(written by Islander)
I hope I haven’t bitten off more than you can chew. Only four selections today, compared to eight yesterday, but two of them are albums and one of them is an EP.
I also hope I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew. As I begin writing this, I realize it will be tough for me to fully express how all this music has impacted me or how it might impact you, given the time constraints I’m under. But I’ll give it a shot.
If there’s a through-line in these recommendations, it’s that all the music is searing, in sound or mood or both, although the stylistic paths traveled by them often diverge.
PURE WRATH (Indonesia)
Januaryo Hardy and his band Pure Wrath will have their fourth album released on April 24th by Debemur Morti Productions. Its title is Bleak Days Ahead (and who in their right mind could argue with that?). Hardy explains that it is “a lament for those silently drowning in a life that demands everything and gives back almost nothing.”
Last week brought the album’s multi-faceted and intensely passionate first single, “Spectral Insomnia“, and an accompanying video that focuses on the disconcerting nature of life in unfeeling urban jungles and the torment of not “fitting in”. The music is also disconcerting: The piercing ring of the guitars is discordant; they writhe, scream, and eventually boil over in desperation. The screaming vocals are at least equally tortured, and the drum-and-bass work is mostly furious.
When the music’s manic pace and burning intensity briefly subsides, the guitar distressingly quivers — and then the music becomes pastoral and beautiful, with the video’s imagery changing as well. Hardy sings, and the music falls into moods of melancholy before it boils over again, but maybe now is fervently beseeching in its feeling.
Near the end the sun rises and casts pastel colors, and symphonic strings create an aura of mystery.
https://purewrath.bandcamp.com/album/bleak-days-ahead
https://www.facebook.com/purewrath/
BARBELITH / TRHÄ (U.S.)
These two bands (whose lineups overlap) make music that’s extremely difficult to categorize, and so it’s no great surprise that their new EP-length collaboration doesn’t fit neatly (or even un-neatly) into any convenient genre-box — which is one of many reasons why it’s so fantastic.
At Bandcamp, the songs are identified as either Barbelith tracks or Trhä tracks, but on the other hand the text emphasizes that all of them were “[w]ritten together in a single room during December of 2024-January 2025,” and that “[a]ll members wrote, reordered and performed on every track.”
The collaboration opens with “ABOLITIONIST“, a song that thunders and clobbers in the low end and burns across sweeping expanses in the upper reaches, matched by larynx-shredding screams. The music also vigorously throbs and slugs, and the guitars nimbly dance and thrillingly vibrate, creating a variety of contrasts with both the high-flying panoramic layers and the heavy low-frequency undulations. The drumming is terrific throughout.
That opening song brings tremendous energy and a multitude of hooks, and so of course the second song immediately moves in a different direction. “GËS’ËMHÉLAEDËNO£” (obviously a Trhä-conceived title) uses strangely quivering electronics and moody acoustic notes to create a mysteriously beautiful but somber overture, and then big tumbling drums and a big growling bass enter the fray and the music begins to tremble and shine more brightly and expansively.
The music’s intensity continues to build in a variety of ways — the drums blast; a voice shrieks like glass being shredded, and another roars like a beast; the music seems to ecstatically dance like sprites. But the song’s mood darkens as well, without much loss of its intensity or its dramatic scale, and symphonic synths also carry it up and away, joined by vividly trilling and brightly pinging instrumentation with an exotic sound and style.
The song is more than 11 1/2 minutes long, and remains almost relentlessly elaborate. It includes even more variations than mentioned above, which you should discover for yourselves, as well as another tremendous performance by the rhythm section. All in all… it’s magnificent.
“KARMA” comes next, and the course changes again, in line with its denomination as a Barbelith track — much more furiously hard-charging, yet still elaborate, ever-changing, and magnificent in its own way. The vibrantly whirring and whirling lead guitar is especially charismatic; the vocals are fanatically unhinged; and probably needless to say at this point, the dynamism of the drumming is great.
It all comes to an end with “QEVO£CAWMAHA£“, the EP’s most heavily gloom-shrouded and feverishly distressing track in some ways, but still the kind of thing that will get your blood rushing and head spinning. And before it finishes, it also towers, flows, and brightly flashes, and the lead guitars, other stringed instrumentation, and sparkling keys deliver an absolutely gripping sequence of spectacles.
It turns out to be every bit as remarkable as the EP’s first three songs, straight through the elegant acoustic guitar instrumental that brings the whole thing to a mesmerizing close.
https://barbelith.bandcamp.com/album/barbelith-trh
https://www.facebook.com/barbelithmd/
HAIDUK Canada)
I’ve been closely following and avidly writing about Haiduk’s music for a lot of years, so I jumped pretty fast onto this next album when I had the chance to hear it.
If you want to get hooked really fast, check out “Vexer“. That song’s fiery and feverishly surging main riff is an immediate grabber, and the furiously hammering drums and crashing cymbals amp up the music’s blood-rushing intensity, while deep-seated growls bring a bit of chilling cold to the fretwork pyrotechnics, which continue unabated (though there’s a bit of miserable squirming that seeps through near the end).
In addition to that big head-hooker, the album (named Archdevil, btw) includes 10 more tracks, and they’re all similarly compact. As mentioned at the outset, I don’t have the time to give each of them their due — just a few broad strokes.
Like “Vexer”, most of the songs are guitar showcases, most of them featuring an electrifying interplay of layered guitars tuned in different ways and channeling varying moods. Most of them are also furiously propulsive, with the programmed drums usually set to overdrive. The vocals appear sparingly, but are always monstrous when they do rear their imperious horned heads.
There’s a lot of fret-melting going on here, lots of sensations that riotously dart and viciously swarm, but Haiduk leavens that with less spidery manifestations that slowly ripple, ring, wail, or moan — along with some riffs that are red meat for thrashers.
As mentioned, the songs are compact, with only one of them (“Darkener”) reaching the four-minute mark, and all of them end pretty abruptly before the next one abruptly fires up. Yet even though the tracks are quick, they begin to kind of run together and become harder to distinguish from each other. And so this might be a case where less might have been more.
Every song is such a furious (and furiously diabolical) spectacle and so filled to the brim with elaborate guitar extravaganzas and relentlessly battering percussion (which is way forward in the mix) that 11 of them in a row runs the risk of leaving some listeners worn out. This album might have worked better if it had been divided into two EPs, or (though I do hesitate to say it) if there had been some bigger changes of pace sprinkled here and there (breathing spaces are few and far between).
But I’m still very glad to have Archdevil, and I still marvel at what Haiduk does with a guitar. I suspect you will too.
https://haiduk.bandcamp.com/album/archdevil
https://www.facebook.com/haidukmetal
ÆDEL FETICH (Denmark)
I was drawn to this next release because of the cover art. You can probably figure out why the cover photo for Ædel Fetich’s self-titled debut album intrigued me, especially because I was told that the music is “an eclectic form of black metal”. And undeniably, the music is eclectic. As a hint, I saw the following comment about it on Bandcamp from Nuno Lourenço (of Salqiu and 0-Nun, among other endeavors):
“Oh WOW. It has been some time since I heard something so refreshingly odd in Black Metal. Punk energy, traditional BM ferocity, 80’s synth-pop ramblings and out-of-nowhere groove innuendos. Pure entertainment!”
That comment quickly touches upon a lot of the music’s attractive ingredients. It might even be enough to get you to listen, without more from me, but I’ll again add just a few broad strokes out of my own inkwell.
No doubt, the songs do include overflows of black metal ferocity, especially in the vocal department, where scorching screams and beastly roars come for our throats, and where the guitars are capable of inflicting blizzard-strength assaults with knife-like cutting edges above riotously hammering drums.
But even in the first song, “Et Liv Fuld af Fejl“, you’ll also encounter extravagant singing that goes up into the rafters, punk beats, playful and nimble bass lines, and riffing that blares like a miserable siren.
The other sings will similarly keep you on your toes, or at least on the edge of your seat. They veer from sheer cataclysms of world-ending proportions to episodes of bounce-off-the-wall punk belligerence accented by drunken yells, and other phases where you might imagine vikings heroically singing, summoning up their blood and courage before a deadly charge.
At times the band bounce with oompah beats or swing about like the performers at a diabolical folk dance. At times the music goes off like cannonades and blares and contorts like heralds of bacchanalian triumph, or it rhythmically head-butts you right in the nose, or it sounds like a cabaret in a far corner of Hell.
The singing turns out to be more predominant across the album than the harsher assaults, but as already hinted, it varies in ways that spawn different visions — some of them battle-ready, some of them highly theatrical or disturbingly demented or ready to throw down in a rural bar. (And I still haven’t quite put my finger on what the singing in “Madras” reminds me of.) But in every manifestation the singing is striking, and a vital part of what makes the album so remarkable.
And hell yes, the album truly is remarkable, the kind of wild musical carnival that has made it stand way out here in the year’s early months.
(And by the way, in case you’re not Danish, the band’s name seems to mean “Noble Fetish” in English.)