I obviously didn’t prepare a Seen and Heard roundup yesterday, which is usually the way I spend Saturday mornings. Just too many other interferences, both personal and job-related, so I checked out.
Today has its own interferences in store for me, some eagerly anticipated and others more mentally grinding. But I couldn’t stomach the idea of missing another appointment with our visitors, so I got an early start on the day and managed to pull together the following recommendations, presented in alphabetical order by band name.
EFRAAH ENHSIKAAH (France?)
As I was beginning to make choices for this column I received an alert about a new starkweather SubStack entry (here). Although I didn’t have much time to spare, I did quickly read through the new recommendations there.
As usual, I found lots of things I want to check out, in addition to some I knew about already, but only took the time to listen to one of the selections, and I fell for it quickly. Here’s what Rennie wrote about it in the SubStack column:
Osmose Productions dropped a single from Efraah Enhsikaah a little while back and color me intrigued. Utterly savage vocals, cold, driven riffs that are as informed by Polish black metal as it is the Norwegian hordes and the Icelandic tribes. Stately and majestic in a state of dissonant melodicism. Parts of this remind me of Andavald and Mgla.
The song in question, “Letharia Vulpina“, rings high, pounds low like boulders dropping, and chops like an ax. The screams are sky-high too, and way up there in the sonic stratosphere electrifying spectacles occur.
The heaving and throbbing heaviness of the bass is a key feature, just as much as the frantic fretwork machinations, the hair-raising screams, and the vivid chopping of the snare. But it’s that panoply of swirling and spasming high-end tones that suck the wind from a listener’s lungs.
When the rhythm section pause near the end, the music becomes more chilling and otherworldly, and the cold chill persists even after the rhythm section return. At the every end, there’s an acoustic guitar piece with a medieval resonance.
This is from a debut album named One Thousand Vultures Waiting To Be Fed, which will be out on October 27th. It features guest vocals from Meyhna’ch (solo, Mütiilation).
https://bit.ly/efraah-enhsikaah-store
https://bfan.link/EE-one-thousand-vultures-waiting-to-be-fed
https://osmoseproductions.bandcamp.com/album/one-thousand-vultures-waiting-to-be-fed
ERSHETU (France?)
Two days ago Debemur Morti Productions unveiled a video created by Dehn Sora for the song “From Corn to Dust” from a debut album by Ershetu, and that’s what comes next in today’s collection. It was accompanied by the following info:
ERSHETU was formed in 2021 by conceptualist/lyricist Void and composer Sacr to create cinematic music which merges epic, obscure and atmospheric Metal with the poignant dramaticism of film scores. Each forthcoming album from the project will explore conceptions of Death within a particular civilization or religion.
Apart from that, I was further intrigued by the disclosure that the album includes vocals by Lars Nedland (BORKNAGAR, SOLEFALD) and black metal guitars, bass, and drums performed by Vindsval (BLUT AUS NORD, FORHIST).
This particular song has a sound that’s both immense and ethereal, daunting and distressing. The singing comes in strident impassioned tones (joined by vicious snarls), and the old tones of a flute join in. The guitars grind and whirl, the drums hammer and clatter, and the melodies sweep in vast waves, but the song will also give your spine some swift jolts, and violins vividly dart.
The experience does have a mythic atmosphere, but it’s richly multi-faceted. The video is a marvelous feast for the eyes too.
This song appears on the album Xibalba, which will be out on October 27th. As the name suggests, it focuses on Mayan folklore, “us[ing] an interpretation of ideas from sacred text the Popol Vuh, not as a historical or ethnological lesson, but to vividly transport listeners into a tumultuous ancient world where Life & Death were perpetually intertwined.”
EU shop: https://bit.ly/ershetuEU
US shop: https://bit.ly/ershetuUS
Bandcamp: https://bit.ly/xibalbaBC
Ershetu: https://www.facebook.com/ershetu
GRAVE GNOSIS (U.S.)
The Floridian occult black metal band Grave Gnosis have been working on their third album for a while, and at last it’s ready, with a release planned to occur on the Winter Solstice, December 21st.
Yesterday, on the Autumnal Solstice, the band released a song from the album named “Ragziel“, along with a lyric video. They wrote this about it:
This track is dedicated to the Mercurial spirit of the Vedantic Nihilism, BERACHESH. The music, lyrics, and visualizer are all designed to evoke the essence of that Spirit, and call upon Him to join the listener, to bless them with His forbidden Gnosis.
Grave Gnosis manifest this particular invocation of that Raven Spirit with music that does seem like an aural form of esoteric sorcery, a ritual flavored with hallucinogens. It has a dark and ominous cast, but the layering of flickering guitars, ethereal keys, and warm, sprightly bass tones also make it inviting — yet still sinister.
The words come forth in gritty snarls and possessed screams, almost submerged in the glorious sweep and feverish delirium of the surrounding spectacles. The drums and bass sound earthy (and sometimes like an avalanche), but nothing else does. As the music shifts, relentlessly, it channels varying moods in breathtaking fashion — of despair and splendor, of peril and bleak grandeur.
The song includes Resurrectionist on guest vocals, and cello performances by Christopher Edward Brown (Kakophonix).
The name of the forthcoming third album is Pestilence Crowned. The band say that the new song will be released on Bandcamp within the next few days.
https://gravegnosis.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/gravegnosis
JZOVCE (France)
If you don’t know, Distant Voices is a DIY French label founded in the summer of 2012 that usually provides its releases in tiny quantities of cassette tapes, which arrive with hand-made artwork and inscriptions of different kinds on beautiful papers or fabric. I buy them occasionally as a means of support, and because I like holding and looking at what arrives, even though digital files are my primary means of listening.
Some of Distant Voices‘ releases are the projects of the label’s owner Thomas Bel. One of those is Jzovce, which has produced three albums and half a dozen EPs since 2019. The most recent of those EPs, Inverses, was released on September 19th, and this time it’s available on 7″ vinyl in addition to tape and digital formats.
The past music of Jzovce has tended to pivot with its alter ego’s interests and moods, so you never know exactly what to expect. I suppose this new EP warrants the label “avant-garde black metal”.
The first song here, “A grands feux“, turns out to be a multi-colored beast. First it puts nerves on end with eerie, dissonant guitar contortions and primitive drum beats, and then dials up the intensity, turning up the searing and soaring heat of the guitars, punching the drums into blasting mode, and venting acid screams.
The intensity ebbs and then the music shifts again, delivering slashing and jolting chords over a stalking cadence before the hurtling raw black metal hellfire breaks loose again. The music also swirls in glorious delirium with a back-beat drive, and then becomes hallucinatory and near-medieval in its tones at the end, like a mutated piano or harpsichord accompanied by strangely maneuvered percussion.
More intriguing twists and turns lie ahead in the second song, “Contre les os“. The multi-layered music rapidly writhes like a serpent, peals like a bell, rabidly swarms, and strangely pulsates. The pacing changes without warning, alternately racing and creeping. The bass prominently muses, and the entire experience is shrouded in an unearthly aura, both daunting and beckoning. “Contre les os” also has its own fascinating finale, which defies my powers of description.
https://www.distantvoices.fr
https://distantvoices.bandcamp.com/album/new-jzovce-inverses
https://www.instagram.com/voicesinthedistance/
SACRIS RITUS VERMES (Germany)
I came across this next song when I was perusing the Grave Gnosis Facebook page for info about that band’s forthcoming third album. There I saw a post which revealed that the Grave Gnosis keyboardist S. had “collaborated with Black Metal terror known as Sacris Ritus Vermes for their upcoming EP entitled With Sacred Horror, to be released via Death Revelations“. In that same post was a link to this next song, which is entitled “Sacris ritus Vermes (raw mix)“.
In a nutshell, the track is an overpowering assault, an immediate scourge of hammering drums, a racing and frantically shivering wall of guitars and keys, vividly thrumming bass tones, and the reverberations of heartless roars.
The drums slow down, but the dense vortices of blazing and abrading sound continue to whirl and scathe with electrifying effects, yet the drums also briefly vanish and the music morphs, pinging like strange bells above sandstorm undercurrents. The drumming is responsible for most of the song’s variations, and thus steals a lot of attention within the near-non-stop storming.
Exhilarating stuff, and makes me eager to hear the rest of the EP. The band’s two members aren’t identified, but their location is specified on Bandcamp as Heidelberg, Germany.
https://srv666.bandcamp.com/track/sacris-ritus-vermes-raw-mix-2