SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: MIDNIGHT, ALIGN, FURNACE, STREGA, ARV, FLUISTERAARS

(written by Islander)

I don’t have a “physically active lifestyle” these days, yet some nights my body acts like I just ran a marathon. Last night was one of those. I conked out and woke up more than 9 hours later. Not even the part of my brain that always nags me, even asleep, about the need to get this Saturday column in shape could resist the bear-like compulsion to hibernate.

So, a very late start today, made later by the time needed to overcome grogginess. Still groggy, even after reading godawful global news stories while inhaling a cocktail of caffeine and nicotine, I glanced at the godawful big NCS in-box. Here’s the first message I saw:

Please take a moment out of your day to listen to the new track from Casa Mondo “Same Words.” It is a taste of Afro Reggae Summer Niceness and would give your followers a warm fuzzy feeling 🙂

I nearly wrote back to ask how in the world we got on this person’s list. We must be on many lists that have zero to do with what we do, because I see dozens of e-mails like this every day from musically remote planets (remote from our own ugly little asteroid).

Of course I didn’t write back, but I thought, the only warm fuzzy feeling our followers might want from music at NCS would be a feeling of fungal infection. And “niceness”? I think our definition of “nice” is not what Casa Mondo had in mind.

Hopefully, what I picked after my very late start will fuel or complement other more immediate feelings if, like me, warm and fuzzy for you is now a distant memory. I think it’s fair to say, by the way, that though there are evolving connections among today’s songs, where you end will be very far away from where you begin.

 

MIDNIGHT (U.S.)

Somehow Athenar‘s filth-encrusted jacket and sweat-soaked mask got infiltrated into a display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. To celebrate, Midnight played a show in Cleveland last August, and footage of that show provides the backdrop for the new Midnight song that I picked to open today.

“Cleveland Metal” is a loving metal-punk homage to Midnight‘s home, a Midnight version of warm and fuzzy, which means it’s also a menace (a head-bobbing menace). It’s one of only two original songs on Midnight‘s next album Steel, Rust And Disgust. The rest are covers. Quoth Athenar:

“I just wanted to record some songs by bands who shared the same sights, sounds, and sewage of my region of birth. Some of these tunes you may have heard, some you may have not. So please, do yourself a favor and check out the original versions… if you want to transform into a total fucking slimebag that is!”

The album will be out May 23rd on Metal Blade. Here, btw, is the track list:

1. Cleveland Metal
2. Iron Beast (Kratos cover)
3. I’m Insane (Synastryche cover)
4. Final Solution (Rocket From The Tombs cover)
5. Frenzy (Screamin’ Jay Hawkins cover)
6. Child Eaters (Rubber City Rebels cover)
7. 3rd Generation Nation (Dead Boys cover)
8. Rock N’ Roll Fever (David Allan Coe cover)
9. Carrions Keep (False Hope cover)
10. Black Leather Rock (Electric Eels cover)
11. Steel, Rust And Disgust
12. Agitated (Electric Eels cover)

https://www.metalblade.com/midnight/
https://www.facebook.com/midnightviolators

 

ALIGN (Sweden)

A jubilant bulging plutocrat brandishing bills while everything burns. A song called “Greed”. Align wrote and recorded it before the economic catastrophes of the last few days, but the signs were already there to see, weren’t they?

The song is a mean marauder, a thrash-fueled rush of galloping viciousness, complete with rabid wildcat vocals, jolting headbutt grooves, and doses of swirling, witchy fretwork culminating in a cool dual-guitar solo (also witchy). It will fire up your internal engine and get it plunging ahead in high gear. Damned catchy too.

Align is the work of the prolific Håkan Stuvemark (Wombbath, among other vehicles), here on guitars and bass, joined by mad screamer Borglin Jörgen and the always adept Jon Skäre on drums.

Stuvemark says that “Greed” is taken from a six-track EP he’s composed that will be “released in some way”, someday.

https://wombbathofficial.bandcamp.com/track/greed

 

FURNACE (Sweden)

It seemed right to follow one Swedish musician who just won’t quit despite the passing of many decades with the music of another. Here it’s Rogga Johansson and his killer melodic death metal band Furnace.

This new song (paired with a lyric video) is “A Blessing and A Curse“. It tells of the grim pilgrimage of a character (Thornblade) in a world of fantasy who seeks from the Goddess of Death the gift of endless life for his tyrant king. But it is a diabolical pact they make, heedless of the warning the goddess gives that eternal life for this king will be both a blessing and a curse — and you’ll see in the words what the curse is.

The song itself is also a supernatural experience, a sinister and seductive display of old-school occult heavy metal, with rhythmic and melodic hooks galore, but with voluminous growls well-rounding the words and ferociously elevating where needed to increase the fear factor. It’s as catchy as the king’s own hell will be endless.

The new Furnace album is Eternally Enthroned. It has a release date of May 30th on Obelisk Polaris Productions. The opening song “Tyrant’s Reign” is also out in the world, and I’ve included that stream too. The Furnace lineup for this album is:

Rogga Johansson – guitars and lead vocals
Peter Svensson – bass, backing vocals and additional instrumentation
Lars Demoké – drums and percussion

https://furnacesweden.bandcamp.com/album/eternally-enthroned
https://www.facebook.com/blackstonechurch666/

 

STREGA (Italy)

Sometimes my listening excursions line up just right, and they sure as hell did today when I heard this next song by Strega right after that Furnace track.

Like the preceding song in today’s collection, “Til-Aar Hyleventïdar” is a sinister and seductive rendition of old school heavy metal, not fancy but not resistible either, and with electrifying devil-spawned vocals. Here the mysterious words come forth in jagged screams of fiendish possession but also pungent grunts, soaring singing that works extremely well, and gruesome gutturals.

Another big head-mover, another dose of highly infectious riffs, this time capped with the glorious frolic of an extended dual-guitar solo. Rightly recommended for fans of Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, King Diamond, Bewitched, Morgul Blade, and Black Magick SS. In numerous decades it could have been a radio hit had the words only been sung, but bless them for staying mostly with true demonism in the vocal department.

Here’s the description we have of Strega and their forthcoming EP:

With members of Ponte Del Diavolo, Darkend and The Headless Ghost, Stryx Strega Strygae features a style mixing 80’s Heavy Metal classics with the eerie voices of Black Metal and sinister, theatrical scenarios. Furthermore, all lyrics are in Arrakyan, the band’s peculiar language.

As they said, the EP is named Strix Strega Strygae. It will be released by Masked Dead Records on April 30th.

https://maskedeadrecords.bandcamp.com/album/strix-strega-strygae
https://www.facebook.com/strega.officialband

 

ARV (Norway)

In my musical excursion today the stars continued to align when I next came across Arv‘s new song “Wrath“. It’s definitely a different kind of beast from the last few songs (a blending of hardcore and post-metal), but the opening notes that vividly ring also capture a feeling of sinister, menacing sorcery, though here they’re grounded with rumbling heaviness and hammering beats.

Where does this lead? It leads first to raw hardcore howls and simple ticking tones, and then to renewed rings and rumbles, now augmented with an eerily slithering and moodily whining lead guitar.

The intensity continues to ebb and flow. The music becomes dreamlike, and it flares and expands to reveal high-arcing splendor. It pounds hard, jolts fast, and becomes bleak. The vocals explode, and so do the drums. Those eerie ringing notes surface again and multiply, catching in a listener’s head even as they disturb emotions, and the finale they lead into is cataclysmic.

This is Arv‘s third single so far this year (I wrote about one of those, “Victim“, here). They’re all at Bandcamp. They’ll feed into Arv‘s debut album, Curse & Courage, which will be released by Vinter Records on May 2nd.

https://arvband.bandcamp.com/track/wrath
http://www.arvband.com/
http://www.facebook.com/arvband

 

FLUISTERAARS (Netherlands)

You may have a different reaction, but I also found a kind of flow from Arv‘s song into Fluisteraars‘ new EP Kronieken Van Het Verdwenen Kasteel – III – Grunsfoort, though the EP is even more multi-faceted.

I eagerly awaited this new EP, which is the band’s final installment in their De Kronieken van het Verdwenen Kasteel sequence. I found these two new songs magnificent.

I mentioned many facets. Among them in the first song (“Sediment der Impressies“) are sequences of vaporous and glistening mystery, of fire-bright splendor accompanied by racing drums and raging screams, of towering and daunting bass-led majesty accompanied by twinkling sonic starshine, stalking beats, and lilting folk instrumentation.

In all its phases, including the even more vaporous and cosmically mysterious penultimate one (a prelude to a catastrophic finale), the music sounds otherworldly.

In the second song, “Grunsfoort in de Mist“, Fluisteraars create another evolving sequence of sound and mood. They again create many tonal contrasts, some shining and ethereal, others deep and throbbing, some abrasively harsh (mainly in the vocals), others fluid and engaging or poignant and gentle.

In its moods, however, the song is downcast as it slowly plods forward, even downcast in the glittering brilliance up in the sky and in the acoustic picking. The band do up-shift the intensity without dramatically changing the tempo, gradually increasing the music’s expansiveness and feelings of internal turmoil and despair, which persists even when the slow march resumes. But astral strings also emerge, creating sights of wonder the downtrodden might see if they only lifted their beleaguered heads.

https://fluisteraars.bandcamp.com/album/kronieken-van-het-verdwenen-kasteel-iii-grunsfoort
https://www.facebook.com/Fluisteraars/