Mandroïd of Krypton – photo by Rebecca Bowring
By the time you read this I will have left home early this Saturday morning on a quick three-day vacation. I mean, really early, so I didn’t have time to write much, and I stabbed these songs off my gigantic list pretty quickly and impulsively.
But that doesn’t mean the songs aren’t excellent, because they are. In fact I impulsively stabbed them because each one of them shivved me right fast and deep.
Due to the vacation, the odds are high that there won’t be a SHADES OF BLACK on Sunday, and we might not have much to throw at you on Monday either.
MANDROÏD OF KRYPTON (Switzerland)
The vocals stabbed me on this song, which comes from the third album of these Kryptonian survivors and premiered at Decibel last Monday. They’re wild and raw, a high gritty howl just on the bleeding edge of igniting.
But that’s not the only thing about “The Waltz of Death” that plunged into me. It’s a high-powered, dirty-toned gut punch, heavy as hell and ferociously mauling, thrashing and lividly throbbing, with a crazed lead-guitar squirming in the midst of electrifying drumwork and big doses of primally compulsive riffage. Highly infectious too.
The album is Cosmic Sarcophagus. It will be released on November 29th by MTAF Records.
https://www.mtaf-records.com/en
https://mandroidofkrypton.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/mandroidofkrypton
https://www.instagram.com/mandroidofkrypton
ALTAR OV ASTERIA (Germany)
Well, I guess this next song isn’t brand new, even though the album release will be. I found out about the song from the announcement that Altar Ov Asteria‘s debut album Éna will be released by Dusktone next month, but the song — “Kataklysm” — has a Bandcamp release date on AoA‘s page of nearly a year ago. Definitely a “better late than never discovery”.
These two German women do render a kataklysm on “Kataklysm“. Their rhythms rumble the earth and pound like industrial-strength pile-drivers, and they send shrill, siren-like guitar-wails of impending devastation and agony spiraling around that tumult, along with bestial snarls and unhinged screams. It’s a devastating but thoroughly exhilarating experience, a wholly engulfing cataclysm.
Dusktone will release Éna on CD and all digital platforms on November 25th.
https://dusktone.bandcamp.com/album/na
https://www.dusktone.org/band/altar-ov-asteria/
https://www.facebook.com/altarovasteria/
SLUAGH (Scotland)
Thanks go to Rennie (starkweather) for the link to this next song (“IX“), the first track revealed from a debut album entitled II, which follows this band’s 2020 debut EP, which I spilled a lot of words about here. If you’re new to Sluagh, their lineup includes people behind such notable groups as Barshasketh, Belliciste, and Uir, to name a few.
In this song, strong thumps and sharp cracks provide the pulse, and a layering of ringing, slithering, and pulsating guitars create an aura of mystery and menace, an aura that becomes increasingly frightening as the guitars frenetically spasm and maddened voices erupt.
Grand fanfares rise up like horns, providing an august air in contrast with the ruinous vocals and the piercing fretwork delirium. And the notes also ping and ring, darting and swirling while a craggy voice intones. The song swells and towers again while witches and warlocks cavort in the music of the guitars, along with strangled growls and utterly berserk screams. I caught myself thinking of a black metal kindred of Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain”.
The album will be released as a limited cassette on the 21st of October by Blood Coloured Beast.
https://www.bloodcolouredbeast.com/
https://sluaghsounds.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063796261941
DRIVE YOUR PLOW OVER THE BONES OF THE DEAD (Canada)
When I saw the name of this band I couldn’t resist learning more about them and their music. When I googled their name, I was also led to a review of a 2009 novel of the same name by the famous (and notorious) Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, which I promptly bought. While doing that I learned that she won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature.
So I have two things to thank this Vancouver band for (unless the book turns out to be disappointing, contrary to my expectations). But the first thing for which I need to give thanks is the final song in today’s little collection, a short throat-punch called “spirit incantation“, which opens their forthcoming debut album tragedy as catharsis.
The maniacally cutting intensity of the screamo vocals put the knife in here, but everything else about the song is equally violent, an assault of furiously battering drumwork, magma-tunneling bass, and blaring, blown-out riffage. It’s leavened by a less cataclysmic mid-section in which the notes sound wretched, hardly a reprieve but at least a shuddering diversion before the barrage of devastation ramps up again to a shock-and-awe finale.
The album will be released on vinyl and digitally on November 15th by No Funeral Records, with an exclusive cassette release from Middle Man Records.
https://nofuneralsound.bandcamp.com/album/tragedy-as-catharsis
https://www.facebook.com/nofuneral8