Pelican – photo credit Mike Boyd
With very rare exceptions, the only times when I’ve managed to put together one of these roundups during the week (instead of waiting for Saturday) is when I’ve unexpectedly had time left over after finishing premieres and the other things I do around here. On this occasion, however, I just forced myself to make the time.
Of course I can’t actually make time – wouldn’t it be wonderful if that were possible! — and so what I mean is that I shoved aside other chores and pleasures because, for varying reasons, I really wanted to spread the word about the following songs without waiting ’til the weekend. Hopefully, when you hear them, you’ll understand the feelings or urgency. (Also, I will have my hands full on Saturday dealing with a ton of other new releases over the past week or two, and this should make that task a bit easier.)
I’ll add that, by coincidence, this collection makes for an extremely varied listening experience.
PELICAN (U.S.)
In looking through our many past writings about Pelican, I found the first appearance in a list of favorite bands posted by one of the two other people who started NCS with me more than 15 years ago (a family member, btw). It was a list posted just two weeks after we began, with no idea where we would go or for how long. And of course that wasn’t the last time we highlighted Pelican‘s music — many more features followed.
Even 15+ years ago, Pelican weren’t newcomers (we were just late to the party). They had already positioned themselves in the vanguard of post-rock and post-metal. Just a few weeks before that list I mentioned, they had released their fourth album, What We All Come to Need. Since then, two more albums have followed, and a few EPs and live recordings, but the pace of the releases hasn’t been as speedy as it once was.
Now here we are, six years after their last album and ready to welcome a new one. It has some extra appeal because it sees founding guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec rejoining the band for his first full-length since that 2009 album What We All Come To Need. So, to see what the reunited Pelican have accomplished I’m starting off today’s little collection with the new album’s first single “Cascading Crescent”.
In this big neck-bender of a song, Pelican go dark and heavy, discharging the brutish thrust of grim and grimy riffage and head-smacking beats. The music gets even more black-eyed and ominous, and the lead guitar also miserably squirms but also seems to mysteriously beckon with its bluesiness within the hammering hostility. It squirms again even more distressingly yet also seductively when the rhythm section shift into a big rumble.
The layered quivering sensations of the guitars begin to sound psychedelic as well as disturbing, though one might also interpret those latter maneuvers as signs of altered-state jubilance.
The name of the new album is Flickering Resonance. It will be released on May 16th on Run For Cover Records.
https://pelicansong.lnk.to/cascadingcrescent
https://pelicansong.lnk.to/flickeringresonance
https://www.facebook.com/@pelicansong/
VENENOSUM (U.S.)
I somehow overlooked the release last October of Venenosum‘s debut album Influence of Spells. If I had known about it, I surely would have jumped on it, because the band’s lineup includes a significant overlap with two other very good Washington State bands — Swamp Lantern and Lifeless Form. Fortunately, I did finally find out about the album via Venenosum‘s recent release of a self-produced video for an album track named “Delirium Rites“.
The video is tremendously good and so is the multi-faceted song. The video depicts a ceremony of transformation (in line with the appearance of caterpillars and chrysalis) which seems simultaneously to be occurring in our snow-covered real world and in some infernal otherworld, where the young protagonist is being guided by a hellish lord. I won’t spoil what the transformation leads to, but I will provide some spoilers about the song.
Among other things, the vocals are stunning, and just as frightening as vocalist/guitarist Jeff Kastelic‘s demonic appearance in the video. But before you get to those, the band slowly spread music of mystery and exotic allure, sort of bluesy and sort of psychedelic and sort of prog-rock, with heavy grooves beneath them.
Gradually, the music grows more sinister and intense as slowly clawing guitars emerge along with those terrifying roars and screams. The music menacingly rakes and pounds and then convulses in a spasm of feverish fretwork, though without losing the melodic thread that launched the song. The music also brutishly thrusts and gnaws at the mind, and it slows and dismally moans, becoming even more frightening.
But there’s still more to come. After falling almost silent, the band shift gears and turn their central melodic motif into a display of heavy metal grandeur, vigorously thrusting and gloriously rising, with a pair of spectacular guitar solos lifting their horns to the skies. As the second solo gets more freakish, the band inflict a very heavy stomp on listeners’ necks.
And on top of everything else, if I’d known about this song before the end of last year it would have been on my list of 2024’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.
Venenosum is:
Jeff Kastelic – Guitar, Vocals, Lyrics
Maclean Sather – Guitar
Stewart Hodge – Bass, Vocals
Easton Sartor – Drums
https://venenosum.bandcamp.com/album/influence-of-spells
https://www.instagram.com/toxicoscordion_venenosum
BÅKÜ (France)
Having already been thinking about post-metal thanks to Pelican, I was receptive to a message I received about the French post-metal quartet Båkü and their debut album Soma, though as it turns out this Valence-based band’s music is on the far heavier and more emotionally heated side of the post-metal spectrum than Pelican‘s new manifestation, and more obviously indebted to the likes of Cult Of Luna, Neurosis, and Amenra.
All the songs on the new album bear the same title — “OPPOSITE“. Specifically, OPPOSITE 1 through OPPOSITE 5. And they are all long-form creations. Both lyrically and in the music, they are described as fulfilling a concept that runs through Soma, “namely the transposition of 3 phases that humans inevitably experience: sleep, awakening and waking.” The first song Båkü disclosed for streaming was the opener.
“OPPOSITE 1” is a hell of a trip, a slow build and a slow burn. Advanced by a chilling ambient-music sequence, in which something ghastly seems to be snarling, the music begins to ring and vibrate like unearthly chimes, and they call forth a huge drum-and-bass pulse. Somewhere in the distance, scarring screams begin putting their needles in the mind, and then the music begins rumbling like a gigantic tank, but with eerily shimmering sonic wraiths glowing around it.
The build continues, like battering rams are taking their turn against the gates of your mind, but still with shattering screams and shrill guitars venting their torments as the gates splinter. The music’s high-low contrasts persist, creating an amalgam of ethereal glittering and brute-force rhythmic trauma, with a repeating bass-throb that really digs in. As the band cycles through these works over and over, it becomes a recipe for the slow, eyes-closed headbang. Even the cauterizing yells and a distorted extended vocal sample at the end doesn’t distract from those compulsive effects.
photo by Marie-Samantha Salvy
Just a couple of days ago Båkü also premiered “OPPOSITE 5.” No slow build here, it charges right away, hammering and rumbling and screaming. But suddenly, the music eerily fades away, just a short detour before the band bring in their big rhythmic piledrivers and strangely spurting strings. They make other detours along the way so that your neck doesn’t get too sore, some of them frantic and bizarre, others dismal and venomous.
The vocals remain a spray of blood; the drums try to make sure no bones are left unbroken, and the bass wants no organs left un-liquefied; the music rises like a sunrise on judgment day, and squirms like mindlessly searching insects. And while you’ll again get your chance for a slow headbang, the finale is sheer incendiary insanity.
The album’s cover art (by Emy R. from Arrache toi un Oeil) is also quite cool. The album is set for release on March 21st.
https://linktr.ee/bakupostmetal
https://bakupostmetal.bandcamp.com/album/soma
https://www.facebook.com/bakupostmetal
BLASTANUS (Finland)
Old friends return. Not that I’ve ever met any of the members of Blastanus, but I started writing about them and their music in 2010 and continued following them until they seemed to vanish for a decade after releasing two albums.
They returned in 2022 with a new full-length named Beyond, and I happily covered a group of songs from that record in a pair of roundups like the one you’re now in the middle of. Now they have a new album on the way named Land Of The Weak, Home Of The Slave. But before I get to its first single, I would like to repeat my attempt at humor about the band’s name which I used in one of those early posts about them 15 years ago:
On the subject of what this band’s name means, here’s a multiple-choice quiz:
(a) Pronounced “BLAST-uh-nus”, the name of the Finnish pagan deity who rules the underworld; lord of the heroic dead who perished by flame and sword;
(b) Severe gastrointestinal condition caused by eating too many wild berries in the Finnish countryside;
(c) What would happen if a cow tried to stifle a severe sneeze;
(d) None of the above.
If you chose (d), congratulations! From the band’s MySpace page: “The concept of Blastanus derived from the sick minds of two friends who at a young age decided to stop trivializing their existence and concentrate on the things that matter the most in life: Blastbeat and, well, you know, assholes!”
Funny? Yes? No?
Oh well, let’s get to the new album’s first single, “Class Warfare“. In presenting the song (and the album), Blastanus promised a blend of technical death metal and grindcore with an even more prominent role for the saxophone, as compared to previous releases. That all sounds right in the context of “Class Warfare,” though you might detect some quick hints of progginess in the mix too.
With drums going full-tilt, the riffage roils and ruins in dense, shrill tornadoes of sound, with vocals that match the violence and the insanity, belligerently roaring and dementedly screaming. It’s like finding yourself in a crazed war zone, with no escape even when the drums shift into a gallop and the guitar soloing sounds like the ecstasies of an acetylene torch. When the saxophone arrives amidst the searing, it has a solo of its own, a smooth and seductive wailing that creates a contrast with the madness around it.
BLASTANUS is:
Antti Oksanen-Guitars, Bass, Vocals
Henri Fredriksson –Drums
Kari Väkiparta –Vocals
Jussi Hurskainen -Saxophone
Land of the Weak, Home of the Slave releases April 20th. Regarding its subject matter, the band have said: “Thematically, Land of the Weak, Home of the Slave reflects global economic challenges and societal disillusionment, particularly in the band’s native Finland. Lyrically, the songs explore themes of uncertainty, mistrust in political leaders, and discontent with institutions.”
https://blastanus.bandcamp.com/album/land-of-the-weak-home-of-the-slave
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0ecgFXFwAKZDsoHDXuTCPX
https://www.facebook.com/blastanus1
https://www.instagram.com/blastanus
LAUDARE (Germany)
Last year Laudare released a new album named Requiem. Our Andy Synn reviewed it, making reference to its elements of “part Black Metal, part Progressive/Art Rock, part Chamber Music” and summing it up as “an album full of surprises” but one in which “the band make it all flow so well – not just on a song-by-song basis, but within each cleverly composed, artfully arranged track” – “a testament to both their impressive songwriting skills and their cohesive collective vision.”
Much more recently, just two days ago in fact, Laudare released a new single named “Of Plea and Purpose“. As usual, the lyrics are fascinating, surging with the thrill of life on fire, a resurgence from a free fall into misfortune, and a plea for purpose. The music is fascinating too.
The words come out in wails and screams in the midst of a head-spinning prog-metal extravaganza, and they come out in haunted but soulful singing in the midst of a slow and smoky mist (though the compulsive drums aren’t misty at all). Back and forth the music goes, returning to phases of instrumentally eccentric vigor, accented by a shivering cello, and also to more subdued and soulful softness, again accented by cello as well as piano and beautiful singing.
It’s all quite head-spinning and also enthralling, and no easier to genre-hobble and classify than Requiem was. Along with its interesting lyrics, the song is available at Bandcamp.
(Thanks to Ed S. for e-mailing me about this song.)
https://laudare.bandcamp.com/track/of-plea-and-purpose
https://www.facebook.com/laudare.violentpoetry/
http://www.instagram.com/laudare