I had time to pull together a large collection of music for this usual Sunday post, but not enough time to pull together the usual long-winded introduction. So we’ll just have to get right to it (please, stop applauding).
As I did in yesterday’s roundup, I organized the choices in alphabetical order by band name.
BØNES (Italy)
As I’ve demonstrated repeatedly over the years, I’m often a sucker for metal that incorporates not-metal instruments, whether it’s strings or brass, accordions or didgeridoos, ouds or whistles. And so I was lured into the first song in today’s collection (“Sweet Agony“) after reading that this Italian band includes a violinist (Alice).
The lyrics of the song, which you’ll see in the video, include the phrase, “A whirlwind of sound takes me to another world,” and the song itself is a transportive whirlwind of sound. It includes not only riffing that viciously skitters in a frenzy and brazenly blazes, but also fire-bright doses of violin delirium (though the violin melodies also seem to wail in sorrow).
The song is also rhythmically propulsive, and includes blast-beat surges as well as skull-snapping beats, while the vocals howl and scream like an enraged beast.
“Sweet Agony” was recently released as a single, but it’s part of Bønes‘ debut album, Self Portrait, which will be released on January 24th.
https://bonesband.bandcamp.com/track/sweet-agony-single
https://www.instagram.com/bonesband_official
https://www.facebook.com/bonesbandofficial
FUMES (Mexico)
By coincidence, my decision to alphabetize the ordering of songs by band name led to another whirlwind of sound following the first one above. This time the whirlwind spins up from the debut album of the Mexican black metal quartet Fumes (not the Canadian death metal band who also has that name).
This first advance track from the album is named “Stellar Ascension Infernal,” and that’s a title that effectively invokes the experience of the music. The song races, powered by an electrifying rhythm section, and the guitars rapidly swirl, spiral, and pulsate, creating clear sounds that are simultaneously ornate and demented (and technically sharp).
The band also inject some haughty heavy metal riffing, a wild guitar solo, and chords of solemn (and bleak) grandeur, along with rabid vocal ferocity that erupts in terrorizing howls.
This debut album’s name is Skeletal Wings Threshold. It’s set for release by Personal Records on February 7th.
https://personal-records.bandcamp.com/album/skeletal-wings-threshold
https://www.facebook.com/fumes06/
KRIEG / WITHDRAWAL
The latest release of the formidable and impressively long-running U.S. black metal band Krieg is a half-hour split with the Canadian band Withdrawal, who’ve been around for about 15 years themselves. The split has been out for a bit more than a month, and I was slower in getting to it than I’d planned. Now I wish I’d gotten to it sooner, because it’s very, very good.
The split harnesses an interesting combination of styles, and not just between the two bands but among their own songs. Krieg‘s four tracks include a cover of New Order‘s “Ceremony” and the song “Bone Whip,” which was first released on a Decibel flexi-disc in the summer of ’23, but before you get to those they deliver “Spirals, Seizures, Seethings” and “A Lonely Grave“.
The first of those opens with catastrophic detonations and weirdly skittering tones, but then erupts in a torrent of writhing and scathing riffage, battering percussion, and maddened screams. The music burns and expansively sweeps forward in searing and swirling waves, but also becomes more distraught and bleak in its moods as the percussive pistons pump in varying ways. Near the end, the song transforms into a maniacal and frightening experience, and then drifts away into the void.
“A Lonely Grave” seamlessly picks up from there, and then leans into hard-driving hardcore beats and slashing punk chords (still fire-bright and blistering in their tone) before the riffing swirls in wholly enveloping (and even elegant) cascades of severe distress, coupled with screams of truly wrenching intensity.
That New Order cover is a surprise, but it happens that I’ve loved that song since it was first released a geologic epoch ago, and I also really like what Krieg have done with it, including the vocals, which get increasingly raw as the song unfolds.
I’ve already said my piece about “Bone Whip,” but will reiterate: The music is grim and mean, the vocals incinerating, the drumming stripped-down, punk-fueled, and feral, but as the blistering and blazing riffing rises and falls it seems to channel beleaguered and desperate moods too, a feeling that comes through even more strongly when the lead guitar rings and wails. It’s angry music, but an anger born from frustration and loss, and not much hope for a brighter day to come. (Well, that’s how I hear it.)
Withdrawal balance out the split with two songs, one fairly short and the other very long. The short one, “Humiliation,” is fast, brutally rumbling, and caustically raw, a blackened hardcore mauler fronted by hair-on-fire screams, backed by vivid drum- and bass-work, and incorporating head-butting grooves.
The long one, “There In The Darkness Of Passing May Your Love Await Us…,” immediately creates a stark contrast with a gently ringing and melancholy melody. Of course, the music eventually becomes much heavier and more harrowing, thanks to neck-snapping beats, gut-busting bass-lines, acetylene-strength riffing and piercing leads that channel anguish, and blood-spray vocal torment.
Withdrawal also pack in doses of hardcore stomp and strut, gunshot drums that make you want to duck and cover, slowly moaning bass notes, fretwork spasms that bespeak violence and confusion, and shrill, wailing tones that sound like lost wraiths from beyond the pale, and an even eerier (and creepier) outro section.
Each band has included digital versions of its own songs from the split on their own Bandcamp pages, linked below, but Krieg and Sin Eater Records are also offering vinyl editions of the entire split.
https://kriegofficial.bandcamp.com/album/krieg-withdrawal-split
https://www.facebook.com/officialkrieg
https://withdrawal.bandcamp.com/album/krieg-withdrawal-split
https://www.facebook.com/withdrawal13/
https://sineaterrecords.bigcartel.com
LYCOPOLIS (Egypt)
Last Bandcamp Friday the Egyptian band Lycopolis made a surprise drop of a new three-song EP, The Sedgeland, and that’s the next item in today’s column.
The title song is rough and raw in its sound, but also eerily and bleakly melodic, and it also surges into a frantic and sandblasting assault, segmented by skipping, punk-ish beats and viciously slashing and swarming chords, all of it matched by acid-spray vocal vitriol. A feral, furious, and supernaturally chilling track for sure.
“Hor-Aha” turns out to be more deranged and breathtaking, like possessed dervishes whirling in the midst of a napalm blast, though it too leans into punk-influenced bouts of exultant savagery. Those riotous dervish whirls also bring in exotic melodies that seem rooted in the band’s homeland.
And finally, “Umm El Qa’ab” cuts loose in a similar way, just as caustic and crazed as its predecessor, and again with drumming that’s both lights-out and more primitive and punk. The riffing in this one seems to feverishly throb, but it also ecstatically spins.
And so, Lycopolis have given us another hellishly good EP. And in case you’re as curious as I am about the title, some researching revealed that in ancient Egypt, the area of Upper Egypt was known by a word that literally means “the Land of Reeds” or “the Sedgeland,” named for the sedges that grow there.
https://lycopolis.bandcamp.com/album/the-sedgeland
NECRODEATH (Italy)
The very long-running Italian band Necrodeath have announced that their next album, Arimortis, will be their last one. They’ve explained this about the meaning of that title:
“Arimortis is a term of Latin origin which indicates the end of a war, the moment in which the fallen are honoured and altars are erected in their name (‘arae mortis’, the altars of death). Even today in some parts of Italy the term ‘arimo’ is used to declare the end of the games. We wanted to use this allegory to seal a path that lasted forty years, full of satisfactions, disappointments and revenge. The songs that make up the album contain several references to our long career.”
Last week they released a video for the new album’s title song. In a nutshell, though the song opens with a segment that rings with mystery, it turns into an enormous, cold-blooded groove-monster, albeit one laced with shining and supernatural musical filigrees and fronted by red-eyed goblin shrieks. Eventually, the music goes mad and rumbles, just in time for frontman Flegias to scream his chant.
Arimortis will be released by Time to Kill Records on January 17th.
https://timetokillrecords.com/en-us/collections/necrodeath-arimortis
https://www.facebook.com/necrodeath.official/
PILLAR AMONGST WILLOWS (U.S.)
As you may have noticed, I always pay attention to whatever the UK label Centipede Abyss releases, even though I’m well aware there’s a decent chance the music will scare the shit out of me.
The label’s newest release, which will be out on January 16th, is a self-titled debut record from Pillar Amongst Willows, which is the solo project of Ben Vanweelden; he’s also involved in Venomous Echoes, Ceremonic Buryment, and numerous other projects.
The first advance track from the record is “The Two of Fire and Smoke“. It doesn’t sound scary at first, but instead consists of the slow and sorrowful moan of a bowed bass backed by audio shimmers. But the song does ramp up into a vividly whirring melody above cantering beats and scalding screams, and then ramps again into blasting percussion and an even more high-flying guitar harmony that’s both electrifying and melancholy.
The song is dynamic and multi-faceted. When the drums briefly vanish, the melody descends into grim sounds of beleaguered grief, and that stricken riff (vibratory but moaning) persists even after the drums launch a staggering march.
There’s an interlude where that groaning bass again appears along with brittle chiming tones, and then the music slowly heaves and quakes, even darker in its mood than what’s already come, and the vocals are so tortured as to raise goosebumps.
Centipede Abyss recommends the album for fans of Amiensus, Firtan, and Spectral Lore.
https://centipedeabyss.bandcamp.com/album/pillar-amongst-willows
https://www.facebook.com/TheCentipedeAbyss/
PLAGUEWIELDER (U.S.)
Regular visitors to our site know that we’ve been closely following the ever-evolving releases of Ohio’s Plaguewielder for a long time, and so I paid attention when the band announced that it would have a new album named In Dust and Ash coming out on January 8th. I also paid attention when they recently released two different videos, one of them a guitar playthrough, for a song off the album named “Sadness.”
Plaguewielder mainman Bryce Seditz dominates attention in both videos, and his harrowing, hold-nothing-back voice seizes attention in the song too. Beyond that, the song’s rocking groove is a big head-mover, and the riffing, as it throbs and swirls, both draws out a kind of haunting gothic gloom and creates eerie and perilous sonic sorcery.
As the song’s title suggests, it has depressive qualities, and the vocals are terrifically wrenching, but there’s also something about it that sounds diabolical, like warlocks at work on their spells. And it proves to be damned infectious too.
“Sadness” is available on Bandcamp, along with another song from the album named “Empty Nights.”
https://plaguewielderoh.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/PlaguewielderOH/
TER ZIELE (Netherlands)
The final song in today’s collection may seem like an outlier for this column, since it lodges more easily into the realms of doom than black metal (apart from the shattering intensity of the screamed vocals and a bit of “blackgaze” in the cycles of riffing). But “The Separation of Body and Soul” is so cataclysmic and wrenching that I couldn’t leave it behind.
In part, Ter Ziele use the listener’s head as an anvil, and pound it with a titanic sledgehammer. In part they drench the senses with riffs that sizzle with distortion and ooze agony from every pore, and with cleaner leads that slowly writhe in misery. And in part, those harrowing screams, coupled with gargantuan roars, do seem to manifest souls being ripped from bodies. They follow the admonition of Dylan Thomas, and do not go gentle into that good night, but rage against the dying of the light.
The video accompanying the song is equal parts mysterious, haunting, and frightening.
The song is from an album named Embodiment of Death. It will be released by Tartarus Records on February 28th.
https://terzieledoom.bandcamp.com/album/embodiment-of-death
https://www.facebook.com/TERZIELEDOOM