This is a holy day for billions of people, a day of fasting and penitence. Here, it’s just another day of discovery. Well, perhaps not just another day, perhaps a day where feelings of resistance, and worship of a different kind, feel more demanding. Anyway, collected here are some new discoveries.

I’m confident that all dedicated fans of metal have favorite labels, whose tastes have proven to connect with our own. My personal list of favorite labels is a long one, due to the wide-ranging nature of my own tastes. But after all this time, I made a new discovery yesterday that struck a chord, a label and distro from Sao Paulo, Brazil, named Hammer of Damnation, whose roots go back more than 20 years under the original name Pure Evil Productions. I don’t know why it took so long for me to make this discovery.

As revealed by its Bandcamp page (here), this label has a very long list of releases associated with its name, but I can tell already that its owner’s tastes intersect strongly with some of my own — and I hope yours as well.

And so the following four songs are from bands whose music will be released by Hammer of Damnation in the near future, or were released quite recently. The sounds are not all the same by any means, but it’s all very, very good stuff. Continue reading »