SEEN AND HEARD: MORNE, BEYOND GRACE, AUTARKH, PYROLATROUS, NÁSVELGR, CONVOCATION, BLUT AUS NORD

September 16th was the last time I was able to assemble one of these roundups of new music and videos, partly due to my missing four days at the site while attending a recent wedding in California. Needless to say, the backlog of new music that interests me swelled to enormous proportions in the interim.

In deciding what to recommend today I defaulted to the most recent releases. Prowling back through everything of interest that emerged over the last three weeks was just too daunting a task, which tends to be Sisyphean even when I’m not missing in action. Hope you get a kick (in the ass or head) from what I chose.

MORNE (U.S.)

Morne’s 40-minute new album plays out across only four songs, which tells you that they’re all substantial in length. One of those premiered this week, along with a very good video, and when I heard it the first time I felt both emotionally and physically crushed. Of course, therefore, I liked it immediately. Here’s what Morne‘s Polish-born guitarist/vocalist Miłosz Gassan said about it:

“‘Wretched Empire‘ lyrically is my take on current situation in the world. How divided everything is and how people are prone to being misled. How we forget our history. History that happened not that long ago. I never comment on my lyrics but maybe in this case it’s needed. I call humanity a wretched empire. It’s not an optimistic song.”

No, it definitely is not an optimistic song. The musical motifs from the track that get stuck hardest in the head are wailing and bleakly writhing guitar arpeggios and moaning pick slides, and the vocals are shattering in their ruinous intensity.

The song will also pound your head flat and the grim riffing will jackhammer your spine while all the other expressions of dismay and anguish are infiltrating your emotions. And so, be prepared to move to the grooves while getting caught up in the dire moods.

Morne‘s new album Engraved With Pain will be released by Metal Blade on November 3rd.

https://www.metalblade.com/morne/
http://www.morneboston.com
http://www.facebook.com/mornecrust
http://www.morneband.bandcamp.com

 

 

BEYOND GRACE (UK)

I’ve been a steadfast fan of Beyond Grace for a long time, and would have been even if my old friend and NCS compadre Andy Synn hadn’t been the frontman, but the new song and video they released earlier this week still stands out to me as one of the best things they’ve ever done, in part because it puts a twist on what I might have expected, even taking past twists into account.

The song’s name is “The Burning Season“, and the startling fiery explosions in the video are thus quite fitting. Everything else about the video (which was filmed and edited by ERD Visual Media) is also excellent, including the fact that Andy plays bass during the performance, and thus doesn’t have to find other ways of expressing himself on film while waiting for his next burst of growling roars and incinerating screams. (The bass on the recording was performed by Charlie Rogers.)

The song itself is also a burning season. The dissonant, needling riffs drill under the skin and writhe there, burning, and they also pulse like dangerous fevers, creating sensations of tension and anguished delirium.

The song also slugs damned hard (but also erupts in obliterating blasts), and the combined singing of Andy and Tim Yearsley, as well as some of the other melodic elements, add a feeling of terrible bleakness to the music’s overarching intensity. It’s not a comfortable piece of music, but we do live in very uncomfortable times — and the song is very hard to forget.

The song will appear on an a new three-track Beyond Grace EP named Welcome to the New Dark Ages, Part 1, which will be out on November 24th. It’s Part 1 of a three-part series of digital EPs which will then be collected as a physical album entitled Welcome to the New Dark Ages.

I’ll add that the cover art for the band’s new EP (created by Gary Ronaldson from Bite Radius Designs) is also the best they’ve used, by my lights at least. I’ll further add that the politically charged lyrics, which you can find at YouTube, are excellent and suit the music very well (of course I wholly agree with them).

https://beyondgrace.bandcamp.com/album/welcome-to-the-new-dark-ages-part-1
https://www.facebook.com/wearebeyondgrace

 

 

AUTARKH (Netherlands)

The same Mr. Synn featured in the preceding item reviewed Autarkh‘s last album (2021’s Form In Motion) for us here, summing it up as “one of the most unique and unorthodox albums I’ve heard so far this year, with a distinct voice and vibe all its own”. Autarkh are now following up that album with a new one entitled Emergent, and my next selection is a lyric video for the record’s third single that surfaced couple days ago.

The words to “Duhka“, expressed through soaring singing as well as wrenching screaming and livid yelling, are harrowing, and so is the music’s combination of futuristic electronics and hard-hitting pugilism. The music eerily shimmers and shivers but also pounds the bones with lead-weighted force and crashes like a ten-car pileup.

Emergent comes out November 10th via Season of Mist.

https://shopusa.season-of-mist.com/band/autarkh
https://autarkh.bandcamp.com/album/emergent
https://orcd.co/autarkhemergentpresave
https://www.facebook.com/Autarkh

 

 

PYROLATROUS (U.S.)

Brooklyn-based Pyrolatrous are returning with their first album in six years, and it would be worth checking out even if you knew nothing about that previous one, because their line-up includes members of Hull, Krallice, Anicon, Woe, and more — specifically, vocalist Nicholas Palmirotto, drummer Lev Weinstein, lead guitarist Nolan Voss, and bassist Joe Merolla.

Well, there’s another reason to be interested in the new album, to wit, the next song in my collection today, “Divination of the Relic Wind“.

As you might expect from this lineup, the performances are technically gob-smacking, especially given how fast this turbocharged engine moves and careens. With the words vented in terrorizing howls and growls, the rhythm section inflicts a high-speed beating, and the stringed instruments dart about, swarm, skitter, and blare in non-stop displays of electrifying delirium. The soloing is no less delirious, but also white hot.

As we say in the trade, take deep breaths before taking this head-spinning ride.

The name of the new album is Inveterate. We have this comment from vocalist Nicholas Palmirotto about its lyrical themes: “The content deals with death, grief, addiction, loss of love, an influx of right-wing nationalism throughout the world, living in a capitalist hellscape, and oppressive government regimes.”

Inveterate will be released on November 10th by Gilead Media and 7Degrees Records.

https://gileadmedia.bandcamp.com/album/inveterate
https://www.facebook.com/pyrolatrous

 

 

NÁSVELGR (Iceland)

Time to really shake things up. My next selection is Draumrof, a complete album released on October 3rd by an Icelandic band or project named Násvelgr.

I’ve done some searching and have found no info about who’s behind it. I was tempted to give it a shot in part because of the cover art (stylistically reminiscent of H.R. Giger) and in part because, well, they’re from Iceland… though I don’t think Draumrof will sound like any other extreme metal you’ve yet discovered from Iceland.

If I had a lot more time I would attempt a much more in-depth review, because the unorthodox music deserves very careful consideration. Instead I’ll have to be unconscionably brief (at least compared to my usual verbosity).

The Bandcamp tags include “avant-garde black metal”, and that’s about as good a shorthand description as I can think of myself, mainly because the music is as full of strange shapes and unexpected twists and turns as a rotating kaleidoscope. It’s hostile and frightening, harrowing and hallucinatory, and ceaselessly fascinating.

Among the constantly mutating ingredients are monstrous death-metal roars and wretched screams, wailing saxophones and soaring angelic voices, immense subterranean undulations and upheavals, spurts of shrill screeching and sounds of sewers overflowing, bell-like pulsations and moans of monastic agony, moments of eerie softness and other moments of industrial-strength mangling and mind-warping guitar-writhing. (This is not a complete list.)

If you’re looking for riffs, look elsewhere. If you’re looking for a bamboozling adventure in terror, you’re at the right place. And lest you get the wrong idea from what I’ve written, this album isn’t an endurance contest. It’s so strangely engrossing that I completely lost track of time while immersed in it.

(I owe thanks to Miloš for linking me to this bizarre extravaganza.)

https://nasvelgr.bandcamp.com/album/draumrof

 

 

CONVOCATION (Finland)

I’ve had exceptionally good encounters with the music of Convocation in past years, witness all the articles I’ve posted about them since mid-2017. Now they’ve prepared a third album for us that will be released by Everlasting Spew Records on November 24th. Its name is No Dawn For The Caliginous Night.

Today brought the album’s first single, “Graveless Yet Dead“, which features guest vocals by Natalie Koskinen from Shape of Despair and cello by Antti Poutanen from Church of the Dead, in addition to the Convocation duo of instrumentalist LLaaksonen and vocalist MNeuman. As you can see, I wasted no time diving into it.

Natalie Koskinen‘s singing voice is celestial and beautifully but eerily haunting, and thus earns an exception to the porous rule in our site’s title. No exception is needed for Neuman‘s cavernous growls and the harrowing screams.

The singing isn’t the only haunting quality about the music. While the song often pounds with crushing force as it staggers forward at a funereal pace, the guitar and keyboard harmonies are writhing traceries of pain, seared into a towering musical monument of catastrophic doom.

https://bit.ly/3teFumB
https://bit.ly/3EZMqqv
https://www.facebook.com/ConvocationDoom

 

 

BLUT AUS NORD (France)

I’m going to close with a mind-bending new video created by Gabriele Panci that was released about 24 hours ago for the mind-bending (and unsettling) song “Nameless Rites” off BAN‘s newest album (and their latest Lovecraftian exploration), Disharmonium – Nahab.

Rather than offer any more commentary about the music, I’ll refer you to our review of the album here, or better yet go listen to it here if you haven’t already.

https://bit.ly/blutausnordEU
https://bit.ly/blutausnordUS
https://bit.ly/dnahab
https://www.facebook.com/Vindsval.official