Dormant Ordeal – Photo Credit: Piotr Dzik
(written by Islander)
Another week has gone by and I’ve had another session with the roulette wheel of new releases, watching the bouncing ball land in one pocket after another as I mentally spun. It’s a fair analogy, since there are 37 or 38 pockets on a wheel and that’s in the ballpark of new releases from the past week I thought might be worth checking out. Also fair, because of the general randomness of my choices of what to listen to.
But the process is also a little like casino craps, getting an instinct about a shooter and betting on particular outcomes. And so I mentally bet on some of the bands from last week I thought were likely to be winners – and some were and some weren’t.
To be clear, I’ve never played roulette or craps in my life, only watched without much understanding. I’m not much of a gambler with my own money; I care much more about losing than the chance of winning; I prefer to keep what I have; there are other ways of being entertained when the odds aren’t always stacked against you — like listening to the following songs:
DORMANT ORDEAL (Poland)
Here’s an example where I bet on the shooter, not only because we’ve had such good luck with Dormant Ordeal‘s music in the past but because of my friend DGR‘s enthusiastic reaction to the first song from their new album Tooth and Nail, which included the comment “Fuck, 3:40 on in the new Dormant Ordeal song rules.”
That first song is “Halo of Bones“. Before the 3:40 mark Dormant Ordeal discharge a bludgeoning and battering attack spearheaded by dissonant tones that both maul and ring, and soloing that wails. Soon enough they stomp the pedal on their musical Autobahn and suddenly we’re going at 100 mph (I’m American and don’t understand kpm) with a brutal growler behind the wheel.
Very damned exhilarating. The fretwork maniacally veers and viciously scissors; the drumming is jet-fast; all the sounds are gloriously unhinged. And then the machine radically slows; a miserable siren dismally pleads for attention; the vocals gasp; but at that 3:40 mark the band suddenly stomp the accelerator even harder and things get even more insane.
Tooth and Nail will be released by Willowtip Records on April 18th.
https://dormantordeal.bandcamp.com/album/tooth-and-nail
https://www.facebook.com/dormant.ordeal
LABYRINTHINE HEIRS (U.S.)
Following a near-monthly pattern that I, Voidhanger Records established last year (or maybe earlier, I forget), the label recently dropped three more forthcoming albums for pre-order on its Bandcamp page, along with sample songs from each one. I read the descriptions of all three, and all three are very interesting, though when it comes to this label I’m always eventually going to listen to everything it puts out. If I didn’t want to spend a bunch of time working on this blog, I already would have listened to these three.
But time not being as generous as it would have been if I’d given up on NCS, I’ve only listened to one song from one album, a self-titled debut effort by a Texas band named Labyrinthine Heirs. The entire description at Bandcamp is worth reading, but I’ll just highlight this one excerpt:
Labyrinthine Heirs is indeed a frightening golem that the band molds with the same clay used by THE JESUS LIZARD, HOWLS OF EBB, CELTIC FROST and VED BUENS ENDE…. On vocals, Evan Sadler sings with the same raw power as BEHERIT and ROOT, his lyrics originally based on an amalgamation of anxieties and existential concerns with a personal interpretation of Gnosticism, the works of Jiddu Krishnamurti, and the Cloud of Unknowing.
The opening track, “Brick Refusers Quartered,” is the one now available to stream, and succinctly summing it up isn’t easy. The vocal sampling at the beginning is, shall we say, quirky. The opening riff is a feverishly skittering and squirming but quickly head-hooking thing, backed by the contrast of methodical beats and gruesome gutturals. And from there, the music warps in other increasingly strange, seductive, and head-knotting ways, but that opening riff and those popping beats continue to return, so your muscles don’t stop throbbing for too long.
Well, hell, I’m not only fascinated, I’ve quickly become addicted.
Colin Marston mastered the album, and it will be released on April 4th.
https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/labyrinthine-heirs
http://metalodyssey.8merch.com
http://metalodyssey.8merch.us
https://www.facebook.com/labyrinthine.heirs
CHAOS INCEPTION (U.S.)
I was a bit late getting to this next song… so late that by the time I got to it I discovered that the entire album that includes it (Vengeance Evangel) had just been released… and I haven’t had time to listen to the rest of the album yet. But rather than wait to do that, I thought it might be more helpful to spill some words about the one song now — because I think it will lure you into the album as a whole without delay while the release is fresh.
As in the case of some of the other albums spotlighted in today’s column, there’s a very long commentary about this one at the Bandcamp page for the releasing label, in this case Lavadome Productions. That commentary is, to put it mildly, very enthusiastic. These words come near the end:
Chaos Inception has delivered a record that’s a weapon—an unrelenting blast of energy aimed straight at the heart of darkness, designed to make the listener feel victorious…. This is Chaos Inception as they were always meant to be. This is death metal at its rawest, most unapologetic form.
The song I focused on, “Artillery of Humwawa“, does sound like artillery firing at a red-hot rate and tank pistons pumping equally fast. Speaking of fast, the vocals get barked at a blistering rate; the bleating and brawling fretwork contorts in spasms; and the tempos, rhythmic patterns, and riffing repeatedly change on a dime.
The song is undeniably savage but will keep you perched on the edge of your seat because it’s so wild. True to the excerpt quoted above, the guitars also spiral up and out in ways that sound victorious, and they blare in triumph when they’re not viciously chewing through everything in front of them. The drumming is also lights-out.
Chaos Inception is Matt Barnes (guitars) and Gary White (vocals), and the renowned workhorse Kevin Paradis was the session drummer on the album.
https://lavadome.bandcamp.com/album/vengeance-evangel
https://www.facebook.com/ChaosInception
DECREPISY (U.S.)
The bouncing ball next landed in a place that marks a bit of a shift from the head-spinning thrill-rides you’ve taken in today’s collection so far.
If you aren’t familiar with Decrepisy based on their excellent 2021 debut album Emetic Communion, you’ll have a chance to get acquainted this year via their new full-length Deific Mourning. If you’re a stranger, it should interest you to know that this PDX-based death metal collective features current and former members of Thanamagus, Vastum, Acephalix, and Ascended Dead, including guitarist/bassist Kyle House and vocalist Dan Butler (not to diminish any of the other members, but I’ll also mention that Leila Abdul-Rauf is credited with synths and vocals).
The new album’s first advance song is “Severed Ephemerality“. There is indeed an ephemeral and exotic quality to the swirling and twinkling guitars that ring-in the song, though soon enough the music (and the vocals) start savagely snarling and the grooves brutally hammer like a big piledriver.
The emotional cast of the music grows darker and more oppressed, and the guitars wail, but the song also slips into scampering d-beat hooks, one of them featuring an exultant guitar solo, before returning to pitch-black stomps and groaning chords or episodes of swarming menace, with one more spit-fire solo and a reprise of that attention-seizing opening motif still to come. (The vocal monstrosity never relents.)
And, to repeat, if you need to bust up any concrete and don’t have a jackhammer handy, just play this loud.
Deific Mourning will be released on March 28th by Carbonized Records.
https://carbonizedrecords.bandcamp.com/album/deific-mourning
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063890721173
BELNEJOUM (Int’l)
My distant comrade Miloš pointed me to this next song before I saw that a small wave of e-mails about it had been lapping at the shores of our in-box. The band’s founder and composer is Mohamed Baligh “Qaswad”, who is credited with piano and vocals, but what really seized attention is the list of other band members and guests:
Members:
George Kollias: Drums (Nile).
Francesco Ferrini: Orchestra Arrangement (Fleshgod Apocalypse).
Fabio Bartoletti: Guitars (Fleshgod Apocalypse).
Rich Gray: Bass Guitar (Annihilator).
Ehab Sami: Guitars, Production assistance
Tamara Jokic: Melisma Vocals
Guests:
Hany El-Badry: Ney
Mohamed Medhat: Violin
Christian Correra: Tenor
Jeremy Garbarg: Cello – (Recording of Elegie was made by a rare cello made by Rugieri in Cremona (Italy) in 1695.)
See what I mean? But before we get to the first excerpt of what they’ve done together on Belnejoum‘s debut album Dark Tales of Zarathustra, here’s what I discovered about Melisma. It is described here as “the singing of a single syllable of text while moving between several different notes in succession,” in contrast to “syllabic” singing, “in which each syllable of text is matched to a single note.”
The album “tells the story of Zarathustra’s corruption and insanity.” The first excerpt we have is the opening song “Prophet of Desolation,” which begins the dark narrative. Over the course of more than 10 minutes, this collective lead us on a hell of a trip. “Symphonic black metal” might do as a shorthand, but doesn’t really encompass all the twists and turns.
The song includes elegant piano and violin melodies and blazing fanfares of great extravagance, jolting grooves and full-bore percussive riots, crazed and crying orchestral strings, goblin snarls and lycanthrope howls, riveting melismatic wails of operatic theatricality and even more theatrical choral voices, vast symphonic sweeps of haunting grandeur and a spectacle of guitar soloing — among other things.
Richly layered throughout, it often sounds like a pageant for the end of the world or the birth of a new one in fire. It really doesn’t sound like anyone held anything back in this song, it’s so over the top. One wonders whether an entire album of this would be survivable, but we shall see.
Dark Tales of Zarathustra will be released by the Antiq label on April 4th.
https://antiqofficial.bandcamp.com/album/dark-tales-of-zarathustra
https://www.facebook.com/Belnejoum/
HABAK (Mexico)
My introduction to Habak, a melodic crust punk band from Tijuana, occurred when they hit like a lightning strike on the main stage of Northwest Terror Fest in 2024 (a performance our man Gonzo highlighted as one of the best discoveries of the night in this review). Like him, I was blown away by their set, and especially by the force of nature that is Hadak‘s front-person Alejandro.
And so, when I saw they have a new album on the horizon I jumped at the chance to listen to its title song, “Mil orquídeas en medio del desierto” (“a thousand orchids in the middle of the desert’). I ran the Spanish lyrics available at Bandcamp through an online translator and got an eloquent and inspiring message, about an alchemy intended to transform sorrow into a party…
Where we celebrate and dance along with our accumulated rage
Then, we managed to create within that hostile world
Fleeting moments in which it seemed a little more habitable
Unexpectedly, the song begins gently and in a somber mood, a lonesome acoustic manifestation of sorrow. When the transformation begins, it begins gradually, first with pulse-pounding beats and a ticking bass, and then with heavy, gouging riffage and bestial howls.
The guitars slash and swirl, throb and moan, in a way that sounds far more like being stricken with pain and grief than any celebration. But eventually Habak put the spurs to the song, surging into a d-beat-driven fury in which the guitars defiantly blaze and exuberantly whirl, and the vocals eject the words in wild howls and fierce cries. Absolutely electrifying.
The album is set for release on April 4th, in various formats by various labels.
https://habak.bandcamp.com/album/mil-orqui-deas-en-medio-del-desierto
https://alertaantifascistarecords.bandcamp.com/album/aa172-habak-mil-orquideas-en-medio-del-desierto-lp
https://www.facebook.com/Habakpunx/
https://www.instagram.com/habakband/
PIGPEN (U.S.)
This next choice of mine was probably the most random of all today, really explainable by nothing more than the band’s presence across the water from me in Seattle and their name — Pigpen.
Pigpen‘s new album Agony and Irony came out on February 9th. Eight tracks long, beginning with a creepy and increasingly discordant and disconcerting Intro track, it discharges a variably paced but almost relentlessly crushing amalgam of sludge-weighted bass riffage and bone-busting drums, paired with larynx-mutilating screams and scratchy and shrill outer-space weirdness — but as the album unfolds it grows increasingly unpredictable.
There’s a fair amount of punk in this amalgam, from some of the beats and chord progressions to the blistering vocals, but the lineup also seems to include a gigantic excavation machine chewing through a stone quarry, plus screeching or scathing harsh noise radiations and guitar spasms (but there’s only a bass guitar in this band) that you might brand as psychedelic except they’re all even more berserk.
Death growls, ghostly wails, vampiric rasps, demented roars, and even more demented babbling join in with the blood-spray screams and yells. There’s a free-flowing amount of madcap inventive permutations in the rhythm section’s work too, drawn from wide-ranging traditions within and without metal, as well as just sheer primitive brutishness. (The drumming alone is worth the price of admission.)
Sometimes the music sounds proggy, sometimes tribal, sometimes jazzy, sometimes funky, sometimes hallucinatory, sometimes like the product of electroshock therapy (mostly like the product of electroshock therapy).
As they say in the trade, this definitely won’t be for everyone — the vocals are especially rude and ruinous — but if you’re in the mood to dump your brain in a lysergic acid blender and hit “puree”, you’ve come to the right place. (It’s a name-your-price download but I’m going to pay for it just to help fund Pigpen‘s medical treatment.)
P.S. The band’s string-slinger Aaron Smith has told us: “This entire album was recorded in my basement, with drums and bass tracked simultaneously just feet apart. All noise effects and samples were recorded live—no metronomes, no triggers, no MIDI samples.” His collaborators were Rylee Baker and Dane Larsen, and whatever void wraiths melted into their space.
https://pigpen1.bandcamp.com/album/agony-and-irony
ALLEGAEON (U.S.)
For a good long while now, Allegaeon have been in the category of “Bands That Don’t Need Any Help From Us.” But of course we do still write about such bands, maybe for different reasons among different people here, but in my case because it seems unfair not to make some expression of gratitude for music that I really enjoy. (Note: this is not universally true of “Bands That Don’t Need Any Help From Us.”)
And so to close today (well, not really, as you will see), I’ll turn to “Driftwood,” the first single from Allegaeon‘s new album The Ossuary Lens. Like the album as a whole, it features the return of the band’s original vocalist Ezra Haynes.
I would sum up the song as a howling and harrowing yet head-hooking freakout, but with effective singing and vivaciously swirling melodies that offset the rabid growls, the searing screams, and the plentiful instrumental fireworks.
(Let’s have a moment of silence for yet another female metal-video victim — though as you’ll see in the video there’s something else going on here that’s out of the ordinary.)
The Ossuary Lens will be released by Metal Blade on April 4th.
https://allegaeon.bandcamp.com/album/the-ossuary-lens
https://www.facebook.com/Allegaeon
https://www.instagram.com/allegaeonofficial
BURIED REALM (U.S.)
Just before doing some cleanup work on the foregoing verbal and visual spillage before posting it, I took a smoke break (yes, I really am that stupid), and quickly saw a friend enthusiastically sharing a link to a new Buried Realm song on FB.
I didn’t know about it, and so it wasn’t in any of the slots on my roulette wheel today. But of course I listened to it before doing the cleanup work, especially because it features vocalist Christian Älvestam. And he’s not the only talented guest accompanying the band’s main man Josh Dummer. Here are all of them:
Björn “Speed” Strid (SOILWORK) on tracks “Human Code” and “Where the Armless Phantoms Glide, Pt. II”
Christian Älvestam (ex-SCAR SYMMETRY) on tracks “Bloodline Artifice,” “Futuristic Hollow Nation,” “Jaws of the Abyss,” and “The Dormant Darkness”
Christopher Amott (ex-ARCH ENEMY/ ex-DARK TRANQUILLITY) on “Futuristic Hollow Nation”
Daniel Freyberg (ex-CHILDREN OF BODOM) on “A Futile Endeavor”
Dean Arnold (ex-VITAL REMAINS) on “Bloodline Artifice”
Francesco Ferrini (FLESHGOD APOCALYPSE) with orchestration and additional synth across the album
Gus G (ex-OZZY OSBOURNE/FIREWIND) on “The Dormant Darkness”
Heikki Saari (FINNTROLL) with drums throughout the album
Per Nilsson (SCAR SYMMETRY) on “Human Code”
My friend’s link took me to a lyric video for the song “Jaws of the Abyss“, which turns out to be partly a majestic sci-fi spectacle, partly a hard-charging Scandinavian-style melodeath gallop, partly growled with ferocity, partly sung up in the stratosphere in a way that gets stuck in the head, and with a guitar solo that will light up your eyes. And I could go into greater detail about this heart-swelling extravaganza — but I’m out of time!
The song is from a new Buried Realm album named The Dormant Darkness, set to debut on April 4th — the magic date for almost all the forthcoming albums that have been the source of music collected here today.
https://www.buriedrealm.com/
https://www.facebook.com/buriedrealm
https://www.instagram.com/buriedrealm