(written by Islander)
As we all do, some days I wake up feeling like shit but still have to forge ahead with daily tasks. Today is one of those days.
The covid virus is still spreading around the country, and an updated vaccine for it became available last week. Because I’m in a demographic with an elevated risk of serious infection, I got the updated shot at a local pharmacy late yesterday afternoon. That’s what caused me to feel like shit this morning. I have a mild case of the sniffles but mainly I ache all over. It’s not so bad if I stay perfectly still, but any kind of movement is painful.
If my past experience with the vaccines is a guide, this will all pass by tomorrow or the next day at the latest, and for me the discomfort is a price worth paying for the enhanced immunity. The daily tasks I still feel the need to forge ahead with include preparing this column you’re now reading.
I mean, I could have just blown it off and gone back to bed. No one would have fired me for shirking. No one else would have suffered serious damage (probably). But this is the kind of daily task that takes my mind off of what ails me instead of turning up the torture dial — so on we go.
P.S. In my listening yesterday and this morning I did a lot of wandering around, and you’ll probably get a sense of that if you move through everything here from start to finish. You probably won’t like all of it, but you’ll probably like some of it. And if you regret the absence of black metal, come back to our front page tomorrow.
DARKEST HOUR (U.S.)
I’m going to start off with two bands who are long-term favorites of our site, beginning with a new song and ooze-spattered video from Darkest Hour.
My friend DGR called the song (“Suffer Divine“) “a two minute circle pit”, and so it is. It’s super-pissed-off, both lyrically and musically. The lyrical line “I wear your hate as warpaint” may explain the sliming of the band in the video.
The vocals are a red-hot fury. Backed by galloping beats, the riffing is equally hot, as the guitars cut, dart, and feverishly skitter, and the soloing is ecstatically molten. Things do get cold and grim when the band slow down, but the vocals still come for your throat without backing down.
“Suffer Divine” is the title song to a new Darkest Hour album that will be released by MNRK Heavy on October 30th. The cover art is a painting by the great Eliran Kantor.
https://darkesthour.ffm.to/sufferdivine
https://mnrkheavy.com/collections/darkest-hour
https://officialdarkesthour.bandcamp.com/album/suffer-divine
https://www.instagram.com/darkest_hour_official
https://www.facebook.com/darkesthourdudes
GREAT FALLS (U.S.)
Living in the Seattle area, as I do, affords many tremendous benefits, one of which is the chance to periodically catch a show by Great Falls, something I’ve enjoyed repeatedly. They’re a powerful live band. Damned good on record too, which we’re being reminded of through the first advance track off a new album named The Bite That Grows Up.
The band’s label calls it “one of the most vicious, brutal, and uncompromising albums of the year” — “a chaotic listen with disorienting rhythms and dissonant riffs that are difficult to pin down, turning on a dime as soon as you try to nod your head to it”.
In the case of this first single, that’s all true. Even though it opens with a brief and dreamy piano melody, the yelled vocals are unhinged and in pain; the drumming unpredictably turns on a dime from moment to moment; the bass is monstrously heavy; and the raw and ragged riffing clangs, scrapes, whines, and groans.
Things suddenly stop and soften, then start again to generate an unhealthy miasma of discordance. More stops and starts lie ahead, along with ethereal shimmering tones, a viciously growling bass solo, full-riot drumwork, torrential guitars, and vocals that are coming apart at the seams.
The Bite That Grows Up is set for release on October 16th by Neurot Recordings. There’s a lot more info worth reading about the album at Bandcamp. It includes this note about the following song: “Additional vocals on first single ‘Nicotine in the Spine‘ (Track 5) by Peter Clement Lund (Guitarist and Vocalist from Danish band/tourmates, Kollapse). Passed away a few weeks after tracking these vocals.”
https://music.neurotrecordings.com/thebitethatgrowsup
https://greatfalls.bandcamp.com/album/the-bite-that-grows-up
https://www.facebook.com/GreatFallsNoise/
https://www.instagram.com/greatfallsnoise/
WORM ALTAR (U.S.)
We’re leaping all the way across the continent for this next song, “Watchers of the Gate“, which is from the debut album of Worm Altar from Portland, Maine.
In this one the drummer wastes little time spurring himself into a frantic gallop while the murky trem-picked riffing gruesomely writhes and roils like the audio manifestation of a plague vector. Just before ice-cold gutturals arrive the pace slows and becomes a stomp, the bass feverishly throbs, and the riffing oozes like a festering infection, but the music even more insanely convulses after that.
It’s a nasty piece of work, both maniacal and ghastly, both frenzied and foul, and you may realize near the end that it’s gotten its fiendish hooks in you when the band return to the way they opened.
The name of Worm Altar’s debut album is Pillars of Eternal Dusk. It will be out on October 16th in variuous formats from Dawnbreed Records, Gurgling Gore, and Contemn Light.
https://wormaltar-gurglinggore.bandcamp.com/album/pillars-of-eternal-dusk
https://www.dawnbreed.com/
https://contemnlight.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/wormaltar/
https://wormaltar.bandcamp.com/
NERVOCHAOS (Brazil)
Now into the 30th year of their career, the Brazilian death metal band NervoChaos have a new album named Chaosmongers that will be released by Black Lion Records and Tumba Records on November 13th. A lyric video for the first single, “Embrace Chaos“, surfaced a few days ago.
This song is what I think of as red meat for death metal carnivores, or, to change the metaphor, it punches all the right buttons for releasing lots of endorphins. The rocking beats get muscles moving; the sinister whines and feverish chugs in the riff department do so too; and the fang-bared snarls and howls are as hellish as you could want.
But NervoChaos also switch things up, inserting bursts of jittery, off-kilter fretwork, near-sung gang words, and subtle tempo changes, all of which add to the song’s demonic moods.
The album’s eye-catching cover art is the work of Niklas Sundin.
https://music.blacklion.nu/chaosmongers
https://nervochaosblacklion.bandcamp.com/album/chaosmongers
https://nervochaos.net
https://www.facebook.com/NervoChaos
https://www.instagram.com/nervochaos
MILIM KASHOT VOL. 7
At the end of August Machine Music digitally released another charitable compilation of music, Milim Kashot Vol. 7. It is introduced with these words:
The newest installment of the MILIM KASHOT charity compilation series arrives itself uncertain in increasingly uncertain times. Within that uncertainty, all proceeds from the sale of the compilation will go to the brave, tireless people at World Central Kitchen who risk their lives daily to provide food and hope all over the world, but especially in the continuing hellish conditions in Gaza. One wonders, as always, if one can make any kind of change for good in a world as bad as this one, but one can only try.
(Coincidentally, yesterday The Guardian published a detailed and damning report on the IDF’s April 2024 killing of seven aid workers in a World Central Kitchen convoy in Gaza.)
I haven’t listened to everything on this latest compilation, but leaped around among the selections. If you’re familiar with previous comps, it won’t surprise you to learn that the music is quite eclectic. Some of the names jumped out at me — among them, the two live tracks from Pyrrhon, a new song by Cave Sermon, and a song from the wonderful 2025 album by Tunisia’s Gomma. I’ll mention only three of the songs I’ve listened to so far.
The opener is a harrowing song called “Fall” from a debut demo by the German band Aum released last January. Furiously screamed vocals vent the words above caustic, screeching reverberations, and then the music brutishly pummels, grimly blares, and unnervingly writhes.
When the cacophonies relent, a lead guitar slowly wails and slithers. When the battering resumes, the riffing manifests as a staccato stitching sensation, segmented by peals of misery-soaked discordance.
The second song I’ll mention is “Electric Weave“, the one by Melbourne-based Cave Sermon, whose music we’ve repeatedly praised here in the past. It’s quite a fascinating mix of sensations. It includes a lonely acoustic-guitar melody backed by aberrant gasps as well as deep electronic beats and buzzings surmounted by gleaming sonic striations.
The buzzing becomes more prominent, coming and going with a Doppler-like effect; the drums tick, and then something like a cow-bell groove vibrantly comes in; a lilting guitar melody resembles trumpet tones, and then a saxophone goes wild amidst heaving undercurrents and urgently throbbing and shivering beats.
And the third song I’ll point to is by another band (like Aum) that I hadn’t paid attention to before. It’s a one-person project from Virginia named Yhtill, and the song — “hlör u fang axaxaxas mlö” — is identified as a premiere, so not previously released.
It’s a creepy and unhealthy experience, something like the audio equivalent of trying to cross broken ground shrouded by a cold, dense, toxic fog — and then to be chased through it by roaring monstrosities.
The music generates a poisonously sizzling drone that dismally rises and falls while drums frantically clatter and lower frequencies bubble and boom. Here and there, something horrid growls and gags. When the drums fall silent, you might imagine the undulations of a massive serpent. When the drums resume, it sounds like someone methodically hammering on a trash-can lid and then slowly surrendering to whatever’s choking the lungs.
I look forward to hearing more of this comp, and to buying it for a good cause.
https://machinemusic1981.bandcamp.com/album/milim-kashot-vol-7
https://aumpost.bandcamp.com/album/fall-marrow-demo
https://cavesermon.bandcamp.com/music
https://yhtill.bandcamp.com/
GRISEVILLE (France)
As my musical wandering continued I delved into the self-titled debut album by Griseville from Nantes, France. It was released yesterday by Voice Of The Unheard Records. Succinctly described as “heavy screamo shot through with post-rock”, it’s a bit off our usual beaten paths around here (okay, more than a bit), but the opening song pulled me in, and I stayed pulled in all the way through.
Here’s an English translation of the French lyrics for that album opener, “Au Service du Néant“:
Trapped in an eternal routine—an empty yet grueling daily grind.
Enslaved by invisible gods, those who hum the tune of your purging.
Condemned, I wander these dismal corridors, clad in a suit of yellowish plaster.
In the service of the void, I carry out my duties without faltering.
And beneath the veneer of their uniforms, the executioners are cowardly and petty—craven, falsely brave.
Trapped in an eternal routine.
As the song begins, a guitar saturated in delay and/or reverb slowly rings and quivers in a way that sounds both elegant and forlorn. Those sounds swell, mystical in their mood and and piercing in their intensity — and then Griseville drench listeners in ringing chords and let the drummer start cracking necks. They also reveal the enormity of their bone-throbbing bass and the raw passion of their screamed vocals (in your mind’s eye you might be able to see the lyrengeal tissues tearing themselves unevenly apart from the strain).
Near the song’s mid-point Griseville briefly return to the wrenching ring of a solo guitar, and then the drums rumble like boulders coming downhill and the guitars wail and whine, slash and squeal. The push and pull of the song’s intensity continues; the music becomes fragile, ethereal, and beguiling but also crushes and grows desperate. For added intensity, they also double-up the screamed vocals.
That first song will give you a pretty good idea about whether you’ll enjoy the rest of the album. The other songs also feature deft picking and glittering melodies (melodies both beautiful and discordant), but also passages of immense heaving and harrowing heaviness — and that contrast works for them.
The songs also include dynamic drum performances that astutely fit the music’s changing moods and momentums, bass-lines you can feel in your marrow, and of course a lot of raw and ragged vocals and gang screams that sound like blood-spray.
As I said, Griseville diverges from our usual beaten paths, but I found myself by enthralled and energized by it. It would have been ungrateful of me not to include it here.
https://griseville.bandcamp.com/album/griseville
https://voturecords.com/product/votu087-griseville-s-t-12/
https://www.instagram.com/griseville_screamo