SEEN AND HEARD ON A TUESDAY: KUNTARI, MOUTH OF MADNESS, VERMINGOD, PLUTONIAN SHORE, SETH, HYENISM

Kuntari

(written by Islander)

With only one premiere responsibility today and nothing else in the queue from our other writers, I had just enough time to compile a rare weekday roundup of new songs and videos. I think many of the songs that follow include aspects of the exotic, or at least that’s the best word I can come up with. The collection is book-ended by a couple of things I found thanks to someone else’s recent collection.

KUNTARI (Indonesia)

Last October I came across the Indonesian musical project Kuntari (the duo of Tesla Manaf and Rio Abror) based on a fascinating collaboration Kuntari did with an Indonesian “Post-Black Metal/Crust/Shoegaze” band named Avhath. I included a bit of background info about Kuntari and a lot of enthusiastic words about just one head-spinning song from the collaboration here.

Well, I didn’t do a good enough job keeping up with these two creative forces, because I overlooked the fact that last December they finally released the album, entitled Ephemeral Passage, which included that song. I learned about that event from Rennie Resmini‘s latest starkweather Substack column (find that here), which also included a link to the Kuntari video below. It was filmed and recorded live in “a deserted chemical ruin,” augmented with skulls At YouTube there’s this description:

“Bessing” is a reinterpretation of centuries deadly combat custom in south Celebes with enormous pace and dynamic range of rhythms. Tesla’s modified Trumpet emulate Puik-puik along with interlocking triple drum stick of Rio, emerge into a concrete structure of beat-based composition.

KUNTARI dissect ancient tradition with surgical instinct, rebuilding it in the form of primal-core: the guttural echoes of mating calls and tribal Indonesian rhythms resurrected from the 16th century blended into a feral rite, roto toms snarling with clipped resonance as Tesla’s percussive guitar transforms into an instrument of raw, thrumming power.

I think I’ll just leave you with that. Prepare to be frightened and fascinated, to be haunted and get hopped up. (The video’s setting, including the startled pigeons, is perfect.)

“Bessing” is part of an upcoming Kuntari album entitled Mutu Beton. The vinyl will be released by 99Chants, Grimloc Records, Disaster Record, and Bojakrama this summer.

https://linktr.ee/KUNTARImusic
https://kuntari.bandcamp.com
https://avhath.bandcamp.com/album/ephemeral-passage

 

MOUTH OF MADNESS (Germany)

Almost 10 years after the release of a self-titled EP, the German band Mouth of Madness have finally released (as of today) their debut album Event Horizon (via Darkness Shall Rise Records). I haven’t listened to the whole album yet, just the first and only single released from it, “At the Heart of the Unknown,” paired with a video. It sure as hell made a hellish impact.

I also thought it would do well coming right after that Kuntari song and video. The tribal drumming at the song’s outset (and elsewhere) connects, and in a way, so does the diabolical riffing and soloing, although this song’s own exotic (and molten) melodies have a more Arabian and/or Sumerian kind of resonance. The vocals are absolutely ravenous.

The whole album premiered today at this location.

https://mouthofmadnessdarknessshallrise.bandcamp.com/album/event-horizon
https://www.facebook.com/thewolvesofgolgotha

 

VERMINGOD (Greece)

Here’s another band whose recording silence has lasted nearly 10 years, the Vermingod death metal band from Patras. They ended their silence late last month with the release of a turbocharged song named “The Fundamental Scorn” and a video to go with it. They describe it as follows:

“The video is a visual embodiment of the silence we were forced to swallow — where truth is buried beneath sacred illusions, and obedience is mistaken
for faith. It’s not merely art; it’s an act of resistance against the structures that teach us to kneel.”

This song, like the ones that precede it in today’s roundup, also includes strands of exotic but also dismal melody, and it’s also blistering and bludgeoning, a hurricane storm of technically frenetic fretwork, thunderous bass machinations, furious but sharply executed drumming, a cavalcade of guttural gurgling and  maniacal screaming, and doses of tire-iron brutality to the back of our necks.

The song, which is intended to pave the way for Vermingod‘s forthcoming fourth album, is excellent. So is the video. Be sure to take plenty of deep breaths before letting this one loose in your cranium.

https://vermingod.bandcamp.com/track/the-fundamental-scorn-single
https://www.facebook.com/Vermingod
https://www.instagram.com/vermingod.band/

 

PLUTONIAN SHORE (U.S.)

Throughout last year and now continuing into this one, Texas-based Plutonian Shore has been releasing singles, paving the way toward an album of all-new material later this year. The latest single, “Ebon Curse“, came out last weekend and features guest vocals by Evintis.

Yet again, this is a song that I thought was melodically exotic, threaded with whirling melodies that seem to have Eastern roots, but it’s much more expansive in scale, much more sweeping than the previous music in today’s collection. Vocally, it features beastly snarls, scorching screams; and fanatical yells; the bass sounds like magma breaking the surface; the delirious dervish-like riffing levitates.

https://plutonianshore.bandcamp.com/track/ebon-curse-feat-evintis
https://www.facebook.com/plutonianshore

 

Photo by Andy Julia

SETH (France)

The French black metal band Seth and their label Season of Mist released this next song and video yesterday, on Bastille Day, the same day when they released their latest album La France des Maudits last year. I couldn’t resist checking it out because the PR we got described it as “a radical reinterpretation of Serge Gainsbourg’s infamous 1968 ode to Brigitte Bardot.”

I do remember Bardot (hard to forget). I’ve learned that Gainsbourg was a famous French singer-songwriter, actor, composer, and director who had “a brief but ardent love affair with Bardot.” That led him to pen some duets (including “Bonnie and Clyde”) that were later included in an album named Initials B.B. Seth‘s new song is a cover of that album’s title track.

I haven’t listened to the original, so I take this Seth tribute to French decadence at face value. At face value, it’s both grand and eerie, elegant and decadent, sinister and seditious. It begins to seem like a dark dream, even with Saint Vincent snarling the words in strikingly vicious fashion, but it also breaks open in a burst of blast-driven derangement.

And if you want to work on your French accent, you can try to yell along with the song’s title. I know you’ll want to.

Unless you’re offended by the site of a voluptuous young woman dressing, applying cosmetics, fixing her hair, and taking Polaroid-era selfies, you’ll likely enjoy the well-made video — which also includes vocalist Saint Vincent‘s wretched and/or enraged countenance.

https://orcd.co/sethlafrancesdesmaudits
https://www.facebook.com/innomineseth

 

HYENISM (Slovakia)

Here’s the other bookend I discovered thanks to Rennie Resmini‘s latest starkweather Substack column. And here’s what he write that hooked me into the final installment in my own column today:

Hyenism is a “one man metal project from Bratislava, Slovakia. No live shows, no merch, no physical releases.” You can grab the entire catalog for under $2. This guy comes without warning and lays down scorched earth policies such as Dominus et Deus and disappears in the din. 5 songs this time packed into a single 34 minute track. Extremely creative use of melodic textures that resemble a cross between mellotron and organ that weave in and around the dissonant riffage and steel girder bass thumps. You see the band name, right? Well, the vocals are that of a rabid hyena. The drumming (programming?), too, is off the rails. If this guy gave a shit about physical copy one would think I, Voidhanger and Total Dissonance Worship would be in on this action.

I really don’t need to add anything, do I? Well, I will anyway, though I’ll be brief.

This is a supremely twisted and turning trip, a constantly changing labyrinth of strange and discordant micro-tonalities, surreal configurations, and generally unsettling effects. As previewed above, the drumming is off-the-hook, and so are the asylum-quality vocals — just thoroughly deranged and dangerous to long-term vocal-chord health as well as sanity.

There are earthquakes too, and light LSD-induced frolics, and brutal industries at work, and dozens of other things you might imagine as you tumble through the labyrinth.

Something this simultaneously dazzling and demented needs to be shared.

https://hyenism.bandcamp.com/album/dominus-et-deus-2025
https://www.facebook.com/hyenism