(written by Islander)
Sometimes we lead off these roundups with shiny lures (bands whose names are well known) to attract hungry fish (you), in the hope that the fish will get hooked by something sharp hanging below in darker waters. That’s what I’ve done today, though to be clear, I was also attracted by the lures.
(Note to self: don’t use the fishing analogy again since you haven’t gone fishing in decades and the only lures you used were worms.)
The lures are themselves quite different from each other, and so are the lesser-known hooks, and altogether they provide a lot of listening (and viewing) pleasure. Be forewarned: there’s a bit of singing in the mix until you get to the end — when there’s a lot of it (and extraordinary singing it is).
BEHEMOTH (Poland)
Behemoth have a track record of releasing stunning videos for their new songs, and they’re usually quite scary too. They’ve done it again with a black-and-white video produced by the Polish outfit Grupa 13 for “I, Scvlptor”, the first single from a new album that bears that same name.
Nergal refers to it as “more of a compilation” than “a regular studio album”. It includes re-recorded versions of two older Behemoth songs, a couple of cover songs (one of which features Sakis Tolis of Rotting Christ), and three songs that haven’t been heard before — including the title song that’s the subject of a truly nightmarish video.
To quote Nergal again: “Lyrically, it is a metaphor for the endless process of shaping oneself – an uneven struggle with matter and personal limitations. The paradox is that from the moment we are born we are already destined to die, so perhaps it is not about victory itself, but about the constant act of sculpting who we are”.
It’s a towering, symphonically enhanced song, ominous and haunting at first, then viciously slashing and brutally booming, and then even more viciously swarming and blasting, with serrated-edge vocals and a berserk solo that make a frightening song even more frightening.
I, Scvlptor will be released by Behemoth and Massacre Records on September 4th.
https://behemoth.bfan.link/i-scvlptor
http://www.iscvlptor.com/
https://behemoth-store.com/en-ea/collections/i-scvlptor
https://www.facebook.com/behemoth/
RUSSIAN CIRCLES (U.S.)
On August 28th Sargent House will release a new album by Chicago’s Russian Circles. It’s their ninth album and so it’s named Nine. Last week we got a first taste of it through a video for a song called “Empath”. The press release we received includes a vivid description of what happens in the song:
Today’s “Empath” launches the band into a ferociously concise overview of metal battle tactics — where a Godflesh-style bass crunch and tornado siren drone ushers in trash-inspired guitars, venomous black metal attacks, d-beat forays, a deliciously knuckleheaded hardcore breakdown, and a final scorched earth war metal riff, all in just under five minutes.
That opening phase described above is menacing and chilling; the subsequent phase is a feverish frenzy (a berserk insectile swarm augmented by an accelerated bass-throb, hacking beats, and a deliriously writhing lead-guitar); the next phase is pure pile-driving brutishness, laced with hallucinatory squalls of sound that feel like they could eat through stone.
The accompanying video, which is just as freakish and frightening as the music, was made by Madeline Hampton.
https://sargenthouse.com/russian-circles
https://found.ee/RC-Nine
https://www.facebook.com/russiancirclesmusic/
FUMING MOUTH (U.S.)
I’m pretty sure one of my NCS comrades will write a review of Fuming Mouth’s new album The Ringing Bell, so I’ll just content myself with continuing to comment about the singles, the latest of which is “Cheat Death“. It arrived with another video of the band throwing themselves into their performance.
Not for the first time, this is a Fuming Mouth song that reminds me of the resurrected Black Breath’s most groovesome past forays. It’s a dynamite-fueled gut-slugger with napalm-strength vocals that also drop into monstrous growls. The music also hulks and heaves, squeals and convulses, rapidly jabs and spins out a fret-burning spectacle of soloing delirium.
Man, these guys are good.
The Ringing Bell has a release date of July 17th on Triple B Records, and it’s the first Fuming Mouth record to feature drummer Jay Weinberg alongside vocalist/guitarist Mark Whelan, guitarist Pat Merson, and bassist Chris Berg.
https://lnk.to/fumingmouth
https://fumingmouth.bandcamp.com/album/the-ringing-bell
https://www.facebook.com/fumingmouth
SÉPULCRE (France)
Now we’ll cross the broad Atlantic and land in Brittany for a first taste of the debut album by the death metal band Sépulcre — and it’s a damn strong taste.
Prepare for a dismal and dreadful overture — music that morbidly moans and miserably writhes, with some big crashing drums and groaning low frequencies coming in here and there. Then prepare for mayhem — furiously blasting drums, eerily sizzling and poisonously flickering guitars, and ravenous, gargantuan vocals that range from cavernous depths to raving heights.
Then prepare for a phase of even more eerie and miserable melody that’s slowly reptilian in its flow — backed by even more catastrophic percussive blows and a return of that fiendishly quivering riffage. By the end, the music becomes diabolically ecstatic and brutally destructive.
Hell, the whole song is diabolical, and a tremendously impressive introduction to the album.
The song is “Katabasis“. The title of Sépulcre’s debut album is Cryptic Temple of Otherworldly Abhorrations. It’s set for release on September 18 by Invictus Productions.
https://invictusproductions666.bandcamp.com/album/cryptic-temple-of-otherworldly-abhorrations
https://www.facebook.com/p/Sépulcre-100036617144390/
LUMINOUS VEIL (U.S.)
Agita Knelling is a new album from Luminous Veil, a duo consisting of Brian Doering from Wisconsin and William Wolfe from Maryland. It’s their tenth full-length in a seven-year period and yet it seems we’ve never written about their music before today. I’m also not sure I’ve ever listened to their music before latching on to the next song in today’s column, but in any case I’m not able to tell you how it compares to what they’ve done before. All I can say is that “Laurels’ Lapse” really grabbed me.
It’s an evolving nine-minute work, one that begins with brightly ringing notes that are both mysterious and forlorn. That melody becomes unsettling when the notes become less harmonious, more dissonant, and more menacing, backed by drumwork that begins seizing attention (and maintains it all the way through).
The music expands to sweeping breadth and near-celestial heights above urgently throbbing bass tones and cracking beats; harrowing screams explode, and the bass heavily undulates. Another brightly ringing (and somewhat yearning) melody emerges along with vicious jabs and cantering rhythms; voices soar in tandem with those ghastly, ruinous screams; the riffing rapidly scissors and frantically throbs; the tempos and drum patterns are in continuous flux.
It’s a very elaborate, very eclectic, and even labyrinthine song, with many contrasting ingredients, only some of which are recognizable as black metal, but it continues to call back to earlier motifs, including the elegant clear-toned melodies, and thus provides a thoroughly engrossing experience.
Agita Knelling will be released on July 1st, with CDs available from the band in the U.S. and from Underworld Echoes Records elsewhere. A tape edition is anticipated later this summer from Fiadh Productions.
P.S. The album’s cover art is quite an eye-catcher, because it obviously isn’t typical for music of this kind. It’s a painting called “The Girl I Left Behind Me” by Jonathan Eastman Johnson (1824-1906), who among other accomplishments co-founded the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
https://luminousveil1.bandcamp.com/album/agita-knelling
https://www.instagram.com/luminous.veil/
JØTNARR (UK)
Take a look at the selfie photo of Jøttnar that’s currently on their Bandcamp page. They’re all smiling, and their smiles are so infectious that you might smile right back at them. Their new single, however, is definitely not friendly.
The riffing in “Lychgate” snarls and roils; the lead guitar frenetically flickers; the drums might make you check for bruising and fractures; and the vocals channel blowtorch intensity.
Jøttnar also throw in militaristic drum tattoos and dismal intonations before bringing back that nasty opening riff, some floor-shaking booms, blaring siren-like bursts of sound, bursts of darting fretwork that almost sound like brass instruments, and more doses of paint-pealing vocal fury. They pack a lot into 2 1/2 minutes, and it’s hard to let go of it.
The song is from Jøttnar’s second full-length, Feet First On The Corpse Path. They haven’t yet announced a release date. Andy Synn reviewed the band’s first album for us (here), calling it “one of the finest debuts of the year” and hailing the band’s “signature blend of blistering Black Metal, crust-punk passion, and moody Post-Metal embellishments.”
https://jotnarr.bandcamp.com/track/lychgate
https://www.facebook.com/jotnarr
THOLN (U.S.)
Now we come to the only complete release in today’s column, a debut four-song EP named Choice, Consequence, & Ruin by a new band named Tholn. It came out two days ago via Immortal Jaw. I paid attention to it because I know a couple of the very talented people involved in the effort.
The band’s four members, who are scattered among four different states, include participants in Deathgrave, Scatter, Transient, and Un, and their EP was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Greg Wilkinson at Earhammer Studios in Oakland. So, based on all that, I had high hopes for the EP — which were not disappointed.
Tholn set the stage for their debut with “Sundered in Twain“, which itself sets the stage with a haunting gothic organ melody. And then things get very dark indeed. With the drums moving at a funereal pace and going off like guns, the music heavily heaves, reverberates like a Geiger counter going off in the presence of lethal radioactivity, and slowly wails like apparitions stricken with grief.
Abyssal growls and caustic screams rise up on the back of this dangerous, heaving beast, and the clear-toned wailing melodies send shivers down the spine — as does the haunted, powerhouse singing of Tholn’s guest Irene Barber. The vibratory organ melody closes the curtain.
I’ll resist the temptation to spill that many words about each of the next three songs. They’re built from essentially the same foundational ingredients revealed in the opener — enormous low-end heaviness; sharp-toned, neck-cracking beats; guitar tones that are both pernicious and piercing; monstrous vocals; mostly high-flying melodies that don’t sound earthly at all; and phases of funeral-doom pacing intermixed with open-throttle surges and high-speed fills.
But Tholn make changes too. “Lust Rites” includes some further vocal variation (ghastly variations) as well as surges of more accelerated destructiveness; the fetid “Master of Mire” feels like it’s been marinated in poison and then oozes it back out, but also includes doses of jackhammering and pile-driving punishment, a frantic solo, and maybe the most terrorizing vocal derangement yet; and the closing “Coffin Hammer” is just fucking ugly and savage, but spiced up with probably the EP’s most exhilarating guitar solo and some weirdly quivering arpeggios that shine like spasming chimes (it has a very cool outro too, which connects to this arpeggios and then transforms them).
Here is Tholn’s lineup:
Justin Rodda – Songwriting, Drums, and Lead Vocals
Fern Alberts – Bass
Adam Wilson – Guitar
Monte McCleery – Guitar
The cover art is the work of Misanthropic-Art.
https://immortaljaw.bandcamp.com/album/choice-consequence-ruin-ij-03
MAUNAH (Denmark)
At the beginning of this column I promised that the end would provide a lot of extraordinary singing, and I wasn’t lying. Although vocalist Søren Sol Koldsen-Zederkof’s lavishly bearded face is often obscured in the following video (albeit by varying visuals that are striking), his voice really is quite remarkable — sometimes sultry, sometimes heart-aching, but also breathtaking when it arcs toward the clouds.
Interestingly, I don’t think he is singing lyrics. Here’s something that was included in a press release we received: “Another element that sets MAUNAH apart from their peers in doom is the absence of a lexical language. The vocals are built on tone, feeling, and rhythm – in an echo of human speech. This creates a space for a more direct connection between vocals and music that reaches beyond the limits of rational language.”
As for the music, the song’s core melody (and the adaptations of it) have an Arabian resonance to them (as I hear it), and they too are sometimes gentle (especially in a gently ringing and mesmerizing interlude) and sometimes towering. The rhythm section also pick their moments to hit like big battering rams, and the soloing is a sublime representation of the melodic through-lines.
I was thoroughly captivated by the song despite the fact that it’s very far away from the kind of metal I spend most of my time with. I’ll leave comparative “FFO” references to others.
The song here is “Heimaland” (“Homeland”), and it’s from Maunah’s debut album Hjarta (“Heart”), which will be released on September 18 by Prophecy Productions. Søren Sol Koldsen-Zederkof also created the album’s cover art. The music video was made by Luiz Arruda (Audiopower).
https://spkr.store/collections/maunah
https://www.facebook.com/maunahband
https://www.instagram.com/maunahband