(written by Islander)
I was able to spend a fair amount of time yesterday afternoon checking out new music I’d noticed over the past week, and made the choices you now see — though I again got a late start on the writing due to Friday night diversions that also went late. Here are just a few quick notes on what’s ahead:
I do enjoy making these roundups a roller-coaster ride, genre-wise. It was easier to do that with this one because the music that made the biggest impressions on me as I listened yesterday just happened to make a big spread of different experiences. You’ll see. If you’re not crazy about one thing, just keep on going, because the next thing will be a different kind of creature.
I’m not sure I will be able to post a SHADES OF BLACK column tomorrow. My wife and I are going to a birthday event for an old friend, and we’ll have to leave home well before I usually finish those columns. Maybe I’ll feel like making enough of a head-start this afternoon that I can get something ready, even if it’s short, before we head out. Or not.
DAWN OF DEMISE (Denmark)
I decided to start with a big slab of red meat for death metal carnivores. That’s the shorthand for the title song from a new Dawn of Demise album, their first one in almost seven years. The album features the return of guitarist Jakob Nyholm, who was a member of the band at the beginning. To quote bassist Bjørn Jensen: “It has everything that we in Dawn of Demise stand for: slam, groove, heaviness, good old death metal tremolo riffs and thrash elements.”
That certainly seems accurate in the case of the title track to Feed My Absurdity. It inflicts stout body blows and gruesomely throbbing grooves, viciously sizzling tremolo’d riffage and bursts of frantically scissoring fretwork, scampering beats and gargantuan gutturals. It also includes a hell of a guitar solo that seems to morbidly moan and then to seize up, and then to beautifully swirl.
The video accompanying the song provides a good view of Dawn of Demise doing what they do, and of vocalist Scott Jensen banging his long-maned head. It also unfolds a strange and mysterious narrative of a young dude whose mind seems to be melting down. Feed My Absurdity will be released by Unique Leader Records on October 9th,
https://uniqueleaderrecords.bandcamp.com/album/feed-my-absurdity
https://www.facebook.com/officialdawnofdemise/
WAYFARER (U.S.)
I did promise you a roller-coaster ride, and this next song and video from Colorado’s Wayfarer is definitely a big twist and drop from Dawn of Demise. It’s a bit of a twist for Wayfarer too, and perhaps a sign of places they’re going on their next album, Riders of the Setting Sun.
This song, “Perdition’s Crossing“, features singing by David Eugene Edwards of 16 Horsepower and Wovenhand, and he leads the song forward in front of mysteriously ringing guitars and a slow, thumping beat. His voice is sinister and haunted, and is a perfect match for music that invokes imagery of the Old West in ways that are themselves sinister and haunting.
But what starts out as a kind of dark, country/western folk song that you could imagine Johnny Cash writing in his later years, it evolves. The singing soars (and includes a backing harmony), the bass heavily heaves and groans, the guitars begin to more vividly shimmer and shine. It’s a fascinating evolution, and dare I say it, a hellish one (which I think I would say even if I weren’t gazing at the demonic face of the priest in the video).
Accompanying the single is a really good (and very chilling) music video directed by Brendan McGowan, who has worked with the likes of Tribulation, Imperial Triumphant, and many others.
“Perdition’s Crossing” is being released as a 12″ “maxi single”, with Side A carrying the title track; and Side B featuring a remix by Ben Chisholm of Chelsea Wolfe (who also produced the forthcoming album) and a field recording. Riders of the Setting Sun will be released in late 2026 via Vesperian.
https://wayfarercolorado.bandcamp.com/track/perditions-crossing
https://www.facebook.com/wayfarercolorado/
SVRM (Ukraine)
I follow svrm as closely as I can, mainly thanks to Bandcamp alerts, because the lone wolf behind the project has no PR apparatus behind him, and these days his embattled and beleaguered (but still resilient) homeland isn’t exactly the easiest place to use as a platform for launching new music across the globe. Thanks to one of those Bandcamp alerts, I discovered that svrm released a new single yesterday named “Марно“, which seems to mean “In vain” in English. Its cover art is a painting by Paul Nash called “We Are Making a New World”.
Based on my research, Paul Nash served in the British army on the Western Front in World War I and eventually became an “official war artist”. “We Are Making a New World” was a painting based on Nash’s drawing of the aftermath of fighting during the Third Battle of Ypres in France. To quote from this article:
The bitter title, We are Making a New World, clearly mocks the ambitions of the war but is also a more universal reference than the previous title and represents a scene of devastation that could be anywhere on the Western Front. There are no people in the picture nor any of the details of, for example, The Mule Track to distract from the broken tree stumps, shellholes and mounds of earth. The Sun is a cold white orb and the brown clouds of the original drawing have become blood red.
“Марно” is a powerfully moving song, one in which svrm’s alter ego S is joined by Igor on bass and flute. The flute eerily wails and reverberates in the song’s overture, creating a ghostly and mournful presence. But soon enough the drums start to hammer, the bass urgently bubbles, the riffing fiercely surges and burns, and the vocals cry out in extravagant howls and splintering screams.
A whirring lead guitar rises up, generating a melody that’s soulful and sorrowing, and unless I’m mistaken, there are symphonic strings and a darting piano in the mix as the song climbs to its crescendo. When the music falls back, it becomes even more heart-aching, and when it powers-up again, it still is, but heart-bursting too, especially when the drums race, the bass pumps like a piston, the vocals tear themselves apart, and the music finds a new zenith of sweeping power and sonic brilliance. Maybe depending on your own mood, it might sound like despair, or it might sound like defiant glory.
https://svrm.bandcamp.com/album/–17
DISHUMANE (U.S.)
Dishumane draws attention because two of its members (drummer Charlie Koryn and bassist Chuck Sherwood) are current or former members of Incantation, and Koryn is also a fixture in Ascended Dead (mong other bands). But I think it’s fair to say that the lion’s share of the credit for Dishumane’s debut EP Centurion’s Demise must go to less-heralded guitarist and vocalist James Shanks, who started the project and then developed it further with drummer Dave Procopio before enlisting the talents of Koryn and Sherwood.
Centurion’s Demise, which was released yesterday by Blood Harvest Records, is a four-song affair. “Conquering the Forlorn” opens by offering roiling and abrasive riffing that’s both savage and dismal in its moods, both frantically demented and abominable in its sensations. The tempo changes abruptly and repeatedly, enhancing the mood changes, and the vocals change too, ranging from gritty, monstrous growls to crazed screeches.
The EP’s title song is a less dynamic experience, more generally fast-paced in its through-line, and it comes across as even more violently deranged. The riffing feverishly skitters, poisonously slithers, maniacally shivers, and freakishly squeals, and the song includes a horrific vocal call-and-response that makes the song even more macabre.
The EP then moves to “Soul Spun Malice“, and it immediately becomes a feeding frenzy of fleet-fingered and maliciously motivated riffage, though it also shifts in ways that create throbbing and contorting manifestations of malignancy and madness. Here, Dishumane change the pacing again as well, and when they slow down the music becomes even scarier and more unearthly.
The closing track, “Loom of Souls“, is an instrumental-only piece, and possibly the scariest episode in a thoroughly evil but elaborately constructed and technically impressive EP.
https://bloodharvestrecords.bandcamp.com/album/centurions-demise
TELESTERION (U.S.)
Unenthusiastically but necessarily, I’ll give some hints about my advanced age: I started listening to Faith No More, Tears for Fears, and Killing Joke from the time when those bands first began releasing music. I heard them on the radio, I saw them on MTV, I bought their records. I should add that I also listened to the music of the British rock band Oasis, but they weren’t as important to me as those other three I just mentioned.
Why is it necessary for me to mention this? Because out of the clear blue sky Telesterion (via Snow Wolf Records) released an EP yesterday that includes covers of songs by those four bands. They’ve explained that these four bands were among the Muses that inspired Telesterion, and hence the name of the EP is Invoking the Muses.
If you’re familiar with the four originals, the covers will remind you of them, but Telesterion put their own distinctive and often breathtaking spin on the songs too.
The daunting depth and gloomy harshness of the vocals makes “Cast No Shadow” darker (though the vocals fly high too), and the music also seems more booming, more brilliantly searing, and more vast in its scale. “Pristina” is desolate, haunting, and heart-breaking even in its original form, and so is Telesterion’s cover, but it is again a more vast scaling of the song, a near-apocalyptic scaling that’s enhanced by soul-sinking choral vocals.
Of the four originals, “Shout” will likely be most familiar to the most people, and once again, Telesterion’s vocals give it a different and darker shade — but they display a spine-tingling range. The cover builds in intensity (almost frightening intensity), but also includes a very cool bass solo and lots of sparkling keyboards and attention-seizing guitar work, including extended dual-guitar soloing that’s stupendous. It’s probably the most spectacular rendition of the four.
And lastly, Telesterion put their spin on “On All Hallows Eve” by Killing Joke. As in the case of the Faith No More song, Telesterion picked one of this band’s darker and more unsettling originals to use as their source material, and they manage to make it darker still, even after bringing in mesmerizing orchestral strings.
The vocals on the original are striking as they move from gloomy crooning to explosive, ragged cries, and the vocals on the cover achieve a similar startling effect. And I suppose it would go without saying by now, but the cover is also more monumental, more sweeping, more body-moving in the heaviness of its booming grooves — and the brief strummed finale is a great counterpoint.
All in all, Invoking the Muses is well worth having. Telesterion have been handing out a lot of free download codes, but if you choose to buy the digital EP at Bandcamp (as I did), Telesterion say that “all money raised will go to Animal Diplomacy, which is an animal rescue charity focused on helping animals in the Middle East.”
https://telesterionmusic.bandcamp.com/album/invoking-the-muses
SLOTH HERDER (U.S.)
I think it’s fair to call this closing selection a “blast from the past”. The last time I wrote about Baltimore-based Sloth Herder (here) was in early 2017, in one of the early editions of these SEEN AND HEARD roundups. The occasion was the surfacing of two songs from their debut full-length No Pity, No Sunrise, which came out that same year. Sloth Herder released a two-track single the next year, but nothing since then — until now.
Now Sloth Herder have a new album on the way (or you can call it an EP if you prefer, since it’s six songs and 21 minutes long). Its title is Persecution Texts, and two of the six songs are available for listening now.
All those years ago when we first wrote about Sloth Herder my friends and I couldn’t figure out a genre label for what they were doing. It’s no easier now. Sloth Herder have referred to themselves as “a dissonant metal/grind/noise/punk band”, and well, even that gives you an idea that labels don’t work very well here.
The first of the two songs, “Eidetic Reverie“, is the one that opens the record. On the one hand, its low-end blows are enormous and the drumming is constantly in flux, blasting and clattering. On the other hand, the riffing burns and churns, and the vocals are cauterizing in their blast-furnace intensity. On the third hand, the music heavily heaves and becomes darkly expansive, but it also reflects dissonant fretwork seizures that spasm and blare.
It’s a head-twisting experience — bruising and bleak, furious and hysterical, savage and spidery. Clearly a case of “WTF did I just hear?!?” But you’ll want to hear it again, and right damned quick if you’re like me.
The other song (which you’ll eventually get to through the player below as soon as your head stops spinning) is “Thriving Wound“. It’s about a minute and a half longer than the opener, which means Sloth Herder will put more twists and turns into you. I won’t attempt to verbally map out everything they do, but only to describe the changing moods — which are dauntingly oppressive and hopeless, despairing to the point of mania, brutally bludgeoning, unnervingly convulsive,
I should add that this song will also jackhammer your head into a pulpy mess, and should you need to tear through concrete in order to excavate a big trench and move massive piles of rubble ahead of you, just set up a big speaker and play this really loud.
https://slothherdermd.bandcamp.com/album/persecution-texts
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sloth-Herder/191788187515489