SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: VIDRES A LA SANG, GOLGOTHAN REMAINS, APOSTASIE, EUCLIDIAN, BOMBUS, [4672], SOLAR WIMP, HEXENBRETT, GLORIOUS WOUNDS, YUNCLAS

Vidres a la Sang

(written by Islander)

Last week I came across the word “Alician” for the first time. Pronounced similarly to “elysian”, it means “Surreal, whimsical, or illogical.” Maybe you can guess by now that it’s based on the character Alice, the heroine of Lewis Carroll’s books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.

By coincidence the word came back to me as I was sifting through a big pile of music in order to make choices for this Saturday roundup. It came back to me because at some point I began to feel like I was tumbling farther and farther down a rabbit-hole, coming across one thing after another that really did sound “surreal, whimsical, or illogical”.

We’ll get to those songs, because I hung onto them, but not right away. Right away, we’ll get to something much more serious — unsettling in a different way.

 

VIDRES A LA SANG (Spain)

Vidres a la Sang named their sixth album in a 20-year career Virtut del desencís. They explain the concept this way:

The virtut del desencís (virtue of disenchantment) is that state of the soul where the last moments of lucidity dwell just before surrendering to the total absence of any hope. To grasp and gather the last moments of light. Clinging, resisting, loving, believing, trusting, living, contemplating and observing to understand that we have not managed to learn anything. That there is nothing that we have been able to understand. Let there be virtue in this disenchantment. Let there be a will.

“Màrtirs” is the new album’s first single, presented through a powerful video. The band describe it as “a profound, heartfelt homage to the peoples oppressed by war, Western exploitation, and the universal human barbarism.”

Slow, subdued, and mournful at first, the music swells into a wrenching attack of blasting drums, rumbling bass, and riffing that claws and writhes in the shrill dissonance of pain. The music also vibrantly pulses while the warped and anguished notes ring and a serrated-edge growl vents fury.

The vocals segue into high-flown singing, adding another dimension of anguish, and the music becomes more elaborate and strange, paving the way toward an extravagantly wailing guitar solo and other intense fretwork convulsions that riotously quiver and scream. The instrumental performances (all of them) reach jaw-dropping zeniths… before the song ends in soft sounds of grief again.

Virtut del desencís will be released on November 29th in collaboration with Abstract Emotions, Nafra records, Negra nit distro, Discos Macarras, and Eternal Juggernaut.

https://www.facebook.com/vidresalasang

 

 

GOLGOTHAN REMAINS (Australia)

Chris Kiesling of Misanthropic Art really outdid himself when creating the cover piece for Golgothan Remains‘ new EP, Bearer of Light, Matriarch of Death. Not only does it seize attention, it fits the EP’s concept narrative, which the band describe as an “evil love story about two centuries old creatures trying to find companionship but due to their strong evil spirit are unable to exist with another powerful figure by their side.”

The first song revealed from the album is “Necropoles“, the penultimate track in this four-song narrative. It delivers rabidly squirming and whining riffage, rocket-fast drum obliteration, and furious abyssal roars, with dissonance dominating.

The rapidly contorting fretwork burns with madness, but the song also slows and slugs, with the guitars ringing like miserable, mutilated chimes as the backdrop to spoken words. Torrential screams also erupt, along with vicious, sizzling sensations and renewed outbursts of frightening fretwork derangement.

Bearer of Light, Matriarch of Death will be released on November 22nd by Dark Descent.

https://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/bearer-of-light-matriarch-of-death
https://www.facebook.com/GolgothanRemains

 

 

APOSTASIE (Germany)

Non Est Deus is the name of the debut album by the German melodic black metal band Apostasie. They describe it as narrating “the ‘Historia Ecclesiastica Perversa’ – the madness of dogmas, and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church”:

The album discusses events in the so-called Christian “history of salvation”, the Latin-Roman church history, as well as the closely related European history. These events and processes are staged as moments of religious madness, dogmatic contradiction and, at the same time, rational criticism and resistance. The events described cover the period from the so-called “turning point of time”, i.e. the birth of Christ, to the so-called Reformation of the Latin-Roman church by Martin Luther.

What you’ll find below is a lyric video for a nearly 8-minute song called “Theotókos“. After an unsettling introductory sample, the music viciously surges, clatters, and screams. The riffing is piercing and pernicious, swarming the senses as the screams boil and the snarls gnash, but those multi-layered glittering vibrations become exuberantly thrusting and glorious as the bass vibrantly throbs and the drums rock out.

Cruel drilling sensations give the song a darker cast even while the song as a whole is still giving the listener’s heart a continuing injection of undiluted adrenaline. Eventually though, the riveting ring of the chords becomes more tragic, more anguished, but no less electrifying in their impact. The pure fury of the vocals never abates.

Non est Deus will be released on November 29th in cooperation with Trollzorn Records.

https://www.trollzorn.de
https://www.apostasie.band
https://www.facebook.com/apostasieband

 

 

EUCLIDEAN (Switzerland)

It’s been about seven years since Euclidean‘s release of their debut album Quod Erat Faciendum, which I reviewed here after learning about it through a recommendation from Rennie (starkweather). I had no idea they were still around, much less on the verge of releasing a new album, but Rennie put them back on my radar via a link to their new long song “Never Witness Clarity“.

The song’s distorted yet still piercing riffage quickly creates a fraught and frantic mood, a feeling of tension and turmoil, enhanced by crazed screams and anchored by truly enormous bass undulations and bone-cracking beats. The guitars also ring like massed chimes, gently despairing in their mood, and scourge the senses like a gale-force sandstorm.

The nimbleness of the bass continues seizing attention as the scale of the music expands, scathing and throbbing in a hybrid of clarity and gritty distortion. Yet eventually the song becomes slower and more ethereal, though freighted with sorrow, and still backed by gripping rhythms.

It’s a strongly dynamic, elaborate, and dramatic piece of music, often exhilarating and relentlessly riveting. Very glad to have something new from this band.

“Never Witness Clarity” is from Euclidean‘s forthcoming album Fosse, which will be released on October 18th.

https://euclidean.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/euclidean.music

 

 

BOMBUS (Sweden)

If you’re of a certain age, most likely with salt in your hair, you will think of this Bond movie song when you see the name of the new Bombus single, “Leave and Let Die“. That connection, plus some previous experience with Bombus, is what led me to check out this next video.

As hoped for, Bombus bomb us with this song, bringing a highly infectious pulse, wretchedly wailing leads, a spiraling solo, and gritty vocals that straddle a line between wild singing and wild snarling. The band eventually dial up the both the fury and the agony in the song, pushing it to ever-greater heights of brawling madness.

Speaking of which, there’s plenty of brawling and madness in the video too. We get to see the band playing in a bar. We also get to see them beating the living shit out of each other, with blood galore.

“Leave and Let Die” is from a new Bombus album named Your Blood. It will be released by Black Lodge Records on November 1st.

https://orcd.co/your-blood-bombus
https://bombus.bandcamp.com/album/your-blood
https://www.facebook.com/bombusmusic

 

 

[4672] (Poland)

It was only a few days ago, in a mid-week edition of these roundups, that I featured a song and video from a new album by [4672]. But not long after that they released yet another song and video, so here we are again.

The newest song, “[Łuna]“, is the 16th of 17 songs in the album’s running order, and appears to be Part I of a piece that concludes with the final song. Here’s where we start to fall down the rabbit hole, though it’s a slow and dream-like descent.

In the video we see things reminiscent of the translucent creatures that dwell in the deepest parts of the ocean, but these seem to dwell among the stars. In the music, tranquil and beguiling piano notes reverberate, trumpets dreamily call to each other, and other tones gently drone. The track stops abruptly, because we’re not yet allowed to hear where it’s leading (though I have).

[4672]‘s new album is named [Ołów], and it’s set for release on November 5th. The artwork for the last 16 releases by [4672] going back to 2011 combine to form a single image, which you can see above.

https://4672.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/studiosick
https://www.facebook.com/4672x

 

 

SOLAR WIMP (U.S.)

Continuing the Alician descent we began with [4672], I’m turning next to the first advance track from the final album by Solar Wimp, a group that started life in Peoria, Illinois in 1995 and eventually relocated to L.A., with lineup changes along the way since their birth.

I gather from a bit of reading that the kind of music they play has evolved considerably over time. What I know about the evolution is limited to the next song in today’s collection, being ignorant about the contours of the long and twisting path that got them to this place.

This song, “Enhanced Iconography,” is a marvel. The music is bamboozling in its intricacy, truly “Alician” in its construction and tonalities, exuberant in its performance, and yet unexpectedly very cohesive.

The multitude of blaring, darting, skittering, and screeching notes will give your head a swift spin, and the bass and drums don’t take a back seat to those freakishly joyful fireworks displays, but seem quite comfortable taking their own hair-pin twists and turns. But, as mentioned, the patterns in the music turn out to be cohesive — and catchy — and the guitar solo near the end is a dazzling and spellbinding spectacle all its own.

For something so delightfully proggy, and so clean and clear in its sound, I will also happily note that the vocals are the kind of wild, caustic screeches and screams that would function quite well as a paint-stripper.

The name of Solar Wimp‘s final album is Trails of Light. It will be released on November 15th. In an e-mail we received from the band, it’s described as “in the realm of latter-period Death filtered through a 90’s Chicago mathrock sensibility, seasoned with some Oranssi Pazuzu cosmic weirdness.” Enticing, eh?

https://solarwimp.bandcamp.com/album/trails-of-light
https://www.facebook.com/solarwimp/

 

 

HEXENBRETT (Germany)

The Hexenbrett duo of Josto Feratu and Scarlettina Bolétt are returning with a second album entitled Dritte Beschwörung: Dem Teufel eine Tochter. According to Google Translate, this means “Third Summoning: A Daughter to the Devil”.

In the PR materials for the album, it’s described as a “devilish and drama-filled rollercoaster ride through cult metal and cult cinema alike,” and as “a wide panoply of sounds and sensations [that] swarm the listener, wrapping them in a wild and bewildering but above all kaleidoscopic headspace that easily avoids simple categorization.”

That all proved to be a good preview of the video for the album’s first single, “Um Mitternacht“. You’ll see the basis for the cult (horror) cinema references in the film excerpts. As for the music, it’s a wild hybrid, or maybe I should say hydra, pulling together ingredients of black metal, gothic horror, classic heavy metal and rock, and psychedelia. Definitely devilish (and not just in the vocals’ demonic snarls and unhinged screams), and ultimately dervish-like in its ecstasies, especially the gloriously demented guitar soloing.

What a great song for your Halloween Night playlist.

Dritte Beschwörung: Dem Teufel eine Tochter will be released by Dying Victims Productions on December 20th.

https://tinyurl.com/3wcbp6he
https://hexenbrett.bandcamp.com/album/dritte-beschw-rung-dem-teufel-eine-tochter
https://www.instagram.com/hexenbrett_official

 

 

GLORIOUS WOUNDS (U.S.)

Today’s next selection is a different branch in the rabbit hole down which I tumbled today, not as surreal as some of the tracks that have preceded it in this collection, but different from the kind of music we usually focus on here. It’s a self-titled EP by a Rhode Island “dark hardcore” and noise-rock band named Glorious Wounds that features former members of Edict, Ruin It, and Third Death.

You’ll discover quite fast that first-time vocalist Jill possesses a raw, raging, and viscerally scary howl, corrosive and cutting, though she also has a smooth and soulful voice when reciting words.

You’ll also discover quite fast that Glorious Wounds know how to create musical mayhem (though the guitars have a ringing clarity rather than the kind of distorted abrasiveness that’s often associated with “dark hardcore” as that term’s used around here). They slug like heavyweights, rage like blaring sirens, and create crazed fretwork spasms, but also have a talent for cooking up feral but infectious punk riffs.

They pack a lot into each one of these 7, mostly compact, songs, and not just in the way the tempos and instrumental patterns change. They also switch up the moods, though most of them are dark — moods of anger, disgust, desperation, angst, and violence (both coldly brutal and wildly free-swinging).

There’s definitely also feelings of defiance, of a refusal to back down, in the music, and maybe even the kind of fierce joy that comes from telling motherfuckers to fuck off.

The closer, “Floating in the Stars“, is twice as long as the next-longest song, and is the most varied, and the most melodic and heart-aching at times, though it kicks up a good fight too. I would say it’s the best of a strong bunch.

Glorious Wounds was released by Rhode Island’s Tor Johnson Records on October 11th.

https://torjohnsonrecords.bandcamp.com/album/glorious-wounds
https://www.facebook.com/glorywounds/

 

 

YUNCLAS (Spain)

And now to end things for today, in another branch of the rabbit hole.

The last time I wrote about the music of Yunclas, a couple years ago, I described their methodology as cooking up some very heavy electro-beats, letting them pump like the pistons of a very groovy mega-machine, augmenting them with lots of other head-hooking percussive accompaniments, and then weaving lots of other sensations around all that:

“swirling futuristic sounds that build feelings of tension and peril, the clattering snap of flickering pulses, doses of weird, warbling, and cacophonous abrasion, glittering celestial lights, cold droning undercurrents, and lots of other continually morphing experiences”.

That description also suits the three songs on their newest EP, which, as the title conveys, is a collection of three tracks that were originally made for compilations by other labels. Get ready to bounce, get dizzy, and maybe fall over.

https://grabacionesautobombo.bandcamp.com/album/compilation-tracks