(written by Islander)
I got a late start on this Saturday’s roundup of recommended new music, and I feel the need to rush in order to keep it from appearing too late in the day. So my review-ish commentary will be somewhat briefer than usual (please hold your applause) and I’ll cut the rest of the introduction to just this:
I would suggest that this collection is a mix of brain-scramblers, bone-smashing punishers, muscle-twitching groovers, headlong racers, and seductive clean-sung sorcery, more or less in that order.
ESOCTRILIHUM (France)
We’ll begin with a supreme brain-scrambler, the mad genius known as Asthâghul. For his newest album (a double album!) under the name Esoctrilihum he has added an array of new instruments — organ, kantele, harp, theremin, and hammered dulcimer — and has conceptually divided the work into four chapters, “each of which tells a ritual stage in the long journey of dead souls towards the jaws of the 8-eyed psychopomp Abxulöm, who will finally deliver them to eternal nothingness.” One look at the cover art created by Alan “Medusawolf” Brown tells you, if you didn’t already expect it, that the music will be far out of the ordinary.
Esoctrilihum‘s naming conventions have also been head-scramblers. No change there: the name of the new album is Ghostigmatah – Spiritual Rites of the Psychopomp Abxulöm, and the title of the opening track, revealed this week, is “Hark! The Bewitched Trumpet Of The Red Harbinger Is Calling The Dead To Gather“. The long names of all the other songs are equally bewildering and intriguing.
“Stupefaction” is my one-word summary of this song’s impact. In its most explosive moments the roiling music is dense and mauling yet still elaborate and mind-bending, somehow utterly ruinous and yet also apparitional. It also creates cosmic musical panoramas, both glorious and frightening, that flow in stunning fashion across furious percussive assaults and tonally shrill instrumental frenzies.
In its less crazed moments, it becomes mesmerizing, and the vocals range widely too, extravagant in every manifestation. It will also let you get your groove on!
The album is set for release by I, Voidhanger Records on September 5th.
https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/ghostigmatah-spiritual-rites-of-the-psychopomp-abxulo-m
https://www.facebook.com/i.voidhanger.records
KAMRA (Slovenia)
When I last wrote about the music of Kamra here, in the context of their 2022 debut album Cerebral Alchemy, I described it as a manifestation of “manifold terrors”, creating experiences “both predatory and crazed with fear”: “Kamra seem to say, ‘Welcome to our asylum. You can run, but there is no escape.'”
The same Avantgarde Music label that released their debut full-length is now set to release Kamra‘s second album, Unending Confluence, adorned with a surreal cover painting by Jeff Christensen. The title of the first advance song from the album suggests that Kamra haven’t tired of creating nightmare visions: “Of Pillars, Walls and Mutilation“.
The song itself verifies that supposition. You might not think so at first, given the nature of the track’s mysteriously ethereal overture and the woozy and wild singing that joins in. But the singing turns to screaming and the music explodes in a wildfire of hallucination, racing and battering, wailing and contorting, an episode of grand and searing dementia. The enormity of the bass contrasts with the blistering and bizarre turbulence way up high, but those low tones also sound maniacal.
When the pacing slows, the song still sounds hallucinatory but more dismal. The music moans and slowly rakes like steel claws, and the guitars continue clawing and gnawing when things speed up again. The vocals remain utterly berserk until the bitter end.
I found out about the new Kamra album through a message from Rennie before receiving the label’s e-mail about it. He will definitely have something to say about it in the next starkweather Substack column.
The album will be released by Avantgarde Music on September 19th.
https://avantgardemusic.bandcamp.com/album/unending-confluence
https://voicesofkamra.bandcamp.com/album/unending-confluence
https://www.facebook.com/VoicesOfKamra/
HUYA GENUS (Italy)
Huya Genus is one of several new discoveries included in this roundup. Their new EP The Imperfection of Nature came out on June 26th. I decided to begin listening after reading the band’s eloquent description of its themes:
The EP delves into the darkness of nature, exposing its flaws through the raw, unflinching gaze of the creatures that endure it. A hunt without glory, the starving urge behind teeth and claws. Shelter as a temporary tomb. Sleeplessness turned flesh, fog that devours form and identity. Cannibalism as a primal echo of survival.
These are nights suspended in the void—lives entangled with death. But in the collapse of one body, another draws breath. In this spiral of ferocity, it is death that feeds life.
Apparently based on their first EP, Metal-Archives labels Huya Genus as “Groove Metal”. Pay no attention to that. I mean, it might have suited their first EP (which I haven’t heard) but it’s way off-base for the new one.
That’s not to say these five songs are lacking in groove (the drums often administer a head-moving, foot-stomping punch), but the EP is a big genre-hybrid, an ever-changing and dazzling alchemy of melodic death metal, black metal, post-metal, and prog rock (that’s not an exhaustive list, btw), occasionally accented by thrashy chords, soaring melodies, and arena-ready heavy metal guitar soloing, and occasionally interspersed with unexpected digressions (e.g., bits of classically influenced piano and acoustic guitar as well as something that resembles an accordion or old pump organ in the head-spinning final song).
No two of the songs are exactly alike, and they feature a changing array of instrumental tones (both rough and crystalline clear) as well as stylistic proclivities and moods. The bass performances are often scene-stealers, and the vocals by Chris Bone (also credited as the lyricist) add a lot to the mix, providing an expansive array of fang-bared savagery.
For such a free-wheeling amalgamation of influences and ideas within every song, they all hold together really well. I found it fascinating.
https://huyagenus.bandcamp.com/album/the-imperfection-of-nature
https://www.instagram.com/huyagenus
YOTUMA (U.S.)
The Final Void is the name of the second album from Yotuma, a death metal band based in Madison, Wisconsin. I don’t think I’d heard their music before, and just randomly decided to check out the first single from the album, “Sphincter Dremel“, in part because of the eye-popping cover art. That first single popped my eyes even wide.
And by that I mean the music hit so hard I thought it might eject the orbs from their sockets. The music is immense and immensely destructive; the riffing pile-drives and whines, sounding like some massive excavator brutally quarrying its way through granite while another machine hammers other crags into rubble.
The drums chop like an executioner’s axe and stir up the troops with martial beats; the vocals are roaring and gurgling monstrosities. On top of all this you get bursts of shrieking strings, off-kilter drum escapades, and bunker-busting bass drops.
This is not music for the higher faculties, but it will make your reptile brain very happy. The album’s startling cover art is credited to Julian Mortuus. The album will be released on September 12th by Bölverk Records.
https://yotuma.bandcamp.com/album/the-final-void-2
https://www.facebook.com/yotumaWI
VICTIM OF FIRE (U.S.)
Victim of Fire bill themselves as “Denver’s only stadium crust band.” I couldn’t quite wrap my head around what that meant but decided to find out, via the four songs now available for listening from their forthcoming album The Old Lie. I became even more interested when I read that the lyrics to the title song come from a poem by the English poet Wilfred Owens, “lifting the curtain behind the bleak realities experienced by soldiers in World War One”. The striking cover art by Dan Bones connects with that theme.
That opening track is an immediate adrenaline kick, a heavy-grooved, hell-for-leather gallop graced with vicious, scorch-the-earth screams, enormous low-frequency turbulence, and glorious twin-guitar harmonies. The music manages to be both fierce and grim, spectacular and tragic, and you’d be wise to loosen up your neck muscles because following a guitar bridge in the song’s back half, it becomes highly headbangable.
In the following three songs that are now streaming at Bandcamp, “Soldier’s Dream” brings out the band’s crust influences even more strongly. It’s also a heavyweight slugger, but ends tragically, melding a bass guitar, violins, and a wailing electric guitar (I think). “Front Towards Enemy” is breathtaking sonic warfare, frantic and desperate, fearful and ferocious, but once again it includes a dual-guitar solo that’s a real stunner.
And finally, “Dismarmonist“, the longest of the four, is just downright breathtaking in its combination of sweeping overhead expanse, heart-piercing guitar harmonies, punishing grooves, galloping exhilaration, and blistering vocal savagery. It’s easy to be completely carried away… and easy to be left deeply haunted when the rush suddenly ends, before the band create one last earth-cracking and incendiary musical extravaganza at the song’s culmination. (This one was presented through a music video that I’ve included below.)
I will definitely catch up to the album’s other six songs (which include a cover of Iron Maiden‘s “Aces High”), because these four are tremendous.
The Old Lie that is set for release on August 1st via Human Future Records/Return Trip Records.
https://victimoffire.bandcamp.com/album/the-old-lie
https://www.instagram.com/victimovfire/
ESSES (U.S.)
To close, we have the sorcery mentioned in the introduction, a song from Oakland-born, now Portland-based, Esses. It comes from their new album Pain at the Altar of Jest.
The song is named “Low“, and for a reason. It amalgamates a variety of important ingredients — Kelly Correll‘s beautifully haunting singing; eerily ringing guitars (the instrumentation includes lap and pedal steel guitars); bone-deep bass murmurs; bone-cracking beats; and big throbbing riffs that will shake you down to your soles. All of that (and more) brings a listener low, but it’s nonetheless wholly enveloping and entrancing.
Pain at the Altar of Jest will be released by Seeing Red Records on September 26th.
https://essesmusic.bandcamp.com/album/pain-at-the-altar-of-jest
https://www.facebook.com/essesoakland/