(written by Islander)
I thought about deleting the placeholder post I made yesterday but then decided to leave it there so you can see the explanation for why this SEEN AND HEARD roundup arrives a day late. That way, I can get right to the music.
Sad to say, I don’t think I’ll be able to compile a SHADES OF BLACK feature today.
EVEN IF WE LOSE (Netherlands)
In these weekend roundups I’m rarely able to write about complete albums or EPs, and when I do they tend to come at the end. So it’s out of the ordinary to start with one, but this self-titled debut EP is what grabbed me first as I was making the rounds and trying to figure out what to recommend today.
I suppose it’s labeled an EP because Even If We Lose includes only four songs, but when you stack up the run-times the total comes out to an album-length 33 minutes. The band explain it this way:
The EP is a raw, emotionally charged journey that blends post-metal atmospheres, crushing heaviness, and moments of fragile introspection. It explores themes of depth, struggle, and transformation — “loud songs for quiet people,” as we like to say. Tracks ebb and swell with tension and release, creating immersive dynamics that we hope resonate with listeners.
Fans of Cult of Luna, Amenra, or The Ocean may find familiar threads, but the EP carries a distinct voice rooted in honesty and emotional intensity.
I read that before listening, and was attracted by the bit about “loud songs for quiet people”, as well as those other band references. At Bandcamp the player begins with the second track, “Marching Blue Giants“, but I think it’s best to begin at the beginning, with “Tuari“.
In the overture of that song Even If We Lose create a melancholy and mysterious mood with shimmering synths, dark piano chords, a plethora of brightly ringing notes, a musing, deftly executed acoustic melody, and deep booms, like the solemn pounding of some ancient hide drum.
The band then pick up that acoustic melody and carry it forward with the distorted whining and writhing sounds of an electric guitar, backed by hard-slugging beats and a heavily moaning bass. Thereby they make the song more dismal and distressing, and even more so with the advent of wrenching screams.
But they’re not through turning the intensity dial into higher numbers. The rhythm section throbs and strikes with greater energy, the guitars sear and submerge the senses in rising and falling radiations of yearning and agony, a rapidly trilling and thoroughly captivating guitar solo flares in piercing tones, and the screams somehow become even more terrifying.
The instruments also fire in vigorous bursts, like rhythmically calculated weaponry, as a prelude to a guitar that slithers and moans above a gripping bass-and-drum duet. That trilling lead guitar returns, the music crests in dark waves, and the drums kick up an electrifying storm.
That one song and the three that follow are strong measures of success in the band’s stated effort to create immersive dynamics, to create tension and release, to deliver swelling and receding tides of intensity. It is indeed a form of atmospheric music, establishing and altering moods, pulling listeners away from wherever their hearts and heads were and into the band’s grasp.
As previewed, the songs include moments of fragile though often forlorn beauty, elegantly rendered, as well as passages of haunting mystery, soul-sinking despair, and soul-stirring resilience. But they also bring the hammer down, delivering crushing and crashing heaviness, often without warning. The vocals, sometimes doubled, are never less than emotionally shattering. The drummer and bassist both continue stealing attention with their nuanced variations, even when surrounded by panoramic waves of audio distress. The even-handed production allows everyone to shine.
Even If We Lose are on the money in pointing to such bands as Cult of Luna, Amenra, and The Ocean. Fans of those groups will easily embrace this very accomplished record. I sure did.
https://evenifwelose.bandcamp.com/album/even-if-we-lose-ep
https://www.facebook.com/evenifwelose115
https://www.instagram.com/even.if.we.lose
BELIEVE IN NOTHING (UK)
If you listen to Even If We Lose (as you should!), or even one song from it, this next selection will give you whiplash. There’s nothing refined about it. It’s hateful and horrifically heavy.
In listening to it, the word “bludgeoning” came to mind, but that word is too tame for a song that’s as titanically and traumatically pounding and rumbling as this one. The word “insane” comes to mind in listening to the song’s torrid vocals, but it doesn’t completely capture just how mind-blown the screams and yells really are.
In addition to ruthlessly pile-driving listeners into a fine paste, the song insinuates an array of screeching and blaring noises, as well as expanding bursts of searing and dismal sound.
In a nutshell, the song is as defiantly nihilistic as this band’s name, even though it will also get your muscles throbbing, whether you want them to or not. I do have one complaint: The song doesn’t go on long enough. I still have a few bones not yet wholly reduced to fragments and a few un-ruptured organs. What am I supposed to do with what’s left?
“The Children Are Cattle” is the name of the track. Its themes are as grim as the music. As explained by vocalist/noise-maker Caine Hemmingway: “This is about a future with no sun, no rain, no dignity, just defeat. A world where children are grown in sacks and hunt in hordes. A consequential dystopian human existence.”
The song is off an album bluntly named Rot, which will be released by Church Road Records on October 31st. At Bandcamp you can listen to another previously released song. Its name is “Gut“. Based on the music, I believe that’s the verb tense of the word, not the noun. It’s also a gigantic muscle-mover and mind-mangler, capable of bouncing you off the floor and flooding your mind with alien radiations that are cold and creepy.
Lest my comments be misunderstood, let me be clear that I’m addicted to both tracks and have pre-ordered the album.
https://believeinnothing.bandcamp.com/album/rot
https://www.instagram.com/believeinnothing_noise/
FIMBUL WINTER (Sweden)
Time to give you whiplash again.
The next song is a classic piece of Swedish melodic death metal, and no wonder, because the band who made it was formed by Amon Amarth co-founders Anders Biazzi and Niko Kaukinen, with longtime Amon Amarth drummer Fredrik Andersson, and joined by vocalist Clint Williams (Munitions, Nemesium) and session bassist Tobias Cristiansson (Necrophobic, Dismember, etc.).
The song, “Mounds of Stones,” represents Fimbul Winter’s debut. It’s from their forthcoming debut EP What Once Was, which will be out on November 14th. It opens with a slow and doleful guitar harmony but quickly picks up steam, fueled by roiling tremolo’d riffing that gives that dismal melody a more distressing cast. Then it picks up more steam, savagely jolting and brazenly blaring, augmented by scalding vocals.The riffing whirls and convulses, in contrast to the steadiness of the beats, and when it comes in bursts, the drums spur into bracing gallops.
The overarching mood of the song is despondent and even desperate. Even when the song generates a throbbing pulse and expands to panoramic and near-symphonic breadth, the ensuing guitar solo sounds forlorn — though it also screams.
The song is paired with a disturbing but fascinating video. As the band explain: “‘Mounds of Stones‘ tells the story of a figure shaped by suffering, who turns his pain into vengeance. He isn’t remembered by name, only by the blood and bones left behind.”
https://share.amuse.io/track/fimbul-winter-mounds-of-stones
https://www.facebook.com/fimbulwinterswe
https://www.instagram.com/fimbulwinterswe/
JADE (Spain) / HALLUCINATE (Germany)
Next up I’ve chosen a split release from two bands we’ve praised in the past, the German group Hallucinate and the multinational band Jade. Both songs are very good, and both are surreal, though in different ways.
Hallucinate explain their song, “Heaven’s Gate,” in these words:
“On March 26th 1997, 39 members of the secretive cult ‘Heaven’s Gate’ left their bodies in collective suicide, convinced by their leaders Ti and Do that they would leave for the kingdom of heaven. Their story has now been echoing for 28 years and this song is Hallucinate’s observation of it.”
Musically, the song is a savage experience, yet (as noted) it’s also a surreal one. The harmonized riffing spins like a delirious but demented dance, segmented by feverishly jabbing fretwork and neck-cracking beats. The enraged growls are authentically murderous, and the dual-guitar riffing begins to sound murderous too, but dementia returns through a wailing and spiraling guitar solo and bursting blast-beats.
The song eventually subsides and almost ceases, a pause that opens the door to a different kind of surreality — softer, slower, and more eerie. When the rest of the band join in (with near-sung spoken words in the mix this time), the pace remains slow, and the music remains hallucinatory, like the sonic rendition of a warped, drug-induced dream that’s choking the life from you.
The growls return and extend into a bay-at-the-moon wail. There’s also an attention-seizing guitar solo that underscores the madness in the music, and further fretwork morphing that seems to moan and meander, paving the way to a spoken-word sample and a closing convulsion of furiously battering percussion and riffage that feverishly darts and furiously writhes, as if channeling both agony and rage.
On the flip side, Jade present “The Hidden Crypt.” It too is surreal, but in a very different way from the hallucinations of Hallucinate.
In its overture the music pierces the mind with a collage of wailing and woozy decibels that are ethereal and unsettling, a haunting rendition of pain. When the rhythm section arrive to begin triggering your sinews with an interesting groove, those unsettling high frequencies persist, joined by torrid roars and fanatical howls.
The scope of the music also expands, drenching the senses with waves of beleaguered grandeur. The lead guitar continues to weave and wail in ways both dismal and queasy, but the rhythm section give it the gas, furiously hammering and frenetically throbbing.
The music also swells to bonfire proportions, burning and throwing off sparks, but the riffing also manifests as a viciously drilling churn, and the vocals extravagantly cry out as well as roar and howl. That’s a thoroughly breathtaking surge, vast in its scale, violent in its energies, anguished in its moods. Interestingly, the band end the explosiveness of the song with the cold isolated clang of a bass.
The split has been released on 7″ vinyl by Lycanthropic Chants, and digitally by the bands.
https://lycanthropic.de/shop/hallucinate-jade-heavens-gate-the-hidden-crypt-split-7
https://hallucinatedeath.bandcamp.com/track/heavens-gate
https://emperorjade.bandcamp.com/album/the-hidden-crypt-split-w-hallucinate
https://www.facebook.com/Hallucinatedeath/
https://www.facebook.com/jadestonemask/
SPIRIT OF REBELLION (Canada)
Despite the fact that the Quebec-based death metal band Spirit of Rebellion are nearly a quarter-century into their career and with five albums and a pair of EPs to their credit, I can find no evidence that we’ve ever written about their music at NCS. A strange oversight, given how impressive today’s head-spinning next track is.
This song, “Pernicious Supremacy“, sounds very much like what its name suggests. It begins with frenetically vicious riffing, skull-snapping beats, subterranean bass undulations, and a deliriously exultant guitar solo. But the riffing twists and turns as if dashing at high speed through a bizarre labyrinth, chased by a beast that imperiously growls like some hybrid of bear and bull.
The energy and intensity of the music is nearly unrelenting, and the fretwork is technically impressive, generating an amalgam of furiously drilling and rapidly darting chaos, spiced with twisting tendrils of sonic eeriness and bursts of bizarrely blaring dissonance.
The band also inflict bludgeoning blows and jet-fueled blasting, and they also cause the multi-guitar riffing to weave and wobble, to skitter and slug. Near the end the music elevates, expands, and shines, though the freakish fretwork dementia can still be heard.
“Pernicious Supremacy” is from a new Spirit of Rebellion album named Transcendent Chaos, which will be released through CDN Records. I haven’t yet seen a release date.
https://www.facebook.com/sordeathmetal/
https://www.instagram.com/spiritovrebellion/
BINAH (UK)
And now to close.
Seven years on from their last album (Phobiate), the British death metal group Binah have completed work on a new one. Its name is Ónkos (ὄγκος), a Greek word that they explain has various meanings —
– tumour
– mass, weight, burden
– a topknot worn on the mask in ancient Greek tragedy
Their label explains that Ónkos “takes a deep dive into the processes of illness, loss, and some of what is left (and sometimes exacerbated) in their wake. It is the result of a raw attempt to capture, verbalize and make sense of these themes almost in real time.” The album includes only two very long songs, and the first one, “Mount Morphine,” was revealed last week.
I’m going to resist my usual tendency to dissect and verbally map what happens in the song as it proceeds, because it’s 23 minutes long, and I doubt anyone has the patience for so many words. Instead, I’ll note some of the changing experiences you’ll encounter as you go forward.
Among those are experiences of: unsettling ambient drift and apparitional hauntings; immense groaning slogs with HM-2 weight behind them; violently convulsive fretwork and percussive frenzies paired with ravening vocal ferocity, shrill sonic slipstreams, wailing and worrying guitar-leads, and frantically delirious soloing; jackhammer-like pounding; weirdly mewling, freakishly slithering, and morbidly moaning melodies; menacing solo bass clangs; outbursts of jubilant musical madness; and a closing panorama of celestial wonder.
Or, to be even more brief, the song is stunning.
Ónkos will be released on October 31st by Osmose Productions.
https://osmoseproductions.bandcamp.com/album/nkos
https://www.facebook.com/binahUKDM