Amorphis – photo by Sam Jamsen
(written by Islander)
This is another Saturday column in which I decided to lure people with a “big name” at the start and then eventually expose people to names they might not know but should.
I could have included an even bigger collection of prominent names, because the past week also brought new music and/or new videos from Opeth, Paradise Lost, Dark Angel, Car Bomb, and Baest, to name a few. You can find those via the hyperlinks I included. But I wanted to have more time for lesser lights.
AMORPHIS (Finland)
By my lights Tomi Joutsen has one of the best death growls in the business, but I also love the way he clearly enunciates words when he sings, and to these American ears his Finnish accent makes the singing even more enticing. He vocalizes in both registers, savage and clean, in the lyric video Amorphis released last week for the first single from their forthcoming 15th album.
But “Light And Shadow” has other attractions too — vibrant piano melodies, darting electronica, leg-moving beats, bone-deep bass lines, and gloriously expansive sweep. Like its title, the song delivers both uplifting grandeur and shades of darkness. Damned addictive too.
The name of the new album is Borderland. It features cover art by Dutch artist Marald Van Haasteren. It will be released on September 26th by Reigning Phoenix Music.
https://amorphis.rpm.link/borderlandPR
https://www.facebook.com/amorphis/
ZATOKREV (Switzerland)
I haven’t tried to figure out what became of Zatokrev over the decade that has passed since their last album, Silk Spiders Underwater…, only thankful that they’re back with a new double-album, Bring Mirrors to the Surface. Thankful, but also curious, because that hiatus has been so long (even though the album was apparently finished in 2022) that you have to wonder how it might have changed the band’s previously interesting musical proclivities (or more specifically the proclivities of mainman Frederyk Rotter).
Zatokrev provided an initial answer to that question a few days ago with the album’s first single, an extensive song called “Blood” that arrived with a fascinating visualizer.
“Blood” begins mysteriously and then builds an atmosphere of ominous tension while enormous beats slowly pound the ground. The music torques the tension further with clobbering assaults and blazing, sizzling, and throbbing fretwork.
The band manifest a towering and daunting immensity, and crystalline sung vocals arrive way up at the pinnacle — but shatter into screams as they soar. The rhythm section make the song a heavyweight slugger and a bone-smasher; the guitars swath it with unsettling sonic hallucinations.
Zatokrev begin making a change with vibrantly ticking bass notes and gently chiming and glittering arpeggios, creating a pleasantly dreamlike and ultimately astral phase, at one point joined by bounding and skipping drums and heavy bass-murmurs. That’s a mesmerizing phase of the song, an entrancing lull. I thought perhaps the band would follow it with a return to tension and turmoil, but they don’t, preferring to leave listeners with the spell.
The song features a guest appearance by Inezona. The album also includes vocal contributions from Schammasch, Manuel Gagneux (Zeal & Ardor), Minsk, and Bölzer.
Bring Mirrors to the Surface will be released by Pelagic Records on August 29th.
P.S. Zatokrev went out of their way to provide this disclaimer about the video: “This visualizer was not generated by AI. It is based on album artwork elements and was programmed using p5.js, a JavaScript framework, which is used to create visuals that can react to sound and other forms of input.”
https://orcd.co/zatokrev
https://www.facebook.com/zatokrev
BARBAROUS (U.S.)
I have a feeling that my first two picks today will have left some of our regular visitors hungry for something more… barbarous. With that in mind, I’m turning next to the first song revealed from a debut album by an Oakland death metal band that bears that name.
The title of the song is “Tools of the Trade“. It proves to be a hard-charging mauler, packed with furious, avalanche-strength drumming, thunderous bass upheavals, scathing riffage that slashes, shrieks, boils, and burns, and gargantuan vocal roars with a serrated edge.
The rhythms also bound and crack, and the riffing also feverishly jolts and insidiously squirms, augmented by a spiraling guitar solo that creates a supernatural aura as it exotically rises and descends.
The song is dynamically multi-faceted and thoroughly electrifying. It should generate a lot of interest in this band’s new album Initium Mors, which is due for release by Creator-Destructor Records on August 1st. The cover art is the work of the great Dan Seagrave.
https://barbarousband.bandcamp.com/album/initium-mors
https://www.facebook.com/barbarousofficial
ACCURSED (U.S.)
Like Barbarous, this next band is for me a recent discovery. Based in Connecticut, Accursed released their debut EP Ascension this past January, and have followed it up since then with two singles. In April they put out a cover of “Cold” by At the Gates, and just yesterday they released an original song named “Beneath A Burning Sky“. Both songs were mixed by Mike Sahm of Crown Magnetar.
Lyrically, this new one is a furious condemnation of Christianity, joining a near-endless line of metal songs with a similar theme. Musically, it’s a hell-raiser too, a furiously vicious melodic death metal discharge.
The screamed vocals are hair-raising in their intensity. The riffing blares like sirens, feverishly slashes like blood-crusted swords, and dismally roils. The drums methodically snap and maniacally clatter. The fleet-fingered soloing is exultant but also fluidly sinister.
The song proves to be not just hostile but also eventually steeped in misery and dismay. It also proves to be highly groovesome, and good reason to check out Accursed‘s previous releases this year. (The cover art was made by Dimas Aditya.)
https://accursedct.bandcamp.com/track/beneath-a-burning-sky
https://facebook.com/accursedct
NECHT (Canada/UK)
It’s time to lick the blade!
My next pick today is a well-made video for a song off this Calgary-based black metal band’s new EP, The Inevitable Suffering. You’ll quickly discover that the music is even more hellish than the last two songs in today’s set.
“Dread Is the Consort of the Dark” features ecstatically swirling fretwork, maniacally blasting drums, ravenous screams, and rabid roars. It also includes abundant double-bass fusillades, jabbing heavy metal chugs, and warping arpeggios that sound intrinsically evil and cruel or exotically Sumerian. Fanatical chants and jagged barks also rear their heads in the midst of the head-spinning instrumental mayhem.
One thing the song definitely does not provide — any room to catch your breath.
To quote the band, The Inevitable Suffering continues Necht‘s tales “inspired by the ancient lore of the Enkari, as presented in the work of Dr Birgitta Olsson, and offers further exploration of the intriguing mythos of the ancient civilization of the Enkari, their sun-god, B’ahn and His eternal cosmic struggle against the all-consuming Mother Dragon, Karnifor.”
https://necht.bandcamp.com/album/the-inevitable-suffering
https://www.facebook.com/nechtblackmetal
IN THE COMPANY OF SERPENTS (U.S.)
Today’s collection has already included a few bone-smashers and head-wreckers, but for the stout-limbed and thick-skulled among you I thought we might need one more — and I found it in this next song off a new album from Denver-based trio In the Company of Serpents.
Right away, “Endless Well” delivers a very heavy, sludge-weighted undercurrent and rumbling drums that hit like boulders, along with bursts of viciously heaving and madly blaring guitars. The vocals are strikingly malignant and unhinged, a combination of crazed, rounded roars and equally crazed howls.
After bruising, busting, and scaring the hell out of listeners for a couple of minutes, the band take a slight detour. The rhythm section continue to use us like blacksmiths use anvils or fighters use punching bags, but the riffing transforms into a heavy moaning crawl and the vocals cry out in tormented near-song, accompanied by haunted ringing tones and bursts of abrasive instrumental screeching.
I assume the striking clean vocals are the work of Jeff Owens (Goya), whom the band credit for backing Vocals on “Endless Well”.
This band’s new album is entitled A Crack in Everything, which is likely what it will cause. It’s due for release on July 11th. The fantastic cover art is the work of Mike Lawrence.
https://inthecompanyofserpentsdoom.bandcamp.com/album/a-crack-in-everything
https://www.facebook.com/InTheCompanyOfSerpents
FER DE LANCE (U.S.)
To close things out today I have one more song that violates the oft-violated rule in our site’s title.
Given my usual tastes in metal, my strong positive feelings for the vocals in this new Fer de Lance song surprised me. In part I reacted so positively because they match up so well the shadow-draped but epic nature of the music, but in even larger part because their high quavering tones are often edged with grit and descend into bellows or shatter into screams. They’re spine-tingling and intense in every respect, and the shifts are seamless.
But back to the music. As noted, it’s epic, fantastical, ominously majestic, broodingly sinister, and compulsively head-moving. And it includes a fantastic clear-toned guitar solo that underscores the sorcery in the song and pitches it to a great height.
The name of the song is “Death Thrives (Where Walls Divide)“. It’s taken from the album Fires on the Mountainside, which has a release date of June 27th via Cruz Del Sur Music. The cover art is a painting titled “Mount Vesuvius at Midnight” (1868) by the great Albert Bierstadt.
https://ferdelancemetal.bandcamp.com/album/fires-on-the-mountainside-2
https://www.facebook.com/FerdeLanceMetal/