SEEN AND HEARD: ABIGAIL WILLIAMS, DISSVARTH, MAN MUST DIE, REVENGE, SANZU, VASTUM, MC BILL PULASKI

 

I had to make a whirlwind trip to Dallas, Texas, for my fucking day job, leaving Sunday morning and returning to Seattle late yesterday. I didn’t have much time to myself, which means I fell behind in listening to new metal. On the plus side, I was put up in a swanky hotel, the corridors of which were lined with large framed photos from ’60s and ’70s fashion magazines. Every time I walked past the one above, I did a double-take. And that wasn’t the only one that stopped me in my tracks. So there’s that.

Anyway, last night and this morning I enjoyed the following new music streams and videos, presented here in alphabetical order by band name except for the last one, which is a twist on what I usually feature in these pages.

ABIGAIL WILLIAMS

Thanks to Andy Synn, we’ve previously reviewed the excellent new album by Abigail Williams, The Accuser, which will be released by Candlelight Records on October 30. Yesterday CVLT Nation premiered a video for one of the new songs named “Nuumite”. It’s the track that ends the album, and takes a sharp turn from what preceded it (though if you listen closely to the preceding songs, you’ll realize that the twist was forecast all along). Here’s what Andy wrote about the song:

 

 

“The band once again save something special for last though, as the dying bars of “Lost Communion” transition into the surprisingly languid, dreamy ambience of “Nuumite”. It’s certainly not as downright epic as its counterpart in “Beyond The Veil”, but it’s almost as drastic a shift in approach, turning the nihilistic aggression of The Accuser on its head in favour of a slow and solemn procession of sober melody and weighty, downbeat clean vocals.”

The video was directed by Mike Dickinson. It’s as cool as the song (which carried me back a long way in some of its dark, post-punk flavorings), though it probably warrants a NSFW warning.

Pre-orders for The Accuser are available on Bandcamp, where you can listen to another song — and you can catch another one HERE that we premiered.

https://candlelightrecordsusa.bandcamp.com/album/the-accuser
https://www.facebook.com/abigailwilliamsofficial

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DISSVARTH

Dissvarth is a collaboration between Dis Pater (Midnight Odyssey) and Svarthen (Aeon Winds), both of them providing vocals, keyboards, and guitars. Their debut album will be released by I, Voidhanger in early 2016.

I previously wrote about the first advance track from the album (here), and now another sample of music has surfaced in the form of a song called “Ablaze of Solar Night”. It’s an Exception To Our Rule. It’s also the kind of music that can carry you away in a remarkably short space of time. This album remains way up on my radar screen — hope you enjoy this new song, too.

 

https://www.facebook.com/Dissvarth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MAN MUST DIE

Oh, we really do love Scotland’s Man Must Die around here. It is, therefore, not surprising that mere hours after the band posted a new single as a lyric video on YouTube, DGR fired up his message cannon and distributed the link, with these words: “This cover song happened, it is glorious”. And yes, it’s MMD’s cover of “Milk” by S.O.D. from that band’s 1985 album Speak English Or Die. And yeah, it’s glorious.

https://www.facebook.com/ManMustDie/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

REVENGE

A couple weeks ago I wrote about an advance track called “Silent Enemy” from the new album by Canadian black metal torrential chaos practitioners Revenge — Behold.Total.Rejection. And now we have another.

This new one is named “Nihilist Militant (Total Rejection)”. It’s as batshit unhinged and as brutally savage as you would expect if you’re familiar with Revenge, but it’s also really interesting, too — which is also what you should expect. I mean, shit, the drum track alone is tearing a hole in the fabric of space-time… and the vocals sound like the monstrous tentacled thing that’s coming through into our dimension.

Behold.Total.Rejection. will be released by Season of Mist on November 13 worldwide. It’s available in various formats at the Season of Mist E-Shop.

https://revengeofficial.bandcamp.com/album/behold-total-rejection
https://www.facebook.com/RevengeofficialSoMpage

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SANZU

It took a glowing review by our own Andy Synn to make me listen to Painless, the debut EP by Australia’s Sanzu. I’m so glad I did. As Andy so eloquently wrote, “it’s really fucking heavy”. And now more Sanzu is on the way.

Yesterday the band released a lyric video for a song called “Ubiety”, which will appear on the band’s first full-length, Heavy Over the Home — scheduled for release on December 3. There are still aspects of the Gojira worship that marked Painless, but this song is a grinding, shrieking, perilous black thing, and the sign of a band who we already knew were really good spreading their (bat) wings. The video, which was directed by Sanzu with cinematography by Dark Spirit Photography, is very cool, too.

Heavy Over the Home can be pre-ordered via the link below (and you can catch another song from the album here):

https://sanzu.bandcamp.com/merch
https://www.facebook.com/SanzuOfficial

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VASTUM

As you know if you’ve been paying attention to our putrid site, Hole Below is the new album by the Bay Area’s Vastum. Yesterday Invisible Oranges premiered yet another song from this absolute beast of an album. It’s the closing track, “Empty Breast”, and it’s a staggering, black-hearted hybrid, part rumbling tank attack and part dismal pounding of coffin nails through hands and feet.

Produced in a way that gives the song massive weight and presence, the music is morbidly pestilential yet galvanizing, utterly doomed in its forlorn central melody yet spine-shaking in its physical impact. Fucking creepy outro, too.

Vastum’s Hole Below drops on November 6th as LP, CD, and digital on 20 Buck Spin and as a limited-edition cassette tape on Sentient Ruin (which can be pre-ordered on their Bandcamp). Go here to listen to the new song:

http://www.invisibleoranges.com/2015/10/vastum-empty-breast-premiere/

https://www.facebook.com/Vastum-440192535391/

 

 

 

MC BILL PULASKI

Okay, now we’re jumping off our usual beaten paths for the last item in this collection.

I’m not a big fan of hip-hop, and so I’m the last person you would ask for recommendations and opinions about it. But this next song has certain connections to death metal that I couldn’t ignore.

First of all, it’s the creation of Will Smith (in his guise as MC Bill Pulaski), the frontman of such killer extreme metal outfits as Artificial Brain and Buckshot Facelift. The song will appear on his upcoming mixtape Station Music.

Second, this jam is a tribute to Antimo Buonnano, the original vocalist of Mexico’s Disgorge and a player in many other excellent bands, including Hacavitz.

Third, though MC Bill Pulaski gathered beats from various sources to back his rhymes (a beat by JimDino the Great on this particular song), the vocal recording, editing, and mastering for the Station Music mixtape were done by Jay Newman of Unearthly Trance in his Long Island studio.

And fourth, just listen to the words….

(As MC Bill Pulaski explained in a Facebook post, “When you ‘wanna be Antimo’, it doesn’t mean you have to imitate what he does, it just means that you have to go full beast mode on whatever you are doing – no compromises.”)

https://www.facebook.com/MCBillPulaski