(written by Islander)
I did a better job than usual this past week going through NCS e-mails every day, compiling a list of what I thought might be worth checking out, and digging through that list with sharp ears. I still had to leave a lot behind, but made a voluminous 8 picks for this Saturday’s column.
And then… I went out last night to party without writing anything, and woke up very late today. I thought about cutting my planned column in half so I could get it finished before sundown, but then decided, fuck that, I’ll keep everything but cut way back on the verbiage — to the likely consternation of music scholars who will be studying my writings for decades into the future (yeah, that wasn’t serious).
If my plan for the day works out, these 8 choices (many of them with good videos) will leave you with whiplash and a scrambled brain if you manage to make it through all of them.
PHASE MERIDIAN (U.S.)
Song: In the Palm (Of the Dead Hand)
Release date: February 25
I paid attention to this song because the lineup of Minneapolis-based Phase Meridian includes two former members of Oak Pantheon — Kevin Shermock (drums, vocals) and Jake Spanier (bass, vocals, keyboards) — and because former Oak Pantheon member and current Vanishing Earth member Sami Sati makes a guest vocal appearance on the song you’re about to hear. The band’s lineup also includes Joe McCumber (guitars, vocals), who along with Kevin and Jake were in a previous incarnation of Phase Meridian called Red\\Shift.
The message of the song concerns the apocalyptic threat of machine intelligences we have made, summed up in the lyrics’ opening line: “We created a god. We gave it a throne. It will destroy us all.”
As for the music, prepare for a pulse-pounding and multi-faceted tapestry of sound — dark, blaring chords; a vividly throbbing bass-bridge; savagely gnawing and vividly darting fretwork; soaring clean-sung vocals intermixed with rampant howls; a madly pulsating mid-song instrumental segment; a scalding dose of vocal napalm from Sami Sati; increasingly frantic (and fascinating) guitar convulsions; and — throughout the song — electrifying drumwork.
Along with this tremendous song, the video made by Kelly O’Donnell of Starseed Studios is also a really good one, including the stirring interpretive dance performance by the masked Nora Anderson as “The Lady of the Apocalypse”.
https://phasemeridian.bandcamp.com/track/in-the-palm-of-the-dead-hand
https://linktr.ee/phasemeridian
https://www.facebook.com/phasemeridian
COGNIZANCE (UK)
Song: Witness Marks
Album: In Light, No Shape
Label: Willowtip
Release date: May 1st
Prepare for a head-spinning fretwork carnival (that’s both malicious and jubilant) in the midst of near-non-stop percussive strafing runs, plus loads of belligerent growls and bits of funky bass-work.
https://cognizance.bandcamp.com/album/in-light-no-shape
https://www.facebook.com/cognizanceband/
PIG’S BLOOD (U.S.)
Song: Strikeforce of Isolate Will
Album: Destroying the Spirit
Label: Dark Descent
Release date: April 24
Prepare for viciously skull-scouring riffs swarming around munitions-grade drumming and a cavalcade of monstrous vocal ugliness and throat-splitting derangement, interspersed with inflictions of jackhammering brutishness and unsettling slitherings of dismal melody.
https://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/destroying-the-spirit
https://www.facebook.com/commandmoreblood/
NUNSLAUGHTER (U.S.)
Song: Satanic Chaos Legions
Album: Satanic Chaos Legions
Label: BLKIIBLK Records
Release date: June 26
Prepare for… exactly what the song’s title promises: ecstatically swirling and swarming guitar savagery; fanatically crazed snarls and screams; neck-wrecking rhythmic blows; and hard-pumping and furiously galloping beats. Feel free to Hail Satan with both of your clawed hands.
https://ffm.to/satanicchaoslegions
https://www.facebook.com/NUNSLAUGHTER
SWÆRMMM (Sweden)
EP: Γ
Release date: February 6
This next selection demands a few more words than the choices above, in part because it’s a full five-song EP rather than a single and in part because the music is such a riotously experimental stylistic hybrid.
I’ll just scrape the surface: The music includes widely varying but thoroughly diabolical vocals; madcap drumwork displays; gigantically booming bass throbs; tons of weirdly contorting riffs and dissonant and demented musical whirls (plus a suitably freakish saxophone solo in the opening song); but also dreamily fluid melodies that are seductive but still a bit dangerous, like narcotics.
Sometimes Swærmmm also sound like an infernal Big Band, and sometimes like a jazz ensemble with horns (on their heads). And the last song includes a tinkling charango performance, gut-gouging electro-throbs; blood-freezing gasps (along with all manner of other vocal madness); a tremendous drum-and-bass performance (including a quick drum solo); and guitar whirligigs that might make you lose your mind.
The songs are elaborate and seemingly free-wheeling, like the sonic equivalent of Hell’s own carnival in the throes of blood-spraying jubilation; yet although the music is full of surprising twists and turns, everything hinges together supremely well. Far and away, the most head-spinning and head-turning music in today’s collection.
https://swaermmm.bandcamp.com/album/–3
https://www.facebook.com/swaermmm
FRACTURED INSANITY (Belgium)
Song: We All Die in the End
Album: Age of Manipulation
Label: Xtreem Music
Release date: February 18
You might need to clear your head and reassemble the addled parts of your mind after that Swærmmm EP. I’m not sure this next song will do that; it might just finish you off.
Prepare for a spooky, very chilling, and increasingly demented intro segment and then an amalgam of brute-force bludgeoning, insectile feeding frenzies, riffing that also pulsates like heated blood, bouts of raging and roaring vocal barbarism, spurts of blurting and moaning melodic misery; and an insane fret-melter of a guitar solo performed by the band’s guest Josh Fury, a well-known guitarist within the Belgian metal and hardcore scene through his bands Congress, Liar, and Dudsekop).
Very cool to watch these guys doing their things in the video too.
https://xtreemmusic.bandcamp.com/album/age-of-manipulation
https://www.facebook.com/FracturedInsanityOfficial
NIXIL (U.S.)
Song: Never Rise Again
Split (with Drouth): Toward Dead Temples
Release date: April 24
This song is the first to be revealed from a forthcoming split between Baltimore’s Nixil and Portland OR-based Drouth.
Prepare for moody, mysterious, and melancholy melody in the song’s overture (backed by leg-moving beats) and then a harrowing display of viciously slashing and feverishly quivering guitars, a bass that thunders and murmurs, drums that gallop and blast and get punkish too, and absolutely scorching vocal hostility. When the pace diminishes, the music also seems to plead and mourn, in surreal and sinuous terms.
The video doesn’t leave much doubt about the message in the music.
https://nixil.bandcamp.com/album/toward-dead-temples-nixil-drouth
https://www.facebook.com/nixilnothing
GODLESS ANGEL (U.S.)
Song: Doomspire
Album: Weltschmerz
Label: Atomic Zombie Records
Release date: February 13
Old-timers around NCS will remember Kansas-based Derek Neibarger, once a frequent commenter at our site and a music-maker under the name Godless Angel. A couple of weeks ago Godless Angel released its fifth album, Weltschmerz, and although (sadly) I haven’t been able to hear all of it yet, I did hear the song that’s the subject of the more recently released video which you’ll find below.
In this evolution of Godless Angel’s music, prepare for a dark-hearted hybrid of death and black metal augmented by thoroughly tormented and sanity-splintering vocals, iron-shod bass clangs, viciously gnawing and mercurially darting riffage, and spine-cracking drums.
https://atomiczombierecords.bandcamp.com/album/weltschmerz
https://www.facebook.com/godlessangel