SEEN AND HEARD: DJEVEL, LECTERN, TORTORUM, INNUMERABLE FORMS, MANÍACO, SPEEDWHORE, INVERNOIR, ABYSMAL GROWLS OF DESPAIR, DREADED VOID

 

I sometimes wonder whether our putrid site is the perpetrator of sensory overload. I am wondering that today, as I shovel vicious music from 9 bands at you on the heels of DGR’s four-band round-up earlier today and nine music posts yesterday. Who can listen carefully to this much music? I mean, besides your slaves here at the NCS asylum, who clearly have some kind of metal psychosis?

I assume the answer is, Not Very Many. Normal, reasonably well-adjusted people will pick and choose. This is a satisfactory answer because it allows me to justify my indulgence in vomiting forth descriptive adjectives and metaphors that may act as guides to the picking and choosing. And with those unsolicited confessions about my state of mind out of the way, here we go again… with different shades of black, death, and doom.

DJEVEL

To begin, I want to share with you the first single from Djevel’s new album (their fourth), Norske Ritualer. The name of the song is “Vi slakter den foerste og den andre, den tredje lar vi gaa mot nord“.

 

 

For those new to Djevel’s music, the band includes current or former members of such notable fixtures in the Norwegian extreme metal scene as Kvelertak, Enslaved, Koldbrann, and Orcustus.

The grim rising and falling melody that launches the song, and runs through it with different variations, sticks its claws in the brain pan immediately and doesn’t let go. The song becomes more heated as it progresses, driven by a blazing drum performance and by maniacally savage vocals. When the break in the conflagration comes, it’s a surprising and sublime one — a soft, classically influenced acoustic guitar instrumental — which then leads seamlessly into an achingly beautiful section of the track, accented by clean vocals. When the fires begin to burn again, the gusting winds of melody carry you away….

Norske Ritualer will be released on October 28 on CD, vinyl, and digital by Aftermath Music.

https://www.facebook.com/djevelmakt
http://www.aftermath-music.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LECTERN

I was drawn to this next song, like a moth to flame, by the wonderful cover art for the album from which it comes. Indonesian artist Adi Dechristianize created the image, and the name of the album is Precept of Delator by the Roman band Lectern. Lectern have released four other albums, the first of which appeared in 1999, though I haven’t yet heard the others.

I love the brutal, bulldozing introduction to this song — “Diptych of Perked Oblation” — and the galloping, slashing charge that follows it is just as magnetic. The music is plenty grim and ghastly, but the grooves and melodic hooks in the song are damned infectious, and it also includes pleasingly gruesome vocal bestiality and a good guitar solo. Lovers of old-school Floridian death metal should eat this up.

Precept of Delator will be released by Via Nocturna on September 30.

http://www.lectern.in
https://www.facebook.com/lectern666

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TORTORUM

The Norwegian black metal band Tortorum have a new six-track EP named Rotten. Dead. Forgotten. that will be released by the World Terror Committee on October 31. It follows the band’s excellent last album Katabasis from 2014. Yesterday DECIBEL premiered the EP’s third track, “Night of the Witch“.

It’s an ominous, mid-paced bruiser at first, with a fine combination of scalding snarls and clean vocals, and then becomes dramatically more intense as it moves forward. The riveting rumble and boom of the drums anchors a seething melody that proves to be a memorable one, while the wild, infernal vocals will put the hairs up on the back of your neck. If this doesn’t trigger an adrenaline surge in your bloodstream, I’ll be surprised.

Thanks to eiterorm for alerting me to this stream. To listen, go here:

http://decibelmagazine.com/blog/2016/9/12/streaming-tortorum-night-of-the-witch

https://www.facebook.com/Tortorum

 

 

 

 

 

 

INNUMERABLE FORMS

A high percentage of the time, my selections for these round-ups come not from press releases or e-mails but from recommendations in my Facebook news feed from friends, many of whom are excellent musicians in their own right. And that’s how I discovered these next two bands. In this case, the recommendations came from Starkweather — whose own music is very much worth your time (and can be found here).

Innumerable Forms are from the Boston area, and what you’ll find below is a 2016 demo consisting of two songs — “Petrified” and “Joyless”. Both are absolutely ravaging storms of ferocious blackened death metal that collapse into dismal death/doom staggers. Both songs are also home to monstrous growls, high, poisonous lead guitar melodies, and cold, cruel riffs that amplify the music’s aura of unearthly catastrophe. This is Grade-A destruction, dangerous to both body and soul.

https://innumerableforms.bandcamp.com/album/promo-2016

 

 

 

 

 

 

MANÍACO

Obscuras Aguas Del Caos is the name of the debut album by a Chilean band named Maníaco. It was released in late May by Chile’s Rotten Cemetery Records and it’s available on Bandcamp.

You’d best fasten your seat belts and strap on your crash helmets and body armor for this album. I’m going to borrow Starkweather’s words in the Facebook post recommending this album:  “bludgeoning tech death grind… absolutely relentless intensity and impulse to destroy. Great combination of modern sound and nod to glory years.”

The whirring, downtuned riffs sound like bone saws at their bloody work; the vocalist barks and growls like a rabid wolfhound; the turbocharged drumming is gripping, and brutal enough to loosen all your teeth and joints; and as icing on the cake, there are some catchy melodic touches salted throughout this relentless barbarity, too. Really well-conceived and beautifully executed mayhem here!

https://rottencemeteryrec.bandcamp.com/album/man-aco-obscuras-aguas-del-caos-cd

 

 

 

 

 

 

SPEEDWHORE

I’m sandwiching this next song in here to provide a change of pace and style. The track is called “Alcoholic Force“. With a title like that, perhaps you can understand why I felt compelled to listen to it.

The song will appear on an EP named On the Verge of Dysfunction by Munich-based black thrashers Speedwhore. The album will be discharged in CD format on October 28 by the reliably tasteful Witches Brew (with a vinyl edition projected for January).

The slow lurching beginning of this song, which puts the spotlight on the bass and drum, is damned cool — but you know what’s coming, and when it arrives it’s hell on wheels, trailing flames and noxious smoke. Really nasty, demonic vocals give this exhilarating rush of speed metal the right edge of blood-thirsty derangement. And of course it’s catchy as herpes.

https://witchesbrewthrashes.bandcamp.com/album/on-the-verge-of-dysfunction

 

 

 

 

 

 

INVERNOIR

Here’s a another example of a recommendation from a Facebook friend, in this case the esteemed Tito V., who must listen to as much new music as I do. It’s a track by a band from Rome named Invernoir, whose ranks include members of Black Therapy. In his message to me, Tito said that the music reminded him of bands like Evoken, My Dying Bride, and a softer and more melancholic Inverloch. You can understand why I wasted no time listening to it.

After being swept away by the song (which originally appeared in late July), I did some investigating and learned that Invernoir are based in Rome, which makes them the second Roman band to appear in this round-up. The song you’re about to hear (“Mourn”) is their first single — and it doesn’t include vocals (beyond what sound like some agonized wails early on).

I’m not sure whether the band do intend to add vocals eventually, but with this song they’ve already demonstrated a mature ability to compose and perform staggeringly heavy doom that soaks the listener in cold tears and puts the chill of death into the bones — while also creating an aura of spectral beauty. The head-nodding riffs that appear about mid-way through, when the song’s pace increases, are especially compelling.

https://www.facebook.com/invernoir/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABYSMAL GROWLS OF DESPAIR

It appears that the Belarusian label Symbol of Domination Productions has discovered another winner. On September 13 (today!) Symbol of Domination and More Hate Records are jointly releasing an album called Worst Putrid Tongue by the French funeral doom band Abysmal Growls of Despair. Just days ago when I discovered this news, only one song (“Arioch”) was available for streaming — which is the song I’ve included below. But as of today, the entire album is on Bandcamp — and so I’ve also embedded the full stream below, even though I haven’t yet had time to hear it.

Worst Putrid Tongue is the sixth album by this prolific one-man project since 2013, though this is my first exposure to his music — and I find myself entranced by “Arioch”. It’s immensely heavy — the level of distortion applied to the stringed instrument(s) is extreme enough to vibrate buildings into dust despite how glacially slow the notes crawl forth. The vocals also give new meaning to the term “cavernous”.

But in the midst of this staggering wretchedness and misery there are glimmers of mournful beauty (including ghostly female vocals and what sound like heaving organ chords) that enhance the song’s eerie hypnotic power. I’m really looking forward to the rest of this album.

https://symbolofdomination.bandcamp.com/album/sodp069-abysmal-growls-of-despair-worst-putrid-tongue-2016

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DREADED VOID

When I saw the amazing cover art above (created by Indonesian artist Waguna Wiryawan), I couldn’t resist diving into the music. It accompanies a debut album called The Abyssal Plane of Suffering by a one-man Australian black metal band named Dreaded Void. The album is now available on CD through Dark Adversary Productions (here).

So far I’ve only discovered one streaming track from the album, and it’s name is “The Murk”. There is a dismal, murky, otherworldly aspect to this largely mid-paced song, but in addition to stalking like a monstrous golem, the music also attacks like a seething nest of vipers whipped into a fury.

The song is unrelenting in its atmosphere of predatory peril and in the visions it casts of people being torn limb from limb by forces beyond our veil. The vocals alone are absolutely insane. But if the song doesn’t get stuck in your head (like a spike), I’ll be surprised.

https://www.facebook.com/dreadedvoid/