(written by Islander)
This collection of recommended music will be much shorter than yesterday’s. We’ve got a visitor coming to the house any minute now, and after that I’ll be heading across Puget Sound to join friends in watching our beloved Seahawks play another team named for a bird, one that wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell if an actual osprey decided to mess with it in the avian world, but this being a football game in which a star player might get butt-hurt right away, as one of ours literally did in the first series of the Hawks’ opening game, you never know.
Now that I’ve made my excuses, on we go….
POLDERHAAT (Netherlands)
As I noted in yesterday’s gargantuan column, I, Voidhanger Records announced yet another trio of forthcoming releases last week, with preview songs available for each of them. I focused on one of those yesterday (from Architect of Seth) and I’m beginning today with another one.
But first, here’s what the label tells us about this Dutch duo’s name and the focus of their debut album:
The band’s name reflects their calling, being a portmanteau of the words “haat” (hate) and “polder,” an untranslatable Dutch term referring to an artificial strip of land reclaimed from the sea by using windmills in medieval times.
Touching on religion, hard labor and punishment, Klaagliederen is a collection of laments centered on the hardships of Dutch life during the Middle Ages, relegated by historians to a period of obscurity, repression, and religious fanaticism.
What we can all hear now is the album’s opening song, “Heresie/Ketterij“. The lyrics are in Dutch but I translated them into my native tongue with the help of an online tool. They narrate the burning at the stake of two “heretics” by Inquisitors.
Undergirded by drums that furiously blast, militantly rattle, and steadily march, the music moves in grand but sorrow-stricken waves of sound — momentous waves pierced by a shrill, frantically flickering lead guitar and eventually by scorching screams. The music is vast and seems to wail in anguish, and to mourn as it descends. The song also includes solemn harmonized singing with an ecclesiastical air, and it seems to connect to the period in history that’s the album’s focus.
The music is every bit as wrenching in its own way as the tormented screams and the horrible events the song portrays, and it builds to a shattering crescendo at the end that took my breath away, accompanied by harrowing vocal cacophonies..
Klaagliederen is set for release on November 6th. It features cover art by Hans Linssen, and trombone performances by Niek Bollemeijer.
https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/klaagliederen
https://www.facebook.com/i.voidhanger.records
BONJOUR TRISTESSE (Germany)
The always-impressive Bonjour Tristesse is returning this year with their fifth album, Disaster Triumphant. I haven’t yet heard more of it than the first advance track, but the press materials describe it as “return to the band’s roots” after the last two albums, “slower, heavier, and more monolithic than its predecessors”, and “quite depressive”. I’ll also share this statement from the band’s sole member Nathanael:
“These songs were inspired by anger, hatred, and contempt for the ignorance and selfishness of modern man, the arrogance of humanism, and the death-machine that devours everything worth living for. Furthermore, these songs were inspired by strong feelings of sadness, grief, and despair over the loss of the natural world.”
That first advance song, “Tomb of Hope“, leads with a slowly throbbing riff that’s steeped in melancholy but is also immediately captivating. It sounds like a solemn expression of grief and a kind of hopeless pleading.
On the other hand, it’s backed by more abrasive tones that seem to whine and snarl and it’s fronted by screams of boundless fury and despair. Beneath it all a very heavy bass expresses its own grim pulse, and the music shifts in a way that itself becomes more grim and desolate, a shift augmented by a dour melody that sounds like the voice of an accordion.
In its preceding two albums Bonjour Tristesse proved that it can blast and blister, and eventually in this song it does launch an eruption of blast-beat intensity, and the music both majestically sweeps and stridently sears.
When the song slows again, that absolutely captivating main riff takes over again and digs in deeper and deeper, even as the vocals continue to vent ear-shredding shrieks of unhinged passion. And whatever is making that accordion-like melody rears its ragged head again as well; it too proves to be captivating.
Disaster Triumphant will be released by AOP Records on November 20th. The album’s cover was created by Abismo Black Arts. The album’s title is taken from the following excerpt from the book Dialectic of Enlightenment by philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno:
“The Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumphant.”
https://artofpropaganda.bandcamp.com/album/disaster-triumphant
https://www.facebook.com/BonjourTristesseofficial/
SERPENT (Sweden)
Metal-Archives lists more than a dozen bands who’ve claimed the name Serpent, and five of those are from Sweden, though only one of those Swedish groups is still active under the name Serpent — and it’s their new song that’s next up in this collection.
I have to tell you straightaway that this Serpent aren’t a black metal band, but more in the vein of occult melodic death metal, yet this song hooked me so hard that I didn’t want to delay spreading the word about it. In addition, I think you’ll find that at least in spirit and subject matter it still fits within the bounds of a column named SHADES OF BLACK.
Serpent named this song (and their forthcoming debut album) for Edgar Allan Poe’s nightmarish story “The Pit and the Pendulum“, and presented it a couple weeks ago through a lyric video.
The song’s opening dual-guitar melody is gentle, elegant, and beguiling — but it’s a big head fake, because soon enough (and quite abruptly) the song thunders and pounds, and the guitars, while not abandoning that melody, greatly magnify its intensity. Moreover, Serpent follow that with a quick dose of spine-jolting punishment and then a swirling and viper-like melodic sequence that sets another hook.
The roaring vocals are deep, gritty, and imperious, though they’re joined by a second, more demonic voice just as the music escalates in its range. And lots more sinister fun lies ahead — including a miserably wailing guitar solo, plenty of skull-busting and neck-bending grooves, swarms of poisonously writhing riffage, haughty but hideous spoken words, and a sorcerous guitar solo — plus a reprise of all the song’s hook-laden riffs and that beguiling overture.
This song is likely to still linger in my head whenever I start contemplating our list of the year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs.
The Pit and the Pendulum will be released by Hammerheart Records on November 13th. The striking cover artwork is the work of Gyula Havancsák (Nile, Kreator, Accept), and we’re told that it represents a “meticulously crafted visual index to the entire album: each of the eight tracks is encoded through subtle symbols, recurring motifs and carefully embedded references woven into the front cover itself….”
https://serpentcult.lnk.to/thepitandthependulum
https://hammerheart.bandcamp.com/album/the-pit-and-the-pendulum
https://www.facebook.com/SerpentCult666/
ÜBERCHRIIST (U.S.)
To close this too-short collection I’m turning to a song that, like the one just above, is exceedingly catchy. Titled “Serpent’s Shroud“, it’s the second single released so far from this Atlanta quartet’s forthcoming second album, Dæmonic Apotheosis. It arrived with a video of these corpse-painted marauders performing the song and cavorting around a bonfire.
The band set the hook right away with a diabolically swirling riff whose pulse rises and falls in a way that sounds vicious but also jubilant. They back that with a heavily undulating bass and with drums that sound like mortar fire.
As scalding vocals arrive, the riffing shifts and begins to blare and convulse, sounding both imperious and rabidly ravenous. The drums engage in their own shifts, and the band also insert the kind of rapid chugs and blaring notes that make me think of a freight engine pumping down railway tracks.
It’s an exhilarating thing to hear, and a memorable one.
Dæmonic Apotheosis will be released on September 25th via Deanwell Global Music. Below, I’ve also included a stream of the album opener and first single, “Anti-Phoenix Descent“.
https://deanwellglobalmusic.bandcamp.com/track/serpents-shroud-3
https://uberchriist.bandcamp.com/track/serpents-shroud
https://uberchriist.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Uberchriist/