SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: OBSIDIAN TONGUE, HATE, OBSTRUKTION, JORDSJUK, APPLE OF BASILISK, SERIAL HAWK, CONTEMPLATION

(written by Islander)

I didn’t expect I would be able to pull this Saturday column together, or the usual one tomorrow either. I thought my spouse and I would be leaving home very early today for a weekend trip. I even prepared a short notice to post this morning saying there would be no music at our site this weekend. But for reasons there’s no need to go into, we canceled those travel plans late yesterday.

That left me flat-footed this morning. I mean, I’m usually still scrambling on Saturday mornings to get this column figured out and finished, but today was set up to be an even bigger scramble because I’d given no thought to which songs and videos I might include. I had done a pretty good job over the last week of saving links to potential choices as I saw news about them — 30 or 40 links! — but no way could I check out most of those.

So, aside from picking a couple because the band names made me feel I’d be in good hands, sheer impulse ruled the rest. It’s a sign of how healthy metal is these days that making choices by impulse still turned out to be good choices.

 

OBSIDIAN TONGUE (U.S.)

This one was an easy pick, one of those bands whose name made me confident I’d be in good hands. What surfaced from Obsidian Tongue last week was the opening track to their new album Eclipsing Worlds Of Scorn.

I always have high expectations about the music of this duo — Brendan Hayter (Thrawsunblat, Obsequiae live) and Raymond Capizzo (Falls Of Rauros, Panopticon live) — but that opening song “Orphaned Spiritual Warrior” still surprised me by just how ferocious it is.

The riffing boils and sears; the shrill screams are lacerating; Ray Capizzo‘s drumming is as acrobatic as ever but still assaulting. However, the rapidly whirling guitars also evolve in a way that brings in feelings of bleakness and turmoil, leavened by a darting instrumental interlude that paves the way for strident singing and glistening tones that arrive just as the sweep of the music expands.

One of Obsidian Tongue‘s strengths is just how much they pack into individual songs, and this one continues to evolve, elaborately layered in its instrumentation and shifting in its moods, but as it approaches the final minute it becomes frighteningly distraught and chaotic, yet with a heart-palpitating crescendo at the end which feels gloriously defiant.

Eclipsing Worlds Of Scorn will be released by Profound Lore on May 30th. The fantastic cover art is the work of Kati Astraeir.

https://obsidiantongue.bandcamp.com/album/eclipsing-worlds-of-scorn
https://www.facebook.com/obsidiantongueband/

 

HATE (Poland)

This was another easy “you’ll be in good hands” call, especially because I was interested to see if Hate might continue putting somewhat different spins on their very well-established musical aesthetic.

Named for a self-sacrificing princess during the fabled Trojan War, their new song “Iphigenia” is deeply sinister, and it’s been presented with an extravagantly sinister video (which also features hellishly-lit depictions of Hate hammering out the song).

To be sure, the band still sound imperious, and the serrated-edge vocals are monstrously haughty, but this isn’t a thunderous death march. The rapidly changing tremolo’d riffage and other tones that glisten and ring create sensations of chilling eeriness, diabolical menace, distressing gloom, and tragic majesty (the latter feeling elevated by a beautiful guitar solo). The song will give your head lots of swift jolts too.

“Iphigenia” is from Hate‘s new album Bellum Regiis. It will be released by Metal Blade on May 2nd.

https://www.metalblade.com/hate/
https://hate.bandcamp.com/album/bellum-regiis
https://www.facebook.com/HATEOFFICIAL/

 

OBSTRUKTION (Sweden)

And here’s where I had to begin letting impulse take over. What triggered the impulse in the case of Obstruktion was the elevator pitch that their music is a “signature fusion of hardcore aggression and death metal ferocity”, resulting in “an unrelenting sonic experience that is both brutally heavy and hauntingly atmospheric.”

The first advance song from their forthcoming second album The End Takes Form bears that out. The vocals on “Death Comes Near” seize attention immediately. They cement the song’s connection to punk, with a wild and furious intensity that’s undeniable. While that’s happening, the drummer hammers and scampers above bowel-loosening bass-lines and the riffage generates a mauling churn of chainsawing sound.

But the band also switch things up, letting the bass provide a heavyweight throb while the guitars create disturbing sizzling sounds, sensations of pain and distress. And they continue to eerily sizzle while the band bring out the pile-drivers and then beat listeners senseless.

More recently, Decibel premiered a video that depicts the band’s performance of another song off Obstruktion‘s new album. This one, “Sow Fear“, is both blistering and bleak, furiously assaulting and burning with agony. The high-speed tremolo’d abrasion is ruthless, and the miserably wailing guitar finale is devastating.

The End Takes Form will be released by Suicide Records on May 28th.

https://suiciderecordsswe.bandcamp.com/album/the-end-takes-form
https://www.facebook.com/obstruktionband

 

JORDSJUK (Norway)

Coincidentally, I moved from one punk-influenced piece of metal to another. The elevator pitch for this next song, “Rennestein“, is also what attracted me to it: “[A] filthy, rebellious anthem that drags you straight into the gutter. With a sound rooted in black metal, death, thrash and punk, Jordsjuk channels the raw and unfiltered energy of Norway’s underground, delivering a ferocious blend of groove, grit, and grim atmosphere”.

The vocals in this song, as elsewhere in today’s collection, are a big part of the song’s attraction. Here the vocalist is Mannevond (from Koldbrann), and he savagely snarls and screams the words with a throat that sounds near-choked with bone fragments and gristle.

Behind him the band drive forward with punk beats, gritty and feverish riffing, and a very noticeable bass performance (which turns out to be one of the song’s highlights). The riffing also swings, careens, and grimly blares, in addition to venting slashing punk chords. The song will give your pulse-rate a swift kick in its ass, and, as advertised, it does indeed prove to be “a ferocious blend of groove, grit, and grim atmosphere”.

The single was released by Indie Recordings. It’s from the band’s debut album Naglet til livet, which the same label will release sometime next fall.

https://ffm.to/rennestein
https://www.facebook.com/jordsjuk

 

APPLE OF BASILISK (Canada)

The next song I picked is “Crowned Sloth“, the first advance track from this Toronto band’s debut EP His Crowned Skull Raised to the Sun. I was drawn to it (again on impulse) by the band’s name, the name of the song, and the cover art.

Lyrically (if I’m interpreting it correctly), the song presents a grim, grotesque, and enraging portrait of enslaved and diseased servants feeding some monstrous regent so they might feed their own children. Musically, it packs a lot of stylistic ingredients into this hideous narrative. I detect some hardcore influence in this song too, especially in its decimating overture and the bludgeoning slugfest that accompanies the bestially enraged vocals.

But the roars turn to insane screams, the drums go into overdrive, and the guitars sear like acetylene torches. The song also decelerates, the vocals transform into haunting howls, and the lead guitar slowly slithers and wails in misery. And then the band ramp up the destruction again, pounding like jackhammers, venting unhinged screams again, and boiling brains with the abrading riffage — before returning to a portrayal of harrowing bleakness once more at the end.

There are an army of tags on the EP’s Bandcamp page, but judging from just this one song, most of them make sense, including “blackened sludge,” blackened doom”, and “grindcore.”

The EP will be released on April 4th, with album art by Evan Odette. The band recommend it for fans of Cult Leader, Deafheaven, Napalm Death, and Thou.

https://appleofbasilisk.bandcamp.com/album/his-crowned-skull-raised-to-the-sun
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61569970995068

 

SERIAL HAWK (U.S.)

Now we come to what I think is the heaviest song in today’s quickly picked offerings, not just sonically crushing but also emotionally searing. The song’s name is entirely fitting: “Raw Wound“.

At the outset the song lurches forward like a massive shaggy beast, the chords tuned to mutilating levels of distortion and the drums brutally slugging and going off like gunshots. But then the band kick into a higher gear, with riffing that viciously thrusts and drums that vividly hammer — just in time for the vocalist to begin venting pain and rage in the rawest of terms, baying and screaming on the precipice of an emotional abyss.

The pacing of the song continues to downshift and upshift (slightly). In the first slower phase a guitar miserably moans and the vocals are frighteningly intense, but this is where the music becomes even more titanically crushing and cataclysmic (though laced with some vivid drum-fills). The striking guitar solo in the midst of the song’s final phase rings and writhes in piercing tones that are as shattering as anything else in the song.

The song is off this Seattle band’s new album Psychic Pain, which was released on March 21st. I had ambitions to listen to and write about the whole record by now, but have failed (in part due to being caught flat-footed, as described at the top of this column). But I do intend to listen to all of it, and I think “Raw Wound” will pull a lot of you into it as well (I sure hope so).

https://serialhawk.bandcamp.com/album/psychic-pain
https://www.facebook.com/serialhawk

 

CONTEMPLATION (France)

Here’s another impulse pick, this time triggered by the intriguing description of contemplation‘s music as “atmospheric dub doom/death metal” by solo artist Matthieu Ducheine, who is also an accomplished violinist. On the Bandcamp page of contemplation‘s recently released second album Au bord du précipice, I also spotted this excerpt from a review at Angry Metal Guy (the complete review is here):

Clearly, Ducheine is a man of many talents, diverse interests, and a metric fuckton of sheer goddamn conviction to pull off a project like this. Because I’ve been listening to metal for over two decades, but none of it sounded quite like Au Bord du Précipice. This is death-adjacent metal you can sink into the pillows with, and once you’re there, you get treated to beautiful violins from the top of a forested hill.

What I’ve heard so far is the album’s title track, and it’s quite a multi-faceted and out-of-the-ordinary experience.

The introductory phase is a beautifully melancholy and mesmerizing experience crafted with glinting acoustic guitar and soulful violin, but that’s only one phase. The next one is unexpectedly very heavy but still intimately connected with the opening melodies. Ducheine demonstrates that he carries an abyssal death growl of monstrous proportions and is capable of making the music heavily stomp and ooze agony.

And then comes another surprise, a collage of intriguing cyborgean electronic sensations and thrumming bass notes that I assume is the influence of dub (honestly I wouldn’t know).

Somehow when the violin appears again it doesn’t sound out of place at all, even after that, and it brings in a folk aspect as it wails (now I would call it a fiddle). Needless to say by now, the tides keep moving, the changes keep coming, as Ducheine unravels and re-weaves the ingredients of dub, doom, and death, and simultaneously transforms the moods.

This really shouldn’t work, but damn me, it really does!

As in the case of the Serial Hawk song above, I haven’t yet heard the rest of the album that includes this song, which was released on March 20th, but I plan to.

https://metalcontemplation.bandcamp.com/album/au-bord-du-pr-cipice