SEEN AND HEARD (PART 1): HOSTIUM, DAEMONIIS AD NOCTUM, HELION, LAMANTIDE, NADIMAC, THRASHFIRE

 

As I mentioned in my last post yesterday (here), I had more than the usual amount of time on Monday and Tuesday to explore new music and found a lot that I enjoyed. In addition to the six videos collected in that last post, I’ve selected recent songs from six more bands here. And at the risk of overwhelming you with metal, we’ll soon be following this round-up today with a second one assembled by Grant Skelton.

HOSTIUM

Hostium are rooted in Vancouver British Columbia. Their debut album The Bloodwine of Satan is projected for a vinyl release by Germany’s Iron Bonehead Productions in February of the new year, and a CD version will be released around the same time by NecroShrine Records. In recent days Iron Bonehead deployed a track named “Bloodwine Chalice” to Soundcloud.

This is primitive, primally appealing black metal. It seems so simple at first, but it’s like a delayed-action poison — when it kicks into gear, it burns like a fever. It lumbers, it races, it rocks, it repeats — and as the song changes tempos and rhythms, it continues to burrow into your veins. At the end, it builds to a rampaging gallop. (The vocals, by the way, are vile and disgusting — just as they should be.)

www.ironbonehead.de
http://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DAEMONIIS AD NOCTUM

Daemoniis Ad Noctum are from Portland, Oregon, and their roster includes members of Panzergod and Raptor and a former member of Axion and Dead Conspiracy. The band’s debut EP Shade was released on November 17 by Portland’s Exile Music(k) on limited edition tape and digitally.

 

 

Shade integrates the dismal drag and soul-sinking weight of doom with hell-ripping black thrash assaults, combining sludgy low-end heft, whirring treble-shifted riff swarms, and scalding shrieked vocals. Heavy and evil and nicely headbangable.

https://exilemusick.bandcamp.com/album/daemoniis-ad-noctum-shade-demo
https://www.facebook.com/Daemoniis-ad-Noctum-391593804347010/
https://www.facebook.com/Exile-Musick-1172514182765043/

 

 

 

 

 

 

HELION

The Lombardy region of northern Italy is home to the death metal band Helion. Their debut release is a four-track EP entitled Duat’s Calling. Yesterday (thanks to a link from my friend Tito) I caught up with a YouTube clip that combines the EP’s instrumental introductory track and its first song proper, “Pyramid’s Cult”.

That introduction is a somber string piece backed by a martial drum pattern, and the beginning of “Pyramid’s Cult” picks up that mournful melody and then spins it (and your head) through a high-speed centrifuge of ferocious, technically flashy (and thrashy) death metal with a contrasting, off-pace second half that features exotic eastern melody — the song is something like an intersection of Nile and Behemoth.

After listening to that video clip, I found the EP’s other two tracks on Soundcloud and I’m including those below as well (the last of which ambitiously reaches for the 12-minute mark). Like “Pyramid’s Cult”, they display not only impressive speed and technical flair but also a knack for interesting melodic hooks (and the extended instrumental interlude in that long track, which includes piano, strings, and wonderful guitar soloing, is beautifully done).

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Helion/180006592030495

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LAMANTIDE

Coincidentally, the next band also comes from Lombardy in northern Italy, and more specifically the town of Cremona. Their name is Lamantide, and their latest release is an EP entitled Carnis Tempora: Abyssus that came out late last month. It did a very effective job staving in my head and scrambling the brains.

Lamantide’s music is part hardcore, part death metal, part post-metal, part math-core derangement. The band prove their skill at keeping the listener off-balance, vaulting from brutally effective skull-clobbering to spinning out seductive melodies, while piercing the songs with blinding eruptions of unhinged guitar dissonance or episodes of shimmering cosmic ambience. The tempos and moods turn on a dime, but this is one talented band who know how to make such sharp twists and turns work, even though you never know what’s coming next.

Carnis Tempora: Abyssus is a “name your price” download on Bandcamp, and it’s also available on clear vinyl (distributors are listed on the Bandcamp page):

https://www.facebook.com/lamantidehc
https://lamantide.bandcamp.com/album/carnis-tempora-abyssus

 

 

 

 

 

 

NADIMAC

For the next selection of heavy sounds I’m venturing to Serbia, which is the homeland of a thrash band named Nadimac (Надимач). Metal-Archives shows that they’ve put out songs for a prodigious number of splits since 2008, as well as four full-length albums. The most recent of the latter (released this past June) is Manifest protiv sudbine, which I discovered on the Bandcamp page of the excellent Witches Brew label.

Below I’m going to embed the stream for the album’s 11th of 14 tracks — “Glas Pod Zemljom” — because that’s the first one I heard; and then I’m also including a stream of the album as a whole. “Glad Pod Zemljom” is so goddamn full of energy, so loaded with high-octane riffs and turbocharged drumming, so infectiously groovy and inventive, that I found it irresistible. If you stick with it, you’ll find that the rest of the album is just as electrifying. This really isn’t run-of-the-mill thrash.

https://witchesbrewthrashes.bandcamp.com/track/glas-pod-zemljom

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THRASHFIRE

I decided to stay in a thrash vein for the last item in this collection. It was the last discovery I made before putting this post to bed, but it might be the catchiest song in here. It’s called “Chainsaw Metal”, and it’s by a band named Thrashfire from Ankara, Turkey. The song is off the band’s new EP Vengeance of Fire, which will be released by Dave Rotten’s Xtreem Music label on December 20.

The riffs in this thing are solid gold, except they’re so heavy and vicious that maybe it’s better to say they’re solid uranium. And the song includes vocals that are just as hellish and deranged, as well as some cool bass work that becomes especially noticeable when the band switch riffs after the halfway point. And to repeat, this thing is as contagious as influenza.

https://www.facebook.com/thrashbeerandviolence/
http://www.xtreemmusic.com/