(written by Islander)
I took a break from NCS last weekend, a short vacation that led me to eastern Washington. That means I now have twice the usual number of new songs and videos sitting in front of me as I ponder what to feature today. But rather than try to go back and figure out what I might have done last Saturday, today I focused mainly on what surfaced within the realms of metal over just the last week. It was a lot, and so I’ve made this roundup a bit bigger than usual.
I’ve managed to pull out eight new songs, six of them accompanied by videos. I think they provide considerable variety, and I’ve arranged them in a way that made sense to me as I listened to everything. Of course, they’re also a reflection of the darkness inside my head these days.
Tonight I’m going to a retirement party for a close friend. She’s too young to be stopping work altogether, just closing one chapter in her life and starting a new one, but I still want to be there. Doubtless, it will keep me out late, with probably a three-hour round-trip on the travel alone. I don’t know if that will impact tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK column, but it might. Another reason why today’s collection is bigger than usual.
DIMMU BORGIR (Norway)
I’m starting with a name everyone visiting us will know. I’ll leave to others any debates over how this new song “Ulvgjeld & Blodsodel” fits within and measures up to Dimmu’s extensive discography. I’ll just take it as it comes.
The video alone is a creepy feast for the eyes. Credit to director Dariusz Szermanowicz and his staff for making such a splendidly sinister narrative. The song’s shimmering and ticking overture is also quite creepy, and when that swells into the song’s main phase the music becomes immense and very dark. It towers and groans, then marches and sears, just in time for Shagrath to begin venting his vocal venom.
Choral voices and soaring keys elevate the song to more glorious heights; but it also continues to coldly heave and to radiate malice, interspersed with elegantly rippling piano keys and hard-thrusting grooves. Everything builds to a grandiose crescendo… with chill winds at the end.
The song is from a new Dimmu Borgir album named Grand Serpent Rising. It will be out May 22nd via Nuclear Blast.
https://dimmuborgir.bfan.link/grandserpentrising
https://www.facebook.com/dimmuborgir
SHADOWSPAWN (Denmark)
Just yesterday the Danish death metal band Shadowspawn (a favorite around here) released a music video for the song “Demonized And Blasphemous” from their latest album Cadaver Dogs, which was released in February through the Via Nocturna label. Frontman Bue Jensen explained the significance of the album title:
“We’re back with a truly killer, thoroughly crafted record, and we’re proud and excited to present it to our fans! We’ve created a narrative about the insane world we see around us, where power-hungry dictators and religion set an agenda built on fear, murder, and oppression. In other words, human carrion feeders who exploit everything they possibly can!”.
Human carrion feeders… we do seem to be especially plagued by them these days, and it’s infuriating to witness their dominance. On “Demonized And Blasphemous” the fury comes through in gritty snarls, savage howls, slugging grooves, and viciously gnashing and dismally moaning chords.
The song also includes feverishly pulsating riffs that set big hooks as they get nerves jumping, and other riffs that poisonously slither, all of it backed by a variety of skull-popping beats. A dynamic and damned infectious song for sure, and it’s fun to watch the performers in the video too.
https://vianocturna.bandcamp.com/album/cadaver-dogs
https://shadowspawn.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/shadowspawn
THORIUM (Denmark)
We’ve written about Thorium pretty frequently going back to 2022, and everytime they come out with something new I expect fury, ferocity, and severe beatings. Based on this next song, I don’t think their new album will frustrate those expectations.
That new album is named Suburban Rot, and the song is its title track. The subject matter is bleak and conducive to anger, and the video imagery and lyrics accompanying the song underscore all that.
In this song Thorium create a hybrid of sensations and moods. They angrily inflict brutish head-butting grooves and leap forward in punk-ish gallops, while injecting gritty riffing that throbs like an angry pulse and swarms like feeding insects. The screaming and roaring vocals are also unmistakably enraged.
But Thorium also infiltrate the song with wailing guitar leads that soulfully express sorrow, and they add a dual-guitar solo that swirls, writhes, and adds an element of psychedelia to its melancholia, along with low-end currents that seem to dismally groan.
The song is out now as a digital single. The album will be released later this year by Emanzipation Productions.
https://bfan.link/thrm-subrot
https://thorium.bandcamp.com/track/suburban-rot
https://www.facebook.com/thoriumdeathmetal
TERROR (U.S.)
I think my next choice goes well with that Thorium song. If anything it’s even more bleak and pissed-off, and of course it’s a lot more of a hardcore beatdown.
The song’s name is “Destruction Of My Soul“. It gets muscles twitching and hands balled into fists, it slugs hard, and the vocals are thoroughly inflamed, but the riffing also carries a bleak mood, as well as skittering in convulsions of violence. The message in the words comes through vividly in the video’s film clips, too.
This track is the second to be revealed from Terror’s new album Still Suffer. It will be released on April 24th by Flatspot.
https://flatspotrecords.com/collections/terror
https://ffm.to/e1axyby
https://flatspotrecords.bandcamp.com/album/fsr92-still-suffer
https://www.facebook.com/terrorhardcore
VEIL OMEGA (Greece)
Now we’ll go down a different musical path with a lyric video for the debut single from the Cretan melodic/atmospheric death metal band Veil Omega. They explain that the song — “Tou Nekrou Adelfou” (“Of the Dead Brother”) — is “rooted deep in Greek folklore” and “unfolds a bittersweet tale of entwined oaths, sorrow, and perseverance.”
The song’s harsh vocals are explosively passionate and utterly ravaging, and so is the music. The riffing is often sweeping, channeling feelings of desperation — but slowly swirling lead-guitar melodies also manifest sorrow and anguish. The song also has a powerful rhythmic pulse, very heavy in the low end and compulsively head-moving, often driven by rapidly jolting grooves and lots of neck-cracking beats.
The sadness that dwells in the music comes to the forefront when the song’s propulsive energy briefly abates and the sound softens, and as the energy intensifies again, it leads to an attention-seizing guitar solo with an interesting sound (maybe it’s not a guitar at all) that’s thoroughly bereft in its mood.
https://veilomega.bandcamp.com/track/of-the-dead-brother
https://www.facebook.com/veilomega/
IVOIRE (Italy)
This is another instance where I found at least a connection between two songs I picked for today, the one immediately above and this next one. But to be clear, it’s an emotional connection not a stylistic one.
This song, “Vetta“, is the first single from Ivoire’s debut album Uragano. It’s a long song, and it creates a changing musical journey that moves between influences of post-metal, sludge, and black metal. Almost imperceptible at first, the music slowly swells, and as it does so it creates a haunting atmosphere, like the insubstantial wavering appearance of a grieving apparition.
That makes the sudden heaviness of the song in its first turn even more startling, and yet melodically that second phase is connected to the ephemeral radiations of the first one. Pushed by mid-paced measured beats, the music heavily clangs, throbs, and moans, but seems to cry out in its shining higher elevations. Even higher still, the vocals shriek in torment.
It becomes a soul-sinking experience, almost hypnotic in its rendering of hopelessness and pain. When the music turns again, the drums vanish and ringing guitars become apparitional once more, still carrying the melody forward but in more poignantly heart-breaking fashion. And again, there’s a sudden increase in heaviness and intensity, and this time Ivoire bring in massive guttural roars and searing overlays.
The melody still rings through and begins to vibrantly trill. Even as the screaming vocals tear their throat apart, the bass rumbles like the movement of a tectonic plate, and the drums furiously accelerate. The song builds to an overpowering zenith of harrowing intensity — only to fall back into a lonely grief at the end.
Uragano will be released on May 8th. It appears we will be hosting a full album premiere in early May.
https://ivoire.bandcamp.com/album/uragano
https://www.instagram.com/ivoire.postmetal/
SLEEPBOMB (U.S.)
Some of you will remember Sleepbomb from previous writings about them here, but for those who aren’t familiar, they are a Bay Area collective who make “cinematic doom” — and the music is literally cinematic, because they create their own scores for classic movies. Their last two albums, for example, were devoted to soundtracks for the 1920 German Expressionist silent film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and for George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead.
Now they have a new album on the way named Songs in the Key of Conan, and you can probably guess which movie inspired this one (okay, it’s Conan the Barbarian, directed by John Milius). The creation of the album was a very long process but at last it’s complete, and now we can share with you a video for the album’s first two tracks, “Forged In Steel” and “Blood In Snow“, which together make for a tremendous jam.
The video features Sleepbomb members Charles Hernandez (guitars), Robert Johnson (drums, percussion), and Tim Gotch (bass, synths), as well as former member Claire Hamard (vocals), and Matt Pankuch (horns, percussion) and K.R. Morrison (percussion).
In these two tracks, which have no perceptible break between them in the video performance, the percussion sets the stage with compulsive tribal rhythms and remains at the forefront. As the music gradually builds, a baritone sax makes a brief appearance, menacingly sizzling keys come in, and a whining guitar melody adds to the music’s growing tension.
As the melody evolves and rises through keys and guitar, it begins to sound both more anciently exotic and more distressing, and its flowing and wailing tones contrast with the visceral impact of the drumming. Claire Hamard’s piercing wails further add to both the exotic and distressing aspects of the music.
As the clanging bass finally arrives, the guitar fretwork grows more feverish and also begins to squall, playing off of the bass and driving the music to another crescendo of intensity (joined by Claire’s extravagant vocals). It does seem like blood is being violently spilled.
Songs in the Key of Conan will be released on June 3rd by Koolarrow Records.
https://sleepbomb.bandcamp.com/album/songs-in-the-key-of-conan
https://linktr.ee/sleepbombsf
https://www.facebook.com/Sleepbomb
BLOOD GRAVE (Chile)
To close out today’s roundup, here’s one more sharp turn in the musical path, one that will jolt you out of the leg-moving, head-spinning revery created by those Sleepbomb tracks. This is the first single and opening song from the debut album of the Chilean death metal band Blood Grave. With no fucking about, they named the song “Bloody Fucking Carnage“, and so it is.
Funeral bells dismally toll, dismal chords crash and slash above big booming drums, and maniacal screams erupt — that’s the introduction, and then, with a quick drum-countdown, the bloody fucking carnage begins in earnest. The riffing maniacally swirls; the bass thunders; the drums hammer and gallop; and the vocals scorch faces.
The riffing is a continually changing manifestation of fiendish ecstasy and cutting savagery, but also seems to manifest torment and agony. Keeping listeners on their toes, the drumming is also in constant flux, changing speeds and tempos with abandon, while the vocals continue to be rabidly insane. Bloody fucking carnage indeed, but the song is a head-spinner too.
The name of Blood Grave’s debut album is The Execution of Humanity. It will be released on May 1st by Chaos Records.
https://chaos-records.bandcamp.com/album/the-execution-of-humaity