Dimholt
(written by Islander)
In compiling this Sunday’s column I can’t say that I intentionally searched for unsettling music, but that’s where the listening trail led me — in directions that were chilling, depressive, and enraged.
Time being limited (as always), I left a few discoveries behind that were especially raw and abusive, in addition to being unsettling. I hope to get back to them later. One thing that struck me about what I didn’t leave behind is that all the music that follows turned out to be more multi-faceted than first impressions might suggest.
DIMHOLT (Bulgaria)
Dimholt‘s 2019 album Epistēmē (their second full-length) really got its hooks in me, and especially its opening song “Death Comes First,” so much so that I put that track on my list of that year’s Most Infectious Extreme Metal Songs (here). It’s been a long wait for something new from these Bulgarians, but now we have it.
The song below, presented with a lyric video, is the title track to Dimholt‘s new album MetaForm (which was co-produced, mixed and mastered by Déhà). Beginning on one channel and becoming even more disturbing when a second guitar appears on the other one, the band introduce a scratchy, dissonant riff that miserably writhes (and rings like warped chimes), and the music is thus unsettling straight-away.
Rocking beats and savage snarls join in, and that twisted guitar harmony evolves, but does nothing to alleviate the music’s head-warping tension — which only intensifies until the track reaches a buzzing and swarming guitar-bridge, which leads to hammering drums, scorching but also gritty vox, and feverishly swirling fretwork chaos. The dual-guitar delirium that ensues is piercing, deranged, fightening, exhilarating.
As the drums rumble and boom, clean choral vocals rise up in the midst of the swirling and contorting guitars, reverent in delivery but ominous in tone, as chilling as anything else in the song.
Dimholt say that the album will be released by the end of this year.
https://dimholt.bandcamp.com
http://facebook.com/dimholt.official
https://www.instagram.com/dimholtofficial/
POKUTA (Poland)
The Polish trio Pokuta came to life in Rzeszów in 2024 as a studio project. They chose a name for themselves that means “atonement/expiation” in English. They named their debut album Metanoia, and describe it as “an attempt to respond to the transformations taking place in each of our value systems.”
The song below, “Mortal Coil“, begins with shimmering and quivering ambient sounds that are both dismal and sinister, punctuated by the crash of some large gong-like instrument. Drums begin to pop and tumble; the vibrating guitars begin to sound more frantic, more distraught, and more deleterious in both sound and mood, creating a dense and disturbing swarm of insidious impact. When the vocals eventually arrive, they’re also disturbing: They’re vicious, but also sound like the vocalist is being strangled.
The intensity of the music continues building, thanks to furiously pounding drums, vividly agitated bass tones, a screaming lead guitar, and the riffing’s continued tidal churn. Beyond that, the bass drum slugs hard, the riffing transforms into a throbbing, head-moving, slash-fest. And beyond that Pokuta move between episodes of sheer chaos, vicious cruelty, and torment and anguish.
A song of many facets, it’s gripping throughout.
Metanoia will be released digitally and on CD by the Polish label Via Nocturna on October 31st, adding to the big pile of Samhain releases this year.
https://vianocturna.eu/pokuta-metanoia-cd-p-2352.html
https://vianocturna.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Pokutabm/
https://www.instagram.com/pokuta.bm
EMBRACED BY DARKNESS (Netherlands)
The Dutch black metal band Embraced By Darkness are set to release their debut full-length Ex Inferis on October 31st (another Samhain celebration) via Non Serviam Records. As the label portrays: “Forged in the cold underground, the band delivers a furious yet melodic storm of darkness, where relentless aggression collides with haunting atmospheres and death-infused ferocity.”
I quote that because the description rings true in the case of the album’s first single, “Messenger of Satan,” which arrived with a lyric video. Launched with an overture that’s ominous and apparitional, the music soon erupts and expands through an amalgam of blasting drums, insanely screeching vocals, sizzling riffage, and soaring symphonic keys that channel both grandeur and distress.
As the song evolves, the band bring in cantering rhythms, jubilantly swirling dual-guitar fretwork, vividly pulsating tones both high and low, and a tandem of barking roars and blistering screams. It sounds almost like a possessed dance, like the joyful whirl of devoted satanic servants around a blazing bonfire, in the throes of a dangerous delirium.
Non Serviam recommends Ex Inferis for fans of Watain, Immortal, Gorgoroth, Dissection, and Dark Funeral.
https://www.non-serviam-records.com/products/embraced-by-darkness-ex-inferis-cd
https://www.non-serviam-records.com/products/embraced-by-darkness-ex-inferis-vinyl
https://non-serviam-records.bandcamp.com/album/ex-inferis
https://www.facebook.com/Embraced.By.Darkness.Official/
https://embracedbydarkness.bandcamp.com
https://www.instagram.com/embraced_by_darkness_official
HAMMERFILOSOFI (Norway/Italy)
Like Dimholt above, Hammerfilosofi are a band whose last album (2023’s The Desolate One) got its hooks in me, as did their follow-up 2024 EP Solus — we enthusiastically premiered full streams of both of them (here and here). And so I was drawn to this next song (presented through a video), which will appear on their forthcoming second album Signum.
On the one hand, “Funeral Veil” is a raging and ruinous assault, furiously propelled by hyper-speed percussion and discharging dense swarms of gnarled and knife-edged riffage, with absolutely crazed, wailing cries above them.
The vocals really are spine-tingling in their intensity, like a person truly possessed by evil spirits and their own torment. The riffing is a swarming and quivering mass of acid-strength mania, and remains so even when the drums lurch and stomp.
But suddenly the experience changes. The vocals sound more haunted; dual-guitars sound brittle but also shiver between the channels as they dismally ring and wail; and that mood persists even when the guitars transform again into more abrasive renditions of pain, and the vocals tear themselves apart once more.
Before the end, explosive percussive detonations jar the listener; fretwork vulcanism and hyper-blasting drums return; and the band ultimately march us toward oblivion.
Signum will be released on (you guessed it) October 31st, via Osmose Productions.
https://osmoseproductions-label.com/hammerfilosofi-signum/
https://osmoseproductions.bandcamp.com/album/signum
https://www.facebook.com/hammerfilosofi
HUBRIS (U.S.)
Buffalo-based Hubris released their self-titled debut album in 2012 and followed that with a pair of EPs and a split, but nothing since the last of those EPs (Regency of Hungering Swords) in June 2019. But at last, they’re returning with a second full-length, Acts of Sedition, and not long ago the band revealed its first single, “Lightless Lantern“.
This is yet another song in today’s collection that goes in different directions as it evolves. The first direction is straight for your throat, driven by megaton bass lines, drums that hit like battering rams and machine-guns, berserk riffing that writhes and rips, and unchained vocal barbarism. Altogether they create a destructive war zone of bloodthirsty delirium.
Within the war zone a different direction begins to emerge, beginning with a piercing lead guitar whose rippling melody is wrenching, and then a riff that darts and swirls and becomes increasingly frantic, but also sounds almost joyful.
The drum speeds and patterns remain in constant flux, the vocals constantly berserk, and the riffing is equally variable, creating moods of mayhem, madness, murder, and feral ecstasy (or at least that’s how I hear it). Near the end, the music also expands into a phase of diabolical grandeur. (It may take you a second listen to focus on the bass-work, but it’s also terrific.)
The cover art for the single is an excerpt from the album’s cover art, commissioned from Triple Seis Design, the handle of Santiago Jamarillo.
https://truehubris.bandcamp.com/track/lightless-lantern
https://ampwall.com/a/hubris/album/lightless-lantern
https://www.facebook.com/thetruehubris
https://www.instagram.com/hubrisblackmetal/
POGARDA (Poland)
To close today’s collection I chose Czarne Obrazy, a debut EP digitally released by Pogarda in July and set for release on CD and digital by Godz Ov War Productions on October 17th. A notice from the label is how I discovered the EP. I’m not likely to forget its cover art — nor its music.
The band are based in Krosno in Podkarpackie, Poland. They explain this about the name they come for themselves:
Pogarda means Disdain.
It is a feeling we all have been feeling through many years of being the underdogs, the not worthy of respect, the forgotten.
With the release of this album, we are the ones looking down on anyone that didn’t have any faith in us, while being thankful to the loyal and the ones sharing our fate. The album has been crafted with a sense of uncertainty in ourselves, yet with all the emotions clumped inside through all the years of being beaten down.
We dedicate our songs to everyone that could live out the feeling of Pogarda with us.
As soon as you hear the opening strains of the EP’s opening song it will be obvious why they called it “Lament“. The beautifully reverberating and warmly murmuring notes of that initial melody are so sad, but so spellbinding.
Without forsaking that opening lament, however, Pogarda gradually ratchet up the song’s intensity, adding snapping beats and shimmering cymbals, and then discharging harrowing screams, dense waves of corrosive riffing, and dramatically heavier undercurrents — but none of that alters the song’s sorrowful nature or overwhelms the soul-stirring lament with which it began. Instead, Pogarda introduce a variation on the lament, slowly executed with a solo guitar of a different tone.
BUT — they also turn the song into a breathtaking hurricane of pain, a furious storm of blasting drums, earth-shaking low frequencies, hail-storm riffage, and unhinged snarls and screams.
“Lament” is an eye-popping, jaw-dropping way to begin the EP, and over course of the ensuing four songs (all of which are shorter than the opener), Pogarda reinforce the impression of a band capable of dynamically delivering both tremendous emotional power and towering sonic power, as well as moments of despondent poignance.
They also often layer the songs with gripping accents, such as the rapidly flickering and wailing lead guitar that seizes attention at some point in every song, variable rhythmic cadences and patterns (some of which feel like being slugged by a heavyweight fighter), and extremely heavy but richly nuanced bass performances.
And while all the songs are emotionally dark, it’s not all doom, gloom, and torment by any means. The music is also brazenly defiant in its mood (as sometimes happens in “A Czwartą Plagą…” and “Wilki wyją“), as well as beautifully melancholy (“Freski“), and the raging vocals constantly remind us of what the band’s name means. Last but not least, the EP’s production is tremendous, and it underscores and magnifies the stark contrasts of tonality and power within the songs.
A really impressive debut here (especially because of the apparent youthfulness of the lineup)… and one that I’m happily buying for myself.
https://godzovwarproductions.bandcamp.com/album/czarne-obrazy
https://pogardablackmetal.bandcamp.com/album/czarne-obrazy
https://www.facebook.com/pogarda.bm/
https://www.instagram.com/pogarda_bm/