SHADES OF BLACK (Part 2): INTO DARKNESS, SABBATIC GOAT, SERPENTRANCE, TREPANATION

This is Part 2 of a round-up I began earlier today (here). The new songs collected in both parts of this post are the result of my recent submergence in the deepest, dankest pits of black, death, and doom, from which I’ve surfaced with some kind of necrotizing disease that I feel the need to communicate to my fellow lepers. Enjoy!

INTO DARKNESS

After only one listen, I proclaimed the debut demo by Italy’s Into Darkness “one of the best death/doom releases of 2012″. After a line-up change, they then followed that auspicious start with a 7″ EP entitled Transmigration of Cosmic Creatures Into the Unknown (reviewed here), which proved that the 2012 demo was no fluke.

In between those two releases the band produced another demo named Cosmic Chaos (2013) (discussed here and available on Bandcamp), which included a rough mix of a song entitled “Shifted To the Red End of the Spectrum”. Finally, that song is going to be released on a vinyl split with San Diego’s Ghoulgotha, and today it became available inn revised form on Bandcamp.

 

 

As much as I liked the rough cut of the song, the new post-production version is better. The quality of the sound is much improved, without sacrificing any of the music’s thoroughly galvanizing power — in fact, it’s even more powerful. The riffs are still fantastic, the percussion is still dismantling, and Doomed Warrior’s vocals are still amazing. If you haven’t climbed on board this hellish bandwagon yet, it’s time you did.

The Into Darkness vinyl split with Ghoulgotha should be available for sale from Unholy Domain Records in the next few weeks. Meanwhile you can download the Into Darkness side at their Bandcamp page, linked below. I’ve included the song in two different players.

http://intodarkness.bandcamp.com/album/shifted-to-the-red-end-of-the-spectrum-abnormal-paralysis-split-7ep-2014
https://www.facebook.com/IntoDarkness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SABBATIC GOAT/TREPANATION

I got an alert from Bandcamp yesterday that Iron Bonehead had uploaded a new split, with one song each from two New Zealand bands — Sabbatic Goat and Trepanation.

Sabbatic Goat’s song is “Kingdom of Enslavement”. The air raid siren starts screaming, a magisterial march begins, and then the song explodes like massed flamethrowers. It’s a merciless attack that’s only thoughtful enough to cauterize the blood flow with a spew of molten fire. It’s a thrashing blackened death holocaust led by some kind of subterranean leviathan behind the mic, and it sounds great.

Trepanation’s track is “Absurd”. No air raid siren for this one, just a squeal of feedback and the sudden settling of a noxious fog — and then it bolts forward like tank cavalry from beyond the veil, trailing putrid smoke and flaming oil. It’s a rhythmically dynamic song that includes moments of staggering doom as well as moments of high-octane rampaging. It has a corroded and decaying sound quality, but that only enhances the destructiveness of the music. And the vocalist  — he’s fucking unhinged.

The split will be released on cassette by Vault of Dried Bones and on 7″ vinyl by both New Zealand’s Black Chaos Productions and the afore-mentioned Iron Bonehead Productions. For now, it’s available as a digital download here:

http://blackchaosproductions.bandcamp.com/album/sabbatic-goat-trepanation-split

Check out the music after all these fuckin’ links:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sabbatic-Goat/147760521954975
https://www.facebook.com/trepanation666
http://www.vaultofdriedbones.com/
http://ironbonehead.de
http://blackchaosproductions.bigcartel.com

 

 

 

 

 

SERPENTRANCE

Back in April I stumbled across a mysterious entity known as Serpentrance and a song that had appeared on Bandcamp by the name of “Obeisance To the Antiquity of Sin”. I frothed at the mouth over it (here), and have been waiting in dreadful anticipation for something more. Today it came.

The new song is named “The Aphotic Temples”. It moves between galloping, meat-grinding decimation and an offal-drenched crawl, the entire horrific affair radiating distortion and an aura of damnation and despair. The vocalist is believably abominable and gargantuan, and the drumwork is riveting.

I still know nothing about the people behind this primeval death entity. I will now resume my trembling wait for more of their aural horrors. They’re up from 60 FB likes to 294 since I last wrote about them — add to those numbers here:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Serpentrance/243700699154518