(written by Islander)
Weeks that end on Friday the 13th include just as much metal hub-bub as weeks ending on a Bandcamp Friday. Most superstitious people view those days as unlucky (an example of triskaidekaphobia!), but metalheads tend to be contrary by nature and so Fridays the 13th are to be celebrated. It’s not so much a rejection of superstition as a turning of it on its head.
I guess it’s a good thing that the next Friday the 13th won’t happen until August 13, 2027, and that will be the only one next year (we had three of them this year!), because the flood of new metal that happens in such weeks makes it hard for people like me to keep up. It has certainly complicated my choices for this usual Saturday column, especially because it followed an immediately preceding Bandcamp Friday, which always produces its own flood of new music.
I had so many things I wanted to recommend last weekend that I had to leave some of them by the wayside. Usually when that happens I don’t pick them up at a later point and instead just move on. But for today’s roundup I decided to start off with three songs I didn’t have time enough to write about last weekend and then move on to four that I discovered this past week, for a lucky total of seven, which is also a happy number.
I should add that the starting three today are a bit unconventional, somewhat like the musical curveballs I often enjoy throwing at you for the final selection in these roundups except I’m throwing them at the outset.
I should further add that most of the following songs include prominent singing — very good singing that warrants an exception to our “rule” about that sort of behavior.
LAUDARE (Germany)
Three voices, guitar, bass, cello, and piano. That’s Laudare for you. How they use those organic and inorganic instruments is continually surprising. Take, for example, the two songs you can now hear from their new album I Am the Wood I Burn to Warm My Bones, on which they are joined by sessions performers on drums, violin, viola, and an 11-person choir.
The first of those songs to debut was “Fireflies“. There, the singers raise their voices in stirring yet distressing tones above heavily tumbling drums and dense guitar abrasion. As the song evolves, a guitar then busily darts around enormous bass throbs; the cello ecstatically swirls; and Marie-Luise Thurm’s singing hits operatic falsetto highs. But she also vents antagonistic snarls and rabid howls as the music belligerently surges and escalates on the power of disturbing orchestration in the song’s final phase.
In the second song, “Of Plea and Purpose“, Laudare immediately jolt and batter, let the singers loose to fly high, and set the cello vividly singing. But just as suddenly they cool their jets, making way for a slowly wailing and quite mesmerizing cello melody, intriguing interplay between bass and drums, and a duet that combines vocals both beautiful and sinister.
Sudden changes are the song’s guiding light, and so the listener then gets hit with scorching screams, avalanche-strength drumwork, and sizzling strings. The dramatic changes of intensity and style continue, both instrumentally and vocally, and all the voices join together in the song’s striking finale.
P.S. Go over to Bandcamp and read the lyrics — the band’s “violent poetry” in words. You’ll be glad you did.
P.P.S. The description of the album at Bandcamp is also worth reading. Here’s an excerpt:
“True to Laudare’s poetic approach, these themes unfold through a musical language that resists easy categorisation, drawing from post-rock, progressive rock, metal, folk and classical traditions. Fragile and forceful, melancholic yet searching – I Am the Wood I Burn to Warm My Bones is an intimate meditation on healing, self-discovery and the difficult freedom of learning to live without illusions.”
The album will be released on February 5th.
https://laudare.bandcamp.com/album/i-am-the-wood-i-burn-to-warm-my-bones-2
https://www.facebook.com/laudare.violentpoetry/
SHEVILS (Norway)
The week before last Shevils released the third single from their new album Sect Resurrection. This newest one is “The Force of Water“. I wrote about the second one, “Father In The Sky” back in September.
Once upon a time I summed up Shevils’ music as a “hook-filled and dark-hued amalgam of noisy punk, hardcore, and post-rock”, but they’ve been pretty free-wheeling in the way they often veer across genre lines, and this new single is an example of that, and a very surprising one.
Even though the song’s opening includes a strong rhythmic punch, the melody does seem to flow and shimmer like water in a stream. But in a sharp shock to the listener, the music suddenly erupts in a black-metal torrent, with drums blasting, harsh guitars dismally rising and falling, and the vocals ejecting incinerating fury.
When the drums shift into rocking beats the music flows and shimmers again, but with greater energy, and the vocal intensity is eye-popping once again when the torrent resumes. The music softens but also urgently slashes. The vocals cry out in singing that’s just as emotionally intense as the screaming, but the song ends in a way that’s harrowing and haunting.
It’s quite a head-spinning song but all the dynamic shifts work quite well together. Having listened to it a lot since it came out, I can attest it has staying power too.
https://open.spotify.com/album/6WqZDplslIJu1LsPuytx1G
https://shevils.bandcamp.com/
https://www.shevils.com/
https://www.facebook.com/shevils
DEATH PARADE (U.S.)
This next song. “Doomhorses“, is the biggest curveball among the three I’ve launched to start today’s roundup. It’s been on my mind a lot since I first came across it, and a big reason is the video with which Death Parade presented it. It includes street scenes of some of our darkest days, including violent encounters during the civil rights movement in the U.S. and other protests, intermixed with stunning footage of horses fighting and racing along ocean shores and through fire and choking smoke.
The imagery supplies the violence. The music mostly does not. But the combination of the two works supremely well. And the song builds its own kind of intensity as the moments pass. It begins one way and ends in a very different way.
The song begins very slowly, with haunted guitar picking joined by mysteriously shimmering strings, a deeply humming bass, and steady beats. Initially Laura Hopkins’ singing is ethereal and it enhances the music’s downcast mood, but she also dramatically soars, and it’s distressing to hear.
The music also begins to snarl and crash, but also backs down, softens, and becomes dreary again. The ebb and flow persists but the song also instrumentally shapeshifts, especially in its phases of more vibrant and more elaborate configuration. The song becomes more frenetic and fiery, more nerve-jangling and heart palpitating, yet undercurrents of grimness and grief persist until the end.
Death Parade is based in Portland, Oregon. Its lineup consists of vocalist/guitarist Laura Hopkins (a founding member of Blackwater Holylight), guitarist Tatiana Rose, bassist Cristina Dobbelaere, and drummer Stanley Lafever.
The song is from Death Parade’s new album Vernaissance, a combination of the words “vernal” and “renaissance”, intended to convey “a springtime rebirth, after a long winter of darkness” (to quote Laura Hopkin, who suffered from endometriosis for many years until finally getting a correct diagnosis and successful treatment).
The following video’s juxtaposition of images of state violence and majestic wild horses, can be understood as a fitting representation of the album’s theme of liberation from suffering. The album is scheduled for release on February 1st.
https://deathparadepdx.bandcamp.com/album/vernaissance
https://www.accidentprone.com/
https://www.facebook.com/death.parade.pdx/
https://www.instagram.com/death.parade.pdx/
AETHERIAN (Greece)
Now we’ll turn to the four newer songs, which are more in line with the usual bread and butter of our coverage.
Last week the Greek melodic death metal band Aetherian released yet another single that will eventually appear on their new album Fall of Civilization, which now has a release date of January 21st. The album is described as “a journey through the rise and ruin of four empires, each consumed by their own obsession. Driven by religious fanaticism, the thirst for endless warfare, technological obsession, or inhumane greed, each civilization built its monument only to carve its own demise”.
The band summarize this newest song, “Of Stone and Anvil“, with these words: “Born in difference, rooted in unity, yet divided by ambition. From their sprawling cities a race of master craftsmen expands their domain in search of natural resources defiling the sacred land of the local population thus sparking an inevitable war.” That tragic narrative unfolds through the lyric video that accompanied the song, which includes a guest vocal appearance by Efi Eva of the Greek post-black metal band Euphrosyne.
The savage ferocity of the main vocals is eye-popping, as it usually is with this band, and the music is fierce too. The guitars frenetically skitter and they violently boil, and the measured drums don’t steel away attention from that feverish riffing.
The music also expands and sweeps in shining yet melancholy tones above the frantic notes, creating the overarching aura of an epic, and Aetherian further enhance the song with rapidly darting keys, soaring song, abyssal growls, and heart-felt soloing. Melodically, they gradually bring sorrow into their song, and that’s the mood you’ll likely remember at the end, after the turmoil has abated.
https://aetherianband.bandcamp.com/album/fall-of-civilization
https://www.instagram.com/aetherian.band
https://www.facebook.com/aetherianband
VANISHING EARTH (U.S.)
When last we heard from Vanishing Earth (once the solo project of former Oak Pantheon stalwart Sami Sati and now a three-person band) it was February of this year. Way back then Vanishing Earth released a wonderful song with an Arabic name, and I put our spotlight on it here. Now, as we near year-end, we have another single from the project, and it’s described as one that will be included on an EP named The Aimless that’s coming out on December 21st.
This new song, “Bone Collector“, is a politically charged condemnation of “merchants of death”. The lyrics are furious, and the song is too, but it also channels other emotions in electrifying fashion, as you’ll discover.
It begins with vibrant acoustic strumming and booming beats, and then a more gnarly electric guitar picks up the riff and surges it forward, reaching a point at which tremolo’d chords viciously roil and scorching screams explode.
The drumming is compulsive, a big muscle-moving presence in the song (as is the bass), and that main riff will get heads moving too as it trades off with the more feverish fretwork swarms. The acoustic guitar also returns; singing trades off with the shrieks (which themselves get doubled for added intensity); the music beautifully flares above percussive gallops; and by the end the song sounds defiant and even triumphant.
The lineup for Vanishing Earth includes not only Sami Sati (Guitars, Vocals, Lyrics, Composition) but also Jason Hirt (Drums) and Matt Houghton (Bass).
https://vanishingearth.bandcamp.com/track/bone-collector
https://linktr.ee/vanishingearth
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61576340474905
https://www.instagram.com/vanishingearthband/
BRED FOR SLAUGHTER (U.S.)
I reacted to the name Bred For Slaughter much like Pavlov’s dog reacted to the bell: involuntary salivation ensued. I think I slobbered even more when I saw they had named their new EP Horrid Display Of Death. I should have slobbered much sooner, but I managed to overlook the first two EPs from these death/grind maniacs, Here You’re Born… Here You Die and Kill for Satan. I might have started greedily rubbing my paws together when I saw this quote on the new EP’s Bandcamp page:
With Horrid Display Of Death, we wanted to craft something that felt utterly relentless from start to finish – no fillers, no atmospheric interlude bullshit, just straight-to-the-fucking-point death metal. We’re nihilist and fuck you!
The first song released from the EP for streaming is “Merciless Torture“, and it is in fact fucking merciless. The searing-toned riffing is maniacal — fleet of finger and electrifying to hear as it spasms and blares. The drumming is also off the hook, and the vocals are just as mad, a bestial cavalcade of grotesque barks, berserk howls, and bursts of gagging noxiousness.
For the first couple of minutes the riffing never slows but it does change, manifesting lunacy and violence in different ways, and though it does briefly slow before mayhem explodes again, it sounds then like putrid sonic illness, and even after the next explosion, there’s a dismal undercurrent in the music. Yet as insane as the song has been, it still won’t prepare you for the guitar solo near the end, which is a total freakout.
And if you’re like me, those frantically vicious riffs will perversely get stuck in your head.
Horrid Display Of Death will be released on December 11th by Horror Pain Gore Death Productions.
https://hpgd.bandcamp.com/album/horrid-display-of-death
https://shop.horrorpaingoredeath.com/products/bred-for-slaughter-horrid-display-of-death-cd
https://www.facebook.com/BredForSlaughter/
MERIDIAN VEIL (Canada)
Last, but most definitely not least, I have a remarkable new song and equally remarkable video from Meridian Veil.
This band will have no trouble attracting attention, because they have a lineup that includes guitarist Danny Marino (The Agonist), vocalist Matt McGachy (Cryptopsy), drummer Dylan Gowan (Seven Spires), and Leprous’ touring cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne. It won’t hurt that their debut album Forgotten Sun is descibed as “a cautionary tale that advocates for human imperfections in the age of A.I.”
The song below, “The Watcher“, is the album’s lead single, and the first chapter in a narrative told from the perspective of an AI Superintelligence programmed for good that evolves into disillusionment and anger.
As Cryptopsy’s vocalist, Matt McGachy is a human blowtorch. If I ever knew he could also sing, I’ve forgotten it, but man can he sing. In both aspects of his vocals he delivers great emotional power, and his ability to seamlessly segue between them is amazing.
The other ingredients of the song also combine with the vocals to create tremendous emotional power in strikingly different ways. With blast-beats hurtling and the guitar searing, the music generates explosive turbulence behind McGachy’s blistering screams and impassioned cries.
But even when the blast fronts expire, the song is very affecting. In a gentle acoustic guitar and cello duet the performers create a somber yet wondering mood as the introduction to McGachy’s raspy, broken-hearted singing. He sends his voice up into the rafters as the music grows more animated (the drumming there is especially wonderful), and then suddenly screams again.
The music is beautifully performed but wrenching to hear. It becomes frantic and frenzied. And when the dust settles once more, the music sorrowfully mesmerizes again.
The greyscale video is also great, in part because it captures McGachy’s dramatically changing demeanor in artful settings that complement those changes, and in part because of the stagings, the lighting, and the camera angles for the other members’ performances.
Forgotten Sun is set for release by Season of Mist on January 22nd.
https://orcd.co/meridianveilforgottensun
https://meridianveil.bandcamp.com/album/forgotten-sun
https://www.instagram.com/meridian.veil.band
https://www.facebook.com/p/Meridian-Veil-61596115676275/