(written by Islander)
I can’t think of any reason to criticize Bandcamp for renewing their Bandcamp Fridays in 2025. Unless I’m missing something, it’s good for bands and labels that use the platform, not only because it lets them keep more of their sales revenue but also because it incentivizes fans to spend.
But it does make my life harder, because in weeks ending with one of those days the volume of new music swells significantly. Even in more normal weeks I can’t listen to everything I’m interested in. That’s an even greater impossibility in weeks like this past one.
But of course I did make some picks. Three of the picks are live videos that I’ve included at the end without much commentary, but the bands’ names ought to be inducement enough.
NITE (U.S.)
I am very very high on Nite‘s new album Cult of the Serpent Sun, which will come out on March 14th via Season of Mist. In hopes that you’ll also get very high on them, I’m starting today with a video for the latest single from the album, “The Mystic“.
When I recommended a previous single, “Crow (Fear the Night)“, in another one of these roundups, I fixated on how great the vocals were — “gritted-teeth gargoyle rasps that sound like they want to gnaw your bones, probably the most evil thing about this infernally glorious song.”
They’re great again on the new song, and again for a similar reason — because they’re a bit unexpected for the kind of music Nite are dishing out. What they dish out here, quite different from that previous single, has the atmosphere of an ancient epic or mythic fantasy, almost folk-metal in its influence.
It’s a slow-moving, melodically rich, and mesmerizing journey, augmented by the tuning of the lead instruments, which make them sound like very old devices, like flutes or pipes or fiddles or a hurdy-gurdy. But the punchy beats are viscerally powerful and those vocals are spine-tingling in their diabolically bestial viciousness.
Very easy to get lost in this one and transported by it.
https://nitemetal.bandcamp.com/album/cult-of-the-serpent-sun
https://www.facebook.com/nitemetal
MAGUS LORD (U.S.)
One of the week’s nicer surprises was the discovery that M. from Lamp of Murmuur has created another project through which to satisfy his creative impulses. He’s calling it Magus Lord, and its first single is “One Path to Carn Dûm“.
Of course, even before listening to the song, I had to remind myself what Carn Dûm is. In Tolkein’s mythos it was the chief fortress of the evil realm of Angmar, where the lord of the Nazgûl gathered to himself Orcs and other fell creatures in preparation for the execution of terrible plans.
As for the song, it nearly reaches 16 minutes, an EP in itself. It too has the quality of an epic fantasy, a conflict with evil. At the beginning it combines sweeping organ tones and sounds reminiscent of operatic female vocals, but also includes booming warlike drums, big throbbing bass-lines, whirring but grim riffing, and monstrous growls and snarls.
More high-toned organ keys add elements of chilling sorcery in the upper reaches; the ringing lilt of acoustic picking and violin strings create a different kind of sorcery, just before those herculean drums speed into a gallop and symphonic strings add to the tension and the glory. Wailing but heroic vocals also add to the song’s mythic qualities, which are abundant, as does a skirling guitar solo, which also sounds heroic but also besieged.
In line with the song’s title, this is a dark and daunting journey, relentlessly gripping. You can sense the evil, and the conflict between darkness and light, which culminates in a dramatic musical clash of forces, in which the strings seem to dance while the drums explode, the riffing blares like the heavy metal of old, and the grooves rapidly jolt.
Near the end, the music elegantly soars to haunting celestial heights again, though the heaving in the lower reaches continues to sound ominous.
The song will eventually be included on a Magus Lord debut album, In the Company of Champions, which will be released (I’m not sure when) by Silver Shield Records.
https://lampofmurmuur.bandcamp.com/track/one-path-to-carn-d-m-single
https://www.facebook.com/people/Lamp-Of-Murmuur/61556096044780/
DISPYT (Finland)
Here’s another very nice surprise from the week past, a new song and forthcoming album from the Finnish band Dispyt, whose lineup includes Mathias Lillmåns from …And Oceans and Finntroll (to name just two) and three current or former members of Ondfødt — Owe Inborr, Juuso Englund, and Tommi Tuhkala.
The guitars in this new song of crusty blackened death metal, “Livslustens katakomber“, are tuned to teeth-chattering levels of abrasion, all the better to make the riffing into a ruinous battering ram and a scathing swarm. Lillmåns‘ snarling vocals are predictably nasty as hell, and the neck-snapping beats provide a vivid drive.
The song charges in a blood-pumping, head-hooking rampage but also downshifts into a much more doomed and agony-soaked phase, right before a guitar solo that miserably wails after Dispyt give the song the gas again.
If you go to Bandcamp you can also listen to a “2025 Digital Bonus” track, “Sommarstaden“, which originally appeared on Dispyt‘s independently released 2017 debut album Den ständigt närvarande ångesten. The name of the new album is Från melankoli till meningslöshet. It will be released through Elitbolaget on April 29th.
https://elitbolaget.bandcamp.com/album/fr-n-melankoli-till-meningsl-shet
https://www.facebook.com/DispytBand
CABINET (U.S.)
Cabinet, one of the solo works of Sxuperion from Mammoth Lakes, California, also has a new album headed our way. Entitled anhedonia, it seems to be modeled on a trip through an abandoned insane asylum and consists of previously unreleased and demo songs.
What’s out there now is “Iatrogenesick Defloration / Anhedonia (room 1.b)“. It will disturb your sleep. Hell, it will disturb your waking moments too. It’s a titanic rolling crusher in which one can detect vivid snare-snaps and cymbal strikes, crazed and ethereal leads, and abyssal gutturals. It does sound insane, as well as massively mauling.
It also includes a detour, a slowly slithering and more monstrous and ghastly lo-frequency crawl as the underpinning for asylum voices. Pestilential and bone-gnawing riffing also returns, along with those wafting spectral tones.
https://bloodymountainrecords.bandcamp.com/album/anhedonia
CHIAROSCURO (U.S.)
My next selection is “A Song for Ghosts“, from a self-titled debut EP by the Baltimore-based Chiaroscuro duo of vocalist Cassiopeia and guitarist/songwriter Nick Temoshok, with the EP lineup fleshed out by drummer Adam Smith and bassist Ben Baris (the live lineup also includes rhythm guitarist Clay Baucom).
Ghosts there may be in this song, but if so they are very angry ghosts, screaming fast in a red-eyed fury, while viciously corrosive riffing sizzles and heaves above hammering drums and nimble bass-lines.
The music abruptly stops and starts while the guitar miserably mewls and whines, and the instrumental work continues to undergo a multitude of sharp but freakish maneuvers as the vocals descend into horrid guttural growls.
All the head-spinning tempo changes and varying episodes of fretwork delirium are eye-popping, but so is the suddenly melodic but also fret-burning guitar solo and a suddenly soft and jazzy interlude that serves as a prelude to a grim and grievous march.
The vocals are utterly berserk from beginning to end, which is fitting for music this wild. An appropriate genre classification for the song will have a fuckload of hyphens in it.
The Chiaroscuro EP will be released by Unholy Anarchy Records on March 28th
https://unholyanarchyrecords.bandcamp.com/album/chiaroscuro
https://www.facebook.com/chiaroscurometal/
POLISH (U.S.)
In preparing for today’s column I listened to a half dozen punk-influenced metal tirades of varying kinds (besides Dispyt above), and I wish I had time to write about all of them, but I just picked this one, in part because it arrived with such a fun video to watch.
I don’t think most bands are naturals when it comes to performing in front of cameras, especially when the music is as batshit as what Polish do, but in the video these people really do seem like they’ve mentally and emotionally transported themselves on a stage beset by divers and fronted with a brutal pit.
Any by “batshit”, I mean that the song is a fast-changing and violently disruptive affair, stitched together by a miserably moaning chord progression (of all things). The music brings the gnarly heft of crust, the eviscerating mania of grindcore and powerviolence, an agonizing breakdown or two, relentlessly electric drumwork, and a noticeably deft bass performance. But the vocals might be the most batshit thing of all.
I got addicted to “Decay” very damned fast. It’s the title song from an album by this Colorado band that was just released (or soon will be released) by No Time Records and Eat These Records.
https://linktr.ee/nailpolishpolish
https://notimeforfun.bandcamp.com/album/decay-ntr-449
https://www.facebook.com/divineoathHC/
https://www.instagram.com/polish_hc
BANK MYNA (France)
One week ago I ended another one of these roundups with a pair of songs and videos from the French feminist post-rock collective Lorsque les volcans dorment, whose lineup includes members of Bank Myna and Skinsitive. A week later, it seems fitting to close (before the live videos I promised) with a song and trippy video from Bank Myna, whose music comes recommended for fans of Big | Brave, Amenra, and ISIS.
The name of the song, which was recorded live, is “Burn All The Edges“. It’s momentous and crashing at first, but with soulful, haunted singing as a counterpoint in between the crashes, and then the music swells and becomes vast as the vocals climb to a higher plane of intensity.
The drums hammer and chop; the music becomes shrill and distressing, creating a painful tension; and then everything fades away to nothing… but only temporarily. Brittle, glinting acoustic notes seem to wander in contemplation, eventually joined by the rest of the band, building tension again but with the rattling drums hooking heads too.
By now you know Bank Myna are building again toward something else, as the drums go deeper and rumble like a tribal ceremony, the vocals almost gasp, and other tones uncomfortably sizzle and squirm. What they get to is a crushing stomp, overflown by swarms of brightness and spine-tingling singing (Maud Harribey‘s voice truly is a wonder, and here she pours out wrenching torment).
The ebb and flow of tension in the song never really stops, and it never stops being gripping. By the end, the music has become massive and calamitous, though the vibrant energy of Maud Harribey‘s singing won’t be defeated.
The song is from Bank Myna‘s upcoming album Eimuria, which will be out on a collective of labels on April 25th.
https://bankmyna.bandcamp.com/track/burn-all-the-edges
https://www.facebook.com/bankmyna
ENLIVEN YOURSELVES
And now here are the three live-performance videos I promised at the outset. I don’t have time to comment about them, other than to say I think you’ll find all of them well worth your time.
The one from Ulcerate is a complete live set filmed in Kraków on the penultimate date of the band’s Eclipse Death European tour. The songs in the set are “The Dawn is Hollow”, “Further Opening the Wounds”, “To See Death Just Once”, “Cutting the Throat of God”, and “Stare Into Death and Be Still”.
The Kanonenfieber video is the live performance of “Sturmtrupp“, which will be included on an album named Live in Oberhausen that Century Media will release on April 25th.
https://kanonenfieber.lnk.to/LiveInOberhausen-Bio
https://noisebringer-records.bandcamp.com/album/live-in-oberhausen-24-bit-hd-audio
And the Nihilo video features the song “Deceptive World” recorded live at KIFF, in Aarau. It’s from a new Nihilo live album Chaos Unleashed that will be released by Iron, Blood & Death Corporation on March 14th.
https://ironbloodanddeath.bandcamp.com/album/chaos-unlesahed
ULCERATE (New Zealand)
KANONENFIEBER (Germany)