(written by Islander)
This Saturday roundup is larger than usual — one new music video, seven songs from records due for release over the next couple of months, and an EP released a week ago.
Once again, I fell down a rabbit hole of high-powered musical intensity expressed in differing ways, from brutal and bludgeoning to mind-lacerating. I’m also going to give myself a pat on the back (because you’re too far away to do it) for arranging the songs in a way that I think provides a coherent flow (flow really isn’t the right word for the movements from song to song, but I haven’t thought of a better one).
P.S. In the U.S. this is Labor Day Weekend, a three-day break from work for a lot of people (but not everyone). As is our habit around here, we’re not taking a break. As usual for us during holidays, we’re just going to ignore this one and continue fouling the airwaves straight through Monday. Of course we hope you’ll come back to see what we have in store tomorrow and the next day, but even if you aren’t here we will be.
NO RAZA (Colombia-U.S.)
It’s been a long time since No Raza appeared in our pages — almost 11 years. Back then, erstwhile NCS writer Gorger penned one of his typically vivid (and very enthusiastic) reviews for their third album, 2014’s When Chaos Reigns. Also back then, No Raza were based in Colombia. In the years now gone by they moved to Florida and released two more albums, most recently Tyrona, which dropped last May on the Noble Demon label.
I missed out on both of those more recent albums, but when I saw a press release about No Raza‘s new video for a song from Tyrona named “Savage Strength“, their name rang a bell. Curious about why it was ringing, and also reacting positively to the description of what the song was about, I decided to check out the song and video.
One thing that struck me about the song (as it did Gorger almost 11 years ago) is the impact of Juan Guillermo Cano‘s voice. It’s immense and extremely deep, gritty and cold but also well-rounded, and when he elevates his voice (in tandem with second vocalist Mike Spillane) it enhances the devastated emotional intensity of the song.
Apart from the vocals the song is notable for its intertwining of bleak, slowly ringing and morbidly crawling melodies, savagely hard-charging and violently skittering riffage, bone-bruising jackhammer grooves, and a wailing but also gloriously swirling solo. The mix also allows all the instruments to be appreciated, including a vividly bubbling bass.
A memorable song and a very good video too. Here’s how the band described the song’s subject matter in that press release I mentioned:
“Savage Strength” is a fierce anthem honoring the true guardians of our planet – wildlife. The lyrics channel raw power and urgency, reminding us that while humans are invaders destroying balance, nature continues to resist, fight back, and reclaim its place. This song is not just music, it’s a call to respect, protect, and recognize the wild as the ultimate force of resilience and wisdom. The countdown has begun… and nature will prevail.
https://music.nobledemon.com/tyrona
https://norazametal.bandcamp.com/album/tyrona
https://www.noraza.net/
https://www.facebook.com/NORAZAMETAL/
EGOCIDE (Italy)
When I heard this next song by Egocide I thought it would fit very well as a follow-on to No Raza‘s “Savage Strength“.
By way of background, this Italian band was born in the hardcore scene but has gravitated toward death metal and thrash, albeit without severing their hardcore roots. From what I’ve read about them, their live performances are intense experiences, which I can believe just based on this one multi-faceted new song off their forthcoming second album.
The song’s name is “Afterborn Inhuman Abortion“. As Egocide explain: “It talks about the sense of forced belonging to something in which one is not really recognized, in which one takes shelter so as not to be marginalized by society. Society based on social media and appearances, where if you don’t conform it tries to ‘kill yourself’, such as an abortion after having already been born.”
The feverish bass solo at the song’s outset quickly grabs attention (it also prominently comes back at the end), and then the drums crack like gunshots, the riffing sears like fire, the vocals furiously rage, and the song becomes a fast-moving series of hard-punching body blows, augmented with tremolo’d riffing that sounds agonized as well as demented.
It’s an explosive experience, but the riffing also carries a fierce pulse, and the song also moves to a breakdown whose pulse is even more punishing. The song jolts; the whine of the lead guitar sounds devastated; and then the band stomp on the gas pedal, making way toward a screaming guitar solo that evolves in a way which sounds wretched.
The name of Egocide‘s new album is Mortichnia. The band say that in making it they drew inspiration from such bands as Dying Fetus, Slayer, Discharge, and Death. It will be released by the Dusktone label on September 19th.
https://dusktone.bandcamp.com/album/mortichnia
https://www.facebook.com/e.g.o.c.i.d.e.bshc/
THEMATA (Finland)
Themata is a new band, although its four members have a lot of experience in other groups. When I saw them described as a sludge metal band I realized I was in the mood for some sludge even though I wasn’t looking for that. So I scratched an itch I didn’t realize I had.
What’s up next is a video for the band’s second single released this year, following their debut with the song “Loathe“. This new one is named “Colossus“, and of course with a name like that you expect something… colossal.
The song does manage to live up to its name, thanks to humongous drums that rumble and smash, massively crashing, grit-caked bass tones, and torrid roars. However, the high, trilling lead guitar melodies and horn-like fanfares sound less colossal and more emotionally stricken, as do the vocals when they split apart at the seams.
But everything fits together, because all the song’s facets are dark in one way or another, including the lead guitar’s forlorn wail as it pierces through a phase of towering musical immensity — just before zeniths of calamitous extremity in which the vocals and the riffing both scream in burning torment as the rhythm section bludgeon listeners senseless.
Good video here, too.
“Colossus” was released on August 13th via Meara Music. Both it and “Loathe” will appear on a forthcoming EP named Riven, which is due for release on September 24th.
https://mearamusic.bandcamp.com/track/colossus
https://www.instagram.com/themataband/
https://www.facebook.com/themataband/
VILE APPARITION (Australia)
About 6 1/2 years ago we had the depraved pleasure of premiering a song from the depraved debut album of Vile Apparition, Depravity Ordained, a song that was both cold-blooded and hot-blooded in its murderous, bone-fracturing ambitions. The rest of the album was at least equally malignant, gore-spattered, thuggishly brutal, and technically freakish. Obviously, I’m greedily rubbing my hands in anticipation of their forthcoming second album. Appropriately, it’s named Malignity.
The first advance track, “Emulsifying Fleshpress“, proves that whatever asylum for the criminally insane has housed Vile Apparition over the last 6 years, it thoroughly failed in its treatment. In a word, the song is bedlam.
In more words, the drumming is violently unhinged; the bass feels like a humongous tunnel-boring machine powered by jet fuel; the squirming, screeching, and slashing fretwork is berserk; and the gutturals monstrous. The song is ruthlessly punishing and crazed even when the band briefly slow down a couple of times, and even more deranged when they floor the gas pedal again.
However, as utterly depraved (there’s that word again) and brutalizing as the song is, the band’s technical chops stand out. They again prove the perplexing proposition that precision is necessary to make music this perniciously warped.
Malignity will be released on October 10th by Me Saco Un Ojo Records and Dark Descent Records.
https://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/malignity
https://mesacounojo.bandcamp.com/album/malignity
https://www.facebook.com/vileapparition
VÍGLJÓS (Switzerland)
I’ve read that this black metal band’s name, Vígljós, is “Old Norse for the light which is just bright enough to be able to kill a man”. I really hope that’s true, but in any event it’s the thought that counts, right?
Having been very impressed last year by their debut album Tome I: Apidæ, I’m relishing the prospect of their second album Tome II – Ignis Sacer, especially because of the following description of its conceptual inspiration:
Thematically, Tome II – Ignis Sacer delves deep into the phenomenon of ergotism – the voluntary or involuntary poisoning by ingesting the claviceps fungus that grows on wheat. This ancient affliction, which fueled historical phases of civil unrest, witch crazes, and societal meltdowns when climate favored its growth on essential food sources, is a central inspiration.
I also want to share the band’s own statement about this inspiration:
The story of humanity and Claviceps is one of creativity and pain. It reaches back to medieval times and possibly beyond. Various kinds of early psychedelic artists deliberately poisoned themselves with the Claviceps fungus to expand their minds and alter their reality.
On this new record we want to honour the impact that Claviceps, and later LSD had and still has on art, music, society, our self-image and medicine, as well as the terror and depravity it brought upon us.
Terror and depravity… both of those are sensations generated by the album’s first single, which is itself named “Claviceps“.
The livid whir of the song’s opening riff sounds both sinister and poisoned, both frantic and fraught, and it seizes attention immediately. From there, the rhythm section start hurtling, the vocals explode in terrorizing screams (like a panther on fire) and mad, splintering cries, and the riffing elevates, making the music sound even more unhinged.
The band continue creating variations on their themes, bringing in cantering beats, vividly twisting riffage that wildly spins and soars, and chord progressions that sound downright devilish. There’s as much wild ecstasy in the music as there is distress, and the band twine it all together in a truly electrifying finale that harnesses almost all the riffing variations and moods.
Tome II – Ignis Sacer will be coming out on September 19th via Les Acteurs de L’Ombre Productions.
https://lesacteursdelombre.net/product-category/preorders/
https://ladlo.bandcamp.com/album/tome-ii-ignis-sacer
https://www.facebook.com/vigljos/
JUNEAU (Belgium)
I inserted the next song in today’s collection as a bit of a diversion from the experiences of the first five. Among other things, it has almost no vocals, and its melodies are painful and haunting. But don’t worry, it’s still a crusher, and it’s still emotionally very intense.
The song’s name is “Heave“. Its iron-shod opening riff is a grim and gritty beast, and the massive rhythmic pounding that backs it isn’t tender either. Somewhere behind the brutish clanging and the electric drum-fills there’s a guitar that’s dismally whining and writhing, like the torments of a spirit in agony.
The song has an engulfing and bone-cracking impact, and then it doesn’t. A solitary guitar twangs, lonely and forlorn; the drums provide a steady beat; and a human might be whispering behind it. Juneau slowly begin adding other layers, gradually building the music toward one last episode of pounding and jolting, but this time augmented by soaring and sweeping sounds that flicker and shine — and eventually sound emotionally broken.
“Heave” is from Juneau‘s second album, Scraps of the Final Lights, which will be released by Tokyo Jupiter Records, A Cheery Wave Records, and De Mist Records.
https://juneauofficial.bandcamp.com/track/heave
https://www.facebook.com/JuneauOfficial/
https://www.instagram.com/juneau.official/
WSTRĘT (Poland)
I don’t know much about this next band, apart from their music. What little I know is that they are a duo from Warsaw (Odivm on vocals and drums, and Voiceless Tongue on guitars and bass), and on August 22nd Godz Ov War released their debut EP, Subhuman Eschatology. Especially for a debut release, it floored me. In the context of today’s roundup, it was like someone spun the intensity dial until it wouldn’t go any further.
The first of the two songs is the title track. The sound is immensely heavy and penetrating. The methodical pounding is extravagant; the music dismally moans, but bursts of tremolo’d riffing feel like heated needles squirming into the brain; the ragged reverberating roars are heartless and harrowing.
Those needling riffs undergo changes as they continue ruthlessly burrowing into listeners, and so do the beats, which get spurred into exhilarating gallops (the bass sounds like an excavator gouging through granite or the throb of a leviathan heart). And those riffs do burrow really deeply, getting stuck more and more firmly in the brain, despite how simultaneously cruel and degraded they feel.
The second song, “Self-Affirming Darkness“, brings together the same ingredients as the first track, and its mood is similarly wrecking and wracked, terrorizing and tormented, but the combined impact might be even more ruinous. The riffing is again a brain-swarming presence, but this time the band also slow down into an oppressive stomp, and they also spin up the riffing into a manifestation of sheer pain.
https://godzovwarproductions.bandcamp.com/album/subhuman-eschatology
https://www.facebook.com/wstret.band
HETEROPSY (Japan)
Having cranked up the intensity so high with that Wstręt EP, I toyed with the idea of ending this roundup with some kind of curveball, something dramatically different from the brutal through-lines of what’s come before. And then I heard this next song, and thought, “Fuck it, let’s end on a really ugly but also thrilling note.”
This closing song is “Pandemonium Alter“, and in many ways it does manifest as musical pandemonium, though it doesn’t begin with mayhem. Instead, it launches with weird, almost calliope-like notes, gruesome HM-2-powered distortion down below, rock-smashing drum-blows, and foul gutturals.
The music is caveman-brutal and plague-diseased, but turns out to include some surprising twists and turns ahead. The riffing begins to sound frenzied, the vocals explode in a frightening scream, and the song takes off in a rumbling gallop surrounded by swarms of flesh-eating riffage. One really nice surprise (which I’m now spoiling) occurs at the 2:20 mark, as a solo riff rises in glory, still otherworldly but jubilant.
And the solo isn’t just a big attention-grabber by itself, it also turns out to be a signal for the song’s most neck-wrecking episode – so get your damn neck loose! And while Heteropsy continue working listeners’ necks, they bring in other variations, both violent and glorious — including another arena-ready guitar solo, fantastic drum fills, and truly disgusting vocal expressions.
“Pandemonium Alter” is from this Tokyo band’s debut full-length Embalming, which will be released on October 31st by Caligari Records.
https://caligarirecords.bandcamp.com/album/embalming
https://www.facebook.com/CaligariRecords