SEEN AND HEARD: THE MUNSENS, LAMP OF MURMUUR, AN ABSTRACT ILLUSION, NIPHREDIL

(written by Islander)

As I write this I am in Nottingham, England, and eagerly looking forward to attending Andy Synn‘s wedding on Saturday. An overnight flight brought me from Seattle to London with an early arrival yesterday, and I didn’t feel too much the worse for wear despite only napping for an hour on the 8-hour flight. Then came a car ride to Nottingham and a lunch there with Andy, his bride-to-be, and some other American friends (including DGR) who have also come over for the event.

By the end of our long lunch and a post-prandial drink at another spot, I was hitting the wall. I fought to stay up until 6 pm and then crashed hard. But I woke up early this morning after 12 1/2 hours of sleep feeling great, and now I’m quite happy with my jet-lag solution!

Of course it’s still weird being on UK time, weird in the sense that I decided to pull this round-up together with something like 7 hours to go before it will magically appear in line with our normal daily posting schedule, instead of just minutes.

I really didn’t plan to do any NCS writing while on this trip. Among other things, I scheduled no premieres until after I’m back in Seattle the middle of next week. Just didn’t want to feel any obligations while here other than being free to be with my friends. But my guess is that nothing sociable will start today until circa lunchtime, so fuck, I might as well recommend some music!

And what a gigantic pile of new stuff to choose from, especially gigantic because I did no roundups last weekend due to a different trip away from home. So this small collection today really is like throwing a few darts, not against a dartboard but toward a hornet swarm. I managed to spike a few of them before running.

 

THE MUNSENS (U.S.)

This first song happens to be the first one I listened to this morning. I’m virtually certain I’ve heard some of this Denver band’s music before, though we’ve never written about them. But the two advance songs that are now streaming from their new album don’t sound like my vague memories of The Munsens‘ previous work.

“The Knife” is the song that plays first at Bandcamp, and listening to it made me feel like I’d stepped on a live power line. The ruthlessly distorted riffing sets up a mind-mangling throb, interspersed with fast, hard-ramming head-butts; the drumming sounds like a mix of d-beat and back-beat; the vocals vent gruesome roars and crazed howls.

The band also throw in doses of viciously swarming and maniacally writhing fretwork; other doses of corrosive, hulking menace; bursts of acrobatic drum-tumbles; further vocals most foul; and a convulsive finale. The music is primitive (that’s not a criticism), brutish, compulsively muscle-moving (especially those jackhammer segments in the riffing), but also fiendish and frantic.

I see that the other song at Bandcamp, “Sacred Ivory“, is a single first released in January 2023. It too is a mangler and a mauler, massively heavy and thick in the low end but lit up by vibrantly (and insidiously) whirring tremolo’d guitar-leads and neck-popping beats. No surprise, the vocals are still bestial, and the band again insert some highly head-moving jackhammer grooves (if you need to bust up some pavement, just play this through some big-ass speakers).

“Sacred Ivory” further includes adaptations of those lead-guitar vibrations and rhythm-guitar throbs that cause the music to sound distressing and grieving, and the song also briefly becomes a dismal, lurching march before that opening riff takes over again.

The name of the new album is Degradation in the Hyperreal. It has a release date of October 24th.

https://themunsensnj.bandcamp.com/album/degradation-in-the-hyperreal
https://www.facebook.com/themunsens/
https://www.instagram.com/themunsens/

 

LAMP OF MURMUUR (U.S.)

And this happens to be the second song I listened to this morning. Obviously, this hornet and the one before got out in front of the swarm when I began the dart game.

This one, “Forest of Hallucinations“, premiered yesterday to help herald Lamp of Murmuur‘s new album The Dreaming Prince in Ecstasy, to be released by Wolves of Hades on November 14th. It’s described on behalf of the label as “the synergy of both sides of a bloodstained coin: triumph and grief, transcendence and torment.”

This one new song, a jaw-dropping one, bears out that description. It begins in a way that’s grand and grievous, with momentous chords, slowly crashing beats, and a wailing lead-guitar melody — but it also mounts a grand (and electrifying) charge, with thunderous drums, brazenly blaring and feverishly pulsating outbursts, brightly rippling piano keys, and ugly snarls.

Lots of the song’s elaborate musical motifs set hooks as they recur, and the grandeur of the song is ever-present, climbing to even high planes of soaring and sweeping extravagance in its most exhilarating phases, but M. also re-surfaces harmonized guitar melodies of distress, and its closing phase, while magnificent, is itself grief-stricken and daunting (and the vocals are shattering). The drumming is a constantly changing but constantly attention-grabbing presence too.

https://wolvesofhades.bandcamp.com/album/the-dreaming-prince-in-ecstasy
https://www.wolvesofhades.com/
https://lampofmurmuur.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/lampofmurmuur

 

AN ABSTRACT ILLUSION (Sweden)

Welp, this is actually the third new song I listened to this morning, three winners in a row. But I listened to it because I already had a fair degree of confidence, based on the identity of the band, that it would be very good. So it was.

Like the song before it in this roundup, “Emmett” is a multi-faceted affair, but with a greater degree of haunting poignance in its less violent phases. Indeed, as the beautifully made video begins, that’s how the music starts — elegant, gentle, and steeped in loss. But the bass begins to moan, the drums launch electrifying booms and martial tattoos, some wailing old instrument joins in, and that provides a bridge to an eruption.

The band detonate furiously blasting drums and furiously howling vocals, and although the glittering shrouds of sound from the opening persist, they now sound distressing. The many facets of the song continue flowering, including frantic fretwork and double-bass torrents; keyboards that gloriously swirl, sweep, and futuristically warble; rapturous solos that are saxophone-like in sound and others that are soulful and jazzy; loads of proggy and funky bass-work; enticing clean vocal harmonies; scorching screams; and a whole lot more.

It’s an absolutely captivating song, 11+ minutes of wondrous, mood-changing adventure. The video is captivating too.

It’s the second single from An Abstract Illusion‘s new album The Sleeping City, which will be out on October 17th via Willowtip Records.

https://www.willowtip.com/bands/details/an-abstract-illusion.aspx
https://anabstractillusion.bandcamp.com/album/the-sleeping-city
http://www.facebook.com/anabstractillusion

 

NIPHREDIL (Ecuador)

To close this impromptu roundup I picked Fractures in the Crystal Vault, a two-song EP released on September 9th by an Ecuadorian band I’ve had good experiences with in the past — specifically, their 2023 debut album The Final Star (which I briefly reviewed here).

The first of the two songs, “The Masked Seer“, creates feelings of tension and disturbance immediately, though the ringing and ravaged guitars are backed by vivid beats and an earth-shaking bass. When harsh vocals bite in, the riffing slowly writhes like a gigantic serpent, a huge dismal presence of doom accompanied by a slowly writhing and wailing guitar spirit.

The vocals grow increasingly unhinged and thus even more ravenous, yet the music briefly changes, gnawing in the low end but becoming piercing and spectral high above — just a brief interlude before the music starts pounding and pulsing, augmented by a beautifully executed guitar solo (eventually doubled) that’s serpentine and sorcerous. By the end the music convulses as the riffing frantically throbs, swarms, and batters.

That first song reminds me just how good Niphredil are in their hybridizing of black, doom/sludge, and prog metal, and the second song further reinforces the impression. It’s the longer of the two and even more varied in its dimensions.

“Death By Dreaming” opens with a doleful acoustic guitar melody, and then the band begin to savagely jolt and jab, yet continuing to carry forward and adapt the sad opening acoustic melody, albeit in more dangerous form. They further continue to build the energy, with drums snapping like gnashing teeth and the riffage exploding in a barbarous swarm.

Again, the vocals are terrorizing in their tormented intensity. Again, the band continue switching things up (including the tempos), with drums occasionally blasting, the guitars creating seizures of vividly buzzing and rapidly swirling mania, and the low-end creating upheavals of destructive seismic activity. They create a head-spinning and heart-palpitating sonic kaleidoscope.

The acoustic melody briefly reminds us of how the song started, and the band give listeners a vicious jolting again too, but they save one of the song’s best features for near the end — a fascinating and highly charismatic guitar solo.

Both of these songs are bleak at their core, but they both throw off a lot of sparks.

https://niphredil.bandcamp.com/album/fractures-in-the-crystal-vault
https://www.facebook.com/p/Niphredil-100063754862534/
https://www.instagram.com/niphrdil/