Sep 082014
 

I thought I’d pass along a few more recently discovered items before calling it quits for the day. Obviously, I think everything in here is worth your time.

FISTULA

I’m about as peace-loving a soul as you could ever meet, yet much of the music I enjoy is violent. Maybe listening to violent music helps me keep cool most of the rest of the time. But I really don’t listen to violent music for therapeutic purposes — I listen to it because I get off on the power and the energy.

Violence in metal takes many forms. Fistula’s new album Vermin Prolificus (released by To Live A Lie Records) is the kind that just wants to beat you senseless with grotesque sludgy riffs and tear your throat out with raw, shrieking vocal extremity.

 

 

The music varies between slow, merciless lumbering and bust-up-the-furniture rampages. Part sludge, part grind, part hardcore, Fistula stitch together different strains of extreme music to produce a Frankenstein’s monster that even fire won’t kill.

The ugly, viscerally potent music is effectively layered with samples of various kinds — the one about drug rehab that comes at the end of “”Smoke Cat Hair and Toenails” and reappears elsewhere is especially disturbing. The samples are selected to suit Fistula’s lyrical themes, which are politically charged; the massively crushing “Pig Funeral”, for example, isn’t a lament for deceased barnyard animals.

Check out the music below. For info about how to acquire it, visit these links:

https://www.facebook.com/fistula666
http://www.patacrecords.com/distro/Fistula-Vermin-Prolificus-Vinyl-LP?zenid=99repv15st3d4gna38s5a5sra4
http://www.tolivealie.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

REVENGE

I’ve got Dan A. to thank for the discovery of this band from Western Massachusetts. They recently released an album named The Heavens Are Empty that has just been tearing up my insides. Yes, it’s violent, too.

The hardcore violence comes in waves of assaulting riffs and rib-cracking percussion, laced with vocal shrieking of the most bloody-minded sort and anchored by tremendously brutal grooves. When the breakdowns come, they’re massively skull-splitting — but the music as a whole will fuck your shit up just as effectively.

The album is available for download on Bandcamp or physically from the Rat Trax label. If you want just one song to sample, go for “The Night Has Teeth” — it will give you a taste of low and slow bludgeoning before Revenge start smashing the furniture into splinters — or “Deterioration”, which is an immediate headbang trigger and also includes a skin-scorching solo.

http://rattrax.bandcamp.com/album/rat-004-revenge-the-heavens-are-empty/
http://www.Rattrax.bigcartel.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

SHEVILS

Unlike the first two bands in this post, I’ve written about Oslo’s Shevils before, most recently in a review of their 2013 album Lost In Tartarus. Late last month they released a new single named “Shivers” and have made it available for free download at Soundcloud (check the link below).

I’ve been meaning to say something about “Shivers” for a while now. It marries beefy riffs, a hook-filled guitar lead, punk rhythms, and blood-spurting vocals. It’s not as violent as the first two offerings in this post, but there’s still something about it that’s dark, despite how catchy it is. Check it out below.

https://soundcloud.com/shevils/shivers
https://www.facebook.com/shevils/

 

 

  4 Responses to “SEEN AND HEARD: FISTULA, REVENGE, SHEVILS”

  1. good god, that Fistula record. YOu were right. Fucking terrifying. And Revenge is great too.

  2. ..thought I was going to hear about new music from Revenge (Canada) 🙁

  3. Pretty surprised they chose that name considering the pedigree of the Ross Bay Revenge.
    Not to mention they’ve recently been touring around a bit and well, I just wouldnt want to cross a dude like J. Read. He’d probably wear yr skull as a cod piece.

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