Groza
It was one of those weeks when my day job jackhammered me into submission. I fell far behind even in saving links to new songs and videos I might want to check out, and the hundreds of emails we receive every day went mostly un-read. And man, what a week to fall behind in. As people used to say 5 or 10 years ago, there was a metric shit-ton of new releases and song or video premieres.
I did obsessively spend a chunk of time this morning just making lists of links, and felt overwhelmed at the end of that exercise. If I had total control over my life I’d spend most of the rest of the day plowing through all those links and compiling round-ups, or at least one gigantic one. But my day-job project isn’t finished, and I’ve got to turn back to it, even on a fucking weekend. So I’ve just dipped my toe in the ocean, and this is what dripped off of it.
GROZA (Germany)
To begin, I chose a video for “Elegance of Irony“, a song off a new album named The Redemptive End by these Bavarian black metallers.
The shoegaze-y song rings and rocks, is sinister and searing, and includes riffs galore, vocals of scorching intensity, and lots of interesting drum fills. The mysterious and menacing video makes for a nice companion to the music.
The album will be released by AOP Records on August 6th.
https://www.facebook.com/grozaband/
APATHY NOIR (Sweden/UK)
Speaking of menace and mystery, those are dominant sensations in the new Apathy Noir song, “Black Seas of Infinity“. The music is elaborate and entrancing, revealing both expansive vistas of sound and periods of moody introspection and solitude, but a nearly ever-present feeling of tension and peril cloaks the music, mixed with melodies of angst and grief.
The band’s mastermind Viktor Jonas is still at the helm, and he’s again complemented by the multi-faceted vocal talents of our own Andy Synn. The album is At the Edge of the World, and it will be released on August 5th.
https://www.facebook.com/apathynoir/
EYES OF PERDITION (U.S.)
Now I’ll switch things up with a ruinous, hammering, braying death metal barrage that will pound your skull into splinters but will also send your pulse racing with torrid flamethrower riffs and ravenous vocal ferocity from Lindsay O. Goddamned merciless, and goddamned thrilling too.
The song title is a mouthful: “When Deeply Ingrained Traumas Spill Forth Like Maggots in Carrion“. The album title is Incendiary Truths, and it’s set for release by these Las Vegas brutalitarians on August 13th.
https://www.facebook.com/EyesofPerdition
THUMOS (U.S.)
I was fascinated by this mysterious band’s June 2021 EP The End of Words, and so I quickly gravitated toward this next song, which is the first one revealed from a new release named Nothing Further Beyond.
“The Pillars” delivers weird, wailing guitar discordance that quivers, squirms, and moans above jackhammering riffs and skull-busting percussion. It creates an atmosphere of hallucinatory dementia, which persists even when the crystalline shimmer of the guitar becomes less discordant and the grooves more neck-bending.
The new EP will be released digitally on September 3rd, and it will be available on 10″ picture disc and cassette from Snow Wolf Records.
https://thumos.bandcamp.com/album/nothing-further-beyond
KAAMOS WARRIORS (Finland)
Now we have another video, this one for the song “Tuli“, which was taken from the band’s third album Kirous; that record was released last December by Inverse Records.
This is a hard-driving, hard-charging song, albeit one laced with ethereal sonic mists and segmented with rocking grooves. The vocals are nasty but the riffing is seductive — like the bedazzling seduction of witches and warlocks practicing incantations. And while you listen, you can watch slow-motion footage of snow flying at the hands of a cloaked and hooded figure.
P.S. Kaamos Warriors also just released a new single named “In Blood and Spirit“, which includes guest vocalist Mikael Heikkilä. I’m including a stream of that as well.
https://www.facebook.com/KaamosWarriorsOfficial
KASCK (India)
And to close, I picked from the metal butcher case some prime red meat for hungry thrashers. “Death to the Crooked“, which is this band’s second single overall, gets stuck in the head damned fast. It’s an adrenaline-fueled, politically charged, furious and blazing rush, with doses of jolting, highly headbang-able groove. It comes with a video that explains the anger and the bleakness in the music.
This song, and the band’s first single, will eventually be included on an EP entitled Deal with the Devil.
https://kasck.bandcamp.com/track/death-to-the-crooked
https://www.facebook.com/Kasck.India