SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY (PART 2): HEAVEN SHALL BURN, OMINOUS RUIN, BALMOG, CHAINSWORD HURSAN, KATATONIA, GHOST

Heaven Shall Burn – photo by Candy Welz

(written by Islander)

Fanatically determined to get both Parts of this roundup posted today, I took a 10-minute break after launching Part 1 and then dived into this one. I haven’t gone to the bathroom yet, but like Cory Booker I’m depending on Depends.

As discussed in Part 1, today’s already-large roundup mushroomed into an even bigger one after my pals Andy Synn and DGR threw 4 more songs into a mix that already included music from 10 bands.

As also discussed there, for you criminals who didn’t bother to read it, I used those 4 as bookends, 2 at the start and 2 at the finish. The 2 at the end have stressed out my usual NCS site-title boundary lines to the breaking point, but not for the first time.

 

HEAVEN SHALL BURN (Germany)

Heaven Shall Burn, one of the all-time favorite bands among the old-time writers at this site, have recently announced that they will have a new album named Heimat released on June 27th through Century Media Records, and last week they debuted a video for an album track called “My Revocation of Compliance“.

The song’s lyrics, which were included with the video, are a furious condemnation of our “age of disregard,” an age of ignorance and apathy, of indifference to the exploitation and slaying of billions of creatures.

Like the lyrics, the music rages, from its scorching screams to its frenzied biting riffage, from its hard-slugging grooves to its blistering percussive outbursts. The music sears like overheating circle saws and fires like fast cannonades. When the song slows and howled spoken words emerge, the sizzling riff-work and lead-weighted basslines sound abysmally cold… a bleak pause before the music catches fire in a fever again.

The stunning cover artwork for Heimat was painted by Eliran Kantor.

https://heavenshallburn.lnk.to/Heimat-Bio
http://www.heavenshallburn.com
https://www.facebook.com/officialheavenshallburn/

 

OMINOUS RUIN (U.S.)

Last week also brought us a video (which premiered at Metal Injection) for the first song revealed from Ominous Ruin‘s new album Requiem.

The press materials for “Staring Into the Abysm” provide the kind of linguistic song-mapping that I’m prone to do:

“Staring into the Abysm” fires out of the gate with a fierce yet melodic guitar lead that plays upon the motif of the entire song. Quickly after the intro, Ominous Ruin embraces its technicality with furious drums and riffs, shortly followed by an astounding bass solo from bassist, Mitch Yoesle, immediately followed by a guitar solo from guitarist, Joel Guernsey. The theme of the song reappears as a quick clean guitar break, followed by another dizzying solo by main guitarist, Alex Bacey.

As the song comes to an end, it fades back into the dark, dissonant clean guitar thematic riff. Heavy with effects, the ending further sonically represents the inevitable slip into empty nothingness, as entropy consumes reality, both physical and mental form, teasing the transition into the final song of the album.

What can I add? Well, the vocals by Crystal Rose are brutally barbaric, and the overarching mood of all the head-spinning fretwork machinations in the song is wild, even joyously demented, but also weirdly off-planet, like the ecstasies of aliens… yet you’ll also encounter a couple of strongly contrasting instrumental sections, one at the end, that are still strange but also eerie and chilling.

Requiem is set for release by Willowtip Records on May 9th. The cover art was created by Pär Olofsson. We ourselves will be premiering another new song closer to the release date.

https://bit.ly/requiem-willowtip
https://ominousruin.bandcamp.com/album/requiem
https://www.facebook.com/ominousruin

 

BALMOG (Spain)

To take a geographic and stylistic leap, we land next on a lyric video for the first single from a new album by the Galician black metal band Balmog. The name of the song is “Mud to Gold“, and I’ve seen the band call it “a tribute to Øystein Aarseth and Thomas Börje Forsber” (known to us as Euronymous and Quorthon).

Prepare for an ingeniously (and diabolically) multi-faceted experience. On the one hand, the drums blast, the riffing churns in a deranged whine, and the vocals sound possessed by demonic spirits. On the other hand the guitars also frighteningly squirm and scream, and the vocals rise up in mad cries. On the third hand, the music rings like sinister chimes as a burly bass hums and the beats snap out head-bobbing grooves.

But there’s still more — musical manifestations of unearthly grandeur, fire-bright lead-guitar hallucinations that screech and swirl, quivering fretwork reverberations, and fanatical howls.

In retrospect, the whole song is like a spine-tingling hallucination, very scary but also very seductive, like a dazzling romp with fiendish creatures that happily and hungrily come into our world on a Samhain night.

The name of Balmog‘s new album is Laio. It’s coming out on May 23rd via War Anthem Records, who invite listeners to follow a “musical path that wanders between Pink Floyd, Ved Buens Ende, Bathory and Mayhem!”

https://war-anthem-records.bandcamp.com/album/laio
https://www.cudgel.de
https://www.facebook.com/p/Balmog-100063606525380/

 

CHAINSWORD (Poland)

Now for another geographic and stylistic leap that takes us to the Polish death metal band Chainsword, who proclaim their love for music of the ’90s and a penchant for lyrics that delve into Warhammer 40k and both World Wars of the previous century.

Chainsword have a new EP named Chapter XII headed for release on May 6th, and what you’ll find below is a lyric video for their recently released second single from it, the aptly named “Butcherhorde“, in which they manifest Khorne smashing the galaxy and leaving carnage in its wake.

They do this through filth-encrusted riffage that viciously churns and maniacally contorts, sharp-toned beats that bludgeon and batter, and the kind of cavernous gutturals that sound like the imperious commands of a lord of Hell.

The band also throw in crazed fretwork flurries that dart and swarm, murderous howls and screams joining the fanatical roars, and a plethora of percussive switch-ups, as well as brutish stomping pulsations and deliriously bizarre guitar soloing that makes all the other destructive mayhem seem sane by comparison.

Impressive, head-spinning butchery that will light up evil eyes….

https://chainsword.bandcamp.com/
https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/chainsword/butcherhorde-2
https://www.instagram.com/chainswordband/
https://www.facebook.com/Chainswordband/

 

HURSAN (UK)

Another big turn of the musical path now comes your way through a self-titled debut EP from the UK band Hursan. I paid attention to it because the lineup includes the vocalist of Oppress., a black metal band whose 2024 album The Subtle Art of Turning Gold into Shit I wrote about a couple times last year. But Hursan aren’t a black metal band. They traffic in a punishing blend of sludge metal and hardcore.

When I saw the name of the EP’s opening song, “Boot Polish Tongue“, I thought of the cringing sycophants who adoringly surround our ghoulish current President. As for the music, it brutishly booms the earth like humongous sledgehammers and blurts in vicious slashing tones, and it dismally whines and moans. The hardcore-inspired grooves seem capable of splitting concrete beneath their iron-shod boots, and the song’s breakdown is so grim that it leaves no room for hope at all.

But one of the song’s most striking aspects are the raging vocals, a frightening array of demon-panther snarls, vampiric screams, fanatical yells (like a street corner prophet nourished by battery acid), and ghastly, grit-choked growls. They make a nightmarish song twice as scary.

Three more songs lie ahead. They take those same basic ingredients and do similarly pulverizing, vicious, and bleak things with them. You may not get used to it, but as you hear those songs you may better notice the shrill and needling lead-guitar dementia, the nuances of the brontosaur-sized bass, and the powerfully head-bending nature of the burly, bone-smashing grooves — not to mention the continuing untreated insanity of the vocals (and the blood-freezing distortion applied to them at the end of “New Testament“).

Fucking mean and psychotic stuff here, primitive and crazed, but hard to escape it. You’ll probably be happy to hear that “Thumbscrews” ends the proceedings with more vigorous speed and sounds of a brazen and blazing celebration, less interested than its predecessors in stomping the life and soul out of listeners and broiling their minds in psychoactive oils.

But well, that turns out to be a head fake, because eventually the song downshifts dramatically to a deathly crawl, that demented prophet starts yelling, and the end brings no good end at all.

https://hursan.bandcamp.com/album/hursan
https://www.facebook.com/people/Hursan/61566567203073/

 

KATATONIA (Sweden)

Now we come to the other two-song bookend I mention at the outset. The first of those is a good video for “Lilac,” the first single from Katatonia‘s new album Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State. It’s also the first sign of what Katatonia‘s new lineup is doing (it includes new guitarists Nico Elgstrand and Sebastian Svalland).

What you’ll notice first is the jumping liveliness of the rhythmic interplay, and then the jolting heaviness of the music. Of course, the song becomes more languid and dreamlike as the singing comes in, but soon enough it bursts open again, surging and swirling, and kicking your pulse.

Back and forth it goes, showing us its varying hooks, which include the rising vocals, and engaging in further instrumental diversions, some of them proggy and mesmerizing, some of them astral or symphonic.

I for one was very pleased to hear this, just as I was when I first heard “Birds” from Sky Void of Stars, which is similar in mood and style.

The new album will be released on June 6th by Napalm Records. Like Heaven Shall Burn‘s new cover art, Katatonia‘s also features a stag; this time the stag itself is burning. It’s the work of Roberto Bordin.

https://lnk.to/KAT-NAEOTWS
https://www.facebook.com/katatonia

 

GHOST (Sweden)

And to close, we have the final bookend, a stunning video for Ghost‘s new song “Lachryma“.

The costumes are quite something! Like those, the song seems tailor-made for Halloween, sinister and seductive, spooky and sorcerous, reflexively muscle-moving and capped with a delicious dual-guitar solo. Of course, the vocals are great, and they carry some damn sticky hooks, just like those big grooves do.

The song will be included in Ghost‘s sixth album Skeletá, which will be released by Loma Vista Recordings on April 25th.

https://ghost.bandcamp.com/album/skelet
https://ghost-official.com/skeleta/
https://www.facebook.com/thebandghost/