s previous music, a lot happens within those nearly 11 minutes.
The song gallops and blazes, blares and convulses, jolts and jitters, and seems to wail in delirium and soar in wonder, usually accompanied by unhinged vocal intensity. It’s a vast and extravagant experience, but it also diminishes and becomes more strange as booming drums tumble and symphonic strings whir.
Even greater and more frightening frenzies subsequently ensue, again grand in scale and ornately filigreed but also catastrophic, though glittering and glimmering sonic vistas of wonder surf across the song’s stratosphere once more as well — until pile-driver grooves and eerie siren-like pulses take us to the end.
Kadath will be released on January 24th by Season of Mist. Yes! We’re now looking at 2025 releases!
https://orcd.co/tgookadath
https://www.thegreatoldonesband.com/
https://thegreatoldones.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/thegreatoldones
https://www.instagram.com/thegreatoldonesofficial/