SHADES OF BLACK: KARG, MATAVITATAU, SUTTUNGR, FINAL DOSE, LOW BEFORE THE BREEZE, DÉMONOS, LESATH, ANTROPOCENO

(written by Islander)

I’m hurrying to post today’s collection before I have to turn to much more mundane tasks, so I’ll spare you a wordy introduction and just say that I’m extremely proud of these choices, not only because I think all of them are excellent but also because they’re going to give you so many twists and turns, right up through the final choice.

 

KARG (Austria)

I’m going to start with what I would guess is probably the best-known (and certainly longest-living) band in today’s collection, and a song from Karg‘s new album Marodeur.

Proceeding at first in a slow and very heavy march, the song very quickly saturates the senses with moods of abandonment and sorrow, in sounds both crystalline and abrasive. Even when the drums vibrantly accelerate and wretched screams assault the ears, the mood of the music remains strikingly bleak and broken.

The rhythms continue shifting, and the music shifts too, gently chiming but also suddenly crashing, mournfully lifting like funeral horns, and fluidly dancing, like sprites that have suddenly manifested in the midst of the mourners. Once that happens, the song begins to sound much more furiously unbridled — still intricate, still elegant, but going wild — and the vocals remain shattering.

I guess this will appeal to fans of depressive black metal, even though it puts much DSBM to shame. The song is “Findling.” The album will be released on April 18th by AOP Records.

https://artofpropaganda.bandcamp.com/album/marodeur
https://www.facebook.com/kargband/

 

MATAVITATAU (Belgium)

When I first saw this band’s name I was wondering if they were from Polynesia. I didn’t actually know what the name meant, but that’s what it made me think of. But no, they are from Belgium.

Of course I looked for the meaning of the name and found that it originated in the writing of Petronius (from the Satyricon), though its meaning has apparently puzzled scholars. I’ve read that it could be interpreted as signifying that the difference between life and death is insignificant, or that (therefore) caution should be thrown to the winds, in favor of frenzy and fury.

Apart from my initial misunderstanding of the name, I also had no idea what the music of the band’s first demo Numen Nescio would sound like, but it turned out to encompass surprises too.

It thrives on the fuel of guitars that straddle a line between crystalline clarity and acid causticity (some tones more clear and others more choking than others), as well as momentously heavy bass-lines and highly variable drumwork. Also notable are the hellish vocals, sounding like a confluence of haughty demonic torturers and their excruciating victims.

As the band’s name might suggest, the songs contain their fair share of frenzy and fury, as the rhythmic section charge ahead like big pumping and throbbing war machines and the lead guitar whirls and darts with electrifying effect.

On the other hand, the music also sinks deeply into territories of abysmal misery, sometimes accompanied by monastic wails, and those electrifying leads seem to manifest as a plague virus burning through helpless peoples.

As you can tell, there’s something about the music (but also influenced by the cover art) that makes me thing of the Dark Ages, not so much because it includes a lot of what I think of as medieval music (though there’s definitely some of that among the influences), but because it sounds as terrorizing as the superstitions dominating ignorant lands, and it often sounds elegant and ancient in its grimness and grievousness. I’m also probably influenced by the Latin song titles and the cover art.

Above all, it sounds like the looming and lusting presence of Death — its ravenous hungers, never sated, and the agonies and fanaticism of the lives that nourish it.

Well, however you might interpret it, I think you’ll find the music exceptionally well-constructed and well-executed, and as thoroughly gripping as it is disturbing. The lyrics, by the way, are “culled and adapted from Horace, Seneca, Lucan, Statius, Egbert of Liège and Bernard of Cluny.”

https://matavitatau.bandcamp.com/album/numen-nescio
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61573076224379

 

SUTTUNGR (Netherlands)

Jan Kruitwagen of Sammath enthusiastically pointed me to this next song by the Dutch black metal band Suttungr, which premiered yesterday. Its name is “Othala“, and its lyrics (translated from the Dutch) are an homage to the fighting spirit of the children of the Bronze Age; the band have also said that the song is “a tribute to the ancient grave mounds in the Vijlenerbos in Limburg.”

The riffing is high and wild, searing and storming, whirring and digging in with ferocious intensity, undergirded by turbocharged drum-and-bass pistons. The sound is ferocious but also feels like despair, like people fleeing for their lives or making a desperate last stand.

The growling, croaking, and viciously snarling vocals are monstrous and ugly, haughty and demonic — no succor to be found there. And as the song evolves and slows, the piercing chords and ringing arpeggios grow even more bleak and oppressive.

Under new acceleration, the riffing begins to feel like an immense and all-enveloping whirlpool, crashing and foaming and pulling toward an abyssal darkness below. The music is both exhilarating and emotionally pitch-black, an amalgam of viciousness and fear, of torment and agony.

Near the end, trumpets blow and strings wail and moan, evolving into an offering of elegant but mournful chamber music — completely unexpected, but surprisingly in keeping with everything else in the song.

The song is from Suttungr‘s debut album Eburoons Vuur, which is expected in the second quarter of this year and will be released on vinyl and tape at Zwaertgevegt and on all music streaming services.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063772514864

 

FINAL DOSE (UK)

The first two songs off a new album by these black metal punks are now up on Bandcamp. I found out about them thanks to a premiere of the newest one at Black Metal Daily.

The album opener, “Eternal Winter,” creates striking contrasts. On the one hand, Final Dose inflict brutal pounding and the ring of slashing chords and feverishly swirling notes that channel sweeping calamity and desperation, matched with furious shrieks. On the other hand, they sidestep into punk beats, wild cries, and more fierce and feral riffing, black-eyed and mean.

In the follower, “Weathered Axe,” the music still punches very, very hard, but the music seems to pick up from how “Eternal Winter” ended — it’s immediately grim and primitive, oppressive and cruel, still fronted by screaming tirades. But it changes too. Spurred into varying punk gallops, the music wildly careens and brazenly blazes, punctuated by exhilarating drum-fills, and with a throbbing riff in its bleak conclusion that makes for a sharp hook.

Very good stuff with a very primal appeal. The album is Under the Eternal Shadow. It will be released by Wolves of Hades on April 11th.

https://wolvesofhades.bandcamp.com/album/under-the-eternal-shadow
https://linktr.ee/finaldose
https://www.instagram.com/finaldosepunk/

 

LOW BEFORE THE BREEZE (U.S.)

At the end of yesterday’s overstuffed collection of new music I tried to help spread the word about an interesting interview of the anonymous Georgia-based person behind The Blood Mountain Black Metal Choir that was recently published at Machine Music. The final question in the interview was, “What album would you recommend from your local scene?” Here’s the answer:

I want to give a shoutout to the wonderful people from Low Before the Breeze. These guys make some of the most ferocious blackened-screamo out there. I was very fortunate to get to meet them recently at a show locally here in Georgia, and they were as kind as they are talented. As of now, they only have singles and EPs out, but they just recently announced a new album and I’m super excited for it, so that’s my album recommendation even though I haven’t actually heard it yet.

Having quickly become a fan of The Blood Mountain Black Metal Choir, I quickly followed up on that recommendation via links to two Low Before the Breeze releases that accompanied the interview answer.

The most recent release (on February 14th) is a single named “Night Wept,” about an abusive romantic relationship. It’s from a forthcoming album due in May.

It’s a hell of a riot, but full of surprises too, bouncing around in ways that are eerie, quirky, demented, and discordant as well as blowing open in bursts of slaughtering fury, with vocals that veer from blistering screams to monster roars and singing that’s both dismal and kind of stately, a veering that offcurs just as quickly as the tempos, moods, and instrumental maneuvers change.

And it’s really hard to overstate how much those instrumental maneuvers change. It’s ingenious, head-spinning, and beautifully executed, and very effective in spinning the mood from raging to bleak, from bewildered to wondrous.

The release before that one is an August 2024 EP named It Kindly Bent Around Me. Its three songs are every bit as dazzling and discombobulating as the new single. During the first song, “Apophenia“, it feels like we as listeners are rodents scurrying through a maze, with the twists and turns coming so fast it’s difficult to make sense of them. Other times it feels like we’re levitating, lifted above the maze for visions beyond the walls that inspire awe.

In the second song “Millenarian” it feels like we’re listening to a street corner prophet with a megaphone, or that we’re swaying in a gospel church with bluesy notes and a beautiful but haunting choir, but maybe with something psychoactive in the air.

“Esplame,” on the other hand, stomps on the extremity pedal, gives us the vocal acetylene and the guitar torch, but of course gets very strange by the end.

I really don’t know that there’s any convenient genre label to slap on this band. But as the kids would say, their music slaps.

https://lowbeforethebreeze.bandcamp.com/track/night-wept
https://lowbeforethebreeze.bandcamp.com/album/it-kindly-bent-around-me
https://www.facebook.com/LowBeforetheBreeze

 

DÉMONOS (India)

I’ll turn next to a lyric video for “Polyhedra,” a dynamic and tremendously powerful new song from the Indian occult/avant-garde black metal band Démonos.

It begins with an excerpt from a heart-breaking operatic aria and something like the sounds of a bubbling cauldron. An opening riff slowly worms forward like a serpent, even more dismal in its mood, and then a shattering scream and hurtling drums add to the music’s stricken and now-swarming intensity.

The cauterizing shrieks and acidic tones provide the signposts of raw black metal. The scratchy and scarring riffs are penetrating and emotionally distressing and depressive, saturated in despair. Those sounds make the appearance of clear and slowly ringing piano keys startling, but they too are sorrowful.

When the drums vanish, and wailing chants come forward against a mysterious and mesmerizing backdrop, there’s a change in mood, exotic and beguiling. The arrival of quavering new feminine vocals by Démonos guest Debapriya Chatterjee deepens that mood, but they also sound distressing as they soar in striking fashion.

All hell breaks loose in the final segment as drums hammer and rattle, the vocals sheer the mind, and the music flows in sweeping seas of catastrophe – but again with that grieving piano melody softening the blow, but offering no hope.

“Polyhedra” is the title song of a new four-hymn EP that releases February 26th across digital platforms and on magnetic tape by Fiadh Productions.

https://demonosmuzik.bandcamp.com/album/polyhedra
https://www.facebook.com/demonosmuzik/

 

LESATH (India)

Staying within the vast bounds of the subcontinent, my next selection is Cold Silence, the latest album from Lesath, whom I’ve written about quite often in the past.

Because of the recency of the release (February 20th) I haven’t spent a lot of time with it, and I don’t have the time at this point to provide a detailed preview for you of all of its many shades and phases. But, as I often tend to do, I wanted to say something now, knowing how often the tides of new music quickly push me away from islands like this one, never to return in my own writing if I don’t act fast.

The shades and phases are many, as has always been true of Lesath‘s music — shades and phases of both mood and musical genre. Given my rapidly expiring time, I’ll first share the album’s preview provided at Bandcamp, which I endorse:

With a sound that feels both soft and vast, Cold Silence captures moments of vulnerability, longing, and introspection at their sharpest. The album blends lush melodies, soaring instrumentation, and poignant lyrics, weaving an immersive, atmospheric sonic landscape that resonates on a profound level, offering moments of quiet reflection and emotional release.

The song titles are signifiers not only of the music’s emotional states but also their sonic sensations. They are indeed golden, breathless, and drowning, experiences of remembrance and the confrontation of death, of fading and perhaps the glimpsing of an afterlife.

In addition to some of the familiar forms of black metal instrumentation (most prominently the hammering drums and bursts of ice-storm riffage), the songs include chiming acoustic guitars, tones of accordion-like moodiness, the ripple of lyres (or something like them), the shimmer of keys, and dramatically varying but relentlessly gripping beats.

The vocals also vary, from wide-ranging and always compelling singing to needle-pointed shrieks and strangled gasps.

As with other Lesath encounters, I still detect a strong post-punk influence, in the melancholy end of that range, as well as folk influences (for some reason Leonard Cohen comes to mind); the black metal serpent does rear its venomous head, rarely but often enough.

You can become spellbound within the album, and whipped and scattered like leaves in a strong wind, but I think mostly this album is a spell-caster and a head-nodder, easy to lose yourself in its entrancing ebbs and flows, beautiful but often downward-spiraling.

If you want just a first taste of what the album brings, I’d recommend “Drowning“.

https://lesathblack.bandcamp.com/album/cold-silence
https://www.facebook.com/raatzone/

 

ANTROPOCENO (Brazil)

Antropoceno from São Paulo describes itself as “an environmentalist project of experimental samba and metal whose goal is to spread an ecosocialist message as an immediate need in the face of climate collapse, and to position itself in a cultural clash against the ideology of agribusiness.” More specifically, concerning their new album:

Terra do Fogo is a commentary on the fires that released a cloud of toxic smoke over all of Brazil in August 2024, with a record number of fires points in the Amazon, Cerrado and Pantanal, which made the air quality in several Brazilian cities among the worst on the planet.

The music is a startling, elaborately multi-faceted, and wholly captivating amalgam of ingredients. It includes bright and dancing acoustic guitar performances, something like the ringing and rippling sounds of a marimba, hornlike blasts, samba beats, soulful and seductive singing, and swirling melodies that sound like orchestral strings.

It also includes furiously unhinged screams, booming and battering drums and bass, slashing and crashing chords that sometimes lean into dissonance, feverish riffing that burns and boils, and blaring notes that sound anguished. In its more extreme aspects, the music is also a rendering of terrible devastation as well as defiance.

Some of the songs are more predominantly folk, others more predominantly black metal, but every one of them interweaves the traditions in amazingly effective ways. Given the nature of the album’s subject matter, it’s not surprising that the music is never far away from feelings of torment and fury, but it’s also perpetually rooted in some of the musical traditions of the region where responsibility lies for the ruin, or the rescue.

The Bandcamp page includes more information about the project’s inspirations and goals, as well as the lyrics in both Portuguese and English. I owe thanks to Jon Rosenthal for posting about this on social media.

https://sonhostomamconta.bandcamp.com/album/terra-do-fogo
https://linktr.ee/sonhostomamconta