SEEN AND HEARD: VERBERIS, ALLEGAEON, PARTY CANNON, MORTAL WOUND, VRYKOLAKAS, VERITERAS, OLD IRON, FRAIL BODY, ATARAXIA

Lately I’ve been organizing these roundups of recommended new songs and videos in alphabetical order by band name, because that means I don’t have to spend any time thinking like a DJ, trying to figure out what makes sense in the flow of the music. Sometimes that has coincidentally led to interesting juxtapositions.

Today, however, I’ve chosen a different organizational scheme, because some of the songs naturally paired up with each other. So this collection includes a block of goofy stuff, a “hulking and hideous  death metal” block, a Seattle block, and some curveballs at the end, although the very end is more like a sequence of eephus pitches that sail in high and slow (look it up).

But to begin, you’ll find something that doesn’t fit anywhere else but left me wide-eyed and slack-jawed.

 

VERBERIS (NEW ZEALAND)

In our reviews we acclaimed the first two albums by this New Zealand band, 2016’s Vexamen and 2022’s Adumbration of the Veiled Logos. Thankfully, we haven’t had to wait the six years that separated those two before getting a third.

The third one is entitled The Apophatic Wilderness, and it’s set for release by Norma Evangelium Diaboli on March 29th. It was created by the same lineup responsible for the first two — DA, JSM, NH, and MP. It includes four long tracks, and really three, because the last two are Parts of a single work named “Arteries Into Ruin“. They all add up to about 41 minutes. The second one, “Labyrinthine Privation“, is out now.

The guitars’ piercing ring seizes attention very quickly; in their discordance they create sensations of hallucinatory intrigue and creeping menace, increasingly putting nerves on edge while the rhythm section mutate and cavort (the fretless tone of the bass is especially beguiling).

When the vocals finally arrive in full force (brazen and bestial, snarling and roaring and screaming), the music more fully convulses, creating a roiling madhouse of piercing dissonant tones above humongous movements in the low end and one crazed percussive eruption after another. Not merely insane, the music also becomes dire and severely traumatic, eventually surging into a catastrophe of titanic and thoroughly mind-bending proportions, as vocalist NH violently tears himself apart.

Incredibly intricate music, prepared for incredibly disturbing yet freakishly beguiling ends.

https://verberis.bandcamp.com/album/the-apophatic-wilderness
https://www.facebook.com/verberis

 

 

ALLEGAEON (U.S.)

Hot dogs. With mustard, ketchup, and mayo, just the way I like ’em.

If you’ll just put your stony judgmental face on a shelf, you’re bound to enjoy the spectacle of a very talented band dressed up as wieners (with singer Ezra Haynes as the vendor) and getting sprayed with condiments, especially because the silliness is paired with a song that’s so frantic and furious.

The opening line in the video puts a different spin on hot dogs: “We are all dogs in god’s hot car“.

The song is “Iridescent“, and it’s a stand-alone single released by Metal Blade that’s intended to help fill the space before Allegaeon‘s next album.

https://www.metalblade.com/allegaeon/
https://www.facebook.com/Allegaeon

 

 

PARTY CANNON (Scotland)

DGR suggested this next song and video as a good “twinsie” with Allegaeon for goofy shit in this here roundup. I agree.

Party Cannon‘s new track is “Not Immediately Life Threatening“. It’s from the band’s forthcoming concept album on Unique Leader, Injuries Are Inevitable. The band have commented: “The video continues with our goal of avoiding the usual performance style video in favour of something that’s as visually IQ-lowering as the music”.

Mission accomplished. (And this also makes for a good segue into the next black of songs in today’s roundup).

Unique Leader will release the album on April 26th.

http://orcd.co/injuriesareinevitable
https://uniqueleaderrecords.bandcamp.com/album/injuries-are-inevitable
https://www.facebook.com/PartyCannonUK

 

 

MORTAL WOUND (U.S.)

Now we begin another block I referred to in the introduction. The song is “Found Dead in a Bush“. It’s from a debut album named The Anus of the World, by L.A.’s Mortal Wound.

After a suitably creepy intro phase, prepare to be pummeled and slaughtered, accompanied by the dulcet tones of a sewer monster, and then thuggishly pounded (caveman pounds rocks together!). More changes ensue, including the advent of piston-pumping riffage, grisly fretwork swarms, and supernatural soloing infected by misery that spirals into the rafters.

The Anus of the World will be released by Dark Descent on May 24th.

https://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-anus-of-the-world

 

 

VRYKOLAKAS (Singapore)

Vrykolakas will be 33 years old this year. To celebrate, they’ll be releasing their fifth full-length, Nocturnal Dominion of Death. The first single, “Foretaste the Divine Wrath“, is the next selection in today’s roundup.

The song inflicts brutish beatings galore and rumbles the guts, but the swarming riffage is also poisonous and lethally vicious, and the vocals are monstrous. Evil music, and the kind that gets hearts racing, but it gets even more interesting when a reptilian guitar solo slithers through, radiating suffering, followed by an even more dismal interlude before the diabolical punishment resumes, accented by additional striking solo work.

Nocturnal Dominion of Death will be co-released by Iron Blood and Death Corporation (Mexico), Satanath Records (Georgia), Paragon Records (US), and Futhark Records (Canada) on April 21st.

https://ironbloodanddeath.bandcamp.com/album/nocturnal-dominion-of-death
https://satanath.bandcamp.com/album/sat372-vrykolakas-nocturnal-dominion-of-death-2024
https://www.facebook.com/vrykobrutaldeath

 

 

VERITERAS (U.S.)

Now we begin a third block. The only organizing principle for these next two songs is that both bands are from Seattle (the closest big city to where I live), and definitely not because the songs are similar.

As you’ll discover from the following lyric video for “Abyss“, the music of Veriteras is a throw-back to the early years of such bands as In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, and Kalmah, etc. Those were among the bands that formed my own gateway into extreme metal, and so I still have a very soft spot for this kind of music.

On “Abyss“, Veriteras remind me why this kind of music landed so hard so many years ago. It’s viscerally propulsive and melodically glorious, though shadowed with darkness, and the screaming savagery of the vocals is striking.

“Abyss” is the opening track on Veriteras‘ second album The Dark Horizon, which is set for release on April 11th. Fittingly, it was mixed and mastered by Dan Swanö at Unisound Studio.

P.S. We will be premiering the full album on April 8th.

https://veriteras.bandcamp.com/album/the-dark-horizon
https://www.facebook.com/VeriterasMetal/

 

 

OLD IRON (U.S.)

The other band in this “Seattle block” is Old Iron. They’re in a different musical neighborhood from Veriteras, a rougher neighborhood to be sure.

Old Iron‘s new EP, Fractal Storm, is a re-recording of two songs from their 2014 release Cordyceps, “reimagined with current drummer Trent McIntyre“. “Thematically, they serve as bookends to the concept loosely running throughout Cordyceps that human consciousness was affected by ancient exposure to extraterrestrial fungi by way of meteorites”. Today, the story might make a connection in the popular consciousness with The Last of Us.

As for the music, it adds up to a weighty 16 minutes. “Ahnighito” is an almost relentlessly intense amalgam of bone-busting grooves, python-thick riffs, wailing and mind-warping guitars, metal-mangling bass lines, explosive drum-fills, and howling vocals that come for the throat with teeth bared and eyes red — plus a digression that drag listeners into a suffocating tar-pit while beating them with sledgehammers.

On the other hand, “Fractal Storm” is slower but even scarier, hinting at cosmic mysteries and dreadful horrors. Its grooves are also punishing, and the woozy, slithering riffs are still thick as tar, but the vocals are even more unhinged, elevating to terrifying screams, and the piercing melodies are steeped in agony. Near the end, following a magnetizing bridge, the song will also pump your head like a piston, setting the stage for a spectacular solo.

Fractal Storm was released on March 27th by Satankik Royalty Records.

https://oldiron.bandcamp.com/album/fractal-storm
https://www.facebook.com/oldironband

 

 

FRAIL BODY (U.S.)

Now for the curveball. I’m calling it that because it’s more in the vein of screamo or “post hardcore” than extreme metal. But it’s still a furious, demented riot in progress, packed with dissonant scarring and shrieking riffage, bass lines at a full boil, and pummeling percussion, but also featuring weird and woozy lead-guitar emanations and rapidly jackhammering fretwork too.

But what grabbed me just as hard as the music in “Horizon Line” was the animated video it comes with, which is a curveball all its own. And that’s all I’ll say about it — just watch.

“Horizon Line” is from this Illinois band’s new album Artificial Bouquet, which will be released on March 29th (tomorrow!).

https://frailbodyil.bandcamp.com/album/artificial-bouquet
https://www.facebook.com/frailbodyil

 

 

ATARAXIA (Italy)

Now for the sequence of eephus pitches — three videos presenting three songs from this Italian group’s 29th (!!!) studio album Centaurea. The music is not metal, but it is sublime and spellbinding.

The first two videos, for “Viriditas” (which was intended by the band to honor their friends and fans in Mexico and Latin America) and especially “The Source“, are every bit as captivating as the music (the faces! the costumes! the settings!).

The third video, for “Galen“, is also a good one, because it lets us see the very talented people principally responsible for the music — Francesca Nicoli (and what an amazing voice she has), Vittorio Vandelli, and Giovanni Pagliari.

https://thecirclemusic.gr/product-category/the-circle-releases/?filter_artist-name=ataraxia
https://thecirclemusic.lnk.to/Centaurea
https://www.facebook.com/AtaraxiaFB