SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: VALDUR, HADOPELAGYAL, NARRAT, NOW I’VE DONE IT, VALONTUOJA, NARCOTIC WASTELAND

(written by Islander)

I got a late start today. When I collapsed late last night I had many ideas about what to recommend, a very long list of potentials, but only one decision. The choosing came this morning, and was painful because I knew I needed to get this thing finished before the sun got too high in the sky and therefore left some songs behind. I can put a few of them into tomorrow’s SHADES OF BLACK column.

Unlike yesterday’s head-start on this roundup I haven’t pinned a couple of big names at the top to act as a lure for all the swimming fish out there. This will be more like using a dragnet to trawl for bottom-feeders.

 

VALDUR (U.S.)

This first song is the one I knew I would include in today’s roundup before I zonked out last night, so it makes sense to start with it, even though it’s likely to be a head-wrecker for many people.

I jumped on it fast, because it’s from the first album by this long-running Mammoth Lake band in almost 7 years. The song’s name is “Waves of Boiling Water / Hailing Molten Meteors pt. II“, which in part seems to connect to the album’s opening song “Hailing Molten Meteors”.

On this fairly short song Valdur play a high-low game. Up in the song’s stratosphere it does feel like waves of boiling water, a dense and distressing miasma of sound that sears but also shines in a way that feels unearthly. Way down below a monster roars the words, drums furiously hammer, and the bass feverishly throbs. You might feel like you’re drowning in the boil, but might also detect that those piercing tones are slowly wailing and writhing, almost like warped emergency sirens.

The experience doesn’t last too long, which is unfortunate. It really feels like something that could and should have gone on much longer. Two and a half minutes isn’t long enough to complete melt the minds of listeners. But as a teaser for the album, which is exactly how Valdur portray it, it does the job.

The name of the album is Guilded Abyss (that would have been a good name for this preview song too). It’s set for release on October 3rd. At Bandcamp the digital version is priced at $2.22, which is a steal if the rest of the album lives up to Valdur‘s standards, but it’s available on different physical formats too (see the second link below).

https://valdur.bandcamp.com/album/guilded-abyss
https://bloodymountainrecords.bandcamp.com/album/guilded-abyss

 

HADOPELAGYAL (Germany)

Hadopelagyal play a different kind of high-low game on this next song in today’s collection. The riffing is a dense, mutilating and mangling churn, and it’s the bloody howl of the vocals that are up near the rafters, with the maniacal pop and clatter of the drums in between.

Listening to this one is like being caught simultaneously in a morass and a maelstrom, with a shrieking goblin exulting in your fear. As the highly distorted tremolo-heavy riffing evolves, falling and rising, it creates sensations of dismal oppressiveness, chilling dread, and hornet-swarm violence, pierced by feverish leads. It also sounds supernatural, which is to say it’s hellish.

The song’s name is a mouthful: “Litany of Saltridden Exudate Under Theosechtrian Tides“. Of course I had to research the meaning of “Theosechtrian”, and found nothing, so it must be Hadopelagyal‘s invention.

The same must be true of the title of the album that includes it: Haematophoryktos. That word seems adjacent to hematopoiesis, a term for the body’s production of blood cells, but beyond that I’m clueless — though I did see the following expression about the album from the band:

Defiled with blood lingers the tidal presence; the death flood spits forth, sealing moans of judgement at the conquest of a black dawn. Descend into the torturous tranquility, extort aural uncreation from the gaping abyss, and behold the sanguine fires with your doomed eyes…

Haematophoryktos will be released by Amor Fati Productions on September 19th.

https://www.amor-fati-productions.de
https://amorfatiproductions.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/amorfatiprod
https://hadopelagyal.bandcamp.com/

 

NARRAT (Germany)

With a one-two punch like the first two songs above, it felt like the right thing to do was to continue punching, with another mind-mangler and body-mauler, and Narrat‘s new song stood forward for that purpose.

The name of this one is “behold what is greater than yourselves“, and it’s from the band’s debut EP Levana, which seems to be named for a Roman goddess involved in rituals pertaining to childbirth. The song arrived with a creepy video.

Undergirded with a heavy low-end stomp, the guitars here dismally clang and moan, and then they distressingly ring like funeral bells (or plague bells) when the drums surge. Possessed screams expel the words; the dense, layered riffing feels like magma, like a pyroclastic flow of molten grit; but a whirring lead guitar brings a melody to the surface, a melody of pain and misery.

The music warps and spins, creating a collage of ringing and raucous sounds that inspires surreal visions of ecstasy and horror, of frightful glory and body-dissolving caustics. The song does seem to invite us to behold something greater than ourselves, but I fear it’s something monstrous.

Levana will be released by Cultkill Music on the 10th of October. They recommend it FFO Wiegedood, Misþyrming, and Woe. The fantastic cover art is the work of Belial NecroArts.

https://cultkillmusic.bandcamp.com/album/levana
https://www.instagram.com/narrat_official

 

NOW I’VE DONE IT (U.S.)

Well, after those first three musical nightmares I think the time is right to make a turn in today’s musical path. To be clear, there’s nothing “normal” about this next song, but it’s more diabolically and gleefully demented than nightmarish.

The visuals have a lot to do with me putting this here, both the wild album art by the tremendous Eliran Kantor and the extremely clever and highly entertaining video made by the band’s two Philadelphia-based members, multi-instrumentalist Peter Hraur and drummer Dan Reynolds.

But of course, this is also here because of the musical ingredients grappled together under the name “Dilly-Dally“. It’s such a twisted experience, composed of often exhilarating but unpredictable drumwork, weird keyboards in a variety of tones, and an ever-changing array of riffs that sound sinister, woozy, and fiendishly jubilant (among other things).

The music bounces off the walls, swings, segues into something that sounds like an oompah band but without brass, and becomes as spooky as a haunted-house tour, and as revelrous as hell’s own carnival (complete with calliope). On top of that you get screamo vocals, nasty snarls, and extravagant singing, and under it you get muscle-throbbing bass-lines.

Did I mention that the video really is genius?

The name of this band’s debut album is An Ill Guest. If you couldn’t already guess, it was inspired by the likes of Diablo Swing Orchestra, Stolen Babies, Finntroll, and Mr. Bungle. It will be released on October 17th.

https://nowivedoneit.bandcamp.com/album/an-ill-guest
https://www.facebook.com/nowivedoneitofficial
https://www.instagram.com/now.ive.done.it.official

 

VALONTUOJA (Finland)

I don’t claim that the preceding song was a palate-cleanser (it’s too demented for that), but it did kind of function as a re-set from how today’s collection began, and I felt it would leave me free to take you in any direction I want. Having said that, I picked this next song because in some ways it’s a demented kindred spirit to that song from Now I’ve Done It, and it’s from an album that also brandishes terrific cover art.

This next song is “Ympyrä Joka Syö Itseään“. An online translation tool tells me this means “The Circle That Eats Itself”. I do think the high, whirling music (part caustic and part glittering) sounds demented, and the drumming is at times as much of a jumping frolic as it is a blast-beat hammering.

I think I hear the vibrant ripple of keys in the midst of those diabolically jubilant and celestially expansive high-end vistas. I think I also hear the kind of strangled snarls that conjure visions of a kicking demon with its head in a noose. The riffing viciously snarls too, but even those sounds seem to portray a kind of gnashing and gnarly joy.

The striking image by JTR that accompanies this particular song (visible in the video below) is a vision of stars, and the song does sound as celestial and as wondrous as the image — but also dangerously delirious.

The song is from Valontuoja‘s forthcoming second album Tulesta syntynyt, which translates to “Born of Fire”. It will be released by Inverse Records on November 14th. The cover art is by Vhan Artwork.

https://push.fm/fl/valontuoja-ympyra
https://valontuoja.bandcamp.com/album/tulesta-syntynyt
https://www.facebook.com/Valontuojablackmetal

 

NARCOTIC WASTELAND (U.S.)

Sadly I must bring this collection to a close, and I decided to send you off with hearts hammering, muscles twitching, and heads spinning. Those are the combined effects of this final song “Introspective Nightmares” by Dallas Toler-Wade‘s Narcotic Nightmares. The song isn’t brand new (it appeared on the band’s 2017 album Delirium Tremens), but the video is — it’s being released in advance of an extensive Narcotic Wasteland U.S. tour that kicks off in September.

As you’ll see from the video and hear in the song, Toler-Wade (on guitars and vocals) has brought along a bunch of other kick-ass musicians — 8-string bassist Kenji Tsunami, drummers Joe Howard and Erik Schultek, and guitarist/vocalist Edwin Rhone.

This song is fast and furious, packed with light-speed drum acrobatics, a plethora of sharp-angled and hard-jolting riffs, and howling mad vocals, but in contrast it also infuses flowing melodies whose sound is wondrous but eerie.

Beyond that, “Introspective Nightmares” includes beautifully swirling and deeply seductive solo work as well as moments of ominous, groaning gloom (even as the drums continue to kick up a riotous storm). And for a song as relentlessly head-spinning and technically virtuosic as this one, a lot of those freaked-out guitar motifs turn out to be damned hook-y.

The video is a great thing to watch, and at the end of it you can listen to Toler-Wade‘s comments about the song. There’s a whole lot more info about the current lineup of the band and the Delirium Tremens album at the first link below.

https://narcoticwasteland.com/bio
https://linktr.ee/narcoticwasteland
https://www.facebook.com/narcoticwasteland