Obscure Sphinx
(written by Islander)
It seems like the end of the year is coming up in a big rush. It’s now four days before Christmas and the start of Hanukkah and 10 days before New Year’s Eve, a block of time when many people do something different from what they normally do (like taking time off from work), and other people feel grumpier about what they normally do because they’re still having to do it (like working).
We’re still here of course, and not even feeling grumpy about it. For a bunch of reasons I won’t bore you with, it’s the fanatically commercialized “holiday season” that makes me feel grumpy, and it’s continuing to pound away on this blog that helps get me through it.
Part of what we’re pounding on, of course, is year-end LISTMANIA. Even on a Saturday I nailed another list to the door. Next week we’ll have lists from at least four more of our writers, plus a bag of odds and ends from Neill Jameson.
But for now, just more new music — quite a lot of it actually.
OBSCURE SPHINX (Poland)
This first one caught me by surprise yesterday, though it made the rounds very fast among people whose musical tastes tend to align with mine. I’m pretty sure it’s been 8 years since Obscure Sphinx released new music, though they did bring us a pair of live albums in the interim. So what are they up to now?
What they’re up to is a new single named “Scarcity Hunter,” which arrived with a mysterious video. It’s a sonic smorgasbord, and they don’t skimp on what’s spread across the platter. They offer gritty throbs and quavering wails, pounding beats and unhinged screams, shrill blowtorch fretwork and sounds of uncomfortable squirming and writhing.
The music viscerally slugs and torques the mental tension, with a softer but eerily simmering interlude marked by tumbling drums and strident singing, which then seamlessly moves into a final bout of hard punching and tormented screaming.
An excellent new work from an excellent band, this song is the first single from their new album EMOVERE, which they say will be out on “06.01.2025.” I don’t know whether that means June 1st or January 6th.
https://obscuresphinx.bandcamp.com/track/scarcity-hunter
https://www.facebook.com/@obscuresphinx/
THIS GIFT IS A CURSE (Sweden)
This next one caught me by surprise too, though unlike the Obscure Sphinx song it did have a press release behind it to help spread the word more quickly (one that even quoted some of our own words about the band’s previous music). It’s the first advance track from the first new album by This Gift Is A Curse in about five years.
What you’ll encounter through “Kingdom” (which also arrived with a creepy video) is a near-immediate assault on the senses, with blasting drums and shrill tremolo’d riffing that plunges the listener into a cauldron of boiling razor-wire.
Crazed screams and tortured cries add to the song’s feeling of catastrophe, though the band also switch up the rhythms to avoid utterly immolating the listener, and they also bring in glimmering chime-like picking, gloomy chants, and skipping beats which create an occult and psychedelic aura — just before they convulse in a sonic maelstrom of violent chaos.
This song includes a vocal appearance by Livmødr‘s Laura Morgan, who also appears on another song on the new album. And yes, there’s a new album coming. Entitled Heir, it will be released by Season of Mist on March 7th.
https://orcd.co/thisgiftisacurseheir
https://thisgiftisacurse.bandcamp.com/album/heir
https://www.facebook.com/thisgiftisacurse
SH-BO-OO-OM (U.S.)
This continued to be a week of surprises, as I found out about a new album-length song from a trio named Sh-Bo-oo-om. That name meant nothing to me, but what did mean something was the discovery that it’s a new project from Mike Kvidra and Todd Bowser, both of whom were members of a band named The Brown Book that I wrote a lot about eons ago, and their friend Daniel Murphy.
Honestly, I’m reflexively averse to spending time with any album that’s just one continuous piece of music, especially one like this that goes on for 50 minutes and includes no vocals. It cuts against the grain of jumping from one new thing to the next, which is what I usually do with these Saturday roundups.
But given the connection with The Brown Book, I thought I’d at least make a start on this composition, which is named “Middle Distance.” It turned out to be so intriguing and immersive that I never turned away before it ended, even though it’s not close to the kind of extreme metal we usually devote ourselves to around here.
A piano is the principle instrument in this opus, sometimes accompanied by dimly sizzling and shimmering string-tonalities (violin? cello? guitars? all of the above?), and by slow, jazz-influenced bass-and-drum rhythms, joined by the shivering shine of cymbals. The piano melodies, as I hear them, are themselves influenced by jazz as well as modernist classical traditions (though I’m no expert in those realms) and prog-rock.
As the vibrancy and volume of the music continually ebbs and flows, and the rhythm section occasionally vanishes, the piano melodies braid together various motifs to create moods of mystery and seduction, of moody introspection and wonder, like a flowering spell that shape-shifts as its tendrils enter and infiltrate the mind.
Sometimes the piano locks into a particular refrain and repeats it, allowing those strings to swell and sear, or allowing the murmurs of the bass to create more attention. At other times, the piano seems to wander, lost in its own curious yet happy thoughts. At still other times, it seems to muse in ways that don’t sound happy at all, but more poignant and haunted.
You begin to notice when arpeggios you heard before return, already familiar, already welcome. In between, new things appear. When the piano itself vanishes, the music creates a psychedelic and surreal dream that wafts around head-nodding grooves, and the strange dream persists even after the piano returns.
If you’re interested in taking a chance on this, take my advice: Don’t go into it in a hurry; relieve yourself of any distractions; maybe even lie down and close your eyes, ready to become hypnotized, to get lost in the woods. Or maybe go wandering into the woods yourself, with this as your only companion.
https://sh-bo-oo-om.bandcamp.com/album/sh-bo-oo-om
BANK MYNA (France)
Okay, let’s begin moving back closer to what you’re mainly here for. But I decided not to make the move an abrupt one. Instead, the gentle beginning of this next long song and video struck me as a companionable segue from what Sh-Bo-oo-om were doing. It too includes bowed strings and shimmering tones, but also a voice this time, an enthralling singing voice (gasp!).
The song does gradually swell into greater intensity, led into it by the rising sizzle of tremolo’d chords and hammered cymbals, the mounting rumble of drums, and (in the video) the frantic contortions of vocalist Maud Harribey and her shattering cries.
But like the previous very long song in today’s collection, this one ebbs and flows, crests and descends. Maud takes up her violin, while continuing to wail, and things begin to get trippy and dark against a backdrop of primitive beats. When the tide flows again the music begins conjuring images of dystopian futurism, a “disturbance in the force,” even though the grooves are still compulsive.
Still receding and advancing, the song continues, both spellbinding and disconcerting. It becomes chaotic, and it grimly crawls toward a haunting near-silence in the final phase.
This video is a film of this prog/doom band’s February 2024 live performance of “The Sleep of Reason” at the Supersonic Club in Paris. That song is from their 2022 album Volaverunt, but the recording of the live performance was also digitally released about a week ago.
https://bankmyna.bandcamp.com/album/volaverunt
https://bankmyna.bandcamp.com/album/the-sleep-of-reason-live-2
https://www.facebook.com/bankmyna/
MISANTHROPÆ (U.S.)
For better or worse I decided I needed to bookend the back end of this collection with something extreme. But what to choose? I have so many fucking new songs to choose from. I found the answer by taking guidance from the fact that I’m already deep into very long songs, so what the hell, I picked another very long one!
This final offering today is a new 18-minute single by the New York “blackened grind” band MISANTHROPÆ. At Bandcamp it’s accompanied by a statement, also lomng, that seems to reflect the music’s themes or inspirations — a very eloquent but intensely harrowing meditation on wretched life and welcoming death.
Across those 18 minutes, the intensity rarely relents. The music is viciously assaulting, scathing the senses with boiling-acid riffage, magma-like bass tones, full-bore drum-plundering, and berserk screams. The music also frantically writhes and shrieks in pain, suddenly stops and suddenly explodes in new cacophonies of murder and madness, and at one point seems to stop altogether, until a dim collage of blood-congealing sensations begins to fill the void.
New grooves take over, head-moving and almost funky ones, but maddened voices still scream and howl, and the riffing still sears the listener’s brain over high heat, which the band keep wildly dialing up.
There’s lots of electrifying drum-fills in the mix, along with bursts of full-bore drum weaponry, variably throbbing bass-lines, and episodes of weirdly worming fretwork, all of which will help keep your brain from turning entirely into a burned and bubbling paste. Or maybe not.
Such white-hot fury this is! So berserk and so searing that you might well lose track of time, as I did.
I owe thanks to Rennie Resimini, as I have many times before, for pointing me to this song.
https://misanthropae.bandcamp.com/track/enshrined
https://www.facebook.com/misanthropae/