(written by Islander)
It is another Bandcamp Friday. You will already have many suggestions and discoveries that point you toward how you might spend your music-oriented money today. Poor you, here are some more. (And I’ll have more tomorrow, so you can start complicating your life in advance of the final Bandcamp Friday of 2025 on December 5th.)
GALUNDO TENVULANCE (Japan)
Once you’ve seen a band name like Galundo Tenvulance, you aren’t likely to forget it, even if (like me) you’ve either forgotten or never knew what it means. I discovered the name and their music through DGR‘s reviews of their 2021 debut EP Tenvulancy, their 2022 EP The Disruptor Descends, and their 2023 debut album Lunar Eclipture. Fair to say he got pretty hooked on what this Japanese band were doing (all the reviews are collected here).
If I were a responsible friend I would have told him that two weeks ago Galundo Tenvulance released their second album, Insomnis Somnia, which features a new vocalist (SAO). He may know that already. He may be planning to review it, because more often than not he tends to review things weeks or months after their release date. I guess I’ll find out today.
Because of the possibility that he may write up Insomnis Somnia, I won’t try to do that now (I also don’t have time to do that anyway). But I will focus on a heart-hammering, head-spinning song and video I’ve had tucked away in my listening list for three weeks since first discovering it.
The orange-drenched video for “Abuse of Hatred” is a lot of fun to watch, in part because the band’s new vocalist is a commanding presence. The song itself is a sonic fireworks display, with bursts of colorful, eye-popping brightness coming in rapid succession. The musical fireworks include riffing and keyboards that rapidly swirl, dart, and soar, combined with pulse-pounding bass-lines, head-rattling and galloping beats, and SAO‘s ferocious snarls and screams.
The music slugs as well as swims and blazes. At times, it sounds like a blaring horn section grandly at work. At others, it sounds like subdued orchestral strings at work (in the song’s darkest and most disturbing phase — and yes, it does get dark). The guitar soloing is a fret-melting piece of exhilarating delirium. The whole thing is exhilarating.
https://spiritualbeast.bandcamp.com/album/insomnis-somnia
https://www.facebook.com/galundotenv/
MIND PRISONER (U.S.)
I have a soft spot in my heart and head for bands from the Pacific Northwest where I live, and usually check out their music more often than I do groups ensconced elsewhere. That regional favoritism led me to Mind Prisoner from the ravaged war zone of Portland, Oregon.
This trio’s second album Less Faith is pegged for release on November 28th by Isolation Club, and yesterday they divulged its first advance track, “Years Gone“. Before listening to it, I had read that the band’s music is post-black metal with elements of doom, post-punk, and gothic rock. Given my tastes, I thought that might work really well.
“Years Gone” does work really well. Sounds of ethereal choral voices and celestial radiations greet the listener, but although those unearthly voices and glimmering tones persist, the surrounding music, slow in its initial pacing, gets much heavier and gloomier.
The song is an amalgam of continuing contrasts. On the heavier side of the scales, cavernous growls and roars join in, along with tormented screams, thundering bass-lines, rattling drum gallops, and full-bore blasting. High above, the synth-driven music continues to shine and sweep, heart-aching and yearning in its emotional effects. As the bass noticeably murmurs, it also sounds grieving and seeking.
Near the end, male choral voices take over the words. Solemn and deep in their expressions, they link arms with gothic darkness, even as sonic stars continue winking and shimmering in piercing tones high above.
https://mindprisoner.bandcamp.com/album/less-faith
BEASTWARS (New Zealand)
I’ve made no secret of how much I adore the music of New Zealand’s Beastwars (why would I keep that a secret?), or how excited I am that they have a new album named The Ship // The Sea that will be released on November 7th via Destroy Records. In keeping with Beastwars tradition its cover art is a piece by the tremendous NZ painter Nick Keller.
You can see the cropped version of his cover painting above. But you really ought to see the full “gatefold” version:
You might also enjoy this time-lapse video of Keller painting the canvas:
This past week Beastwars also released the second single from their new album, “The Storm“. I probably sound like a broken record at this point, but I can think of few singers whose voice delivers such raw emotional power as Matt Hyde‘s. It is both wrenching and electrifying to hear him shape-shift from low to high on this new song.
Beyond his voice, the song packs a solid punch, thanks to heavy, muscle-throbbing riffs, bone-gnawing bass-lines, and gunshot drums, very much like the storm of the song’s title. But the music also includes elegant, mysteriously rippling arpeggios, and brightly pulsating and squalling leads.
https://linktr.ee/beastwars
https://beastwars.bandcamp.com/album/the-ship-the-sea
https://www.facebook.com/beastwars666/
MAUDITS (France)
I could have sworn that we’d written about the music of the French instrumental band Maudits before today, but having searched our pages I can find no evidence that we have. Better late than never, I hope.
The occasion for finally recommending them to our visitors is an intriguing video for “Fall Over,” the first single from their forthcoming third album In Situ. I’ll share this quote about it from guitarist Olivier Dubuc:
This track is very representative of our musical approach, blending doom elements, dark ambient, and strings that shift between dissonance and melancholy, all immersed in strange textures. We’re therefore thrilled to present it today as our first single.
The music here rings like chimes and glimmers like moonshine, but it also uses heavy chords to channel ominous menace. The drumming will crack your necks and slug your body, and the bass enticingly throbs and weaves, while the guitars also wail and warp in saxophone-like tones.
As the song proceeds, it adds intriguing percussive rhythms that made me think of Javanese music, as well as snarling and jolting riffage, hyper-animated drum-outbursts, vividly lilting arpeggios, funky and jazzy bass-grooves, stratospheric waves of astral sheen, zeniths of extravagant exuberance, troughs of grim malice, and visions of ancient mystery. Quite a multi-faceted and perpetually engaging experience.
In Situ will be released on November 7th.
https://mauditsofficiel.bandcamp.com/album/in-situ
QRIXKUOR (UK)
Now we turn to what I think is one of the two most extraordinary songs in today’s collection, a sonic phantasmagoria of a high order, a theatrical pageant of violence, madness, magnificence, and mourning (and that’s not a complete listing of where the song will take you).
“Slithering Serendipity” is the song’s name. Over the course of its nearly 13 minutes Qrixkuor lead listeners through an astounding labyrinth of experiences, ranging from frantic classical piano melodies to bestial growling bass-lines, from sparkling cosmic visions to viciously swarming riffage, from booming ritual beats to obliterating blast-beats.
The vocals lead listeners through twists and turns too, like an imperious demonic choir in the throes of malign possession. The lead guitar is often just as deliriously glittering as the keys, both reveling in arcane ecstasies. But the music also towers, pitch-black and immensely heavy as it heaves and looms.
Sometimes the music also mysteriously sways, reminiscent of horns or wind instruments, or gloriously ascends, aided by menacing choral voices. It generates near-cacophonous furies and seeps poison, creates harrowing visions of apocalypse, like roiling and ruinous conflicts between hell and heaven, and nearly always drenches the senses with richly layered instrumental dioramas both bizarre and elegant.
Somehow it comes as no surprise when the song ends with operatic female singing and dark chamber music.
The song is the first to be revealed from Qrixkuor‘s new album The Womb of the World. It will be co-released by Dark Descent Records and Invictus Productions on November 10th.
https://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/the-womb-of-the-world
https://invictusproductions666.bandcamp.com/album/the-womb-of-the-world
https://www.facebook.com/qrixkuor
CATHEDRAL (UK)
I have many friends and acquaintances who worship at the altar of Cathedral and have been in mourning over their demise since 2013. I confess that I’ve never been one of those die-hard Cathedral fans, for reasons there’s no need to go into. But Cathedral being Cathedral, I felt a sense of obligation to check out a newly unearthed Cathedral EP (released today by Rise Above Records) after getting an excited message about it from Jon Rosenthal.
For those who haven’t learned about this new release, here’s the back story, which I’ve lifted from a press release:
The phrase back from the grave takes on new weight with the release of Cathedral’s long-hidden epic Society’s Pact With Satan. Thought lost for over a decade, this 30-minute monolith was the final piece recorded by the much-missed British doom metal legends in 2012, during the sessions for their swan-song album The Last Spire (2013).
For reasons now forgotten, the track was never mixed and slipped into obscurity, until producer Jaime Gomez Arellano unearthed it while revisiting old studio archives. Hearing it again, the band agreed it demanded a proper release.
The result is Cathedral’s ultimate sermon: an unapologetic, uncompromising journey of macabre visions, towering riffs, and arcane eccentricity. No one has ever sounded quite like Cathedral, just ask Tony Iommi.
Because I’m not a Cathedral die-hard I’m incapable of trying to analyze how this one 30-minute song stylistically slots into their discography. I just took it as it came, unsure whether I would even finish listening to it.
But it begins in a way that pinned me in place like a butterfly caught by a collector; such was the effect of the dense swirl and swarm of the instrumentation and the momentous timpanic drum ritual. It sounds like madness and revelation. It sounds like deranged voices in cacophony. It sounds glorious but unhinged. And then on top of that Cathedral bring in massively heavy and maliciously stalking low frequencies, backed by skull-smacking beats — the other side of hell where suffering is all.
There is, of course, singing, at first accompanied only by gothic organ chords and interspersed with crashes of gruesomely corrosive fretwork and slow, battering-ram beats. The music also becomes more devilishly jubilant, both hard-charging and serpentine, just in time for the vocals to rear up on their cloven-hooved hind legs and bray in gritty, commanding tones.
The lead guitar swirls and spirals, slithers and darts, diabolically joyful and psychedelically rich, joined by funky bass frolics and vivid drum-tumbles. Even in the heavy low end, the riffing sounds brutishly happy and brazenly fearsome. Altogether, it’s just downright glorious; the soloing alone, which gets jazzy and proggy too, is to die for.
Much more could be said about this head-spinning experience, including a note about the stately and graceful acoustic-guitar dance that transports us back to a medieval age in the song’s second half, and the convulsively head-moving heavy-metal pulse that soon follows it — and the astounding guitar solo that follows that.
Much more could be said, because the song is genuinely labyrinthine, full of surprises, full of stylistic wrinkles, repeatedly turning corners into changing moods, drawing influences from decades of rock and metal (and other genres) to create an epic adventure under the sign of the pentagram.
I have to be honest and confess that I loved this, and that I really ought to figure out what else Cathedral I’ve missed.
https://cathedralofficial.bandcamp.com/album/societys-pact-with-satan
https://www.facebook.com/cathedral