(written by Islander)
Normally I use the “Seen and Heard” title for Saturday roundups of recommended new songs and videos. When the number of picks swells to gargantuan proportions I use “Overflowing Streams,” because the number of streams in the column is overflowing. Get it?
I’ve got a baker’s dozen of bands in today’s collection, too many names to try to cram into the post title. I used the exclamatory word “Chaos!” in place of all the names because I got on a roll with the kind of high-energy, high-intensity, sometimes batshit-crazy, music I was hearing. With just a couple of exceptions, I filtered out everything that wasn’t Chaos!, leaving them for another day.
Stylistically, the Chaos! comes in different packages. Though the opening segment is pretty heavy on tech-death, I arranged the choices so they begin to change. You’ll see. You’ll also see that there’s no black metal in this collection (or at least nothing I’d call black metal or its variants), but I’ve got tomorrow to focus on that.
Another aspect of these Overflowing Streams columns that’s different from the usual Saturday roundups is that I don’t take time to get album art and upload it for so many impending or recent releases. Sorry about that!
SEPTICFLESH (Greece)
I’m starting with a song that isn’t new, but it’s now accompanied by a computer-generated video which is new, and is very cool to watch. The song, “Psychohistory,” is off the band’s album Modern Primitive.
When DGR reviewed the album, he called this a “bludgeoner of a track,” “a death metal hammerer,” and so it is, augmented by just a few grandiose symphonic blasts, bursts of sizzling and blazing fretwork and furious drumming, and imperious roars. It sets the stage well for the further chaos to come in today’s collection.
The music video was created by Sotirios Vagenas.
https://septicflesh.bandcamp.com/album/modern-primitive
http://www.facebook.com/septicfleshband
OBSCURA (Germany)
Now we start moving into a tech-death block with Obscura‘s moody new single “Evenfall,” and we also have a well-made video that shows the band’s performance.
The song isn’t an immediate fireworks display. Instead it begins with a slowly mewling and kind of miserable bass riff whose melody the guitars eventually pick up and carry forward behind scorching vocals and booming drums. But of course, some instrumental fireworks do come (some of them melodic fireworks), though the song’s overarching mood remains distressing. Less tech-death and more melodeath, this one….
“Evenfall” is taken from Obscura‘s new album A Sonication, which will be out February 7th on Nuclear Blast.
https://obscura.bfan.link/aslp.yde
https://www.facebook.de/realmofobscura
CYTOTOXIN (Germany)
Continuing in the vein of German tech-death, but with greater speed, brutality, and ruination, we turn now to Cytotoxin‘s second standalone single (following 2024’s “Hope Terminator“), and it comes with a great video.
Staying true to their thematic focus, “‘Condemnesia‘ sheds light on the victims of the Chernobyl incident who suffered from acute radiation sickness and describes the desperate and hopeless situation for affected individuals and physicians in the Soviet hospitals.”
Staying true to Cytotoxin‘s stylistic strengths, the song is equal parts freakishly head-spinning, brutishly head-smashing, and ferociously decimating — and with some glorious finger-tapped soloing in the mix too.
https://cytotoxin.bandcamp.com/track/condemnesia
https://www.facebook.com/cytotoxinmetal
CONSUMPTION (Sweden)
You wouldn’t call Consumption a tech-death band, but the first dynamic single off their new album flows pretty well from the last two songs in today’s roundup. The Carcass-influenced “Exterminator” is fast, technically impressive, and often demented (especially in the vocal department), though at times it also feels fiercely jubilant (especially in the soloing) and grimly grand.
The song is from an album named Catharsis, which will be released by the Dusktone label on January 31st.
https://dusktone.bandcamp.com/album/catharsis
https://www.facebook.com/consumptionsweden
SPIRITWORLD (U.S.)
How we’ll take a bigger stylistic turn in the path.
“Distinct from any other band in the scene, SpiritWorld thrives in its own aesthetic realm, a place where thrashing hardcore, Wild West stylings, and supernatural horror dwell in macabre harmony.” That’s an on-point excerpt from a press release announcing this Vegas band’s new album Helldorado, which will be released March 21st by Century Media. The press release description of the album’s first single and video is also on-point:
“A 3-minute hellride, opening track ‘Abilene Grime‘ begins as a feisty honky-tonk shuffle then transforms into a Slayer-strength fist-pumper that thrashes straight into the abyss. The official ‘Abilene Grime‘ music video brings the song to life with cinematic grandeur, depicting a doomed preacher’s descent into the underworld.”
In keeping with today’s theme, the raw and raging vocals are themselves chaotic, and the song gets hellish too, but yeah, it’s also a big fist-pumper.
I’ll add that guests on the new album include Sgah’gahsowáh (Black Braid), Zach Blair (Rise Against), and Frederic Leclercq (Kreator).
https://spiritworld.lnk.to/Helldorado-AlbumPR
https://www.facebook.com/spiritworldprophet/
OF WOLVES (U.S.)
I haven’t double-checked to confirm, but I’m pretty sure I’ve written about every release from Chicago-based Of Wolves — because they’ve all been so powerfully good. The band’s members are all grown men with gray in their hair and lives that don’t make it easy to churn out music rapidly, so fans have to be patient, but at last we do have their first new recording since the 2020 album Balance.
True to the band’s genre-splicing proclivities, the new song “halfTONE” is a soul-shaker and a skull-splitter. It brings into play tension-coiling throbs and ragged gasps, but also scalding snarls and jolting grooves, as well as wailing singing, tormented cries, and bleak moaning chords. The vocals really are remarkably varied and astonishingly intense — as is the song as a whole.
https://linktr.ee/ofwolves
https://ofwolves.bandcamp.com/track/halftone
https://www.facebook.com/pages/OF-WOLVES/8914531284
DRUGS OF FAITH (U.S.)
Speaking of bands that don’t churn out music at a rapid or regular clip but tend to seize attention when they do, let’s turn next to Drugs of Faith. Now past the 20-year mark of their existence, and more than 10 years after their last full-length, they finally have a new album on the way. It features the same three-person lineup that made the Decay EP released in 2019 – guitarist/vocalist Richard Johnson (Enemy Soil, Agoraphobic Nosebleed), bassist Ivan Khilko (Immanent Voiceless), and drummer Ethan Griffiths (Embra).
The first advance track, “Gas Mask“, skitters and slashes, bounces and brawls, vents the words in a red-eyed fury, and eventually takes off from its punk launching pad into an eruption of grindcore mayhem.
The name of the new album is Asymmetrical. It will be released on February 21st by Selfmadegod and Malokul.
https://selfmadegod.bandcamp.com/album/asymmetrical
https://malokul.bigcartel.com/product/drugs-of-faith-asymmetrical-12
https://www.facebook.com/drugsoffaith/
-(16)- (U.S.)
The next song, also with a video that seizes attention in different ways, isn’t as flat-out fast and chaotic as most of the music up above, but it brings its own kind of disturbances.
“Proudly Damned” begins like a big, shaggy, pounding beast, but laced with quivering and glittering fretwork. It brings grim clawing chords, head-butting and gut-slugging blows, and utterly rabid vocal intensity that occasionally segues into morose singing.
Before it ends, the music also becomes slowly slithering and sinister, as a prelude to a hell of a wah-pedaled guitar solo.
The song is from a new -(16)- album named Guides For The Misguided, which will be released by Relapse on February 7th.
http://bit.ly/16-guidesforthemisguided
http://orcd.co/16-guidesforthemisguided
https://www.facebook.com/16dropout
DREAD MAJESTY (U.S.)
Andy Synn recommended this next song, not once but twice since I forgot about the first time. I’m not sure how he came across it and I’m also not sure how to give it a genre descriptor, other than “over the top.” It’s by a Colorado Springs quintet named Dread Majesty, and it’s their second single so far, following “All the Saints Are Dead” from last November.
“Your Time Has Come” packs in a lot of varied and relentlessly extravagant sensations. Among other things, it includes flickering electronics and massive detonations, bursts of crazily darting and brilliantly swirling fretwork, high-flown theatrical singing and beastly growls.
It flies gloriously high, with bits of grandiose symphonics in the mix, but also sounds machine-like and futuristic, and it gives the listener’s pulse lots of swift kicks too.
The song was released on January 1st and it’s available on Bandcamp, along with a second track that’s an instrumental version of the song. I’ll add that I saw a comment from the band on Facebook that they are planning to release a full-length album this coming spring.
https://dreadmajesty.bandcamp.com/album/your-time-has-come
https://www.dreadmajesty.com/
https://www.facebook.com/dreadmajestyband/
GLACIER EATER (U.S.)
As in the case of the Septicflesh item at the top of today’s collection, the next one involves a song that isn’t brand new but a video that is. The song is “Homeward,” and it was part of this Oakland CA band’s second album Tempest, released in 2023, which we very happily premiered and reviewed here.
“Homeward” will get your head pumping like a piston very damned fast, and simultaneously spew napalm in your face through the larynx-stripping vocals. In those respects, there’s a hardcore aspect to the song, but the band do spin it up into melodic death metal territory with exhilarating dual-guitar harmonies before firing up the brutish jackhammers again.
And just when you think the song might be ending, the band punch the accelerator and let the fretwork fly and go gloriously wild.
The video was a DIY effort, directed, produced, and edited by Glacier Eater guitarist Keith Welch, who had never before shot or edited a music video. He and his bandmates did a very good job with it despite the lack of experience.
https://glacierrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/tempest
https://www.facebook.com/glaciereater/
STRESS TEST (U.S.)
I paid attention to these next three songs because the band who made them, Stress Test, was described in a press release as a PDX group that shares current and former band members with Unto Others and Drouth. I was also tempted by the description of their music as “rooted as much in Aus–Rotten style hardcore punk and Napalm Death style grind as they are in Thrash Metal.”
The three songs are what’s been released so far from the band’s self-titled debut album, to be released by Transylvanian Recordings on February 28th. In a nutshell, they’ll light a fire in your blood very fast and keep it hot, with galloping and jolting beats, utterly berserk vocal raging (and some samples in “Suffer”), and riffing that alternately slashes, punches, feverishly swirls, and burns like a blowtorch.
At one point in “Suffer” the music also sounds enticingly strange and supernatural, and it undergoes electrifying convulsions in “Bastard Behavior.” Chaos reigns again!
https://transylvanianrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/stress-test
https://www.facebook.com/stresstestpdx/
SCARE (Canada)
I thought the next song and lyric video, “Thrash Melrose,” would fit very well as a follow-on to the Stress Test tracks. It was premiered by No Echo. Here’s how this Québec City-based group describe its subject matter:
“‘Thrash Melrose’ is a reflection on Green Anarchism and a lament for the state of our planet. It speaks to the harsh reality that humanity has crossed a threshold, endangering the home that nurtures us. The song calls for a return to simplicity, to lives rooted in harmony with nature rather than domination over it. For even if we falter, nature will endure and thrive, a testament to its resilience and the balance we’ve strayed so far from.”
As for the music, it’s a hard-charging, gut rumbling, blood-spraying marauder, with the blood-spray coming equally from the screaming vocal tirades and the swarming riffage. And though you might not expect it from a song that’s both maddened and bleak, it’s also home to an electrifying guitar solo that swirls and soars.
The song is from Scare‘s second album In the End, Was It Worth It?, which will be self-released through all digital services and on vinyl on February 21st.
https://scareqc.bandcamp.com/album/in-the-end-was-it-worth-it
https://www.facebook.com/scareqc
TASSMA (Spain)
The fact that I’ve left Tassma‘s new EP to the end of this massive roundup should in no way be interpreted as a sign that it’s less worthy of your time than what precedes it. I just had a tough time figuring where else it would fit within the expansive confines of today’s collection.
The name of the EP (released on January 3rd) is Si los perros ladran. It includes two songs of unorthodox thrash, both of which were presented through music videos, which you’ll find below.
Musically, “Influencia” comes off like a jolting and whining beast at first, but then the band spur that beast into a thrash-powered gallop – but also quickly cause its path to twist and turn in unexpected directions. Fronted by crazed vocals, the music ruthlessly pounds, viciously slashes, frantically swirls, and morbidly heaves, constantly slowing and speeding up like there’s a madman in control of the throttle, and reaching a zenith of ecstatic insanity in a solo that surely melted all the frets.
“Rendición” is just as unpredictably dynamic and exhilarating, and the video allows us to see just how young all these dudes are — and that one of the performers is a violinist, whose riotous displays of exuberance are every bit as thrilling as that of the guitarists. In this song you’ll also discover that Tassma‘s many twists and turns include shifts into music of sorcery and elegance.
All in all, a great discovery! (And the final bit of chaos for you today.)
https://tassma.bandcamp.com/album/si-los-perros-ladran
https://linktr.ee/tassma