(written by Islander)
I’ve been seeing the word “tsunami” a lot this week. I assume it’s because yesterday was a Bandcamp Friday, which always provokes a flood of new music and a typhoon of traffic in our in-box from bands and labels trying to take advantage of Bandcamp’s relinquishment of their revenue share. I dunno, maybe there was another reason. I’ll have to investigate.
I kept pretty good track of all the new music I wanted to check out in preparation for this regular weekend roundup. My spouse has been away from home visiting her favorite sister and so I spent a lot of time yesterday making my way through that big list of possibilities.
After much mental backing-and-forthing I came up with six picks for today, including a pair of EPs, while still leaving a lot of candidates for the usual Sunday column tomorrow.
THE GREAT SEA (Germany)
Even though I pushed off a lot of new black metal to tomorrow’s column to make today’s choices somewhat easier, I still decided to lead off today with a new song and video from The Great Sea. This German duo released their debut album Noble Art of Desolation via AOP Records just last year. It received a glowing review here from our contributor Daniel Barkasi, which ended with these words:
It can be difficult to ascertain what to expect when a new band emerges, and with great thankfulness, The Great Sea have provided a fastidious black metal experience with a forlorn and imperative message. The ambition for this project was indeed gargantuan, and luckily for our ears, Noble Art of Desolation has at minimum matched the lofty heights of its astute creators.
Wasting no time, The Great Sea have a new album on the horizon, one named Silent Feeble Cries. Once again (as the PR materials describe) the album “ventures into the complex relationship between humanity and nature,” embracing “both ecstatic madness and the forces of decay, corruption and decline.”
Once again lead vocalist A. is joined by guest vocalists Azathoth (Gràb, ex-Dark Fortress) and Phil “sG” Jonas (Crone, ex-Secrets Of The Moon), but this time the guest list also includes Pelle Åhman (ex-In Solitude), whose voice can be heard on the opening track “Thirteen Moons”. That’s the song that was released last week through a beautiful, strange, and haunting video directed by David Gregory that was filmed amid the landscapes of the Scottish Highlands, and is dominated by the remarkable face of actor Gordon J Millar.
photo by Janosch Rathmer
As someone who has a low tolerance for singing in extreme metal, I was mesmerized by Pelle Åhman‘s voice in this song. His high-flying and impassioned singing meshes with other aspects of the music that build tension and introduce signs of turmoil. Those other ingredients include the unsettling rise and fall of an opening tremolo’d riff, coupled with enormous percussive booms and dismally sizzling low-end reverberations.
The tension doesn’t break but becomes more harrowing as the riffing boils, the drums begin hurtling, and Åhman’s piercing voice soars and wails. Grief seeps through in trilling lead-guitar tones, but when the turmoil manifests again it includes raging growls and wrenching howls.
The music continues to push and pull. The beats rock as well as thunder. The whirring riffage wondrously rises, but also descends in sorrow. When the pace slows and Åhman returns in gloomier tones, melancholy moods flow in broad swaths. When his voice escalates again, joined by those wrenching growls, the music begins to surge once more but still carries feelings of dismay and anguish. It’s an entirely captivating song.
Silent Feeble Cries is set for release by AOP Records on January 29, 2027.
https://artofpropaganda.bandcamp.com/album/silent-feeble-cries
https://www.facebook.com/thegreatseaofficial
https://www.instagram/thegreatseaofficial
RAT KING (U.S.)
It’s always fun to get in on the ground floor with a new band and then watch them take continuing to make big strides forward as the years pass. For me that’s been the case with Seattle-based Rat King.
I literally got in on the ground floor with them by watching one of their live performances in 2017 on the floor of Seattle’s tiny Funhouse venue, where they were part of a bill that included two other bands who’ve also made big strides since then — Seattle’s Rhine and Arizona’s Lago.
Up to that point this trio had released an EP, a couple of splits, and a debut album, and since then they’ve released two more albums and a few more short releases. Along the way they’ve moved their music from the death/sludge place where they started into the direction of death metal and grindcore.
Rat King’s newest output is a five-song EP named Lagrimas Para El Abismo that was released yesterday by Within the Mind Records.
The title song, which I think means “Tears for the Abyss” in English, begins with a dismal throb but then leaps forward in a roiling blizzard of cutting riffage backed by furiously rattling drums and fronted by cavernous roars. There’s a taste of d-beat as the drumming shifts, and the riffing, while still caustic in tone, gloriously but still maniacally blares.
Yet the guitars also miserably wail, not only in the grievous timbre of the riffing but in the cries of the lead guitar. Even after the song begins to jolt and boil again, and eventually to convulse in madness, it’s an emotionally distressing experience. The eerie, ominous, and gloom-steeped sensations that suddenly appear at the end remind us of the song’s title.
From there Rat King continue their way through four more songs that again seamlessly entwine viciously cutting riffage, bone-smashing and head-rattling drumwork, monstrous roars, and slower, more atmospheric periods of more morbid, menacing, or soul-gutting terrain.
Dynamism of pacing and mood are signal features of the songs, and the melodic ingredients of the riffing (yes, the riffs are melodic as well as damned mean) drive all those mood changes, though the constant shifts in drum rhythm have a lot to do with that too. The soloing is also beautifully crafted, evocative, and often eerie, and the riffs manifest as big hooks — even in the hulking and rapidly gnashing beast that is the closing song “Birthing Our Demise“, which does sound at the end like the birth of our demise.
Or to put it more succinctly, these songs are very well-written, sharply executed, and constantly gripping. For me this was a very easy purchase. We happily hail the continued progress of Rat King.
The EP is out now as a digital download, but the band say that CD’s will be available soon on Purge Fluid Records.
https://ratkingband.bandcamp.com/album/lagrimas-para-el-abismo
https://linktr.ee/ratkingseattle
https://www.facebook.com/ratkingseattle/
OREAMNOS (U.S.)
I first came across Oreamnos six years ago through their debut EP Into the Night, released by Bloody Mountain Records. At that time their cross-country lineup consisted of two former members of Weverin — guitarist/bassist Sam (aka Harp) (also Pthisis, Gov’t Crucifixion) and drummer/guitarist/vocalist Matthew (Valdur, Sxuperion, SXAP). Here’s what I quickly vomited up after listening to that EP:
If my head were in better working order I would try to provide a more complete introduction, but can only manage to say that this is a terrorizing formulation of blackened death metal that also creates a nightmarish atmosphere of the supernatural. The songs (all of which have their own monstrous personalities) shift gears and moods without warning, delivering head-spinning chaos and delirium one minute and sensations of creeping dread and suffocating misery the next, while also taking advantage of opportunities to beat the listener senseless or inject bits of eerie astral ambience. Cavernous gutturals and poltergeist screams complete the sinister work of putting the frighteners on you.
Since then Oreamnos have released a debut album (2023’s The Granite Wall) and another EP (2025’s Futility), and their second album In Ruins is now set for release by Bloody Mountain on Friday the 13th of this month. The credits identify Harp as handling almost everything, with MPD as session drummer and M (aka Sxuperion) as session vocalist.
The first song made available for streaming from the album is “CSCK“. I don’t know what that title stands for, but I hope it refers to the constant scalar curvature Kähler metric. (Look it up if you want a head-scrambling incidence of differential geometry.)
Regardless of the what the song title means, it’s a hair-raising assault of fast-changing but ever-monstrous riffing, fast-changing but ever-bludgeoning drumwork, and horrid gutturals as deep as ocean trenches.
As the riffing shifts without warning it maniacally writhes, brazenly blares, brutishly jackhammers, viciously slashes, morbidly moans, and pulsates like an open vein. Occasionally a shrill lead guitar spurts up and quivers in agony or ecstasy (you choose) or wails like a miserable ghost that’s lost its way.
It’s quite a spectacle, an intersection of brutal and technical death metal with bits of supernatural spicing in the mix that’s a lot to take in on just one listen — so feel free to listen more than once!
https://bloodymountainrecords.bandcamp.com/album/in-ruins
https://linktr.ee/oreamnosband
https://www.facebook.com/p/Oreamnos-61563020530020/
https://www.instagram.com/oreamnosband
PROFANE ALTAR (U.S.)
I’ve mentioned before that I’m a native of central Texas and spent a big chunk of my adult life in the state before moving to the Pacific Northwest decades ago. Sometimes my job took me to Laredo and a few other towns in South Texas. Though I haven’t gotten back there in a very long time, I have great memories of those trips to the region.
My old home state has been on my mind a lot this past week as I watched the election returns roll in, including the news that Democrats won every House district that touches the U.S.-Mexico border. It was on my mind when I came across this short e-mail in our in-box from a dude named Jorge Diaz: “Profane Altar is a death metal band from Texas. Formed by veterans from the local scene. You can download and stream one of our songs here [leaving a Bandcamp link]. Thank you.”
When I checked that link, I saw that Profane Altar’s Bandcamp page identifies their location as Laredo, which was all the encouragement I needed to check out their music, and that page also lists these folks as the lineup:
Vocals: Fabian Santamaria
Bass, Vocals: Eliseo Lara
Guitars: Jorge Diaz
Guitars: Jose Lozano
Drums: Eduardo Vasi
I don’t know anything about their politics, and I’m not gonna assume anything even though Trump and the neo-Nazi he just promoted to Chief of Staff made it a priority to hunt Hispanic people like animals. But I do know (now) that they whip up some outrageously explosive and lethally violent death metal. I know that because I listened to the one song on their Bandcamp page, “Ravaging Spiritual Dimensions“, which seems to be their first single. It was released in mid-October.
Madness and mayhem reign in this turbocharged song from the first moment. The low end provides a high-speed avalanche while the riffing (which has an HM-2-like tone) savagely surges and slashes and the lead guitar sears, cuts, and frantically quivers.
The drumming is tremendously impressive and constantly gear-shifting. The fretwork is quite agile as well as lethal (and very infectious), and hits its zenith in a screaming, warbling, and ultimately seizure-like guitar solo that will drop jaws and pop eyes wide open.
Oh, we shouldn’t forget about the vocals. There’s actually no way you could forget them. They’re both front-and-center and insane, discharging blood-choked gutturals, rabid snarls, choking gags, and berserk howls with such deranged intensity that they manage to stand out despite the spectacularly savage derangement of the surrounding music.
https://profanealtar.bandcamp.com/track/ravaging-spiritual-dimensions
https://www.facebook.com/profanealtar
VORLUST (U.S.)
I was quite taken with Vorlust’s 2022 debut album Lick the Flesh, and tried to explain why here. I described it as “a monster barrage of death-metal bludgeoning and devil-thrash mayhem, laced with hellish supernatural vapors” and tremendous guitar soloing.
We hadn’t heard new recorded music from them again until last week, though we did see them put on one hell of a show at the 2025 edition of Northwest Terror Fest. Given that the lineup includes members of Necrot, Dipygus, Bonestripper, Nite, and Vastum, that’s not surprising, but last week the band’s new label Tankcrime did release a new Vorlust single named “Pleasure Drive“.
It’s a pleasurably filthy piece of work, just like the lyrics, which include these recurring lines of poetry savagely expelled by vocalist Cunnus:
Touch me slowly
Fill me hard
Ride my pleasure drive
The grit-coated riffing itself seems to moan in orgasmic ecstasy, and the drumming is damned ecstatic too, but the riffing also shifts into feverish chugs that are big head-hookers, and they also seem to ooze unmentionable substances.
The vocals, as you may already know, are incredibly bestial. They maliciously gnash, rabidly bark, and bay at the moon, like some foul thing that’s viciously consuming the sex partner that’s trying to pleasure it. And speaking of orgiastic, check out the guitar solos, which are just flat-out spectacular. And orgiastic.
Tankcrime has announced that Vorlust are currently finalizing their upcoming second full-length, Wet With Filth, scheduled for an early Spring release next year.
https://tankcrimes.bandcamp.com/album/pleasure-drive
https://www.instagram.com/vorlustbeastmetal/
http://www.facebook.com/tankcrimes
HAGEL (Mexico)
To close, I’m going to take a giant step away from Vorlust, and frankly away from everything else I’ve included above. Where I’ve landed is a new album by the Mexican band Hagel named The Veil Of Shadows. It was released just yesterday by Personal Records.
Hagel has an extensive and evolving history that dates back to 1995. You can read all of that at the album’s Bandcamp page linked below, but I’m going to skip over it, other than to note that the album includes new vocalist Iveth Herrera, whose inflamed, serrated-edge howls are spine-tingling.
The EP includes five songs, described on behalf of Personal Records as “a ritualistic and melancholic black-doom metal” that blends influences from such sources as early Moonspell, Rotting Christ, Ophthalamia, Mortuary Drape, Katatonia, Empyrium, Samael, and Tiamat.
Apart from the shattering intensity of Iveth Herrera’s harsh vocals, lots of other qualities of these songs stand out, and the relative clarity of the production helps that happen.
The songs include dual-guitar harmonies that are heart-breaking but also mesmerizing, as well as prominent bass accompaniments that are burly in heft but warm in tone, and nuanced drum performances that include periodic fills that will light up nerves as they crack necks.
They also include deftly picked and classically influenced acoustic-guitar solos (and a closing track that’s entirely an acoustic-guitar instrumental) as well as rasp-edged black metal riffing that’s grim and cold but also frantic and fiery, and weighty doom-drenched riffs that heave and stomp.
Hagel do a great job introducing soul-stricken melodies through a variety of fretwork techniques and then introducing adaptations of those melodies as the songs unfold, thereby driving them ever deeper into a listener’s head. They also shift the pacing from song to song, and sometimes within songs, to maintain further interest; just the first two songs prove that right away, and Hagel continue too pull and push the speed as the next three songs play out.
All in all, it’s an enthralling EP created from a seamless blend of doom and black metal ingredients, and one that should appeal to a range of varying audiences.
https://personal-records.bandcamp.com/album/the-veil-of-shadows
https://www.facebook.com/p/Hagel-100063703533638/
https://www.facebook.com/personalrecords666