These are bathrooms I visited in Port Orchard, Washington
(written by Islander)
It’s been a hell of a week hasn’t it? More like a week from hell. The daily news has become a series of Hieronymus Bosch paintings, the ghastly ones whose details have frequently appeared on the cover of metal albums.
On the other hand, it’s been a heavenly week if you focus on the kind of music that typically makes its way into these Saturday roundups. So let’s forget about the news for now and move right to that!
MANTAR (Germany)
I’m never going to not rush to check out new music from Mantar. (Forgive the double-negative, I guess I haven’t completely forgotten about the news.) Especially when it’s prefaced by this kind of statement from guitarist/vocalist Hanno Klänhardt:
“We wanted to do everything different from the last album. The last album was very produced. A huge sounding record with clean production. Display of power. That was what we wanted and felt at that time. Now we are trying to destroy what we’ve built up with the last album. There is a certain beauty in disappointing people’s expectations.”
We already got a taste of the new album last November, a song called “Halsgericht” that I wrote about here (and included more of Hanno‘s commentary about the record). Last week we got another taste, a video directed by Guilherme Henriques for the song “Rex Perverso.” To quote Hanno again: “The title roughly translates to ‘king of the perverts,’ a title apparently worn with pride worldwide.”
You want groove? You want grit? You wanna get scorched (but with a few bits of airy melody as balm)? You want to see Hanno and Erinc wearing shirts for a change instead of stripped to the waist (well, mostly)? Well, dive on in!
The name of the new Mantar album is Post Apocalyptic Depression (oh hell we’re back to the news again!). It will be released by Metal Blade on February 14th.
https://www.metalblade.com/mantar/
https://mantar.bandcamp.com/album/post-apocalyptic-depression
https://www.mantarband.com
https://www.facebook.com/MantarBand
https://www.instagram.com/mantarband
BALMOG (Spain)
Now let’s take a quick trip through the entrails of Soutomaior, with a nasty new EP by Balmog. It consists of two new tracks, “Mud to Gold” and “Devalo” from an upcoming Balmog album, plus a cover of Leonard Cohen‘s “Who by Fire.”
“Mud to Gold” sounds like its title, an amalgam of racing and roiling dirty black metal and head-rocking, gut-punching grooves, augmented by wretchedly writhing and brilliantly chiming guitars that gleam, all of it accompanied by ravenous growls and fierce screams.
Before it ends, it also sounds like glittering, shivering, and haunting sonic sorcery too, an experience both melancholy and sinister, with one last blasting and boiling surge at the finale.
“Devalo” is much shorter, but very much in line with the sensations of the first song, except it’s book-ended by chilling ambient swirls — and it seamlessly flows into the cover song. Cohen‘s lyrics are of course remarkable:
And who by fire, who by water
Who in the sunshine, who in the night time
Who by high ordeal, who by common trial
Who in your merry merry month of may
Who by very slow decay
And who shall I say is calling?
And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate
Who in these realms of love, who by something blunt
Who by avalanche, who by powder
Who for his greed, who for his hunger
And who shall I say is calling?
And who by brave assent, who by accident
Who in solitude, who in this mirror
Who by his lady’s command, who by his own hand
Who in mortal chains, who in power
And who shall I say is calling?
In the original, Janis Ian sang with Cohen. In the cover, Balmog bring along Dorl Mathos and Antinoë. They also accelerate the song, using their big bass throbs and compelling beats to make it jump. The singing is great, as is the ferocious snarling, and they don’t forsake the melody but give it new life through a jubilantly dancing guitar solo — though the ambient outro is a chilling kind of remembrance.
I wish there were more here, but I guess that’s what makes this EP an excellent teaser.
https://balmog.bandcamp.com/album/mud-to-gold-ep
https://www.facebook.com/pages/BalmogBy-Hekate/365630056846060
JUODVARNIS (Lithuania)
So far today I’ve been drawn to bands whose music I know well and already value, and here’s a third time for that allure to exert itself.
Heads hammer and hair flies in the video for “Juodos Akys” (“Black Eyes” in English), a dramatic new Juodvarnis song that they describe as “a manifestation of a mind-shaking anger, which dwells inside each and everyone of us.” The video also captures the raw intensity of the vocal performance by Paulius Simanavičius — and the intensity of the performances by everyone else.
The song is a slugger and a fever, a sequence of big body blows and frantic jabs, but laced with clear, swirling guitars and cauterized by blast-driven eruptions whose sweeping melody sounds despairing. The song also includes a beautifully rendered guitar solo that’s soulful but bereaved.
If you go over to YouTube or Bandcamp to listen, you’ll find the lyrics, which include an English translation. If you’ve slept on this band, it’s time to wake up.
https://juodvarnis.bandcamp.com/track/juodos-akys
https://linktr.ee/juodvarnis
https://www.facebook.com/juodvarnis.band
https://www.instagram.com/juodvarnis_band
DARK MEDITATION (U.S.)
I decided to move next to a couple of bands from my neck of the woods, beginning with “Call to the Beast,” an amazing new song from Seattle’s Dark Meditation.
Like the three songs that preceded this one in today’s collection, the vocals are a big strong point in this one. They move seamlessly from extravagant, wounded wails to beastly wounding snarls, and back again. Behind them, the hard-driving surge of the drums and the charging rumble of the bass kick up the adrenaline levels.
Meanwhile, the riffing sounds dark and witchy as it slithers, and fierce and brazen as it jolts and slashes. The song is a pulse-puncher from the beginning, but it escalates and elevates in its intensity, with an exhilarating guitar solo leading the way toward grand chords and frantically flickering arpeggios — and a finale that’s violent and devastating.
“Call to the Beast” will be included on a new Dark Meditation mini-LP entitled Where the Darkness Bleeds.
https://darkmeditation.bandcamp.com/track/call-to-the-beast
http://www.facebook.com/darkmeditation
GRAVEWITCH (U.S.)
Staying in the Pacific Northwest, next we visit the corpse-painted black thrashers in Gravewitch from Bend, Oregon, and a bloody video for their new song “Mistress of Hate.” The video is described as “a sequel following up the first Gravewitch music video “Circle of Power” from the first album The Summoning.”
Turn the ignition on this song and it will rev up your engine into the red zone damned fast, with drums and bass pumping like high-octane pistons, the guitars going fiery and wild, and the vocals gnashing at your throat.
The music also blares, blazes, and throbs in a way that sounds dire, like a manifestation of fear, and even the more frantic fretwork begins to feel like running from something red-eyed and hungry at your heels. The song also pitches upward like a terrible calamity in progress, but in all its phases the music keeps the pulse-rate high and the hooks sharp.
This new song will appear on the sophomore album of Gravewitch. They haven’t yet announced a title or release date.
https://gravewitchofficial.bandcamp.com/track/mistress-of-hate
https://www.facebook.com/gravewitch/
MESSA (Italy)
I decided to move next to a small block of songs that feature prominent singing (or in the second case, close to singing), which I guess will serve as a reminder that we don’t take the name of our site too seriously.
The first of these, “At Races“, also reminds us what a compelling voice Sara Bianchin possesses. Messa describe the song as a devotional to the work of Killing Joke during the ’80s, and that comes through, but so do this band’s doom roots.
Heads will nod to these compulsive post-punk beats, and the guitars (both slightly rough and bell-like in tone) deliver more hooks, both mysterious and inviting (and a little sinister too). And the song isn’t entirely at the races; when it slows, it becomes ethereal (and a bit sad too, especially in the beautifully grieving guitar solo). Through it all, the vocals are frequently heart-stopping.
The recital of poetry at the end may come as a surprise, but stay with it.
The song is from Messa‘s new full-length The Spin, which will be out on April 11th through their new label Metal Blade Records.
https://www.metalblade.com/messa/
https://messa.bandcamp.com/album/the-spin
https://www.facebook.com/messaproject
https://www.instagram.com/messa_band
MARES OF THRACE (Canada)
In May of this year Mares of Thrace will return with a new album named The Loss. The song titles follow the five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — but the album begins with “Anticipatory Grief” and “The First Stage: Shock.” It then treats “Denial” as the second stage and further inserts “Disenfranchised Grief” and “Complicated Grief” among the remaining stages.
The first public excerpt from the album, “The Second Stage: Denial“, proceeds like a giant lumbering beast, shaggy and filth-encrusted, wielding skull hammers. Its voice is a shattering cry coming apart at the seams, and weird, woozy, and warbling sounds seem like strange sprites leading its hulking procession.
This is a bone-breaker, an earth-mover, an acid-dropper (the guitar solo really is a psychedelic trip), and Thérèse Lanz‘s vocals really are shattering — wounded and wounding. (To re-use a phrase I used once before today.)
https://maresofthrace.bandcamp.com/album/the-loss
https://www.facebook.com/maresofthraceca
IMPURITY (Sweden)
Of all the music I listened to in hunting for what to include today, I struggled in figuring out what to add as the closing bookend, and then realized I was overthinking things: Just go with some good old chainsawing Swedish death metal, especially a dose of it that interweaves some other facets.
On the new advance track from their debut album, Sweden’s Impurity (not the much-longer-living Brazilian one) churn and worm their corroded riffs while the rhythm section deliver slow slugging blows, and then they give their machine the gas. The pistons start hammering; the churn becomes a mangling boil; macabre gutturals and ghastly howls fight through the dense swarm, and so does a freaked-out solo and frenzied leads.
But — surprise, surprise — a gently glimmering acoustic interlude creates a break, and Impurity follow that with a witches-and-warlock solo, a seductive tracery of sonic sorcery. Then they give it the gas again, and their machine becomes an enormous mangling and mauling onslaught, albeit with some electrifying drum-fills and battering-ram crashes in the mix.
As noted, this song “Mourningside” is from Impurity‘s debut album, the name of which is The Eternal Sleep. And get this: For extra authenticity, it was recorded by Tomas Skogsberg at Sunlight Studio and it was mastered by Dan Swanö. The album will be released by Hammerheart Records on March 7th.
https://impurity.lnk.to/theeternalsleep
https://hammerheart.bandcamp.com/album/the-eternal-sleep
https://www.facebook.com/impuritysweden
https://www.instagram.com/impurityofficial