Feb 022025
 

(written by Islander)

In both these Sunday columns and the more genre-scattered ones I do on Saturdays I tend to write about individual songs more than complete EPs or albums. That allows me to cover more ground, and to bring more bands and their forthcoming releases to people’s attention.

The downside is that lots of listeners don’t really put much weight on individual songs. They want to know about the complete record, maybe through a review or more likely by listening to all of it when that becomes possible.

I don’t have any way of knowing whether the pluses of my strategy outweigh the minuses, but I’m wedded to it for better or worse. Today’s column is a classic example of that, though I have included a trio of complete but short EPs in the mix.

 

MNAJDRA (U.S.)

I’m proceeding in alphabetical order by band name, beginning with the anonymous U.S. project Mnajdra. Last week Snow Wolf Records released a new Mnajdra EP named The Lady of Verdala, which follows their 2024 album In the Name of the Goddess (which I premiered and reviewed here).

The new EP maintains the band’s connection to Maltese lore, which has been on display in their previous releases and in their very name. With respect to the EP’s title song, a bit of googling reveals that Verdala is the name of a Maltese palace built in 1586, now used as the official summer residence of the President of Malta. It also reveals this (from the same source):

Verdala Palace is supposedly haunted by the “blue Lady”, a niece of Grand Master de Rohan. She was due to marry a suitor who she did not like, so she committed suicide by jumping off the balcony in her bedroom. Her ghost is reportedly seen roaming the palace, wearing the same blue dress she wore when she died; her wedding dress.

The song itself is dissonant and disturbing, generating a clawing wail and a swirling eeriness around mid-paced thumps — and then surging forward in a flurry of blasting drums, scorching screams, and riffing that seems to wail in greater torment, with ominous moaning undercurrents below.

As the drum rhythms continue varying, so does the music. The searing and spine-tingling sounds in the upper elevations are both vast and wretched. The song also heavily and morbidly heaves, still laced with stratospheric sensations of shattering torment and vocals coming apart at the seams. It seems like an authentic soundscape for a tale based on a bride’s suicide and supernatural hauntings.

The EP’s second track is “The Devil’s Farmhouse.” Here, the googling reveals that this is the colloquial name for a dilapidated 18th-century farmhouse that is a Maltese national monument, and that Maltese myth claims was built by the devil.

In bringing that legend to life, Mnajdra‘s song opens with rapid-fire drumwork, a depressive riff that slowly writhes, and vivid glittering tones. But it too leaps ahead like a sudden conflagration — drums blasting, the voice shrieking, the multi-layered, synth-embellished music becoming more gloriously expansive in its sweep but even more tortured in its moods.

As the drums riot, the riffing jolts, and the music magically swirls in the upper reaches. The vocals become cacophonous and frightening, a gripping blend of screaming, roaring, and reverent singing. Bullets again fire at high speed, and the anguished melody flows in broad waves, but the drums also vanish and the song strangely shimmers like a field of stars.

https://mnajdra.bandcamp.com/album/the-lady-of-verdala

 

PLUTONIAN SHORE (U.S.)

Texas-based Plutonian Shore released three singles last year and I managed to miss all of them. I still haven’t delved into the first two (“Messiah” from last May, and “Chasm” from last April), but I did recently check out the third one, “Realms of Despair,” which came out in early December.

In line with its name, the music flows like a broad river of despair. The riffing and symphonic keys vividly ripple and shine, with a prominent bass-throb and bursts of percussive clatter below, but the mood is heart-breaking.

The words come in savage, strangled snarls and stately, chantlike choral singing. The music also grows more sinister as the notes vibrantly dart and swirl as well as cascade, somehow both morose and fiery.

(We’re told that Plutonian Shore plans to release an album of all-new material later this year.)

https://plutonianshore.bandcamp.com/track/realms-of-despair
https://www.facebook.com/plutonianshore/

 

PURE WRATH (Indonesia)

Here’s another song I’ve been meaning to catch up with for weeks, a new Pure Wrath song named “Flowers and Walls” that was released on January 7th. It’s described as “a standalone composition of unreleased material: a rendition of Wiji Thukul’s poem, Bunga dan Tembok.” You can see the words at Bandcamp.

At first, the drums are slow and steady in their pace, allowing the notes to brightly but dismally ring like slightly warped chimes, and then to shimmer in greater agony. Those sounds are spellbinding but distressing. The words are fervently spoken and somberly sung. The drums pick up the pace, and the music becomes a drenching rain of pain, stricken but striking — with a more subdued and surprising finish.

https://purewrath.bandcamp.com/track/flowers-and-walls
https://www.facebook.com/purewrath

 

SIVYJ YAR (Russia)

Vladimir Vishniakov from St. Petersburg is returning with a new Sivyj Yar album named A Scarlet Sunset Over The Horrid Abyss. Avantgarde Music will release it on February 28th, and provides this introduction:

Sivyj Yar has always been about the history and darkest times of the Russian people, and this new album makes no exception. In Vladimir’s words, this work is about the innocent, the tortured, the murdered, the broken, and the forgotten. About those who were destined for unbearable suffering. About the sacrifice that they made. The wheel of terror turns faster. The darkest parts of history repeat themselves if they are erased from human memory or replaced with false images. Entire nations can easily be plunged into darkness for years. Icy fear fetters souls, mutilates them.

The only track publicly revealed so far, “Everything Under The Snow Will Hush, Then Die“, comes in at 9 1/2 minutes, and it provides a sprawling saga of sound. It includes symphonic strings and elegant piano melodies, big warm bass tones and dynamic, hard-punching drum grooves, vibrantly raking riffage and viscerally heaving chords, scalding howls of torment and sensations of celestial sweep.

As the song unfolds, it interweaves varying stylistic influences both within and outside metal, and also interweaves experiences that are tragic and glorious, wistful and resilient, earthy and heavenly. It’s also packed with hooks of different kinds. It earns the minutes it asks of you.

https://avantgardemusic.bandcamp.com/album/a-scarlet-sunset-over-the-horrid-abyss

 

SLEEP PARALYSIS (U.S.)

This alphabetical ordering has coincidentally created some complementary experiences and some contrasting ones. This next song, following the one from Sivyj Yar, creates a startling contrast.

Helplessness” is a real head-spinner. It crashes and swarms, dances and darts, stops and starts. The dancing notes are voiced by some instrument that sounds very old, and fascinating. The vocals are maniacal, and the variability of the drum cadences is too.

Without warning, you get a vibrantly rippling, classically influenced piano performance. Again without warning, everything explodes in a riotous and ravishing sonic tapestry with almost too many details to take in, and then the instrumentation both drifts and flickers, creating intrigue.

Hell, the whole song is intriguing, and so dazzling that it’s well worth listening to repeatedly — which is actually probably a necessity. I’ve read that “Helplessness” is based on a story by a friend of the Sleep Paralysis creator “about a house fire and the nightmare of having to choose between two loved ones to save and the anxiety and guilt of that decision.”

The song is from the self-titled debut album of Sleep Paralysis, which is the solo venture of Arizona-based Stephen Knapp, “the same mind behind the chaotic and dissonant black metal band CERULEAN.” It will be released by I, Voidhanger on February 28th, and more info is available at its Bandcamp page.

https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/sleep-paralysis
https://www.facebook.com/CeruleanBlackMetal/

 

SVRM (Ukraine)

Now we come to another brief EP, a two-song January 31 release from svrm named Скорбота, which I believe means “Sorrow” in English.

The first song, “Вічність” (“Eternity”), does sound like a contemplation of the great beyond — airy, elegant, and mystical — but only at first. Then it becomes a big, dark head-mover, with a heavy, compelling riff backed by booming grooves and fronted by tormented screams. A second guitar sings its anguish way up high while that rhythm riff sinks its teeth in and the grooves work your neck.

The second song, “Лист” (I think it means “Leaf”), includes a credit for clean guitars performed by Cronin of Malencontre. The slowly strummed and gently picked notes of its overture speak of sorrow in spellbinding terms, and then a vast storm breaks open, with drums and bass furiously galloping and dark musical clouds racing overhead.

Vivid classical keys and sweeping symphonics join the fray, along with tortured screams of utmost intensity, yet the music collapses again at the end, reminding us of what the cover art shows.

https://svrm.bandcamp.com/album/–15

 

UTHULLUN (U.S.)

In the fall of 2020, still under the pandemic cloud, I premiered some music from the debut album Dirges From the Void by the mysterious Uthullun, a Chicago-based solo project. At that time I wrote:

Uthullun do not traffic in straight-forward or simplistic compositions, nor do they seek to provide calm or assurance. To the contrary, the elaborate and puzzling intricacy of the songs, and the persistence of dissonance and discord, create disturbing experiences. They repeatedly throw the listener off-balance, but for a number of reasons the journey isn’t repellant, but instead unexpectedly seductive. Uthullun continually boggle the mind, but put strange spells on it at the same time.

I’m happy to see that Uthullun is back with a new record, a startling two-song EP released on January 29th, with a striking cover image by Misanthropic-Art. The EP’s name is The Barbed Thread of Madness, and I’ll share these words about it from the record’s Bandcamp page:

the maddening secrets of reality reveal themselves in slithering whispers. a thousand eyes open to hideous truths in the blackest chasms of human psyche. mankind’s collective unconscious falls to insanity as insidious tendrils of abhorrent knowledge dig deep.

the barbed thread of madness bites into tender flesh and we can do naught but heed its agonizing pull.

in its grasp we writhe in throes of sublime torment, and the only release is the blinding light of total oblivion.

In the case of the EP’s title song, prepare yourselves for dissonant and mind-needling guitars that have an insidious bite, as perversely hook-y as they are disconcerting. Prepare also for a barbarous war charge of furious drumming, rapidly roiling (and still brutally dissonant) riffage, berserk screams, and wild singing.

Warped but brilliantly-toned guitar leads return in layers again, like some bizarrely colored viper coiling and uncoiling in the blood-soaked battle ground, along with growly bass tones, gut-loosening drums, and flurries of madly contorting riffage. Barbed threads of madness indeed!

The second song, “Blessed Be Oblivion“, is less wild, no less comfortable, and just as perniciously seductive. Again, the guitars weirdly chime and venomously slither, gleaming (with just a light coating of grit) yet discordant and dismal, while the bass pleasantly hums along and the drums amble and skip, both of them seemingly oblivious to the oblivion unfolding around them.

Again, the vocals have sliced through their tethers to sanity, screaming into the void. Again, despite how twisted and mind-mangling the guitars are, and how hopeless the mood they create, they unexpectedly cast a spell, one that grows more immersive because of the longer run-time they’re given.

Only at the end is there a reprieve of sorts, a classically influenced acoustic guitar instrumental, though it’s a very melancholy way to end, like the grace of oblivion at last.

If you’re like me, this song, like the first one, will get under your skin and stay there for a while.

https://uthullun.bandcamp.com/album/the-barbed-thread-of-madness
https://www.facebook.com/uthullun/

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