We’ve reached the end of a long holiday period and that left me feeling glum last night, morose over the realization that the rat race will resume on Monday. I felt much better after going through a big batch of songs I wanted to consider for this Saturday roundup.
Apart from enjoying the music, I’m enjoying the idea of how wobbly these eight selections will leave people who make it through all of them; there are many twists and turns along the way.
I arranged the choices in four two-band blocks. This doesn’t mean the selections in each part sound alike, but I did perceive some connections, except in the final two. Those two are together at the end only because I didn’t want to leave them out.
SABHANKRA (Türkiye)
To begin, I chose “The Shadebringer,” which is the opening song from this Turkish band’s new album Nocturnal Elegies — and one of the first songs I’ve identified as a candidate for my list of 2025’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs (I have to assume we’ll still be around a year from now when that list rolls out).
Grim and daunting at first, but punctured by rapid percussive bursts, the music starts viciously and maniacally swarming (with the drums still going nuts in jaw-dropping fashion), but the band also bring in scorching screams and searing stratospheric synths.
The riffage also writhes in agony and dire chords rise up, segmenting the music’s full-bore ferocity and throat-ripping shrieks, and those ethereal synths continue reappearing, elevating it to epic and mystical heights.
Nocturnal Elegies will be released on January 24th.
https://sabhankra.bandcamp.com/album/nocturnal-elegies
https://www.facebook.com/SabhankraBand/
ANDE (Belgium)
Continuing with this initial two-band black-metal block, I chose the two tracks currently streaming from Ande‘s new album De Schemering van Werelden.
In the first of those, “Van de eeuwen,” Ande creates a harrowing but head-hooking experience. The song brings enormous bass-undulations and spine-shaking blasts, along with unhinged vocal intensity and rapidly writhing riffage that sears like fire. The melodies become grim and even miserable in mood, especially when the momentum switches to a staggering pace, though the scarring torment of the vocals never relents.
The second song, “De wraak van het bos,” is similar in sound and mood, deploying abrading and dissonant riffing and those terrorizing vocals to drench the listener in agony and wretchedness, but again anchored by gut-rumbing bass-lines and neck-cracking beats. Feverishly wailing guitar-leads and immense, churning chords enhance the song’s transfixing emotional darkness, which reaches a near-apocalyptic level.
De Schemering van Werelden will be released by Naturmacht Productions on January 31st. It features cover art by Misanthropic-Art.
https://andenp.bandcamp.com/album/de-schemering-van-werelden
https://www.facebook.com/andeblackmetal/
HOLY DEATH (U.S.)
Heavy doom plays a role in this next two-band block. That’s the connection, but you’ll see that the music is still very different.
The first offering is a song called “Timecrimes” from these Long Beach death-doomers. It could have been called “tankcrimes” because it’s so fucking heavy. The song also includes bloody-raw vocal bellowing, sandpaper-toned riffage that scours and yowls, snare beats that will pop your head open like a cracked egg, and some utterly ruthless chug-fests and slash-fests.
“Timecrimes” is from a new Holy Death album named Paradice, which will be released on March 7th.
https://holydeathdoom.bandcamp.com/album/paradice
https://www.facebook.com/holydeathdoom/
MEGATON COMMUNION (U.S.)
When I see the word “megaton” in a band’s name I expect tonnage in their music, and thankfully Megaton Communion bring it.
This next song, “Disbelief,” is a big, pounding stomper but the guitars also slither, squeal, dart, and contort, adding elements both sinister and surreal, and it includes a wailing dual-guitar solo that doubles-down on the psychedelia.
Meanwhile, vocalist/bassist Joe Marshall has a voice born for this kind of music. He hits the high notes with clarity and soul, and the effect of his echoing voice is spine-tingling as it contrasts with all the megaton bone-busting down below.
I’m embarrassed to say that “Disbelief” is the only song I’ve heard from this Ohio trio’s new album Red Sky Warning, which was released by Black Doomba Records on December 6th. I checked out the song after seeing news that it had been released with a video — one that uses footage from ’60s protest movements to help make its point — and only later realized the whole album had come out. The link to it is below.
https://megatoncommunion2.bandcamp.com/album/red-sky-warning-full-album
https://www.facebook.com/p/Megaton-Communion-100091137926018/
CRACKWHÖRE (Austria)
Now we start another two-band block.
I’m an aging adult but still capable of thinking and acting like a juvenile. That’s why I had to check out the following EP after seeing the band’s name and the EP’s cover art. I didn’t know what to expect, but since the impulse was mainly a goof, I didn’t go in with high expectations. What a fantastic surprise I got!
The a cappella voices in the intro track are a big head-fake, because what comes after that in the title song is a blaring and bracing blow-out of high-energy, d-beat punk ‘n’ roll laced with ecstatic soloing and fronted by lacerating vocal fury. The sound is rough and raw, thoroughly electrifying, and absurdly hooky.
From there the band keep the speed, the octane, the ripped and raw vocal insanity, the soloing freakouts, and the barbed-wire hooks up in the red zone. Crackwhöre do stick an “Interlude” track in the midst of the bounce-off-the-walls mayhem, which sounds like a hellish tour through a haunted house where some thing is sharpening its knives, but other than that, prepare to rut and rock the fuck out.
The name of the EP is Heroin Supremacy (of course it is). It was released on December 31, 2024.
https://crackwhre.bandcamp.com/album/heroin-supremacy
GASH FAITH (Poland)
I didn’t pair this next album with Crackwhöre because of any similarity in the music (there is none) but because of the band names. Juvenile me was still alive and well.
What Gash Faith bring to the table is music that’s primitive and pernicious, a floor-bouncing and mind-mutilating combine of electro/industrial beats, ruinously rusted riffage that whines, groans, and worms its way like fattened maggots, matched up with malignant howls and gruesome grunts that get processed through the sonic equivalent of a house of mirrors.
Every now and then, the lead guitar also slithers, quivers, and squeals, like the worms have been dosed with psilocybin. Every now and then, the vocals turn to dismal near-sung wails.
The thudding machine-beats are compulsive and spleen-rupturing; the vocals are usually hideous; and everything else feels like we’re being drugged and made to do degrading things. Please tell me I’m not the only one who likes this. Please.
https://gashfaith.bandcamp.com/album/perfection-ended
https://www.facebook.com/gashfaith/
THE FALL OF MOTHER EARTH (France)
Now we get to the final two-band block. These are the two that really have no discernible connection to each other, and are here together only because I didn’t want to leave them out.
I found both of the next two songs by The Fall of Mother Earth because the first one showed up in a YouTube side-bar to the right of something else I was listening to. I launched the song out of curiosity, and by the time it ended I felt my heart in my throat. The second song had the same effect, except even more so.
These two, which flow together in a way that makes them seem like one long song, are the contents of an EP released on December 26th. It’s the solo work of Mathieu B. from Rennes. In simplest terms, they bring an amalgam of rapid, battering-ram grooves; sparkling guitar-and-keyboard melodies that dance, dart, fluidly flow, and magnificently soar; and truly cavernous yet impassioned gutturals.
The music brings to mind Wolfheart in some of its aspects, and more generally the kind of melodic death metal that’s influenced by visions of the great cold north.
https://thefallofmotherearth.bandcamp.com/album/chaos-convergence
https://www.facebook.com/TheFallOfMotherEarth/
ЧЕРНОПЛОДЬ (Russia)
My Serbian friend Miloš sent me a Bandcamp link to “Аннея,” the last song in today’s roundup. I didn’t know what to expect from it, though I was intrigued by the music’s cover image and the photo of the band, which looks like a small army, most of whom are women.
Turns out that many of those women, maybe all of them, sing as a choir in this song. Before they do, distorted tones slowly crawl and warble, quiver and squeal; and big drums boom. When the voices arrive (some of them male), they wail and cry out in ways that are disconcerting, seemingly possessed, but also glorious. Chimelike tones rhythmically ripple and ring, adding to the aspect of the song as a kind of ancient ritual in progress.
The song is from an album by Черноплодь (“Chernoplod”) that’s entitled И З Г О Р А. It was released in April 2021. I haven’t yet heard the rest of it. I did use an algorithm to translate some of the Russian text at the album’s Bandcamp page, and it rendered this:
The third release, the full-length album “IZ G O R A”, took the vector for even more experiments with female vocals and genre boundaries. Conceptually, the album is divided into two parts:
The first is an intense, black metal-like aesthetic, with references to post-punk and rock motifs.
The second – with an emphasis on dungeon synth, folk themes, tragic themes in the dominant choir.
https://chrnpld.bandcamp.com/album/-
https://www.instagram.com/chrnpld/