OUR LIST OF 2014’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS: PART 16

 

We present Part 16 in the continuing rollout of our list of 2014′s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. For more details about what this list is all about and how it was compiled, read the introductory post via this link. For the other songs we’ve previously named to the list, go here.

Yes, it’s true that we had twerking and clean singing in the last installment of this list. But today we’re getting back to music that’s incinerating, and it burns with a black flame.

THY DARKENED SHADE

In Liber Lvcifer I: Khem Sedjet, the Greek black metal band Thy Darkened Shade created one of the year’s best albums. The music is intricate, technically impressive, and completely engrossing throughout the album’s extensive length — and it’s alive with passion and blazing energy.

The album is also home to one of the year’s most infectious extreme metal songs — “Revival Through Arcane Skins”. As I wrote in my review, one of the album’s most arresting features is the prominence and nimbleness of the bass, and that’s definitely a striking feature of this song in particular — that, and the jaw-dropping guitar and drum performances.

But the “Revival Through Arcane Skins” is on this list because the architect of the music, Semjaza, employs all that instrumental extravagance in the service of a very memorable song, one that has drawn me back to it over and over again — with clean-sung segments that are especially infectious. If you haven’t yet explored the wonders of this album, delay no longer….

https://wtcproductions.bandcamp.com/album/liber-lvcifer-i-khem-sedjet
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Thy-Darkened-Shade/391172430930927

 

 

 

 

 

LVCIFYRE

Dark Descent released the second album by London-based Lvcifyre almost one year ago. But despite the passage of so much time, I haven’t forgotten Svn Eater, or its pulverizing title track.

When I first heard the song, it smashed me in the head so hard that I hit the wall hard, followed by a dark descent to the floor, head still spinning. It’s a furious fusillade of pummeling, blackened death metal that manages to rhythmically slam you with riveting power even while the riffs are raking your flesh at high speed. Aided by a contagious occult melody, the song is the kind of assault that sticks in your head, or what’s left of your head after you hear it. The riff is king, and you are its slaves.

This is one of the songs on this list that came from an album we stupidly never got around to reviewing — but it’s excellent. I’d recommend this review at Angry Metal Guy.

https://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/sun-eater
https://www.facebook.com/Lvcifyre

 

 

 

 

 

 

LVTHN

Belgium’s LVTHN made its presence known during 2014 with three potent short releases, the most recent of which is a four-song compilation entitled The Grand Uncreation (which includes a cover of a Katharsis song). Though this EP was released in late December, it includes a song that first arrived on January 1, 2014, in LVTHN’s debut release — a two-track offering named Adversarialism. I’ll repeat what I wrote then:

The music is infernally chilling and ferociously powerful, a devotion to the altar of blast-beat percussion, flooding guitar distortion, and horrific vocal excretions. It’s in the vein of bestial second-wave black metal, but with excellent production and execution, and what makes it further stand out are grim melodic hooks that seize hold and don’t let go.

The LVTHN song I’m adding to this list is “Opposed By the Nameless”, a fine example of the bestial black art — torrential hailstorms of knife-edged riffs undergirded by the distant rumble of percussion and pierced by flesh-rending vocals, with waves of dark, dramatic melody moving through the music like the migration of leviathans. It’s gripping, galvanizing, ravaging music — and when the song changes at the 2:40 mark, it becomes a headbanger’s delight.

https://lvthn.bandcamp.com/album/the-grand-uncreation
https://www.facebook.com/adversarialism