Here are a half dozen new tracks and videos from forthcoming records that caught my attention over the last 24 hours, and are worth your attention. I think you’ll find that altogether they make for an interconnected playlist that flows well.
KRALLICE (U.S.)
If there is now any kind of reliable forecast for new music from Krallice, it is to expect the unexpected. It seems evident that the many creative forces within the band are simply uninterested in plowing the same furrow twice, and instead they give free rein to what interests them and how they’re feeling at the moment. Like all good mavericks, the impulse to shake things up also seems to be alive and well.
The occasion for these thoughts is the release of “Crystalline Exhaustion“, the title track from the band’s 11th studio album. Clocking in at a luxurious 14 minutes, it plows many furrows, moving from a mesmerizing astral ambient excursion (which is both downcast and celestial) into a pulse-quickening gallop enlivened by glittering tones that ring and reverberate, and from there into booming percussive thunder, a wash of swirling guitar and synths that’s both distressing and glorious, and scorching vocal tirades. The feverish intensity and the sweeping grandeur of the sounds ascend in breathtaking fashion, and then we drift away into wonder….
I read one comment by someone who claims to know, but the accuracy of which I haven’t verified, for this new album Nick McMaster played guitar, Mick Barr played bass, and Colin Marston confined himself to synths. As usual, Lev Weinstein‘s drumming is electrifying.
Crystalline Exhaustion will be digitally released on January 28th. CDs, tapes and shirts will be released in March by P2 (pre-orders will start on January 28th). Vinyl will be released in the future by Gilead Media
https://krallice.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/krallice
NEGATIVA (Spain)
04 is the name of the third full-length from Negativa, the longest running project of Spanish artist D.B. (Délirant, Hässlig). The first preview track, “XXV“, apparently surfaced last November but I somehow overlooked it until receiving an e-mail abut the album yesterday.
With just a few momentous booms as prelude, the song explodes, drums driving like turbocharged pistons and the union of guitars and synths coming in exhilarating but emotionally tormented waves, accompanied by shattering vocals. The distressing tension in the music coils relentlessly, even when the drums become steadier or vanish altogether. It’s like being overcome by a typhoon or a wildfire — a calamitous panorama of fear and pain that rivets the senses.
04 has a release date of January 28th. It will be released by Mystískaos in digital and vinyl editions (with vinyl distribution handled by Dissociative Visions). A CD edition will be released by Nebular Carcoma.
https://negativa0.bandcamp.com/album/04
https://www.facebook.com/negativa0
UNRU (Germany)
A long six years after their full-length debut these Germans have announced that their second album, Die Wiederkehr des Verdrängten, is headed for release on March 4th via Bablyon Doom Cult Records. Yesterday Invisible Oranges premiered the new album’s title track, which is also its shortest track. Stylistically it’s a different kind of beast than what I remember from the band’s debut.
This beast is a heavy, lurching, and ominous one at first, but takes off in pulse-pounding fashion, building a mood of life-threatening danger. The harsh vocals change into soaring, solemn wails as the music itself soars and sweeps. When the song reprises the opening sequence, get ready for your body to reflexively heave.
https://www.babylondoomcultrecords.com/?s=unru&post_type=product
https://www.facebook.com/unruband
HAUTAJAISYÖ (Finland)
The Finnish Death metal band Hautajaisyö (whose name means “funeral night”) will be releasing their fourth album Ei Hauta Kysy Lupaa later this year through Inverse Records. The first single, “Kuuleeko kukaan” (“does anybody hear”), surfaced about a week ago and I caught up with it yesterday.
The song is a gripping manifestation of menace and madness, driven by fast-changing drumwork, a panoply of seething, frenzied, and jolting riffs, monstrous guttural vox, and hideous howls. It gets the muscles twitching and the mind spinning.
https://hautajaisyo.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Hautajaisyo/
IMPLORE (Germany)
In the next video you’ll get to see a fine-looking beautifully-decorated naked man wandering through the wilderness, as well as fully clothed metal dudes taking out their violent impulses on helpless musical instruments.
The music is a new single named “The Burden of Existence“, which was released yesterday by the band’s new label Church Road Records. It brutally pounds and howls, squirms in unnerving fashion, and convulses in spasms of dissonance and percussive mayhem. There’s fury in the music, as well as desperation and anguish, and its rapid changes will keep you on your toes.
With regard to the new song, Implore comment: “‘The Burden of Existence’ is the agonizing tale of enduring life, with its different stages and consequences. At times the beauty of nature is enough to justify the principle of universal finality.”
P.S. If you’d rather watch a might-as-well-be-naked young woman young writhe in the throes of maniacal ecstasy and a bound man squirm like a worm, while listening to the howling and hammering discord of new music by Bunuel, you can go here.
https://bfan.link/the-burden-of-existence
https://www.facebook.com/imploreband
BLAZEMTH (Spain)
And to close this little round-up of new sights and sounds I’ve chosen a lyric video for the title song of this Spanish band’s debut album The Return of Lucifer. (It may be a first full-length, but the band’s origin story begins in about 1993 under the name Daemonium).
In commenting on the album, the band’s label Xtreem Music invokes a vintage style of black metal from the early ’90s, in the vein of Immortal. Dissection, Mayhem, Necrophobic, and Christ Agony. This title song is deeply sinister and ravishing in its savagery, but it also creates visions of perilous magnificence as it swirls and rises on hot thermals like some immense dragon. The song is capable of carrying you away in its great talons, and the beautiful instrumental interlude just adds to the song’s feeling of vast grandeur.
The Return of Lucifer will be released through Xtreem Music (CD, 12″ vinyl, cassette tape, and digital formats) on March 15th. I’ve also included a stream of the album’s first single, “Visions of My Dark Soul”.
https://xtreemmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-return-of-lucifer
https://www.facebook.com/blazemthband