SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: GRIMA, A THOUSAND SUFFERINGS, KLUDDE, BODY COUNT, GOSPEL TREMORS, BRÜDNY SKÜRWIEL

Grima (photo credit: Mikhail Yuyukin, Viktor Shkarov, Marat Zaborovskiy)

(written by Islander)

How’s your day going? Well, I hope. Here’s how mine started:

I woke up way earlier than I wanted. I made coffee and went out on my deck to start inhaling it, along with a few smokes. While doing that I read various lengthy narratives of the Game of Thrones series because my wife and I had started binge-watching it for the first time and I was both confused and curious about where it was going (though I’m still confused). I also read a moving and meaningful report on a ceremony in Gettysburg, PA last week to commemorate the 161st anniversary of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

I was putting off a daunting task but finally forced myself to get to it, the task of trying to figure out what to put into this roundup, daunting because even though I managed two weekday roundups over recent days my list of candidates was still enormous.

I really didn’t have any strategy, just started impulsively clicking links and making discoveries, mostly leaning into bands I wasn’t familiar with. I found four with videos, where the short films and the music clicked. Since I got sucked into a couple of long and compelling videos for yesterday’s roundup, I decided to start with those four.

I can’t say there’s any real logic to the following choices other than my liking of them, though I guess the influence of black metal does coincidentally rear its horned head to varying degrees in most of them.

 

GRIMA (Russia)

To begin, here’s an intriguing video for “Skull Gatherers“, a song from Siberian Grima‘s new album Nightside. Grima introduced the song with these words:

“Skull Gatherers” tells the story of the Skull Gatherers, particularly devoted servants of GRIMA, who are dedicated to harvesting trophies from the bodies of the deceased and weaving them into an endless collection. Each lyric and chord resonate with the somber silence and chill of the earth, the final resting place for those who have found peace in the Taiga. The song transcends listeners into a realm of nocturnal shadows, rugged nature, and mysticism – the perfect soundtrack for those prepared to confront what lies beyond the boundary between life and death.

Monstrously masked in the video and indulging their professed worship of Siberian forest deities, Grima render music that’s mysterious, lacing the softer moments with the trill of old traditional instruments, but in their blistering and bestial vocals and the grim slash and fiery swirl of their chords they create sinister and sweeping sensations too, backed by rocking grooves, and they conclude with a brief accordion melody.

Nightside will be released by Napalm Records on February 28th.

https://napalmrecordsamerica.com/grima
https://grima.bandcamp.com/album/nightside
https://www.facebook.com/grimablackmetal

 

 

A THOUSAND SUFFERINGS / KLUUDE (Belgium)

On December 6th Consouling Sounds will release a split named Het Pact, which is a conceptual collaboration by the Belgian black metal bands A Thousand Sufferings and Kluude. Here’s how the split is described:

Het Pact tells the real-life story of the infamous Belgian De Vis family. Once the richest family in Aalst and the surrounding area. A Thousand Sufferings and Kludde each tell in their usual way about the absurd agreement between the last descendants of this family. Greed drove them crazy: they promised each other never to marry or produce heirs… and they went to great lengths to prevent this!…

[I]t tells of the sorrow of a girl in love, bound to live out her days locked away in the family castle. All to preserve the riches, acquired over generations, each more depraved and decadent then the next.

On the split, Kluude, using the Aalst dialect, “tells the story of the history up to and including the last generation of De Vis,” while A Thousand Sufferings “takes the listener inside the protagonists’ minds”. Both bands released videos for one of their tracks (they each recorded two songs for the split).

The ATS song, “De Zotte“, provides the perspective of that imprisoned young woman (Maria De Vis), who in the video finally emerges from her captivity as an old woman. The video also intersperses scenes of the band performing the song, the most startling being the vocalist’s wild facial expressions – no less wild than his vicious snarls and mad howls.

The song puts me in mind of a fast, onrushing train, with the drums and bass pumping like pistons as the riffing eating up the rails like charging wheels. The ensuing wail of the guitars even sounds like the long blast of a train engine’s warning horn.

Eventually the band bring in other sensations — feverishly flickering electric throbs and sweeping and swirling riffage that channels a vast despair, eventually backed by vivid percussive hammering, and a finale of rapidly darting keys. The whole thing is exhilarating and gets muscles moving.

Kluude‘s video is also interesting: it stars marionettes! And it includes narration of the disturbing story in subtitles, as if in an old silent movie. The song, “Slecht Geldj II: Pact Verbroeken“, is the second of the two Kluude tracks on the EP, and also the same story of Maria.

In the music, Kluude drench the senses in waves of sky-high sizzling riffage and gently glittering keys, propelled by a racing drum gallop and fronted by scalding, serrated-edge vocal tirades. Still frenzied, the music grows even more tormented, but also (as the drums switch to a rocking gear) more feral and cruel.

In the midst of that second phase, a frantic and fluid guitar solo spirals high, anguished but glorious, and the song keeps digging its infectious riffs deeper into the listener. At the end of the video, the screen provides details about the terrible treatment of Maria.

https://consouling.be/
https://www.facebook.com/ConsoulingSounds/

https://www.athousandsufferings.com
https://www.facebook.com/a.thousand.sufferings
https://athousandsufferings.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/kluddeband
https://kludde.bandcamp.com

 

 

BODY COUNT (U.S.)

Ice-T has explained that a lot of his lyrics for Body Count‘s new album Merciless are based on his love of horror movies, including tales of serial killers. That comes through in the video for the album’s title track, but another thing that comes through, as Ice-T beats and tortures a bound Klan member, is their fury against racism.

Yeah, yeah, I can imagine some of you ready to point out that Ice-T plays a cop on TV and makes commercials for Cheerios and GEICO. Well, that’s one Ice-T. There’s clearly another one, one who’s still pissed off, and I don’t think he’s faking that.

Apart from the furious vocals, the song brings skull-busting beats and miserably groaning chords; monstrous roars and shrill, eerily swirling accents; head-chugging grooves laced with swirling leads and an even more eerily swirling solo.

Merciless was released by Century Media yesterday.

https://centurymedia.store/products/body-count-merciless-cd
https://www.facebook.com/bodycountofficial/

 

 

GOSPEL TREMORS (U.S.)

As I was listening to this next song, one thought kept coming to me: “This is like hardcore performed by night wraiths.”

Why did I think that? Well, along with gut-busting rhythms and hardcore yells, the song brings abrasive, slashing riffage that sounds bleak and ice cold in its viciousness, and caustic screams that don’t sound human. Even when an echoing voice begins singing, that goblin voice is still nearby, and the culminating solo also sounds diabolical.

The name of the song is “Solicitor“. It’s the latest single by the Chicago trio Gospel Tremors. It follows up a three-song self-titled EP released last August, also available on Bandcamp. I haven’t listened to that yet, but damn sure will.

https://gospeltremors.bandcamp.com/track/solicitor

 

 

BRÜDNY SKÜRWIEL (Poland)

I was going to find a translation program to figure out what this Polish band’s name means in English, but Metal-Archives saved me the chore. It says there: “The phrase ‘brudny skurwiel means ‘dirty motherfucker’ in Polish.” A pretty good sign that their music isn’t going to be pretentious. Other signs are in the cover art for their new album, and the album’s name: Silesian Bastards.

Two songs from the album are now streaming — the title track and “The First Ones In Line“. They were recorded live, and they definitely are not pretentious, but they’re a hell of a lot of fun.

The defiant lyrics of both songs are barbarically growled. Along with that, the title song breaks into a high-octane charge of fiery speed metal that gloriously blares and furiously shreds, shot through with soloing that’s fast enough to melt the strings. If you’re ready for a loaded syringe of adrenaline, this will fix you up.

“The First Ones In Line” is different. Punk beats still provide the propulsion but it’s not as fast, and the riffing is more sinister and devilish in its mood (though the gritty vocals are still bestially crazed), and the soloing here is infernally psychedelic.

Silesian Bastards will be released by the Old Temple label on December 1st.

https://oldtemple.bandcamp.com/album/br-dny-sk-rwiel-silesian-bastards
https://www.facebook.com/chujciwdupiechodzi/