(written by Islander)
Yesterday was another Bandcamp Friday, when the platform waives its revenue share so that artists and labels can take in more money from their sales. There will be two more of those this year, on November 6th and December 4th.
In deciding what music to recommend in this column I nearly didn’t pay any attention to our in-box for the last two days, because I knew it would be flooded with messages from people trying to take advantage of the Friday benefit (and to be clear, I don’t blame them a bit). I already had plenty of possibilities from preceding days this week and last week.
But I wound up wading through the flood anyway, and fielding recommendations from assorted other people online. I didn’t listen to everything I listed for myself, because if I had, it would already be Sunday. But I listened enough to make the choices difficult. Here’s where I came down. I hope you’ll enjoy the picks.
OBSCVRE SER (Brazil)
As you’ve seen, this collection includes some “big names”, but I decided to start with a very obscure obscvre name, because the song below was the first one I listened to this morning and it blasted the cobwebs from my head like a nuclear detonation. I thought you might need a head-clearing wakeup call too.
The song is from a new album by the São Paulo band Obscvre Ser, whose music is a hybrid of sludge, black metal, and hardcore. Here’s their description of the album and the song: “About the album, O vazio não morre is about what remains when everything around begins to fall apart. “O que sobra” closes this journey with the question that lingers: after everything has collapsed, what continues to exist?”
In writing and recording “O que sobra” Obscvre Ser obviously aimed to make an overpowering impact, and they hit the mark. The song inflicts skull-busting beats and immense battering-ram blows; it sends towering waves of distressing melody sky-high, punctuated by megaton bass-drop explosions; and it feels like the fire and fury in the vocals could ignite brushfires in parched fields.
Those high-arcing melodic waves create visions of searing and unsettling grandeur but also descend in mammoth groans of agony, yet as eerily chilling as those sensations are, the band persist in making the song a ruthless bludgeoner too.
O vazio não morre is scheduled for release on October 31st.
https://obscvre-ser.bandcamp.com/track/o-que-sobra
https://www.facebook.com/obscvreser/
http://instagram.com/obscvre_ser
ASSUMPTION (Italy)
Last week brought the very good news that the Italian doom/death metal band Assumption will have a new album for us in November. Its name is Paradox of the Arrow, and it follows their stunning Hadean Tides full-length from four years ago.
Last week also brought us the album’s first single, “Tombs Upon the Sun“. It too is stunning. Its slow, organ-led opening is elegantly ethereal and haunting, and those unearthly sensations persist even after the song begins to stomp like a striding giant. Then comes a viciously throbbing riff that drives the song into a phase of violent grandeur and spine-cracking beats.
Monstrous gutturals rise up from cavernous depths, and the music seems to miserably wail and feverishly convulse. The drumming is tremendous, and so is the band’s ability to create coherent melodic through-lines in a constantly changing experience. The song also includes an eye-popping mid-song guitar solo that propels the song to its exhilarating zenith, and another solo that’s more dismal in its mood, as well as a plethora of chameleon-like guitar-leads.
It’s the kind of song that really needs to be heard more than once to comprehend everything that happens in it, though it’s gripping as hell just the first time through.
Paradox of the Arrow will be released by 20 Buck Spin on November 13th. The fantastic cover art is a painting by by Mariya Popyk.
https://20buckspin.bandcamp.com/album/paradox-of-the-arrow
https://www.facebook.com/assumptiondoom/
RISE ABOVE DEAD (Italy)
Assumption aren’t the only veteran Italian band with a new album slated for release in November. The Milanese post-metal group Rise Above Dead have a new one coming too, one that features the return of original singer Andrea Rondanini, and to help spread the word they released a beautifully filmed video last week for the album’s first single, “Drowning Slowly“.
Commensurate with its title, the song does create a dark and oppressive atmosphere, but the urgent throb and sinister swirl of its opening riff generates a more viscerally muscular and muscle-moving impact. After grabbing attention in that way, the band turn to wailing chords and weeping arpeggios to darken the mood, and then let their vocalist loose to scald and shatter listeners with his furious intensity.
Back and forth the music goes, alternately surging with desperation and submerging listeners in sorrow, but at all times the rhythm section back the music with gripping work. Speaking of which, the rhythm section get the song to themselves for a brief time in the song’s back half before the music begins building in intensity once more — and indeed drowning listeners beneath sweeping tides of musical distress.
There’s enough emotional power in this song to light a city, and the video really is riveting to watch.
The name of the new album is Voidmass. It’s due out on November 27th via Argonauta Records.
https://www.argonautarecords.com/
https://www.facebook.com/riseabovedead/
https://www.instagram.com/riseabovedead/
VOID SECTOR ZERO (U.S.)
Void Sector Zero is a new name, but the band will have no trouble attracting attention, in part because they have Season of Mist behind them but mainly because their lineup consists of guitarist Christian Muenzner (Necrophagist, ex-Obscura, ex-Alkaloid), vocalist and bassist Alex Weber (Revocation, Malignancy, Exist), and drummer Gabe Seeber (Decrepit Birth, Abigail Williams, Carach Angren), all of whom found a chemistry together when they played in Obscura during the 2022 world tour for A Valediction.
Void Sector Zero’s tech-thrashing debut album is Dead Space Enigma, and last week brought us a great video of this trio performing the lead single, “Vortex Divinium“.
As you might expect, the performance is a tech-death tour de force, but these days fleet-fingered and fast-twitch skill and dexterity are in abundant supply, so what makes the song stand out is more than that. It succeeds in creating a feeling of alien fascination, with filaments of melody that are as fluid and fascinating as the fast-leaping and spider-fingered fretwork is eye-popping. The band also make room for a jazzy instrumental phase that might be the most memorable aspect of the song.
All three performers are not just lights-out in their skill, all three are notably creative in the changing accents they bring to the song. It’s a head-spinning joy to see as well as hear them.
https://orcd.co/voidsectorzerodse
https://voidsectorzero.bandcamp.com/album/dead-space-enigma-2
https://www.facebook.com/p/Void-Sector-Zero-61573165450159/
ACÉDIA (Canada)
The Dark Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, I’ll have a lot of new black metal to recommend tomorrow, but I felt an urgent need to share this next song from the Québec progressive black metal band Acédia without delay.
The song, “Le pacte muet“, is undeniably unsettling but also viscerally cathartic and persistently mind-boggling. At the outset the guitars feverishly roil but also simultaneously seem to ooze a vital ichor, and immediately the prog-minded interplay of bass and drums demonstrates the song’s grooves aren’t going to be conventional.
The guitars also stab listeners with shining spears of unnerving dissonance, and in clear tones they eerily quiver and miserably squirm as well, while the roaring vocals are frightening in their own fashion as well. The drums eventually go off in blast-beat bursts; the bass intriguingly bubbles as that happens; and the roars flare into unhinged howls.
But although all of the performers turn in noteworthy performances, it’s the piercing fluidity and disturbed frenzies of the dissonant guitars, and all their inventive machinations, that are likely to stay with you the longest and call you back.
“Le pacte muet” is the first advance track from Acédia’s fourth album, Égarement, which will be released on November 20th, with a cassette edition on Les Productions Hérétiques.
https://acediametal.bandcamp.com/album/garement
https://www.lesproductionsheretiques.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Acediaqc/
DISFEAR (Sweden)
Now, to close, we turn to the biggest name in today’s collection, the Swedish d-beat legends Disfear and a song from their new album The Last Nail. The story of how the album came to be is a harrowing one, and one followed by tragedy as vocalist Tomas Lindberg and drummer Marcus Andersson both succumbed to cancer before the album’s release (go here and scroll down to get the full story).
It’s impossible to ignore those deaths in listening to the first single, “Early Graves“. Their passing creates a feeling of poignance, especially because both men knew the bleak prospects for their health when they recorded the songs.
Photo Credit: Robert Samsonowitz
But having said that, the song is also undeniably glorious, an electrifying d-beat romp that sends ringing fanfares of brass and brazen melody up through the roof. The vocals are absolutely flame-broiled; the soloing is serpentine and shining; and your bones will feel the throb of the bass deep down.
On top of everything else, the song is enormously infectious.
https://www.relapse.com/pages/disfear-the-last-nail
https://disfear.bandcamp.com/album/the-last-nail
https://www.facebook.com/Disfear/