Some weeks I have no time for even one round-up. This week I’ve gone overboard with them. Make hay while the sun shines and all that shit.

The hay I’ve made today before we hit the weekend flows like this (yeah, I know, hay doesn’t flow): We begin with an utterly decimating piece of sonic warfare, and then get pretty damned thrashy through the next three  tracks (the kind of songs that will get your motor running fast and hot). After that I’ve gone in a couple of other directions, one of which will bury you beneath mountains of stupendous heaviness and the other of which will then fill your subterranean crypt with horrors, because we don’t want you to spend eternity alone.

VITRIOL

Some metal memories are more vivid than others. I distinctly remember, for example, being left slack-jawed and dumb-struck when I first heard this Portland death metal band’s debut EP Pain Will Define Their Death. Equally vivid was the impression that Vitriol left when I caught their live performance at Northwest Terror Fest in Seattle earlier this year. It was so goddamned ferocious that it sucked the air from my lungs. And then also vivid again was my chance encounter backstage, right after the performance, with vocalist/guitarist Kyle Rasmussen, who could not have been more happy, humble, and engaging.

Put all those vivid impressions together, and they leave me super-eager for Vitriol’s debut album, To Bathe from the Throat of Cowardice, which will be released by no less a label than Century Media Records on September 6th. Continue reading »