(written by Islander)
I did enough listening over the last couple of days to make the usual difficult choices for this Saturday roundup, but other activities prevented me from getting a head-start on the writing. Those same activities last night caused me to oversleep this morning, so this is arriving much later in the day than is ideal. And because I’m late, that’s the end of this introduction.
BEYOND GRACE (UK)
Probably everyone who lands here knows that my good friend and NCS comrade Andy Synn is the frontman and bassist of the Nottingham-based death metal band Beyond Grace. And while no one who is aware of my connection to Andy will be surprised to see me promoting a new Beyond Grace song, I can honestly say that I’d be recommending this song even if no such connection existed — for three reasons.
For one thing, the message of the song, and the reasons why Beyond Grace chose to record it, are important and timely. The song is “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next“. It was originally recorded and released by the Welsh band Manic Street Preachers in 1998. As this source explains, it was “inspired by the Spanish Civil War, and the idealism of Welsh volunteers who joined the left-wing International Brigades fighting for the Spanish Republic against Francisco Franco’s military rebels.” (That same source includes a lot more interesting info about the song.)
Sadly, its anti-fascist message still strongly resonates today. Beyond Grace have written this about their inspiration for recording a cover of the song:
The horrors we see inflicted on others, in Palestine and Ukraine, in Sudan and Venezuela, and all around the world, do not stay there but always come home to roost… cruelty and oppression know no borders and no boundaries and no mercy for our children, no matter where they come from or the colour of their skin.
For another thing, the Beyond Grace cover song is fronted a great piece of artwork created by the inimitable Kim Diaz Holm.
And for a third thing, this cover song is a real heavy-hitter, many orders of magnitude more intense and emotionally devastating than the original.
The original’s pulsating drum-and-bass rhythm is a compulsive muscle-mover. Beyond Grace replace it with pulverizing percussive detonations, punishing double-bass rumbles, bullet-spitting snare attacks, and enormous low frequency crashes and clangs. Until the chorus, they replace the Manic Street Preachers‘ falsetto singing with Andy‘s raging growls and furious screams. And the guitars also scream, like fracturing sirens.
In the chorus, as notes ring in anguished tones, guitarist Tim Yearsley sings the words, and it’s spine-tingling to hear it (Andy harmonizes with him in the second and third choruses).
Eventually, the music violently convulses in a riot of fury, and the screams explode. But in the song’s finale, which inflicts bursts of bone-jarring percussive cannonades, the guitar melody flows, and seems to wail in grief, as if to ask, “have we learned nothing?”.
You can stream Beyond Grace’s cover song at Spotify, YouTube Music, and Apple Music.
- Youtube Music – “If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next”
- https://linktr.ee/beyondgrace
- https://www.facebook.com/wearebeyondgrace/
ENTHEOS (U.S.)
My next selection today is a video for a new Entheos song named “Golden Crown“. The song fascinated me, in large part because of the stark contrasts it includes. The video underscores those contrasts, though “underscores” might be an understatement.
The biggest contrast occurs in Chaney Crabb‘s vocal performance. It shifts from restrained and ghostly singing to utterly unhinged screaming, seemingly intense enough to threaten larynx damage — and if those raging explosions weren’t scary enough by themselves, what happens to Chaney Crabb’s appearance in the video makes it even scarier.
There are other contrasts. The song rocks and synths eerily shimmer, but the drums also hammer harder, the bass beefily throbs, the riffing dangerously shivers and sears, and even the singing becomes more ardent and unsettling.
In the video and in the recording, Chaney Crabb is joined not only by her usual Entheos partner Navene Koperweis (ex-Animals As Leaders, Animosity) but also by guitarists Scott Carstairs (Fallujah) and Michael Stancel (Allegaeon). The song is from a new Entheos album named Empty On The Inside. It will be released by Metal Blade on October 23rd.
https://www.metalblade.com/entheos/
https://entheosofficial.bandcamp.com/album/empty-on-the-inside
http://facebook.com/entheosband/
HÄMND (Sweden)
My next recommendation today focuses on a single song, although the album that includes it is out now in full. I just haven’t made my way through the entire album yet. But this song, “Orkan“, made a big impact, and I thought it would also make a great pivot from that Entheos song into even heavier and darker territory.
It’s a long, powerfully transportive song, and primarily an instrumental one, though when the vocals do appear, their screaming intensity is like an electric shock. The music opens with a vividly tumbling (and very catchy) drum progression, gut-loosening bass undulations, and a feverishly sizzling guitar harmony that builds unnerving tension as it painfully rises and dismally falls.
When the vocals make their first shattering appearance, they further magnify the tension and the music’s feelings of severe distress, which are themselves magnified through shifts in the shrill tremolo’d guitar harmony. As this happens, the drummer’s performance remains riveting, and the bass remains enormously heavy.
When the tension breaks (though it doesn’t entirely break), the emotional quality of the music descends into feelings of agony and hopelessness, leading to a catastrophic bridge… which in turn leads to a slowly twanging solo guitar melody that might conjure visions of haunted high-desert plains. That guitar melody continues to reverberate and then to become more sinister after the rhythm section and the second guitar return.
The cross-channel interplay of the guitars in this phase of the song is fascinating, this time creating an aura of dangerous mystery instead of unnerving tension. This time the guitar harmony also begins to broil listeners as it soars, and the second explosion of screams turns up the heat even further while the rhythm section grab attention again.
“Orkan” is from Hämnd’s second album Bortom, which (as mentioned) is out now and available on Bandcamp.
https://hamndband.bandcamp.com/album/bortom
http://facebook.com/hamndband
SEV LEZU (U.S.)
Sev Lezu is a relatively new black metal band whose three members are drummer, vocalist, lyricist, and producer Sasha Stroud (Belexum, Onw), guitarist Melissa Moore (Crossspitter, Sonja), and bassist FW (Manat). Their debut album Blood Conscript also includes a guitarist/songwriter guest appearance by Mia Priest (ex-Impiety) on the track “Corpse Step”.
The album’s first single is its title song, and it justifies the band’s description of their music as “Grinding, Melodic Black Death”. At first, the band eject the riffing in feverish spider-fingered bursts; the enormous bass is heated to a high boil; the drumming is fast and furious; and the screamed vocals sound as if they’d like nothing better than to have your throat in their teeth.
The riffing intensifies, twitching even faster, and it swirls and squirms as well, while the rhythm section rumble like avalanches. The riffing continues to change, still coming in exhilarating dual-guitar bursts, but beginning to sound devilishly ecstatic. And one guitar also slithers and soars. And the drums kick into different patterns as well, doing their own part to get listeners’ hearts jumping.
A very cool song, and one that’s as catchy as it is… twitchy.
Blood Conscript is set for release on August 28th.
https://sevlezu.bandcamp.com/album/blood-conscript
https://ampwall.com/a/sevlezu/album/blood-conscript
https://www.instagram.com/sevlezu/
BOÖTES VOID (Germany)
The German black metal band Boötes Void will have their third album Panta Rhei released on September 4 by Vendetta Records. Their first single from the album, “Nihil“, was released last week with a diabolically mysterious video.
The sound of cold winds sets the stage, and then the riffing swaths the listener in sonic acid, abruptly punctuated by bursts of hammering drums and momentous musical fanfares. The acid-strength riffing continues to swirl and sear, but they’re joined by gritty, vicious snarls and shrill guitar-leads that begin to sound like warning sirens.
Eventually those high, trilling guitars have a space to themselves, captivating but still sounding like a warning. Afterward, the rhythm section get bones throbbing again; doubled vocals cry out in rage or pain (or both); and the band torque the intensity of the music up into the red zone, accented by militaristic drum patterns. Those brief but big musical fanfares also reappear, like strong bolts that connect the pieces of the song together.
As the credits roll in the video’s long closing segment, a gentle, melancholy, and mesmerizing orchestral melody provides the dreamlike soundtrack, though I don’t know if this is part of “Nihil” as it will appear on the album (I hope it is).
The new album’s philosophical concept is an interesting one, described (in part) as follows in press materials we received:
Taking its name from the ancient Greek philosophical principle of Heraclitus – “everything flows” – Panta Rhei revolves around the doctrine of perpetual change, exploring the idea that nothing in existence remains fixed. Every moment transforms us, every experience reshapes the world around us, and permanence itself proves to be an illusion.
https://vendetta-records.bandcamp.com
https://vendetta-records.com
https://www.facebook.com/booetesvoid
HAIL CONJURER (Finland)
To close today’s collection I’m turning to Hail Conjurer, a solo project whose music I’ve premiered twice before (and would have done so a third time if my schedule had been more open). In this instance, the song is “Nocturnal Ardour“, which debuted last week as the first advance track from Hail Conjurer’s forthcoming tenth album Abyss & Ekstasis.
In this very creepy song the music gradually swells around a slow and steady thump, and as it does so it blankets the listener with a dismal harmony, a rough cloth infested with hopelessness. The music then shifts to something else, providing a scratchy backdrop above which orchestral strings throb and wail. The thumping lustfully accelerates, and frightening, jagged-edged snarls emerge and elevate to howls.
The entire experience does have a nocturnal aspect, like a moonlit journey through a black forest in which evil things lurk. But the music changes again. The drumming shifts into rocking beats, and the riffing becomes more dangerous; and then the riffing begins to boil and swirl and the drums gallop. Overhead, ethereal hornlike tones slowly cascade.
The drum patterns continue repeatedly shifting (simple but effective), as does the music, though near the end Hail Conjurer take us back again to that dangerous forest, though this time the beasts show themselves.
As far as I know, Hail Conjurer is still the solo work of a multi-talented artist who is also known for his roles in Hooded Menace, Horse Latitudes, Hollow Woods, and Ride For Revenge (among other groups). Abyss & Ekstasis is set for release on September 23rd via Into Endless Chaos and Crypt of the Wizard, with Silent Future Distribution handling US distribution.
https://hailconjurer.bandcamp.com/album/abyss-ekstasis
https://www.facebook.com/hailconjurer/