SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: PARADISE LOST, AMORPHIS, CAR BOMB, NOVEMBRE, HIGH PARASITE, TIGGUO COBAUC, CIRCLING OVER, OROMET, CORRIDORÉ

Paradise Lost

(written by Islander)

When I finished yesterday’s head start on today’s column I thought I’d focus today on lesser-known bands. As you can see, I didn’t completely follow through on that notion. What grabbed me as I listened turned out to be a mix of names everyone knows and names more likely to be new discoveries.

I’ve led with the luminaries. Maybe they will function like old friends greeting you at the door to their home and pulling you inside, where a group of strangers are waiting to do unexpected things to you, some of which, as it turns out, are going to hurt.

 

PARADISE LOST (UK)

This first song, “Serpent on the Cross“, caught me completely by surprise. It just happened to pop up yesterday afternoon on the right side of a YouTube page where I was listening to something else. It’s the second single from an upcoming Paradise Lost album named Ascension that’s set for release on September 19th by Nuclear Blast.

The song’s classically-instrumented overture is haunting, and that melody carries forward even as the band join in to make the experience massively heavier. Then, following a feverish guitar bridge, the music rumbles, thunders, and viciously throbs. The vocals are of course thoroughly ravaging, and the piercing guitar melodies are both stricken and captivating, with everything capped at the zenith by a glorious fireworks display of soloing — followed by a crushing doom finale.

https://paradiselost.bfan.link/ascension.yde
https://paradiselostofficial.bandcamp.com/album/ascension

 

AMORPHIS (Finland)

The last 24-36 hours also brought us yet another song and video (directed by Patric Ullaeus) from the new Amorphis album Borderland. This one is “Bones“.

As Tomi Joutsen roars the song’s name, the riffing sets the hook really fast, and more hooks arrive in an exotic melody that sounds like the dance of desert djinn. The song’s big booming grooves are hooks of their own.

It’s a grand song, and Joutsen‘s clean-sung chorus adds to the grandeur. The guitars and the keys all work together to elaborate upon the Eastern melodic motifs and connect them all, with highly infectious results.

Borderland will be released on September 26th through Reigning Phoenix Music.

https://amorphis.rpm.link/bonesPR
https://amorphis.rpm.link/borderlandPR
https://www.facebook.com/amorphis/

 

CAR BOMB (U.S.)

Car Bomb have established a well-deserved reputation for technically impressive but insanely chaotic music, spliced with all sorts of other ingredients that play their own roles in keeping listeners completely bewildered and busted up. This next song, “Blindsides“, is all of that.

The freakishly skittering and strangely squirming guitar work is batshit crazy; the drumming is explosive; the wide-ranging vocals are unhinged in their rendering of cynical and savage lyrics about the corrupt distractions that blind so much of the modern world.

The song also includes nimble and inventive bass-work, inflicts thuggish heaviness, incorporates slow-flowing clean-sung darkness, applies a dose of atonal jackhammering, groans like a dying leviathan, and ends with a mesmerizing (and I’d say jazz-influenced) guitar instrumental.

The song comes with a video, described by guitarist Greg Kubacki as “a fake trailer for a fictitious 80’s animated movie” with inspirations including “Akira, Aeon Flux, Studio Ghibli and David Lynch.”

“Blindsides” is from a new Car Bomb EP named Tiles Whisper Dreams, their first new music since 2019’s Mordial, which will be released on August 1st.

https://carbomb.bandcamp.com/album/tiles-whisper-dreams
https://www.facebook.com/CarBomb/

 

NOVEMBRE (Italy)

Here’s one more prominent name before we begin getting into more obscure ones. When I read the story about how this next song “Days of Nova” came to exist, I thought it created somewhat low expectations. Here’s the back story as humbly described by the band:

“This track is a little miracle on its own. At first, it was conceived as an instrumental, then relegated to the B-sides/Bonus area, and finally discarded altogether. Then, out of the blue, right in the middle of mixing the upcoming album — Peaceville asks us for a track for the “Volume ‘25” compilation, and it had to be short. Our minds immediately went to DAYS OF NOVA, which — in just three days — was literally unearthed and brought back from hell.

“There was no time to properly record it, so we decided to use the demo tracks — which totally suck. Oh, you have no idea! But that’s the thing; you’ll never notice — because this is where the supernatural hand of Dan Swanö comes into play. In just half a day, he managed to create this living entity — it sounds like a million bucks, moves, breathes, and speaks to your soul! Yes, in music, the strangest things happen! ENJOY!”

This being Novembre, I didn’t have to think twice about listening and watching the lyric video for this song, and man, am I glad I did!

To my ears, there’s an elegant medieval resonance to the song’s melancholy acoustic opening, which beautifully still flows forward even after the band turn the song into a much heavier and more harrowing creature. But what really makes the song stand out is an extended guitar solo with a saxophone-like sound that’s thoroughly captivating.

Also, loosen up your neck, because the song’s high-intensity closing phase will give it a good workout.

“Days of Nova” is the opening song on that Peaceville Records sampler CD, which includes 18 more from the label’s roster of bands, almost all of them from existing releases. Peaceville says the sampler will be included free with orders from their web store, while stocks last.

https://burningshed.com/
https://www.facebook.com/novembre1941

 

HIGH PARASITE (UK)

Right before Independence Day here in the U.S. High Parasite released a new single named “Cold“, paired with a remix by producer Lewis Johns (Employed To Serve, Earthtone9, Loathe) of the song “Parasite” from their 2024 debut album Forever We Burn. I overlooked it, until reminded by DGR. He commented that “Cold” sounds like “a high energy Paradise Lost and My Dying Bride crossover”. With Aaron Stainthorpe fronting High Parasite, the connections are already there.

“Cold” is paired with a video that stitches together tour and stage footage. The song is indeed a propulsive and highly head-moving thing, but it does have its chills, most especially when the beats slow down, the guitars gloomily ring, and Stainthorpe croons instead of snarls.

The rapidly writhing riffage, which is highly infectious, makes me think of a viper’s nest uncovered. The bass is enormous. The drums hit very hard. The slowly slithering leads are a channel of mesmerizing misery.

https://highparasite.lnk.to/Cold
https://www.facebook.com/highparasiteofficial/

 

TIGGUO COBAUC (UK)

I don’t think I had heard the blackened sludge/doom of Tigguo Cobauc before being lured into this next song. The lure was the presence of multi-faceted guest vocalist Chelsea Marrow from Visitant. She was on my mind when I read about this song because, coincidentally, we premiered the Visitant song “Starless” yesterday.

The band describe the song as “an evolved reimagining” of the track “Deliverance” from their Fountains of Anguish album. In addition to the guest appearance of Chelsea Marrow, it also includes the participation of new Tigguo Cobauc vocalist Craig Phillips.

The band have also crafted an extensive written narrative about the harrowing events that unfold in this song, “Ascended Deliverance“, which was released by Exitus Stratagem Records in late May. In a video that accompanied the track’s debut, those events also unfold, along with footage of the band recording the song.

Musically, “Ascended Deliverance” begins with a heartbeat and a swelling collage of eerie and sinister sounds, eventually joined by the vibrant (but also sinister and sorrowful) trill of a lead guitar and the song’s own low-toned pulse, which is primitive and ritualized. The vocals don’t arrive until more than a minute and a half in, but they’re terrifying when they do, a truly spine-tingling presence that’s both fanatical and wretched.

The music continues to flow like the the Styx, creating a doomed and accursed trance, seeping under the listener’s skin deeper and deeper as it goes. Even the shattering expulsions of both vocalists (and they really are both shattering) don’t completely destroy the spell.

https://tigguocobauc.bandcamp.com/track/ascended-deliverance
http://www.facebook.com/tigguocobaucband

 

CIRCLING OVER (U.S.)

Here’s another band (this one is based in Denver) I knew nothing about before reading about them yesterday and then listening to the song “Eve” from their forthcoming debut album Amends. Seeing comparative references to the likes of Cult of Luna, Holy Fawn, Isis, and Deftones, I had at least a vague idea of what to expect as “Eve” began.

What I didn’t expect was that the opening drum progression felt like it was going to pop open my skull. It sure as hell made quick friends with my reptile brain within. I also didn’t expect that the gently gleaming guitar melody which joins in would so quickly create a captivating contrast, or that the singing would be so seductive.

I thought the song might lean too far into dreamy prog rock for our nasty site, despite how much I was enjoying it, but about halfway through it gets considerably more intense. The music still gleams but now it surrounds and sears. The enormous bass, which had been subtly droning along, begins to mightily throb. The drums hit like a sledge. The vocals splinter into screams.

And after that eye-popping audio vulcanism, things get very heavy and very dark indeed, almost apocalyptic, followed by a funereal and deeply haunting finale.

Amends will be released by Braeburn Records on August 15th.

https://circlingover.bandcamp.com/album/amends-pre-order
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100089630096134

 

OROMET (U.S.)

Here’s yet another band I don’t think I had heard before yesterday. This one is the duo of Dan Aguilar and Patrick Hill from Sacramento, CA. They have a 2023 self-titled debut album under their belt already, with a second one that will be announced in the coming months by Hypaethral Records and Transylvanian Recordings. The next song in today’s collection, “Better Off Alone“, is intended as a bridge between the two albums.

It’s a massive track, both in its length and ultimately in its overpowering sonic impact. Though the music begins softly and mysteriously, like an expanding mystical vision, it transforms into a staggering funeral doom march. The melodic ingredients still sound ethereal, but become far more sweeping and stricken. Both the terrorizing vocals (an amalgam of crazed howls, agonized wails, and soul-shattering screams) and the crushing low end are the opposite of ethereal.

As one might expect from a 15-minute song, it continues changing, moving between phases of light and loud, evanescent and utterly pulverizing. It creates trances and both magnificently and monstrously towers over its listeners. Its whistling, crackling, and boiling instrumental ingredients (some of which  bring to mind distorted flutes or whistles or accordions) create an engulfing pain, and they peal like bells of grief.

In its final phase the music also softens again and becomes panoramic, a union of eerie, futuristic synths and chamber-music strings, mystical and haunting again, heart-breaking and spell-binding.

https://oromet.bandcamp.com/track/better-off-alone
https://www.instagram.com/oromet_doom/

 

CORRIDORÉ (U.S.)

And, voilà, one more band (this one from Madison, WI) that was new to me when I encountered the song I’ve chosen as today’s final entry. I put this song last not because it’s the least impressive (to the contrary, it’s excellent) but because I think it will send you on your way feeling energized.

The song is from a forthcoming album named Abandon, so-named (according to bassist/vocalist Eric Andraska) because its central theme is the abandonment of feelings of isolation, loneliness, and grief — “to break free from that which torments us.” As for this particular song, “(Become) Carrion“, he says this:

“This was the first song we wrote for this album. The song is about the inevitable march towards death while trying to find a glimmer of light in the darkness of a society that makes less and less sense and is more unforgiving and alienating with each new day. Ultimately, it’s hard not to feel that everything has ‘slipped away, out of view’ and to come to the harrowing realization that maybe we’ve been dead the whole time.”

Corridoré waste no time kicking the song into high gear. A burly bass urgently throbs. The drums furiously gallop and clatter. Most strikingly, layered guitars create an electrifying musical blaze, piercing in their feverish vibrations. Not to be outdone, the vocalist screams as if the riffing had set himself aflame.

The song also reveals other facets — deep, doom-cloaked singing and slower but still sweeping phases of sorrow; soulful guitar soloing with a hopeful feeling; brightly darting notes and chords of towering immensity; and singing that flies much higher than before. The song creates a mood of empowering uplift, but then explodes in sounds of anguish and despair — and it seems to grieve at the end.

Quite a multi-faceted song that pulls from many different genres. Hypaethral Records will release the album on August 22nd and recommends it for fans of Deafheaven, Falls of Rauros, Nothing, and Inter Arma.

https://hypaethralrecords.bandcamp.com/album/abandon
https://www.facebook.com/corridoremadison
https://www.instagram.com/corridoreband