SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY, PART II: H-W

(written by Islander)

Moving on from yesterday’s Part I of the usual weekend roundup, I’m starting with the next letter of the band-name alphabet and continuing through W (no X, Y, or Z bands in this collection).

I mentioned yesterday that I had a few complete releases in this collection, in addition to all the singles, but I realized that one I thought had come out on Friday isn’t actually out yet, so I’ll push that one to a subsequent weekend.

But the first band today does have a complete release to their name, and it’s an interesting one.

 

HETEROMORPHIC ZOO (Canada)

“We make worship music for monsters.” So say Heteromorphic Zoo, a Canadian band led by guitarist Ray Heberer, whom I started writing about here more than 13 years ago when he was a 15-year-old student in Taiwan. They describe the tale of their recently released New World EP in these words: “A coalition of monsters arrives to conquer a new realm. 5 vignettes told from the perspective of their enemies, their champions, and their overlord provide a glimpse into the consequences of this incursion.”

I’ve already written about the first-released of those five vignettes, a fiery, head-exploding, jackhammer fest named “Napalm“, which also features utterly deranged vocals that sound like a fight between bull elephants, howler monkeys, and a pack of demons that just escaped Hell.

But the song also includes exotic melodies that spin through all the bombs dropping and the jackhammers busting up granite, plus an exultant violin solo by Megan Ash that elevates the music to head-spinning glory.

As for the other four songs, the opener “Ritual of Fidelity” is also a vocally hostile, high-energy slugger, laced with frenetic fretwork and plenty of rapid-fire jolts, but it too includes a violin solo, this one a classically influenced piece that vividly dances and darts.

That’s followed by “Your Final Seconds“, which quickly creates a contrast, opening with mysterious ringing tones and a bone-moving bass-and-drum duet. From there the music starts punching and screaming, but the rhythmic interplay is still riveting and the violin swirls the musical mysteries forward, eventually in harmony with the guitar.

Speaking of which, there’s a thoroughly head-spinning guitar solo in this one, and a guest vocal appearance by Ville Hokkanen of Synestia in the bridge-collapsing breakdown at the end.

After “Napalm“, the EP continues with “Avatara“, the subject of another pre-release video. Gentle and beguiling at first, and again a subdued showcase for the rhythm section, the song grows more intense and more wrenching in its mood, especially in the vocal department. Here, the violin, guitar, and piano elegantly channel wistfulness and sorrow, though the vocals only become more shattering in their torment and defiant fury.

In the closing song, “Aura of Despair“, Raymond Heberer III (who I believe is HZ guitarist Ray Heberer‘s father) performs trombone, bass trombone, soprano trombone, and alto trombone, and Francesco Ferrini of Fleshgod Apoclaypse fame created the orchestral arrangement.

This one is towering in its scale and daunting in its atmosphere, though still hard-hitting and vocally shattering. Things do get faster, and more baroque and bombastic, unfolding into an extravagant manifestation of symphonic death metal, filigreed with equally extravagant violin and guitar performances and bursts of jackhammer-grooves.

I suppose people who reflexively recoil at deathcore might recoil at this EP, because that’s one of the genre ingredients in the mix, but this is a hybrid that also includes melodic death metal, metalcore, and lots of proggy and neoclassical flourishes, and I found it to be a fun trip, with variations among the songs that keep things interesting all the way through.

The EP’s mind-blowing artwork was created by Lordigan Pedro Sena. It’s available now on Bandcamp.

https://heteromorphiczoo.bandcamp.com/album/new-world
https://www.facebook.com/heteromorphic.zoo

 

HIDDEN MOTHERS (UK)

Next up, still in the H’s, is the Sheffield-based progressive post-hardcore band Hidden Mothers. They have a debut album on the way named Erosion/Avulsion. The first song I heard from it, “Violet Sun“, was in fact the third single released so far, and it really made a powerful impact.

At the outset, the vividly tumbling drums, screaming and searing guitars, and bursts of rhythmic pugilism set the hook damned fast, but what really grabbed me were Luke Scrivens‘ vocals, which grab the spotlight as the rest of the band mostly back away. His singing style has drawn comparisons to Jeff Buckley, but their gritty soulfulness also made me think of Joe Cocker.

It was thus even more startling when his voice soared into shattering hardcore screams. The music also becomes much more intense, though it continues to ebb and surge, and it continues to be instrumentally interesting as different guitar motifs shift between the channels. The song creates moods of anguish and pain, of longing and despair, anchored by a very potent rhythm section. But man, those vocals, they steal the show….

I’ve also included videos for the first two singles, “Still Sickness” and “Defanged“, both of them bleak and bracing. Turns out, they are also gripping, for many of the same reasons as “Violet Sun“.

The music’s not always as extreme as most of what I pay attention to around here (though it does periodically shove your head into blast furnaces of intensity), but I’m so captivated by it that I’d be embarrassed if I didn’t urge you to give it a chance. And while the vocals are utterly vital, the contrasts between the primal, bone-shaking earthiness of the rhythms and the otherworldly ethereality of other ingredients is another standout feature.

Erosion/Avulsion will be released by Church Road Records on November 29th. Videos for all three singles are below.

https://hiddenmothers.bandcamp.com/album/erosion-avulsion
https://www.Instagram.com/hiddenmothersuk
https://www.Facebook.com/hiddenmothersukbm

 

IMHA TARIKAT (Germany)

We’ve been closely following Germany-based Imha Tarikat for the last 5+ years, with my friend Andy most recently reviewing their 2022 album Hearts Unchained – At War with a Passionless World,. He found that it took their signature sound to a whole new level — “further embracing and elevating the underlying punky vibes and heroic Heavy Metal attitude to add even more colour and contrast to their uniquely vibrant and emotionally explosive brand of Black Metal.”

Now, Imha Tarikat (the duo of vocalist/guitarist Kerem Yilmaz and drummer Jerome Reil) have dropped a stand-alone single in advance of the autumn leg of their European tour. It is described as “a first taste of new great things to come next year, although the track will not appear on the next full-length”.

“Murderflesh” is the song’s name, and it is indeed murderous. Propelled by galloping and hammering beats, it delivers swaths of boiling but anguished riffage, coupled with raw, shattering howls on the bleeding edge of coming apart — plus bursts of rap-like words and monstrous growls, as well as abrasive and assaulting tremolo’d aggression, blast-beat fusillades, and a frenetically flickering guitar solo.

As I’m hearing this, it sounds like a mix of hardcore, black metal, and something else I’m not putting my finger on, very intense but with very bleak moods.

https://imhatarikat.bandcamp.com/track/murderflesh
http://lnk.spkr.media/imha-tarikat-hearts-unchained
https://www.facebook.com/imhatarikat/

 

IMMORTAL FORCE (Canada)

Can you guess why I decided to listen to this next song, even though I knew nothing about the band when I did that? Well, you’re looking at it — and it’s looking at you. I’m referring of course to Paolo Girardi‘s wild cover art for this Vancouver band’s debut album Mystic Seance Unrealities.

The album is 10 tracks long, including a cover of “Suffer the Children” by Napalm Death and “Ruptured in Purulence” by Carcass. The choice of those two covers is a clue to what Immortal Force are up to, and their own song “Mass Murder Meat Market” is another big one.

The vocals sound like a big mastiff barking and a burning panther screaming, with high-toned crackling yells taking the lead in spewing the venom. Meanwhile, the drums inflict electrifying beatings of various kinds, and the downtuned riffing viciously swarms and feeds. By the end, the music is brutishly lurching and staggering, eventually yielding to the quiver of chilling ambient tones. Horrors!

https://hpgd.bandcamp.com/album/mystic-seance-unrealities
https://ffm.to/immortalforce
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100090233452159

 

NECRONOS (Mexico)

I try to pay careful attention to what Mexico’s Chaos Records is releasing, and one of the first ones they’ve scheduled for the new year is a debut album named Charred Tongue by the Mexican death metal band Necronos. I didn’t know what they would sound like, but was encouraged when Chaos Records located them in the vicinity of Ulcerate, Execration, and Spectral Voice, and so I dived into the album’s first single, “Bone Process“.

Chaos describes Charred Tongue as a narrative that describes “the tale of a forgotten slave species seeking revenge through cosmic warfare and dark occult knowledge”. And it turns out that “Bone Process” has very dark atmospheric ingredients in keeping with such a tale — in addition to delivering encroaching sonic catastrophes of various kinds, most of them hallucinatory.

It’s a long song, and a very creepy one. At first, the guitars needle and sear as big drums rumble and tumble like tribal or ritual beats. Harrowing roars howl from the middle distance as the vibrating chords continue relentlessly swarming their way under the listener’s skin, hungrily feeding on what they find.

The drums also gallop and jackhammer. The bass also delivers thudding grooves and moaning agonies. The sandpaper-textured guitars also rudely whine and dismally chime, and sound increasingly not-of-our-world and not amenable to reason. Slowly picked notes surface and meander through sizzling chords and militaristic beats, also eerie and even more bereft in their resonance.

Music to make your skin crawl….

Charred Tongue will be released on January 13th (CD and digital). It’s up for order now.

https://www.chaos-records.com/product/necronos-charred-tongue-cd/
https://chaos-records.bandcamp.com/album/charred-tongue
https://www.facebook.com/people/Necronos/100092571746274/

 

NISHAIAR (Ethiopia)

The very interesting Ethiopian quartet nishaiar has a new album named Enat meret that’s coming out on December 5th. At Bandcamp they provide an extensive statement about the meaning of the album’s name — which (to be brief) refers to a shamanic entity from an unearthly realm “of boundless energy and ancient wisdom”, on an earthly mission “to infuse our reality with the potent energy of her homeland”.

The album looks like a long one — 15 tracks long — and three of them are now streaming at Bandcamp, one after the other in the album’s running order. I’ll warn you in advance that these songs feature feminine singing — crystalline, angelic, soulful, and shamanic in its varying tones — and bountiful electronic and ambient ingredients.

But they also include head-moving drums (including what sound like primitive hand-drums, and rumbling double-bass), swirling fire-like guitars, symphonic strings, subtle spoken words, chant-like male singing (as well as male/female harmony), some other ancient instruments that I’m too ignorant to place, maybe even a clarinet or saxophone — and, in “Yemelek“, scorching screams and strangled snarls.

I found it quite easy to get lost in these three songs as they moved from one to the next. I hope you will too, though they’re mostly way off our usual beaten paths.

https://nishaiar.bandcamp.com/album/enat-meret
https://www.facebook.com/Nishaiar-100067774879707/

 

PINCER CONSORTIUM (UK)

Last month I spilled a lot of words in reviewing Geminus Schism, the debut album of this Belfast-based duo. These are some of those:

In genre terms, the album could be considered a mad intergalactic mashup of black, death, and industrial metal, albeit with the kind of adventurous, unpredictable, and technically impressive instrumental maneuvers that summon the phrase “avant-garde”, because the word “progressive” seems too tame….

“Space opera” is a well-known genre term among fans of science fiction, and that term keeps coming to mind as I think about Geminus Schism, not only because it sounds so far-flung and futuristic (and so alien) but also because it’s so fantastically elaborate, so meticulously constructed, and so completely over the top in its extravagance.

The album is out now, but Pincer Consortium aren’t yet finished presenting it. Last week they released a stunning short film for the two-part, 11-minute song “Schizoid Rivalry | Double Occultation“.

Prepare for a hideous and horrifying excursion through hellish realms — and extravagant music and words to match. That’s all I’ll say, but Pincer Consortium have a lot more to say (they’ve never been stingy with words), and I’ll share their preview of the video and music here:

A visual and auditory study in the extreme manifestations of dissociative pathology and psychological disintegration. This dual composition examines the breakdown of identity, exploring the chaotic oscillations between competing psychic fragments and the emergence of a suppressed alter ego.

Through a deliberate use of dissonant harmonics, distorted sonic textures, convoluted song structure and unsettling visual stimuli, this movement aims to simulate the cognitive dissonance and perceptual distortion experienced in severe cases of dissociative identity disorder. The viewer is subjected to a progressive destabilization of narrative coherence, intended to evoke a sense of disconnection from reality and self.

The psychological disturbance mirrors an evolutionary transition between species. The fractured psyche reflects the disorienting shift between primal instincts and emerging consciousness, as if the patient’s mind is caught in an incomplete transformation. The internal chaos becomes an allegory for evolution itself—where identity breaks down, and old and new selves violently clash, symbolizing a broader struggle between adaptation and survival in the dark recesses of the human mind.

Aesthetically, the video employs grotesque, fragmented imagery, meant to mirror the disintegration of the ego and the involuntary submission to darker, unconscious impulses. The deliberate focus on the visceral, the abject, and the disturbing mirrors the inevitable psychological deterioration, reinforcing the collapse of traditional constructs of identity.

This is not a composition for passive consumption. Rather, it serves as a disturbing yet instructive case study on the malignant forces lurking within the human psyche, designed to challenge the viewer’s comfort zone and evoke the unease.

https://pincerconsortium.bandcamp.com/album/geminus-schism
https://deformeathing.com/pl/p/PINCER-CONSORTIUM-Geminus-Schism-CD-Digipack/3438
https://www.facebook.com/PincerConsortium/

 

TVMVLO (Portugal)

Now the alphabet brings us to a Portuguese death metal trio who are making their first appearance in our filthy pages, with a song and video from their forthcoming second album Portals of Terror.

The song’s name is “When Glory Fades“, but there’s nothing evanescent about the music. It’s a furious and savage attack, brutal and blazing, packed with vicious tremolo-heavy riffage, furiously rattling percussion, and abyssal gurgling growls. The riffing imperiously blares as well as gouging and gutting in high-speed frenzies, punctured by some delirious soloing, and it’s thoroughly electrifying to hear such exhilarating cruelty.

Portals of Terror will be released on November 11th, on CD by Doomed Records, and on vinyl by Larvae Records, Firecum Records, Raging Planet, and Selvajaria Records.

https://tvmvlo.bandcamp.com/album/portals-of-terror
https://www.facebook.com/tvmvlo

 

WOLFHEART (Finland) / DAWN OF SOLACE (Finland)

To close out this weekend’s metastasized, mega-sized roundup I have a small and gloomy  Tuomas Saukkonen block — one new song each from Wolfheart and the revived Dawn of Solace, both of which arrived with videos.

The Wolfheart song is “The Gale“. It’s the closing track on the band’s new album Draconian Darkness (extensively reviewed here by NCS slave DGR), and one that Saukkonen calls the “most beautiful and majestic song of the album”. The video, which includes scenery from Iceland, is intended to match those qualities.

The music includes some strikingly dramatic contrasts. One one side there’s acoustic picking and singing, both with a sorrowful mood. On the other side, there’s blazing and bombing instrumental power, stricken in its mood, and Saukkonen‘s gargantuan growls. It is indeed majestic, and it is indeed emotionally wrenching.

https://wolfheart.rpm.link/draconiandarknessPR
https://www.wolfheartmetal.com/
https://www.facebook.com/WolfheartRealm

The Dawn of Solace song is “Murder” and it’s from that band’s new album Affliction Vortex, scheduled to drop on February 14th through Noble Demon.

I’ve been a renewed fan of Dawn of Solace since their return from the tomb in 2020, and especially their last album, 2022’s Flames of Perdition. I will readily admit, even if it might confuse some of you, that a big part of the appeal for me has been Mikko Heikkilä‘s singing voice, and he’s still in the lineup for the new album, along with keyboardist Saku Moilanen.

When you hear “Murder“, I think you’ll make an immediate connection to “The Gale” from Wolfheart‘s latest album. It has similar elements of doleful musical beauty (including a lead melody that sounds almost like a grieving accordion or hurdy-gurdy), and some big momentous occasions as well, in which Heikkilä sings and Saukkonen roars in tandem. A heart-breaker, but a very memorable one.

https://music.nobledemon.com/vortex
https://www.facebook.com/dawnofsolace/
https://www.instagram.com/dawnofsolace_official