(written by Islander)
Although this Sunday’s collection includes varying shades and phases of black metal I would say they have unsettling sensations of madness and murder in common, and most of them feature a muscular heart-hammering punch as well as abundant doses of crazed ferocity and mind-bending psychosis.
In many instances you’ll also encounter some of the most unhinged vocals you’re likely to find outside the hideous real-world history of self-immolation.
Only in extreme metal could an introduction like that qualify as “enticing,” but I know our audience well enough that I’m sure it will be.
LUCTUS (Lithuania)
I count five articles we published about the music of Luctus between 2015 and 2020, touching upon their third album Ryšys and their fourth one Užribis. Both of them left good memories here, and so it was welcome news to see that they’ll have a fifth full-length named Tamsošviesa/Chiaroscuro out in September.
To open today’s collection I picked the first single from the new record, which is the title track, and it was presented through a lyric video (with English subtitles). The song opens with a dissonant anti-melody that’s despairing in its mood. It wails over heavy, brazen chords and feverishly jolting riffage, eventually joined by immense death growls, acidic screams, maniacal blasting, and outbursts of berserk tremolo’d fretwork.
The song is a cold-hearted slugger and a savage eviscerator, but that shrill wailing guitar-lead continues reappearing to pierce the mind and chill the spine, like an apparition of agony.
Tamsošviesa/Chiaroscuro will be released by Inferna Profundus Records on September 13th.
https://infernaprofundusrecords.bandcamp.com/album/tamso-viesa
https://www.ipr666shop.com/
https://www.facebook.com/luctuslt
NATÜRGEIST (U.S.)
Metal-Archives reports that this Denver-based solo project put out a demo named Reinvigorated Terror in 2021, but I missed it. So I didn’t know what to expect when I began listening to this next song, and I didn’t learn until after it left me gasping that the person behind it is Morris Kolontyrsky, a guitarist known for his work with Blood Incantation, Spectral Voice, and Stillborn Fawn.
The song’s name, “Grand Universal Fire“, turns out to be completely fitting, and one of the most electrifying things I’ve heard in weeks. From the first moment, the fleet-fingered riffing sears and soars like a wildfire out of control — a glorious and golden wildfire — and both the drumming and the bowel-loosening bass-turbulence are just as fast and just as exhilarating. The vocals are also on fire, just the most sanity-stripped and high-pitched screams you could imagine.
While the music’s blistering pace is almost unrelenting, the song also includes thunderous detonations, exhilarating drum-fills, and bursts of brazen sound, as well as breathtakingly delirious fretwork. Almost unrelenting, because the song does segue into a grand march, though even there the flame-broiled and rasp-coated lead guitar continues to go wild — sheer madness willed into sound.
This song was released in May on a 7″ vinyl split by Electric Assault Records The other participant on the split was Oregon-based Mania, so of course I had to track down Mania‘s contribution too. That’s next.
https://naturgeist.bandcamp.com/album/mania-nat-rgeist
MANIA (U.S.)
Like Natürgeist, Mania is a solo project and its sole member (Nate Myers) has left his mark on the music of many other bands. Unlike Natürgeist, Mania has an extensive discography dating back to 2006, though I can’t remember ever investigating it. So, as in the case of Natürgeist‘s portion of the split, I went into Mania‘s two songs without any preconceived expectations.
The first one, “Barrage“, doesn’t sound like a barrage at first. At first it sounds ancient and mystical, but sure enough, the barrage comes. With drums hurtling at jet speed, the caustic riffing rapidly whirs, but it creates a dismal emotional barrage. As monstrous growls well up from caverns deep, the sweep of the music expands, yet its mood is still severely distressed.
The vocals transform into screams, and the emotional timbre of the riffing (and perhaps keys?) changes too. The music boils and blares and maniacally roils and writhes in ways that sound intensely desperate, creating sensations of catastrophic violence and mutilating pain — but with a closing phase of cruel haughtiness to add one more dimension to a riveting track.
The second and shorter Mania track on the split, “Pinnacle of Terror“, also earns its name. Once again, the layered fretwork is fire-fueled and the drumming furious. Once again the riffing deliriously convulses and brazenly flares, but this time the drums also sound like an avalanche, and fanatical cries go up along with guitar work that both wails and fiendishly sizzles. And this time the closing creates a dramatic and haunting contrast with the preceding terrors.
You put these two songs together with that Natürgeist track and you get an experience that will send your heart-rate into the red zone.
https://thetruemania.bandcamp.com/album/split-with-nat-rgeist
ARKHAAIK (Switzerland)
In 2019, which seems like a geologic epoch ago, I reviewed and premiered Arkhaiik‘s powerful debut album *dʰg̑ʰm̥tós in advance of its release by Iron Bonehead Productions. Here we are, six years later, and Arkhaaik will return with a second album, this time on the Eisenwald label.
The new album, Uihtis, is described as a concept album that explores “the theme of hunting in a Bronze Age context” on two distinct levels:
While half of the album is dedicated to the very real act of hunting an animal and the ceremonial slaughter of the sacred creature, the other half takes a different approach by exploring the theme on a transcendental level – here the sun “hunts” the moon and vice versa.
Arkhaaik favors long-form songs, and the latest one released from Uihtis is an 11-minute creation named “Hrkþos Heshr Hiagom“. I saw this description of it in a Bandcamp alert:
HrkÞos Heshr Hiagom – bear blood rite. The holy bear has died of his countless wounds. The hunters rejoice in ecstasy as they perform the sacred rituals in the echoing caves, where reality and the spirit world merge. Blood becomes their second skin as the lifeforce drains from the creature and the darkness is filled with screams intoxicated by the song of the blade.
Across these 11 minutes Arkhaiik create a changing tapestry of sound and mood. They brutally bludgeon and ruthlessly slash; they hit like battering rams and cut like circle saws. Gritty, torrid snarls, bestial growls, and mad cries add to the barbaric ecstasies of the experience.
On the other hand, as the brutish and jubilant cruelty of the music fades away into a grim miasma of sound, mystical quavering tones (which might be an exotic voice but also sound like an ancient type of horn) manifest in the upper reaches, segmented by momentous crashes. The music then begins a primitive and punishing stomp that gradually increases in speed, and the riffing begins to viciously churn and grind — but those eerie and otherworldly vibrations continue to surface.
Consistent with the song’s theme, there’s a primitive and primeval quality about the song as a whole, one that goes hand in hand with its mystical qualities. The song also drags and dismally clangs before it takes one last opportunity to beat listeners senseless and viciously gut them before ending with fervent chant-like singing and something more clearly a horn.
Uihtis will be released by Eisenwald on July 25th.
https://arkhaaik.bandcamp.com/album/uihtis
https://www.facebook.com/helveticundergroundcommittee/
TRYPANON (Finland)
The next song comes with a video. Watching the video’s wretched protagonist writhe in agony and attempt to expel something from within his emaciated figure is an unsettling experience. The song would be just as strange and unsettling without the short film.
The press materials we received for the album that includes the song describe it as one that “drags the listener through a ritualistic transformation — an existential death trip that explores themes of corporeal transcendence, spiritual ruin and ecstatic suffering.” Those themes are reflected in the sounds and moods of just this one song, “Veiled in Shadows“.
As the drums blast and a scorching voice screams, the high-toned riffing channels a dissonant and disturbing pulse, vital but demented. The riffing also mercurially and almost jubilantly squirms, and the bass seems to frolic as well.
Things get even more surreal as the band bring in bursts of insectile skittering fretwork, chime-like arpeggios, and riffing that spins like dervishes. Ecstatic suffering indeed.
“Veiled in Shadows” is the first single from Trypanon‘s second album Through the Portal of Flesh to Achieve Divinity. It will be released on September 5th by Time To Kill Records.
https://timetokillrecords.com/en-us/collections/trypanon-through-the-portal-of-flesh-to-achieve-divinity
https://trypanon.bandcamp.com/album/through-the-portal-of-flesh-to-achieve-divinity
https://www.facebook.com/trypanon
DOWNWARD (U.S.)
To close, I decided to include a complete album released on July 11th, which I became aware of thanks to an encouraging message from J.R.
Metal-Archives says Downward is a Houston-based duo formed in 2009. Apparently unbeknownst to M-A, Downward released a demo named Agony that year, and until the release of To Lurk As Fever two days ago they hadn’t been heard from since.
The album’s evocative description at Bandcamp (not written by the band) refers to it as one that “plumbs the deepest, darkest reaches of self-destruction, a heavy hitter that “focuses on thick riffs and harmonic intrigue to make its point,” and featuring “one of the most memorable vocal performances since the early days of dark metal.” At Bandcamp I also saw this quotable comment by a supporter of the release:
An unbelievable and unique horror. Over 15 years after their cult demo, “Agony,” Downward returns with a heavier, more psychotic vision. Too weird and damaged to be prog, too heavy and rhythmically varied to be black metal – Downward‘s “To Lurk as Fever” exists in a liminal and disorienting space.
All of that elevated my expectations, and I wasn’t left disappointed.
The vocals do indeed stand out. Even listeners whose ears have developed a thick hide after being scarred from years of black metal vocal abuse may be left with the kind of expression you’d have after seeing a child blasted through the windshield in a violent car wreck. The word “terrifying” is overused in metal writing (including by me), but there’s not a better word to describe Downward‘s dramatically range-spanning cavalcade of layrnx-spawned torment.
To return to something I mentioned way up above in the introduction, Downward‘s music is also heavily-muscled, thanks to the gut-churning burliness of the bass-lines (which are nimble as well as hefty) and the skull-smacking, spine-cracking impact of the drumming.
The riffing is also a key strength of the songs. They’re not only hook-filled, they’re potent channels of dark emotions — creating moods of violent delirium, twisted confusion, dangerous ecstasy, uncontrollable despair, and demented hallucination. They straddle major and minor keys and variations in picking, and the deft layering and interworking of the guitars (as well as their interworking with the rhythm section) make the songs tremendously engrossing, despite how unhappy they are.
No doubt, Downward know how to whip up storms and create visions of horror, and the vocals are truly mind-lacerating, but as you make your way through the album it will become apparent that the music is also quite elaborate, quite instrumentally rich and well-plotted, and with a lot more inventive twists and turns than I have time to try to map for you.
Most of the songs are longer than average, but that’s the explanation: These are sonic shapeshifters of a high order, and they need the room for their darkness to flower in full, to fully wrap listeners in their poisonous vines and lethal blooms.
https://downwardintodeath.bandcamp.com/album/to-lurk-as-fever