(written by Islander)
I keep an electronic calendar and a paper calendar of premieres I agree to run for NCS. Belt and suspenders, as people use to say before suspenders went the way of the Dodo. But sometimes my pants fall down anyway, like when the plans of a band or label change and I’m being distracted by something else when I see that and then forget to change either calendar.
That’s what happened today. I had an album premiere on the calendar, but when I went hunting for the “assets” for the premiere I saw the e-mail chain where a schedule change had happened. So I found myself with time I didn’t expect to have today, and decided to make this roundup of new songs and videos as a bit of a head-start on the weekend roundups. My selection strategy was to pick the newest things I saw that I liked this morning. Hope you enjoy what I chose.
(In case you’re wondering, I do have assistants in my NCS work, but mainly they delete things I’ve written and introduce typos by walking across the keyboard. They’re less useful in keeping my pants up.)
SERPENTES (Portugal)
Portugal has the greater share of the songs I picked today, with slices of Russia, Tunisia, and Sweden in the mix. And I did mix things up, both geographically and stylistically, because it’s unfair for me to be the only one here whose head is spinning.
So we’ll start with Portugal and the band Serpentes. Though the name of their new album, Desert Psalms, might make you anticipate stoner doom, the psalms of these serpents are musically venomous black metal recitals.
“Desert Psalm VI” surges at the speed of hellfire, rumbling and thundering, maniacally whirling and searing in bursts of piercing fretwork delirium up in the sonic stratosphere, and vocally howling in raging madness, sometimes augmented by eerie chants that underscore the music’s occult inspirations.
When the hellfire pace slows, the music seems to slowly snarl and to become dismal and pestilential. When it accelerates again the vocals sound even more insane. The music also becomes eerily exotic, underpinned by a riveting off-speed drum performance, and then coldly venomous above a double-bass rumble.
Desert Psalms will be released on April 18th by NoEvDia. We have this description of the participants: “Envisioned by A.Ara of Angrenost, Desert Psalms is now manifested with the contribution of Misþyrming members Dagur Gíslason and Magnús Skúlason, Erdsaf of Angrenost, and Ólöf Rún Benediktsdóttir of Svartþoka.”
https://www.noevdia.com/artist/serpentes/
https://serpentes.bandcamp.com/album/desert-psalms
GOLEM OF GORE (Italy)
I’ll now make the first turn to Italy, and a radical turn in what you’ll hear. The band’s name is a brazen clue. The name of the next song is an even more brazen clue: “Chronic Obstructive Caustic Vomit“.
Prepare for a bit more than two minutes of foul gore-grinding mayhem, replete with berserk snare-clatters, disgusting vocal vomit, and freakish fretwork that swarms and throbs in toxic tones.
The vocals, apart from some street-corner spoken-word expulsions, really are nasty — a cavalcade of abyssal growls, crocodilian gurgles, violent regurgitations, and other gruesome sounds I don’t want to imagine. Might be wise to cover yourself in plastic sheeting before you listen.
The track is from Golem of Gore‘s album Ultimo Mondo Cane, which will be released by Everlasting Spew on May 30th.
https://everlastingspew.bandcamp.com/album/ultimo-mondo-cane
https://www.facebook.com/golemofgore
CRUST (Russia)
Now for a slice from Russia, which will slice you up, thanks to a band we’ve been closely following for a while around these parts.
Here’s how Crust introduce their stunning new song: “‘Soul-Grinding Abyss‘ takes the listener into Dante’s world of eternal torment and Lucifer’s frozen domain.”
And at first it does indeed sound like we’re being escorted into a frightful and unnerving domain. Then we see where we’ve come, as the music savagely crashes and writhes, with the lead guitar brilliantly swirling in a kind of mesmerizing form of suffering, and then the song becomes more violently tormented.
In the low end, the music is very heavy indeed as it rumbles, churns, and heaves. Up above, the vocals are unhinged in their rage and/or torment. A pause in the subterranean upheavals leads into a richly reverberating extended guitar solo that slowly and then more feverishly wails, spiraling higher and higher until the stricken souls it manifests seem to come apart. Near the end, terrifying chaos reigns. At the very end, the music softly rings in grief.
The song is the opening track on Crust‘s new album Where Light Fears to Descend, which will be released on May 23rd.
https://crustband.bandcamp.com/album/where-light-fears-to-descend
https://www.facebook.com/crustsludge
ANZV (Portugal)
Back to Portugal we go (Porto, to be precise), and a song and video whose name you might mistake for a certain standout Swedish group. It seems that, with different spellings, both bands took these names from Shamash or Šamaš, the sun god and god of justice from Mesopotamian mythology.
ANZV‘s song “Shamash“, immediately creates daunting esoteric grandeur, dark and expansive as it looms but also seductively ringing like sorcerous chimes. The deep, jagged-edged snarls and howls are also daunting and menacing, while the flowing seas of sound in the music’s upper reaches portray splendor.
The piercing, chime-like quality of the music persists, but grows more disturbed, more stricken in its sensations. But the guitars also ring in other ways above compulsive rocking grooves, seductive again but also thriving, even jubilant as they elevate into higher octaves.
The video is also a fantastic accompaniment for this worshipful testament to an ancient god that was, as the lyrics tell us, a reaper of souls as well as a bringer of light.
The song is from ANZV‘s forthcoming second album Kur, set to be released on May 30th through Edged Circle Productions. The album’s name draws inspiration from ancient Sumerian mythology: “Kur delves into the concept of the underworld — a dark, cavernous realm beneath the earth. The single encapsulates themes of despair, transcendence, and the perpetual interplay between life and death.”
The band’s own name is taken from the Mesopotamian monster figure Anzû. “Described as a divine storm bird who could breathe fire and water or in some descriptions as a lion-headed eagle. Either also as the personification of the southern wind and the thunder clouds.”
https://anzv.lnk.to/kur
https://edgedcircleproductions.bandcamp.com/album/kur
https://www.facebook.com/ANZV.OFFICIAL
https://www.instagram.com/anzv.imdugud
CAGED BASTARD (Tunisia)
Tunisia is our next stop, and a new EP from Caged Bastard that gives me a fourth time to wrote about this band (find the other 3 here). The EP’s name is Narcicult, introduced this way:
Narcicult is an 11-minute purge of reckoning and truth. This EP is a brutal fusion of heavy groovy riffs, raw black metal aggression, and bastardized sonic wizardry. Every track is an anthem of exposure and annihilation.
It stands as a testament against the narcissistic parasites infesting our society those who craft false personas, feeding on pity while disguising manipulation as trauma. No more hiding behind excuses of mental health, past toxicity, or childhood wounds. The masquerade is over.
“Narcicult, your era has ended, and you will rot in guilt.”
The quotation already lists the music’s ingredients. How they work together must be heard, but here’s my take:
The first song brings heated throbs and hammering beats; crazed spasms and caustic swarms; rabid snarls and bloody cries; and a lively bass denouement. Generally mauling in its tones, it nevertheless makes a strong connection to a listener’s pulse and gets it jumping.
The second song stalks and stomps, groans and yowls in dissonant tones, but the guitars also become weirdly but intriguingly hallucinatory as they quiver, swirl, wail, and emit churning bursts, echoing in tandem with a bass that’s almost jazzy in its woozily weaving progressions, and with off-kilter beats in the mix. In the closing phase of this one, it made me think of Gershwyn gone out of his head, and pure chaos at the very end.
The third song seems gloriously delirious. It magnificently blazes and hurtles (though the vocals are as ugly and furious as ever), and the riffing swings, bounds, and maniacally swarms as the drums repeatedly shift gears. The music seems feral and then desperate and then is suddenly cut off.
Once again, Caged Bastard has created an astounding collection, still giving free reign to experimental impulses but in ingenious ways that still make intelligible songs (even if they’re frequently disturbing and always head-spinning).
https://cagedbastard.bandcamp.com/album/narcicult
https://www.facebook.com/cagedbastard
SKUGGOR (Sweden)
And finally, here’s music from today’s Swedish ambassador, whose forthcoming album Where Sun Resigns will be their third full-length in as many years. I haven’t heard the first two, so the first two songs revealed from the new one is my first exposure.
The first of those has an audaciously profound name — “Meditations Upon the Roots of Infinity” — but the music is a haunting meditation, its mystically ringing (and hook-laden) melodies steeped in grief even though its popping and galloping beats are full of life. The vocals provide a third dimension — they sound like they’re still trying to get at our throats even though they’re being strangled.
The repeating refrains of that first song sound very much like the harmonious ringing of multiple chimes, and the longer they ring, they deeper they go, thoroughly entrancing as well as despondent.
The second song, “For Every Word a Hymn of Growth“, is less chimelike and more blazing. The layered guitars (and I assume keys) create sounds of swirling and gleaming splendor, great swaths of eye-opening (but also sort of distressing) glory unfolding above galloping beats. But eventually, we get chimes again, though the tones are more fluid and ethereally wafting, and perhaps a bit melancholy too.
Once more, Skuggor relies on repeating motifs and once again they get stuck in the head, and some of those motifs seem to channel intense yearning as well as dark thoughts.
Where Sun Resigns will be released by Naturmacht Productions on May 16th.