(written by Islander)
I had a narrow opening in today’s schedule for a roundup of new songs and videos, and not a lot of time with which to fill it, so I won’t waste the time with further introductory remarks. We’ll get right to it, beginning with:
MÜTTERLEIN (France)
Ever since seeing the recent announcement of a new Mütterlein album a group of metal-loving friends and I have been greedily rubbing our blood-stained hands (contrary to rumor we don’t have talons and the blood is from paper cuts). The rubbing has become more intense since hearing the album’s first single (not that kind of rubbing, get your minds out of the gutter).
photo (c) Soulcrusher
That first single, “Concrete Black“, slowly wails and warps, then eerily quivers and throbs, with only the boom of ritual drums to keep us even slightly earthbound. Marion Leclercq‘s voice wails too, but also vehemently screams on the borderline between fury and pain as the music begins to burn and twist, like some surreal draconic figure made of sound.
Hallucinatory and harrowing throughout, the music crests and subsides, and crests again, within a frightening and freezing other-realm. It creates a deeply chilling and disorienting musical collage, not a place where you’d want to stay for very long without risking a collapse.
The name of the album is Amidst the Flames, May Our Organs Resound (mine are resounding). Leclerq describes it as “a musical tribute, a memorial work that explores the deep wounds left by oppression throughout history.” “This album is an ode to all those who have suffered in silence, especially women, whose bodies have been instrumentalised and sacrificed, like Anarcha Westcott, a tragic and emblematic figure in the history of modern gynaecology.”
The album will be out on May 9th on Debemur Morti Productions, with cover art by Dehn Sora.
https://mutterlein.bandcamp.com/album/amidst-the-flames-may-our-organs-resound
https://www.facebook.com/mutterlein
CARONTE (Italy)
In the first of many twists and turns in this collection, we’ll turn next to a video for a new Caronte song named “Interstellar Snakes of Gold“.
It wastes no time getting a listener’s head moving with rocking beats, slashing chords, and burly bass throbs. But there’s something sinister about the riffing, something poisonous, and the gothic singing and quivering melodies heighten the feeling of bearing witness to supernatural spirits, reptilian in shape and, yes, interstellar in domain.
The guitar soloing spectacularly swirls — these are, after all, snakes of gold — and the vocals strikingly elevate too. Most normal people won’t be able to resist the song’s rocking grooves or the sway of its pentagram-shaped spells.
The song is from Caronte‘s new album Spiritus, to be released on the 8th of April by Ván Records.
https://caronteoccultdoom.bandcamp.com/album/spiritvs
https://www.facebook.com/ferociailluminata
https://www.instagram.com/caronte_band
CAUSTIC WOUND (U.S.)
Well, after those first two songs the time seemed right to give you a brutish beating and a ghastly gutting, and for that we’ll turn to the first advance track from a new album by the Pacific Northwest deathgrinders Caustic Wound, which follows up their Death Posture debut album.
“Blackout” delivers lead-weighted heaviness and vicious, jagged jolts, but also erupts in a feeding frenzy of abrasive, maniacal riffing, monstrous gutturals, berserk screams, and blasting drums. It becomes a head-moving chugfest too, right before a thoroughly freaked-out guitar solo — and it’s over before you can completely figure out what the hell just happened.
The new album, Grinding Mechanism Of Torment, is a 16-song affair. It will be out on Profound Lore on April 25th.
https://profoundlorerecords.bandcamp.com/album/grinding-mechanism-of-torment
AUSTERE (Australia)
Alas, the Australian duo Austere (Mitchell Keepin and Tim Yatras) will be releasing a new album named The Stillness of Dissolution in June, though the music doesn’t sound optimistic that any of us will live to see that month. What’s next here is a stunning video for the record’s first single, a tale of decay presented from the viewpoint of a betrayed and solemn soul called “Time Awry“.
Here, Austere quickly create a horizon-spanning vista of torment, with unbridled screams fronting the rise and fall of feverishly throbbing riffage, which occurs below dense, swarming overlays of sound that create a kind of wretched grandeur, amplified by vividly swirling and vibrantly piercing leads.
There’s a distressing intensity to the vocals and the music, but your body will still likely want to move reflexively to the rocking grooves (the bass seems heavy enough to bust up rocks). Austere also bring in rippling keys and haunted singing as well as paranormal soloing and scratchy picking, which just slightly break up the repeating cycle of music and beats, a cycle that digs deeper and deeper as it goes.
It’s undeniably a dark song, but also undeniably glorious, and even with a few bursts of double-bass intensity in the mix, your legs and heads will be left still bouncing by the end. (This one quickly vaults to a high place on my list of candidates for 2025’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.)
The Stillness of Dissolution will be released by Prophecy Productions on June 6th, depending on whether humanity succeeds in committing suicide by then.
http://lnk.spkr.media/austere-dissolution
https://austere-official.bandcamp.com/album/the-stillness-of-dissolution
https://www.facebook.com/OfficialAustere
https://www.instagram.com/official_austere
KORSAKOV (France)
The French duo Korsakov named themselves for a medical condition that I’d never heard of — Korsakoff syndrome. One source describes it as a neurological disorder “characterized by amnesia, deficits in explicit memory, and confabulation.”
Their new album Anosognosia also has its roots in the band’s interests in memory, and seemingly its insidious pathologies. According to the same source, anosognosia is a neuropsychiatric disorder produced by brain damage that causes the sufferer to experience a deficit of self-awareness, and more specifically “a condition in which a person with a disability is cognitively unaware of having it.”
Well, you learn something new every day. What have I learned about Korsakov‘s music?
Based on the first song revealed from the album (“VIII“), their interests lead them to intertwine scything black metal abrasion and incendiary shrieks, as well as methodically snapping drums, humongous low-end upheavals, and shrill, crazed leads. Collectively, all that creates a mood that’s near hopeless, but the shoegaze-like cycle of the pulsating riffing burrows in.
They take a short break, with the bass forming a bridge, and on the other side they resume the burrowing. Though slower and even more bleak in their variations there, the guitar leads are still fire-bright.
Eventually they take another break, banishing the beats and bringing forward music that sounds like gentle chimes and beckoning flutes. It’s almost like a pastoral stroll, full of wonder at what spring is bringing.
But of course, the volume and the intensity ramp up again. As the steady beats start working your neck, the band flood the senses with music of torment and wonder, of agony and yearning, and screams that seem to have violently stripped away sanity.
Korsakov will release Anosognosia on April 11th via Source Atone Records.
https://www.facebook.com/korsakovBM
https://www.instagram.com/korsakov_bm
https://korsakov-bm.bandcamp.com
WAR MAGIC (Sweden)
One last dramatic twist in the path lies ahead, with a recently released second album named Atomic Rites by the Swedish band War Magic. I missed their first one, 2022’s Foreverwar, but was lured into this one when I saw the names in the lineup — Rogga Johansson (Paganizer, Massacre, etc., etc.), Peter Svensson (Assassin’s Blade, Void Moon, etc., etc.), and drummer Thomas Ohlsson (Stass, ex-F.K.Ü).
Oh, there was one more inducement — the explanation that Johansson and Svensson formed War Magic “with the aim of paying tribute to the war-inspired metal of Bolt Thrower and classic Death Metal” (I’ll be drawn to anything inspired by Bolt Thrower like a hungry fly to honey). And then I also read with curiosity that “while Foreverwar leaned more toward the ‘War’ aspect, this new record shifts its focus towards ‘Magic’, while still maintaining its war-driven themes.”
Lest you think the music finds magic in war, like some celebration, these 10 relatively compact songs instead seem more bent on revealing its immediate horrors and lasting degradation and damage. They do this in different ways, though the music’s backbone consists of jolting, teeth-loosening groovesomeness, vicious circle-saw tremolo’d guitars, well-rounded gargantuan roars, maddened howls, and insane screams, all slagged in grit.
The songs translate blood-mad violence, trembling fear, and shuddering agony, often within the bounds of single songs. Musically the music moans and whines and slowly writhes in pain just as often as it boils over in blood-spraying bouts of madness and inflictions of old-school slashing punk chords slathered in grime. Rhythmically, they bring gallops and stomps, the old punk beats, and what sounds like well-trained mortar fire.
Where does the magic come in? Well, in some of the songs the band create tales of infernal powers driving and presiding over the bloodshed, or of dead soldiers raised to hideous life again. In keeping with that, they create supernatural visions of hellish and often bestial creatures, both musically and in the lyrics. (And as they do that there were a few times I detected hints of old Black Sabbath in the mix too.)
Just as the band proclaim, they aren’t trying to break any molds here or make new ones. But as an homage to the likes of Bolt Thrower and gnarly classic death metal, this is pretty damned good.
Atomic Rites was released last Friday by Obelisk Polaris Productions. The amazing cover art is the work of Julián Felipe Mora Ibáñez.