HEAVY AS HELL: NEW MUSIC FROM BÖLZER, INFERNAL CURSE, YOUNG AND IN THE WAY, BLACK TONGUE

This is a collection of recommended new music and videos, all of it except one discovered by your humble editor over the last 24 hours. What they have in common, apart from the fact that they’re really good: you will be bludgeoned, gutted, and left for worms.

BÖLZER

I had a passion for this Swiss band’s 2013 EP, Aura, that bordered on the unhealthy. I listened to it so much that I became convinced an alien entity had taken up residence in my skull (and lord knows there’s enough space in there for a roommate). I also included “Entranced By the Wolfshook” on my list of 2013’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. I’ve been tremendously eager to hear what Bölzer would do next. Now I know.

Thanks to a tip from KevinP, I discovered this morning that the band had started streaming a new song named “Steppes” on SoundCloud. It is one of two tracks (totaling about 18 minutes) that will appear on a forthcoming EP named Soma. The artwork will again be prepared by Alexander L Brown, and it will be released by Invictus Productions.

Earlier this year, the band wrote this about Soma on their Facebook page:

“‘Soma’ consists of two odes to the goddess Luna, set amidst a thematic backdrop of war and the surrender of the fleshly temple. The tonal and conceptual qualities will contrast the themes of spiritual birth and phallic solar worship offered on ‘Aura’, ultimately perpetuating the cyclical struggle of energies.”

There is definitely some kind of struggle happening within “Steppes”, a convulsive movement of swarming alien entities, tearing and howling and striking with merciless mallet blows. It’s both militaristic and otherworldly, and it proves again that Bölzer are in touch with strange attractive energies that elude the grasp of many other blackened death metal bands. Listen:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/BÖLZER/108657105834227

 

 

 

 

 

INFERNAL CURSE

Once again, I owe a debt of gratitude to CVLT Nation, because yesterday they premiered a song by an Argentinian trio named Infernal Curse that is just eating me alive and not even spitting out the bones. I am doubly grateful because they made the song stream share-able, allowing me to put the music below.

The song is named “Waters of Phlegethon” and it comes from a four-song EP entitled The End Upon Us that’s due for release by Iron Bonehead Productions on May 16. My god, this thing is a gargantuan beast. The massive, radioactive riffs and drum blows in the first seconds of the song come down like nuclear hammer strikes of ultimate doom. And then the thing starts to chug, and I thought my head was going to come off. And then the pacing increases further, and it’s like someone has shoved a high-voltage cattle prod down your throat or hurled you into a maelstrom of knives and ice.

It’s riveting, horrifying, thoroughly devastating, and ferociously infectious. Fuck, where has this band been all my life?

www.facebook.com/bandinfernalcurse
www.ironbonehead.de/
www.facebook.com/IronBoneheadProductions

 

 

 

 

 

YOUNG AND IN THE WAY

This North Carolina band have got a new 11-song album named When Life Comes To Death that Deathwish Inc. plans to release on May 27. Last month I wrote about an amazing video of the band executing a Candlemass cover at a show in March, which just fuckin’ killed me. And now they’ve released another video that’s killing me all over again.

Unlike that last one, this video is for a song from the new album — “Be My Blood”. Even if you just listened to the song without watching the video (and you can do that on Bandcamp), you’d still be left obliterated. But the video (directed by Max Moore) definitely enhances the destructiveness of the raging experience.

https://www.facebook.com/yaitw
http://deathwishinc.bandcamp.com/track/be-my-blood-2
http://store.deathwishinc.com/product/DW159v.html

 

 

 

 

 

BLACK TONGUE

Black Tongue are a UK band whose name I originally heard because their ranks include two members (Eddie Pickard and Aaron Kitcher) from Infant Annihilator, who drew a fair amount of attention at our humble site. Black Tongue have recorded a debut EP named Born Hanged that will be released on May 14 (and is now available for pre-order here), and last last week they released a video for a song called “Coma”.

If you’re looking for subtlety and nuance, look elsewhere. If you’re a death core hater, you should probably look elsewhere, too (although Black Tongue put a few doom-y twists on the genre standard). But if you just want to be beaten, battered, and bludgeoned into a pile of bone splinters and intestinal paste, this will do nicely. It’s low, slow, and saturated with bleak atmosphere, and the breakdowns are goddamn pulverizing.

https://www.facebook.com/blacktongueuk

 

https://www.facebook.com/blacktongueuk/
http://totaldeathcore.bandcamp.com/album/born-hanged