SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: A BAKER’S DOZEN OF BRUTALITY

these plus one

(written by Islander)

The last time I compiled a Saturday roundup of new songs and videos was 21 days ago. No need to go into the reasons for that (because I’ve previously shared them). Needless to say (but of course I’m saying it), the volume of new musical extremity that has emerged since then has reached towering proportions.

As the days passed I continued keeping lists and open tabs, and visited many of those locations to do some listening yesterday and this morning, but it was still just a relatively small dent in that looming edifice of new sounds.

To sort of make up for being AWOL for the past three Saturdays, I’ve made this roundup a big one — a baker’s dozen of songs (and one short EP). Recency being primacy, I tended to lean toward newer things at the top of my list.

As you’ll see, I also tended to lean toward prominent and familiar names, but eventually descended deeper under ground. I also loaded almost all the videos on the front end — eight of them to start. And much of what’s coming, including the first four songs in a row, delivers the kind of high-speed intensity that gets hearts hammering.

 

KREATOR (Germany)

Last week Kreator announced that their sixteenth studio album, the modestly named Krushers of the World, which will be released on January 16 via Nuclear Blast Records. Yesterday they also released a cinematic video for the album track “Seven Serpents“.

In addition to excellent footage of Kreator performing the song, the video tells a sinister supernatural tale, but I won’t spoil it.

As for the music, Mille Petrozza‘s high, rasp-textured, and fire-spawned voice is in good shape; the drums sound like accelerated cannon fire; and the keys and choral voices reach epic heights; but it’s the fast-darting and frantically swarming riffage and the exhilarating soloing that really sells this blood-rushing crowd-pleaser of a song. And of course the band eventually reach a point when they trigger the good ol’ headbang reflex.

(The album’s hellish cover art was created by Zbigniew M. Bielak.)

https://kreator.bfan.link/krushers-of-the-world
https://kreator.bandcamp.com/album/krushers-of-the-world
https://www.facebook.com/KreatorOfficial

 

CORONER (Switzerland)

Since the last one of these columns the head-scrambling and heart-palpitating Swiss metal pioneers Coroner released yet another single, with a video, from their new album Dissonance Theory. It really has been exciting to see such a distinctive band picking themselves up and moving forward after a 30-year absence without missing a step, and if anything striding further than before. That’s true again in the case of this newest single “Symmetry“, presented with a video that lets us see veteran guys in action.

Coroner’s guitarist, songwriter, and producer Tommy Vetterli commented, “This track is about vanity, ego, and how self-obsession can be destructive. That idea shaped the way we played it too. ‘Symmetry‘ gave us room to explore, and with the rhythmic dimension Diego [Rapacchietti – Drums] brings, it pushed us further than we’ve gone before.”

The song is fast and vicious, but also technically impressive. It’s a viscerally compelling pulse-puncher but also reaches heights of sinister glory (and depths of sinister darkness when the band slow the pace in the song’s back half). Speaking of glorious, the fluid guitar solo is that too. We are lucky to have these dudes back in harness.

Dissonance Theory is due on October 17th via Century Media.

https://coronerofficial.bandcamp.com/album/dissonance-theory-24-bit-hd-audio
https://coronerofficial.com/
https://www.facebook.com/coronerband/

 

ENTHRONED (Belgium)

Continuing the progression of long-lived bands today, Enthroned are next. They announced their twelfth album this week, one entitled Ashspawn, which was written in close collaboration with occult author Gilles de Laval. To help draw attention to the news, Enthroned revealed a spectacular video for a spectacular song off the album named “Raviasamin“.

Here, Enthroned waste no time creating an aura of vast occult splendor but then follow that with savagely inflamed screams, possessed cries, swarming and slithering fretwork derangement, and skull-cracking beats. It’s a full-bore frightening experience that reaches zeniths of hellish exultation, capable of leaving the whites of your eyes showing all ’round.

Ashspawn will be released by Season of Mist on December 5th.

https://orcd.co/enthronedashspawn
https://enthroned.bandcamp.com/album/ashspawn
https://www.facebook.com/Frater.Silurian/

 

REVOCATION (U.S.)

Revocation‘s new album New Gods, New Masters was released yesterday. Our Andy Synn reviewed it here. He named four songs that he said were “more than capable of going toe-to-toe with the very best of the band’s back-catalogue.” One of those, “Dystopian Vermin”, is the subject of a video that Revocation also released yesterday to help open a few more people’s eyes to the album release.

The video is a can’t-look-away kind of extravagance, and the song, in a word, is maniacal in just about every way, both vocally and instrumentally, barely kept on track by steadying drumbeats and doses of jackhammering and battering-ram groove. The soloing is also a swirling and fret-melting delight.

https://www.metalblade.com/revocation/
https://revocationband.bandcamp.com/album/new-gods-new-masters
https://www.facebook.com/Revocation/

 

MESSA (Italy)

Messa‘s latest album The Spin came out last April via Metal Blade. I’m surprised that none of the NCS slaves (or at least the doom-leaning ones) reviewed it. As a reminder to all of us that the album is worth exploring, the past week brought a video for the album track “Reveal“. Here’s what the band had to say about it:

“The main riff in ‘Reveal‘ manifested itself spontaneously. Our guitar player Alberto dreamed of it one night. He suddenly woke up at 4:00am and recorded it with his phone so he wouldn’t forget it. It was the most immediate song to write out of all those we wrote for The Spin and it features two key elements: the typical, ‘blues’ use of slide guitar and the ‘metal’ element of the blastbeats. This video was entirely shot with analog equipment in a tire warehouse in our hometown. We chose the lo-fi aesthetic on purpose, using the dynamism of strobe and neon lights. We tried to make it as spontaneous as the songwriting process for the track.”

I’m a sucker for a bluesy slide guitar, which is as rare as hen’s teeth in the world of metal, and that’s what’s used to launch “Reveal“. But as forecast above, the music also charges, propelled by bursts of blasting percussion, and the band alter that bluesy opening melody to make a more sinister experience. And if somehow you haven’t yet heard Sara Blanchin‘s sultry and soaring voice, which more than earns an exception to our “rule” about singing, you’re in for a treat.

This is a song that will get under a lot of people’s skins, and it’s great that the spectacular guitar solo is also performed with slide guitar. Who knew (other than Messa) that delta blues and doom could co-exist so well? Cool lyric video too.

https://www.metalblade.com/messa/
https://messa.bandcamp.com/album/the-spin
https://www.facebook.com/MESSAproject

 

IGORRR (France)

A few days ago Igorrr dropped a video for the song “Daemoni” off their latest album Amen, which is out now on Metal Blade. Igorrr‘s mastermind introduced it this way:

“The Earth has a demon inside it. The bright side attempted to convert it but didn’t succeed, and the gong marked the end of all hope. You can hear the demon’s heart. You can hear the ceremony for it to wake up. You can hear the mud and the dirt. You can also hear, with such great strength, the bright side of life fighting before it was destroyed by evil.”

The video is a hell of a thing — a hell of a scary thing, a freakish and skin-chilling phantasmagoria. The music, on the other hand, is mainly about the convulsive pulse, the pulse of a heart and a neck, augmented by gnawing guitars, glitchy spasms of sound, skull-splitting beats, soaring choirs, lilting acoustic guitars, crystalline operatic singing, and bestial howls and screams. It’s really hard to think of anyone but Igorrr capable of integrating so many disparate ingredients this well.

https://www.metalblade.com/igorrr/
https://igorrr.bandcamp.com/album/amen
https://www.facebook.com/IgorrrBarrroque/

 

OUTLAW (Germany/Brazil)

Time to turn up the heat again.

The Brazilian-born but now German-resident black metal band Outlaw will be releasing their fourth album, Opus Mortis, on October 31st with AOP Records. In a late-August SHADES OF BLACK column I called attention to the electrifying first single from the album, “Through the Infinite Darkness“. I included a comment from the band in which they intriguingly stated: “This song is closer to what we presented before, and that’s why we wanted to release it first. The rest of the album is a journey to something unexplored by us until now.”

So now we have a second single, this one named “Those Who Breathe Fire“, which features a guest appearance by guitarist Georgios of Dödsrit. It arrived with a dark, flame-lit, skull-strewn, and blood-spilling video.

The song’s harmonized riffing quickly creates feverish tension, and the vocals are mad and merciless. The song compulsively throbs and sweeps too, but Outlaw keep the fear factor and tension torqued to a high degree until they unexpectedly step back, to create a collage of dreamlike ambience and bird-like whistling. But that phase rises and expands too, creating fear again from seductive mystery, and paving the way toward a wonderful guitar solo (a pair of them, actually) and vividly dancing keyboards.

The song beautifully brings together sounds of daunting occult splendor and hard-charging savagery, a stirring union of vast supernatural glory and feral ferocity.

https://artofpropaganda.bandcamp.com/album/opus-mortis
https://outlaw218.bandcamp.com/album/opus-mortis
https://www.facebook.com/OutlawBlackMetal

 

THRON (Germany)

Now we turn to yet another black metal band based in Germany (Thron), one that has been pumping out albums at a notable rate of speed since their self-titled 2017 debut. Their latest full-length is named Vurias, and my next selection is a video for the song “The Serpent’s Path“. I found this comment about it in a press release:

“The Serpent’s Path” is a visceral descent into inner torment and transformation, drawing from themes of chaos, betrayal, and isolation.It fuses eerie acoustic guitar passages with furious blast beats and epic synthesizer layers that remain tastefully restrained, never overpowering the core intensity. Drawing clear influence from Norwegian black metal legends like Emperor, Enslaved, and Satyricon, the track balances primal aggression with atmospheric depth, forging a sound that is both savage and majestic.

I can’t quarrel with any of that. The song launches with gripping drum work and a seductive serpentine melody that has an ancient pagan resonance, and it sinks its fangs in a listener’s head right damned fast. From there, the band feed their fires, unleashing blast-beats, scalding snarls, and feverish yet bleak riffage. The sensations are full of diabolical peril but they’re also stricken and haunting, emotionally dark even as the music is often fiery.

It’s also true that the synths are used judicially, but vital to lifting the song heavenward near the end without diminishing its fearsomeness. The video is well worth watching too.

Vurias will be released by Listenable Records on October 31st.

https://bfan.link/the-serpent-s-path
https://listenable-records.bandcamp.com/album/vurias
https://www.instagram.com/thronkvlt
https://www.facebook.com/thronkvlt

 

LUGUBRIOUS GARMENT (Italy)

Surely you recognize the name Gabriele Gramaglia from his projects Cosmic Putrefaction, Vertebra Atlantis, and Turris Eburnea, among others. To that list we must now add the intriguing name Lugubrious Garment, his newest project and one that (to quote the Nuclear Winter label) “was born out of an urge to channel a more brutal, ravenous instinct compared to Gramaglia’s other ventures, giving shape to a merciless yet dynamic form of extreme metal.”

Lugubrious Garment‘s first demo consists of three tracks, on which Gramaglia was joined by session drummer Claudio Invidia (Defacement, Devoid of Thought).

The one song we can hear now, “Of Vengeful Intransigence“, bears out that quote in the preceding paragraph. At first it’s a dense, lumbering, corrosively tuned, and monstrously heavy experience, leavened with furious blast-beat eruptions, guitars that are shrill, shrieking, and swarming, and a panoply of cold guttural roars and hair-on-fire screams.

The song as a whole also erupts in maniacal fretwork convulsions, mutilating drum-fills, berserk soloing, and brutal slugging. It’s a head-spinning, technically jaw-dropping, thoroughly breathtaking kaleidoscope of sound, but unmistakably and ravenously violent. Looking forward to hearing the other two songs!

Demo MMXXV is set for release by Nuclear Winter Records on October 31st.

https://nuclearwinterrecords.bandcamp.com/album/demo-mmxxv
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61581118918912
https://www.facebook.com/martyrdoomproductions

 

MODDER (Belgium)

I was initially drawn to this next song by the name of the album from which it comes — Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun — and by the album’s striking cover art. Although it’s this Belgian psychedelic sludge band’s third album overall, I don’t recall having heard their music before, so I was curious to see what it was like.

The new album’s first single, “Mather“, is so pulverizing as to be stupefying. It delivers thuggish pounding, primitive and brutal, but Modder also lace that cold-hearted trauma with bursts of demented screeching fretwork and electronics, exhilarating drum fills, and bone-gnawing, rasp-edged bass-malice.

Modder‘s lineup doesn’t include a vocalist, but sometimes it sounds like there is some hideously grumbling voice in the mix. They also briefly restrain their pile-driving thuggery in order to drip psychedelics into our ear-holes, a mix of strangely ringing guitars and burbling bass tones. Afterward, they accelerate into new manifestations of churning, battering, and charging hostility — but with one last dose of skull-crushing brutishness to close things out.

The accompanying video is a fascinating piece of eye-candy, as you will see.

Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun is set to be released on October 3rd via Consouling Sounds and Lay Bare Recordings.

https://modder.bandcamp.com/album/destroying-ourselves-for-a-place-in-the-sun
https://www.instagram.com/modder_sludge
https://www.facebook.com/modder666

 

SUFFERING HOUR (U.S.)

Over the last 8 years we’ve devoted quite a lot of attention to Minnesota’s Suffering Hour. We premiered and reviewed their debut album In Passing Ascension. We also reviewed their second album The Cyclic Reckoning, calling it “quite possibly be the first truly ‘great’ record of 2021.” I also named a song from that one to our list of 2021’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs. And we reviewed (with praise) their 2022 split with Malthusian (Time’s Withering Shadow). It’s therefore very good news around here that Suffering Hour are back with a new EP.

Entitled Impelling Rebirth, the EP includes five tracks spanning 15 minutes, and the one you can hear now is “Revelation of Mortality“, a three-minute tirade of blistering and battering violence, replete with utterly crazed vocals, freakishly exultant but viciously rabid riffing, and full-throttle blasting.

For something so berserk, the music also rings and swirls in a way that’s magical, and the bass-work is noticeably nimble. Moreover, near the end the riffing sets up a weirdly writhing and piercing pulse that’s a surprisingly big hook, backed by a marauding rhythm-section performance.

Terrific stuff here, but from this band that’s no surprise. Impelling Rebirth will be released on October 3rd by Profound Lore.

https://linktr.ee/impellingrebirth
https://sufferinghour.bandcamp.com/album/impelling-rebirth
https://www.facebook.com/SufferingHourMetal/

 

SUFFERING (UK)

Of course I thought it appropriate to follow Suffering Hour with Suffering, whose name obviously places no temporal limits on their agonies. “Suffering conjure a bleak fusion of soul-crushing doom and violent black metal — a sound steeped in occultism, ritual, and madness.” So says Apocalyptic Witchcraft Recordings about this band’s second full-length, Things Seen But Always Hidden, which the label will release on November 28th.

“Apocrypha Through The Keyhole” is our first public glimpse of the album. It begins in a way that’s strangely seductive, thanks to a skipping drum-and-cymbal progression and a musing bass melody. But of course, things get much more sinister. The music is slow and serpentine, seeming to mysteriously and woozily wail, while the vocals deliver sheer unbridled terror.

Though the soloing is a vividly flickering experience, it sounds tormented. Hammering drums, possessed screams, and more expansive wailing manifestations add to the torment. When the pace slows, the lead guitar seems to slowly weep — and nothing could possibly offer succor to the vocals, which are shattering in the extremity of their wretchedness.

https://orcd.co/APw054
https://suffering.bandcamp.com/album/things-seen-but-always-hidden
http://www.facebook.com/suffering.ukmetal

 

SCAPHIZM (U.S.)

I owe thanks to Miloš for linking me to this final item today, a roughly 9 1/2 minute EP named Prowess and Brutality released by the Houston band Scaphizm on August 8th. I assume this is their debut release because I haven’t found any other music from them. I haven’t found much else about them either, beyond this EP. But the EP made a mark, much in the way that a trampling herd of stallions or a bear attack would leave a mark.

Given that the track list packs 8 songs into those 9 1/2 minutes, you can guess that these mauling outbursts are short, each one spilling into the next. The opener “Breath of Desire” sets the scene and locks a listener in place with vividly rumbling and tumbling beats, screeching pick slides, brazen chords, and bestial vox. Scaphizm also mix in d-beats, blast-beats, head-knocking back-beats, and furious riff-swarms.

It’s the kind of opener that pops eyes and gets muscles moving, a grimy and gripping combination of blackened death metal, punk, and powerviolence. From there, Scaphizm continue discharging songs that change tempos and moods without warning, surging and slowing, creating explosions of unhinged violence and feral jubilation but also sinking into soul-sucking bleakness.

The drumming is relentlessly immediate and bone-smashing; the vocals are relentlessly deranged; the riffing is ugly in tone and unpredictably variable in progression; the bass sounds like a lunatic excavation machine or like bombs going off; the feedback noise is ruinous; little pulsing tones sometimes frantically surface.

This hell-on-wheels EP obviously doesn’t last long, but it’s thoroughly electrifying and multi-dimensional enough that it doesn’t wear out its brief welcome. To the contrary, if you’re like me the first thing you’ll do after getting trampled and gutted by it is go right back to the beginning for second and third helpings.

https://scaphizm832.bandcamp.com/album/prowess-and-brutality
https://www.instagram.com/p/DNGrfXrPCKA/