It has been a very busy week for the release of new songs and videos, and the week is only half-way through. Some of my fellow NCS slaves have tossed a lot of them my way, and I’ve ferreted out others.
Even though I’ve included quite a lot of them in this roundup, more are still running around the prairies waiting to be corralled. I hope I can lasso a few more before the weekend, assuming my lathered-up pony doesn’t hit a gopher hole and pitch me over its head into a hard landing.
DÅÅTH (U.S.)
This site sprang to life in November 2009. Just a couple months later we published our first annual list of “Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs“, and Dååth‘s “Wilting on the Vine” was one of the 10 we selected. That’s how long ago we started following this Atlanta-based band, though they had been releasing music for six years before that. But after one more album in 2010, the band fell silent for what turned out to be a very long time.
Photo by Stephanie Cabral
Last year they re-surfaced, releasing five singles, and now they’ve got a new album coming our way in May. It includes three of those singles and six more songs, one of which — “Hex Unending” — debuted this week in a video of the band directed by David Brodsky.
Prepare for a bombastic spectacle, a howling, high-voltage attack that jolts hard enough to leave your spine vibrating, augmented by grim as well as glittering fretwork, swirls of symphonic grandiosity, and a head-spinning solo by Dan Sugarman (of Ice Nine Kills).
Dååth‘s updated lineup includes band founder/guitarist Eyal Levi, long-time vocalist Sean Zatorsky, drummer Kerim “Krimh” Lechner, Jesse Zuretti on orchestration and guitar, Rafael Trujillo on lead guitar, and David Marvuglio on bass.
The new album also includes other guest guitar solos — by Jeff Loomis (Nevermore, Arch Enemy), Mark Holcomb (Periphery), Dean Lamb (Archspire), Per Nilsson (Scar Symmetry, Meshuggah), and Spiro Dussias (Platonist).
The name of Dååth‘s new album is The Deceivers. It will be released by Metal Blade on May 3rd.
https://www.metalblade.com/daath/
https://daathofficial.com
https://www.facebook.com/Daath
https://www.instagram.com/daathofficial
NOCTURNUS AD (U.S.)
This week Profound Lore announced a new album by the Tampa sci-fi death metal band Nocturnus AD, which continues the journey of Dr. Magus following the events portrayed in 2019’s Paradox. On the new album, Unicursal, he traverses through the Spheres of the the Kabbalistic Tree Of Life.
The new album’s first single is “CephaloGod“. The band’s Mike Browning describes it this way: “[I]t’s a song about Cthulhu being awakened from his ancient slumber by his followers when the right stars aligned and opened a portal for him to travel through it to take over the Earth”.
The animated video that accompanies the song, which also includes monstrous depictions of the band, is a hell of a thing to see, and the song is a hell of a thing to hear — a superior amalgam of teched-out whiz-bang and grotesque horror.
After a creepy ambient intro phase in which Cthulhu awakens, the music begins frantically squirming and blaring, bludgeoning and battering, and it spins up into even more crazed frenzies, especially when the soloing goes nuts. The vocals also sound crazed, and as grotesque as the creature that’s the song’s centerpiece.
https://linktr.ee/nocturnusad666
https://www.facebook.com/NocturnusAD
OUBLIETTE (U.S.)
In June The Artisan Era will release this Tennessee melodic black metal band’s third album and their first once since The Passage in 2018, whose title track we premiered here. This week we got a taste of what it brings, through a video for the song “Primordial Echo“.
The song is immediately a dramatic contrast with the Nocturnus AD song that precedes it in today’s collection, introducing gentle notes that glitter like frost in a setting sun. But the music does spring to vivid life, wildly spinning and vigorously jolting while vocalist Emily Low furiously howls at the moon, and then blazing and blasting, with strings flying and drums hammering.
There’s enough flashy fretwork and percussive athleticism in the song to make the band’s alliance with The Artisan Era understandable, but it’s also home to blackened belligerence, and it also magnificently soars and sweeps, and becomes a moving lament before it’s done. It comes with a video by Malcolm Pugh that’s extremely cool to watch too.
The name of the is Eternity Whispers. It features eye-catching cover art by Sam Nelson.
https://oubliette.bandcamp.com/album/eternity-whispers
http://www.facebook.com/oubliettemetal
ROPE SECT (Germany)
Once again, as you’ve already seen, my decision to arrange all these songs and videos in alphabetical order by band name has resulted in some whipsaw twists and turns, and now there’s another.
This week Iron Bonehead Productions announced May 17th as the international release date for Rope Sect‘s second album, Estrangement, and began streaming its first single, “Revel in Disguise“.
Prepare now for a song that brings together vocals reminiscent of The Smiths’ Morrissey, an extremely vibrant bass performance, bouncing beats, and guitar melodies that shimmer and shine but also devilishly swirl and flicker. No, it’s not really metal, despite a final blast-beat flurry, but it punches lots of my old buttons, and it’s very damned catchy.
https://www.ironbonehead.de
https://ironboneheadproductions.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/IronBoneheadProductions
https://www.facebook.com/theropesect
UFOMAMMUT (Italy)
Ufomammut will celebrate their 25th anniversary this year. Honestly, I’d forgotten they’ve been going that long. Part of the celebration will be the release of their tenth studio album, entitled Hidden. My next pick for today’s roundup is an animated video for the album’s first single, a song named “Leeched“.
A distant light pulses in the video as the song begins conjuring strange and psychotic visions, but then the band find their groove, though the timbre of the distorted riffing still sounds like a monster snarling. The vocals, of course, go very high, up into layrnx-straining elevations, adding to the song’s other hallucinatory aspects, in tandem with the gut-churning riffage, the neck-cracking beats, and the eerily whistling radiations. Scary stuff but viscerally potent.
Hidden will be released on May 17th by Neurot Recordings in North America and by Supernatural Cat Records in Europe.
https://music.neurotrecordings.com/hidden.OPR
https://www.supernaturalcat.com/home/hiddenpreorder/
https://www.ufomammut.com
https://www.facebook.com/ufomammutband
VALE OF PNATH (U.S.)
Its been eight years since we got a new album from Vale of Pnath, with just an EP (Accursed) to fill the gap. That EP started taking this tech-death band’s music in a more “blackened” direction, and on their new album they’ve continued that evolution, at least judging from the first single “Burning Light“, which was presented through a music video by Scott Hansen revealed via a premiere at Metal Injection.
This new song opens with a mysterious and menacing symphonic overture and then starts vigorously bringing a battering ram into play, a prelude to a blast-beat fusillade, scalding screams, and even more grandiose orchestration.
Rapidly flashing strings, megaton cannonades, and venom-spitting screams keep the intensity high, pushing the music to new heights of firestorm mayhem as the symphonics burn across the heavens. Here and there, the breathtaking hellish bombast recedes long enough to allow pinging electronics and bowed strings to play more prominent roles. The video is also suitably hellish in its changing visions.
The new album is the work of a quite different lineup than the one that was responsible for the band’s first two albums. It now includes Ken Sorceron on vocals and guitar (he also performed bass on all the tracks on the new album), drummer Gabe Seeber, guitarist Vance Valenzuela, and bassist Austin Rolla. You may notice that all those folks other than Rolla are also members of Abigail Williams.
The album also includes a bunch of guest guitar solos, by Donny Burbage (Cradle of Filth, Aether Realm), Miles Dimitri Baker (Interloper), Matthew Brown (Demon King), and Christian Muenzner (Necrophagist, Obscura, Alkaloid), as well as a cello performance by Christopher Edward Brown.
Between The Worlds of Life and Death will be released on May 24th by Willowtip Records.
https://willowtip.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/ValeOfPnathCO
https://www.instagram.com/valeofpnathco