(written by Islander)
Long story short, I overslept. I mean, I way overslept, and in a few hours from now, as I start to pull this roundup together, I’ve got to do something else that isn’t blogging. So I will have to truncate today’s collection.
P.S. Truncate descends from the Latin verb truncare, meaning “to shorten,” which in turn can be traced back to the Latin word for the trunk of a tree, which is truncus. Incidentally, if you’ve guessed that truncus is also the ancestor of the English word trunk, you are correct. Truncus also gave us truncheon, which is the name for a police officer’s billy club, and the obscure word obtruncate, meaning “to cut the head or top from.” (lifted from this place)
P.P.S. According to M-A no metal band has ever named itself Truncus (or even Truncheon, which is surprising) or named an album Obtruncate. The field is wide open.
RIPPING REMAINS (U.S.)
As I stared at my humongous list of new songs I might choose from, the names of two bands leaped out at me like predators hungry for my eyeballs. How could I resist starting off with Ripping Remains and following them with Dying Remains? Well, I would have resisted if either of these first two songs had turned out to be bummers – but they’re not!
Decibel mag hosted the premiere of the Ripping Remains song with a lyric video just two days ago, and explained that the band includes two alumni of Dripping Decay (Eric Stucke and Jason Borton) plus Michael Freiburger, whose Satanik Royalty Records will release the band’s debut EP Necrodestiny on October 3rd.
The song, delectably named “Rub My Infection On You“, is the kind of music that will make old school death metal addicts slobber uncontrollably. The riffing is foul and feverish; the drumming is an exhilarating clobber-fest; the cavernous gutturals and berserk screams are monstrous.
The music ravenously seethes and swarms, viciously slugs and vigorously hammers, slows into a lurch to make room for a thoroughly crazed guitar solo, and eventually writhes like some foul writhing thing (and maniacally skitters as well). It will get your adrenaline and your head pumping, and it’s damned easy to just put it on a loop for extra fiendish fun.
https://www.satanikroyaltyrecords.com/
https://satanikroyaltyrecords.bandcamp.com/music
https://rippingremains.bandcamp.com/album/necrodestiny
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61579391648573
DYING REMAINS (Canada)
Dying Remains hail from Calgary, Alberta, and their debut album is well-named Merciless Suffering. It’s set for release by the Maggot Stomp label on September 15th. For the name of the first single off the album the band truncated the method of hideously torturous capital punishment used in medieval Britain: “Hung and Drawn“. The quartering may occur in a subsequent song.
It’s fun to watch this trio do their thing in the video that accompanies the song (also fun if you like gushing blood and visions of drawing, i.e., disembowelment). And the thing they do at the outset is smack skulls, lurch like some shaggy, fetid beast, and spin out a shrill and freakishly swirling solo.
Having grabbed listeners by the throat with all that, they then bring in rabid howls and a brutishly jackhammering riff laced with bursts of buzzing fretwork malice. Additional bouts of brutish stomping ensue, along with highly headbangable jolts. It’s a thoroughly barbaric experience, primitive but also primally compelling.
P.S. Dying Remains will soon be embarking on a cross-country U.S. tour along with Gored Embrace and Mutilation Barbecue (with a few Canadian shows before and after). You can find the dates and places at their FB page.
https://dyingremains-maggotstomp.bandcamp.com/album/merciless-suffering
https://www.facebook.com/p/Dying-Remains-100091308382555/
FERAL STATE (UK)
Already feeling feral and filthy from listening to those first two song, I was drawn to this next one because the band’s name is Feral State. I would have been more strongly attracted if they’d been named Feral Filth. Fortuitously, it turned out that their song “Concrete” is a nasty piece of work, and pretty grimy too.
You get the wail of a warning siren at first, barely warning enough before the crushing begins. It sounds like the pounding pistons of some enormous smoke-belching excavator quarrying granite, and there’s a throbbing riff in the midst of that which I swear I’ve heard before but can’t place.
Once they’ve set that nasty hook Feral State charge ahead in a deranged crust-punk-and-grindcore frenzy, augmented by vivid bass-lines and raw and rabid howls. The riffing viciously roils and savagely slashes, with a few screeching lead-guitar outbursts for extra insanity. For this listener, it feels like being riotously bounced off the walls, gutted and busted up and ready for more.
“Concrete” is from an album named Feral II which will be released by Road To Masochist on September 26th.
https://www.roadtomasochist.co.uk
https://feral-state.bandcamp.com/music
https://www.facebook.com/feralstate666
https://www.instagram.com/feralstatehc
SUNKEN (Denmark)
At this point I decided it was time to take a mental bath, to wash away all the grit and grime left behind by those first three songs and then see what might un-cleanse me next. Sunken‘s new song “Og det er Lykke” did both things.
The song’s long overture sounds like it was performed by a classical string ensemble. The music is placid and dreamy, as is the imagery in the accompanying visualizer video. It creates a beautiful lulling of the spirit, but did leave me wondering, where’s the metal? Have no fear, you’ll get that.
The music suddenly crashes and becomes dense and expansive, but still melancholy in its mood — a more stricken form of sorrow, and what sounded like a standup bass in the song’s overture is still a prominent presence. As tormented screams come in and the rhythm section accelerate, the music luminously swirls and elevates, pierced by high, whistling notes.
The thoroughly engulfing music is simply dazzling as it rises and falls; the tortured vocals are always shattering, and the music becomes distressing too. It’s a long song, nearly 13 minutes, and so it’s a fair bet that at some point the music’s ravishing intensity will pull back — and so it does near the track’s mid-point, becoming ethereal and glistening. Those tortured vocals don’t completely vanish, but if anything become even more ruined and ruinous, creating a stark contrast with their musical environs.
It’s also predictable that the intensity will return, and it does, like some senses-surrounding blaze, an elaborately layered and breathtaking expanse, celestial in its scale and in its shining but scorching radiance. Thankfully, Sunken let us back down gently, with something like the music of an ancient lyre, before drawing the curtain closed on the spectacle they have made.
“Og det er Lykke” is from Sunken‘s third album Lykke, which will be released by Eisenwald on October 24th. The fascinating cover art was painted by Benita Malciute.
https://sunken.lnk.to/lykke
https://sunkendenmark.bandcamp.com/album/lykke-2
https://www.facebook.com/SunkenDenmark/
TANVALD (Czechia)
Serendipity played a big role in what I picked for today’s collection, and so it happened again when I tried out the opening song from Tanvald‘s debut album Nemofilista.
Like Sunken‘s song above, “Zármutek” begins slowly and softly with a classical instrument, this time a piano. With whispering wind behind it, the pianist slowly spells out a very melancholy spell. Soft and somber spoken words join in… and again you might wonder, where’s the metal? And as in Sunken‘s song it arrives… in shocking fashion.
That sad piano melody goes slowly on, but without warning Tanvald also assault the listener with a blast of harsh, searing noise, including harsh, searing vocals — creating an ultra-dramatic contrast with the piano’s elegantly doleful melody. Eventually, a guitar carries the melody forward in contorted chiming and wailing tones that make it even more emotionally dismal.
The music swells and burns; the rhythm section heavily march; that distorted lead guitar sounds even more stricken; and someone might be singing out in pain, pushing the song to a crescendo of agony before its more gentle, more clean-toned, and very haunting and heart-breaking finale.
There’s another song from Nemofilista that’s also streaming at Bandcamp, the album’s penultimate song “Touha“. If you let the player below continue running, you’ll hear it. Like “Zármutek“, it’s often abrasive, depressive, and devastating, yet with striking sonic contrasts of its own — and its emotional power in all its ebbs and flows is undeniable.
Tanvald is the solo work of Somnium. Nemofilista will be released by Naturmacht Productions on October 10th.
https://tanvald.bandcamp.com/album/nemofilista
https://tanvald.org
https://www.facebook.com/TanvaldMusic
CRATOPHANE (France)
I wasn’t sure where to go next after Tanvald‘s song and then suddenly I remembered that I, Voidhanger Records had recently surfaced a song from a new album that I hadn’t checked out yet. And lo and behold, its format wasn’t too distant from that of Sunken‘s song and the first one from Tanvald — but only in the sense that it begins slowly and subtly.
In the case of Cratophane‘s album opener “Ranx” the initial phase resembles cold, distant wind and a deep heart-beat. As the song gradually evolves, big rumbling and tumbling drums come in with a tribal rhythm, accompanied by the shine of cymbals and eventually by slow-moving fretwork with a sizzling reverberation.
Cratophane continue adding layers and variations, cranking up the drums and adding shrill, whistling and skittering keys that are kind of unnerving and kind of enticing; hitting a rocking stride and causing the music to gnaw; bringing back that beating heart and allowing the brighter tones to frolic (though the frolic becomes demented).
So many more things happen as Cratophane lead us through their strange musical labyrinth, things scary and supernatural, things head-hooking and head-spinning, things venomous and wondrous. And man, the rhythm section really know how to wake up a listener’s reptile brain and keep it engaged throughout all the many bizarre twists and turns.
(Cratophane don’t use vocals either here or elsewhere on the album. You won’t miss them.)
The name of the album is Exode. I, Voidhanger plans to release it on October 3rd. The terrific cover art is the creation of Vincent Perriot. The music was inspired by science fiction comics, and the band have provided this evocative verbal picture of the music:
“These are compositions that fall into the realm of a kind of instrumental, psychedelic, and cosmic prog metal,” the band says, “in a spirit somewhere between BLIND IDIOT GOD and PELICAN, but played by fans of VOIVOD and ALUK TODOLO, with a mix of zeuhl-style melodies and many very dissonant, even noisy passages. In other words, a sort of RUSSIAN CIRCLES on LSD, trapped in an inhospitable parallel dimension.”
https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/exode
http://metalodyssey.8merch.com
http://metalodyssey.8merch.us
https://www.facebook.com/cratophane