SHADES OF BLACK: SORDIDE, PSYCHONAUT 4, AMYSTERY, ALTA ROSSA, APOTHECARY, CELEPATHY, ANCESTRAL CÂNTICO, SILHOUETTE, PAYSAGE D’HIVER

Sordide, photo by Jeremy Tiercelin

(written by Islander)

Over the past week I added an even 30 new songs or complete releases to my list of black and blackish metal that I wanted to check out in building today’s column. That was on top of how the list stood a week ago, already wobbly from its ungainly height.

As usual, I didn’t have time to check out all 30. In a handful of instances, I defaulted to previously proven names. For others, I had dependable recommendations. And for others, I went exploring, based on glimpses of one thing or another (artwork, lineup, location, conceptual framework) that I thought were interesting.

Here’s what came out at the end of the sifting, with the choices due in part to how the music fit together in my head, sometimes complementing and sometimes contrasting.

 

SORDIDE (France)

This is one of those previously proven names. In an effort to build on an already very impressive discography, Sordide have a new album named Ainsi finit le jour set for release by Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions and La Harelle on October 25th.

So far, the public has one extract from the album to consider, the opening song “Des feux plus forts“. Never educated in French, I had to turn to a translation tool, which reports that it means “stronger fires”.

The music is definitely fiery and hard-charging, but also bizarrely mercurial in the demented maneuvering of its dissonant, abrasive strings, and crazed in the possessed howling of the vocals. Combined with those unsettling vocals, the strident screeching and swarming buzz of the guitars sounds like an intersection of fiendish exhilaration and cold cruelty.

When the drums start stumbling and the bass begins musing, those twisting and twining anti-melodic notes begin to sound more dismal, though no more sane. Perversely, for such a deviant and borderline-inhuman experience, it’s an enticing song too.

https://ladlo.bandcamp.com/album/ainsi-finit-le-jour
https://www.facebook.com/sordideband/

 

 

PSYCHONAUT 4 (Georgia)

As verified by a computerized search of everything our site has published over the last 15 years (yes, we’re close to our 15th birthday!), we’ve never written about the music of this band from Tbilisi, though they’ve been in existence nearly as long as we have. So, it’s about time.

Apart from the band’s favorable reputation in the realms of DSBM, I was tempted by the report that the following just-released single, “Mzeo Amodi“, was being presented with an animated video. And the changing imagery of the video does turn out to be well worth watching

As for the music, it does bear some of the hallmarks of DSBM, but other divergent hallmarks as well.

It includes nothing-left-of-this larynx screaming, but also diabolical howls and folk-ish singing that’s both woozy and strident (and very good). It includes emotionally fraught riffing that seems to boil and writhe in pain, but also serpentine, hallucinatory melodies, nimble bass-lines that aren’t submerged by the shrillness of the guitars, and drumming that constantly shifts patterns.

And it rocks out, with a feverish and feral riffing pulse, augmented by a spiraling solo that really seizes attention, though it sounds quite forlorn, and another one at the end that’s glorious.

The song is from an album named …Of Mourning, which will be released by Immortal Frost on October 25th. Two more songs are available for listening at Immortal Frost’s Bandcamp page for the album.

https://lnk.to/ofmourning
https://immortalfrostproductions1.bandcamp.com/album/of-mourning
https://www.facebook.com/psychonaut4.official
https://www.instagram.com/psychonaut4.official

 

 

AMYSTERY (Germany)

Here’s another instance of a band whose music I’d never heard before, despite their release of three albums beginning in 2007, though there’s been a 14-year gap between the third one and the fourth one that’s now on the way. In this case, I’m pretty sure I saw the link to this video alongside a different one I was viewing at YouTube, and the thumbnail image caught my eye.

The video turns out to be well-made for what it is, marked by a dramatic courtyard setting for the corpse-painted, bare-chested band’s performance beneath a night sky, lit by torches and a blazing light behind, and interspersed with a different narrative, in which the protagonist becomes possessed.

Despite the band’s name, there’s no mystery about where they draw their influence, based on this song, “Goddess of Sins“. The song blazes from near-start to near-finish, flourishing with high-toned razor-wire riffing that furiously rises and viciously falls, scalding shrieks, and hard-charging rhythms.

There are moments when the rhythms become more swaggering and snapping and the guitars more dark and diabolical, more sinister and pernicious — just enough dynamism to keep the conflagration from exhausting its appeal.

As a snooty writer might say, they’re not breaking any molds with this song, but it hits a sweet spot if you’re looking for a raging, adrenaline-fueled Nordic second-wave storm of sound.

“Goddess of Sins” is from the Amystery album Chaos Empire Satan. It will be released by Folter Records on October 31st.

https://folter666shop.de
https://www.facebook.com/Amysterycult

 

 

ALTA ROSSA (France)

The cover art by Simon Chognot for this band’s second album A Defiant Cure is what pulled me toward this next song, “The Art of Tyrant“. What pulled me all the way in was the booming rumble of the avalanche-strength drumming, the emotionally crushing groan of the opening chords, and the wrenching but otherworldly sheen of the tones that sweep across the song’s celestial elevations.

All of that happens in just the track’s first minute and a half, and the music just gets more intense, propelled further by strikingly tortured screams, searing swaths of penetrating sound, humongous percussive detonations, rapid-fire snare-strikes, and doses of bunker-busting riffage.

Eventually, the vocals cry out, nearly singing but too emotionally lacerated to get there fully, and at the end the music swells to vast proportions, still electrified by the drumming but panoramic in its wondrous but perilous sweep.

If Alta Rossa‘s objective was to leave listeners with dropped jaws and popped eyes, I’d say… mission accomplished. Also worth noting, this passage from the text at Bandcamp:

A Defiant Cure confronts what we all accept as normal — a banality of evil that imposes itself at the expense of complex thought and a rich, elusive world. The entire album resonates with the words of the Italian Antonio Gramsci: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.”

https://altarossa.bandcamp.com/album/a-defiant-cure
https://www.facebook.com/altarossa

 

 

APOTHECARY (U.S.)

One more example of a band I’m pretty sure I knew nothing about going into this next song, despite the prolific nature of their releases. I went into it based on what I’ve heard in the past from the label that’s releasing their new album (Centipede Abyss), and after seeing the names of the two people behind Apothecary — drummer extraordinaire Jared Moran and “The Spiral Eyed” (aka John Rushworth), who does everything else and is also a member of Ar’lyxkq’wr (as is Moran).

The track stream below is identified as an excerpt from a song named “Thus Conjoined to Smokeless Flame“, so there’s obviously more to the song than what we can hear now. The main reason I’m including it here is Moran’s drumming, which is jaw-dropping from beginning to end. What goes on around it is going to test the endurance of your ear-drums and your sanity.

What goes on around it is an acid-bath-whirlpool of shrill, distorted guitars and keys, thoroughly hallucinatory but ruinous in their effect, coupled with a vocal panoply that’s a truly frightening sonic bestiary. Those completely saturating surrounding tones do shift as time passes, dismally wailing as well as painfully screaming, slowly slithering and chiming as well as convulsing.

At first I wouldn’t have predicted it, but I found myself frustrated, rather than grateful, when the excerpt abruptly ended.

The song is from an album named Flæscwellere. Centipede Abyss has set it for release on November 14th.

https://centipedeabyss.bandcamp.com/album/fl-scwellere
https://www.facebook.com/theSpiralEyed

 

 

CELEPATHY (Sri Lanka)

I decided to investigate this next album based on its solo creator’s location (though the cover art created another temptation). In black metal circles, Sri Lanka is best known for near-bestial or fully-bestial ferocity, which is a style that scratches an irritated itch I sometimes get. But these six Celepathy tracks, assembled under the name LSD (a shorthand for “Lost Silver Dream”) are something else, something more depressive.

All the tracks are instrumental. The first four of them on LSD were previously released digitally by the band in 2022, while the final two are demos making their debut on the LSD tape release by the විරෑපී (VIRŪPI) label.

As the gripping title track shows, Celepathy is capable of clawing at the senses with heavily distorted and emotionally abysmal guitars, but as the opening and closing instrumentals demonstrate, the album also includes passages and accents of elegant, though haunted, beauty.

The very scratchy guitar, sometimes low and sometimes high, is usually the center-stage performer in the middle four tracks, and the drumming is very simple, but pay attention to the bass when it’s there (it’s not always there), because it tends to move toward the spotlight as the riffing repeats its cycles.

And the riffing is most definitely based on repetition, channeling particular emotional shades (dark ones through and through) and then relentlessly and abrasively driving them into our heads, occasionally offset by ethereal ambient shimmers or segmented with despairing leads.

The penultimate song “R.U.I.N” is quite different from the first four, much faster and more unhinged. It’s propelled by hurtling drums and comes off like a wildfire or a pyroclastic flow, and though the album notes say all the songs are instrumental, it sure sounds like screaming in that one.

LSD was released on October 11th.

https://virupi.bandcamp.com/album/lsd
https://celepathy.bandcamp.com

 

 

ANCESTRAL CÂNTICO (Brazil)

Location and obscurity were the main things that drew me to the next songs, three of them now streaming from a forthcoming album named Hermético Caminho dos Saberes Ocultos (which seems to mean “Hermetic Path of Hidden Knowledge”).

The idea that hidden, esoteric wisdom provided the inspiration is manifested in the music, which turns out to be unorthodox, mysterious, and kind of magical, and a variant of black metal that draws equally from classic old heavy metal and trippy rock (or at least that’s how I hear it).

The music has notable low-end heft and thrust, and equally notable high-end sorcery with a diabolical atmosphere, and the reverberating vocals have a haunted gothic resonance, with smooth and seductive spoken words that are witchy in their aura, but also augmented by bestial snarling, croaking, and strangulated gagging.

Or to put it differently, the songs pack a visceral punch and sometimes a livid throb, but the darting, slithering, and swirling guitars, piercing in their tones, sound infernally enticing and even gleeful — and the harsh vocals are as hellish as the clean ones are seducing.

I’m very interested to see what else the band do with their 7 other album tracks.

https://ancestral-cantico.bandcamp.com/album/herm-tico-caminho-dos-saberes-ocultos-full-length
https://www.facebook.com/ancestralcantico

 

 

SILHOUETTE (France) / PAYSAGE D’HIVER (Switzerland)

To close, I’m cheating against my own rules, by including songs without making the effort to say anything about them. I’ve already written about previous advance tracks from the forthcoming albums by these two bands. The ones below are the most recent “singles”, both released just a few days ago. They fortify the conclusion that both albums will be worth having.

The Silhouette album is Les Dires de l’Âme; it will be released by the Antiq label on October 20th. The Paysage d’Hiver album is Die Berge; it will be released by Kunsthall Produktionen on November 8th.

https://antiqofficial.bandcamp.com/album/les-dires-de-l-me
https://silhouettebm.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/silhouettebm

https://paysagedhiver.bandcamp.com/album/die-berge
https://kunsthall.ch/
https://www.facebook.com/PaysagedHiver.Official/