(written by Islander)
For reasons I explained yesterday in details verging on the tedious (if not tipping all the way over), I’ve again confined myself to music that I’ve been able to download and listen to on a music player rather than stream online. In one instance where a haunting video was available (for a Trelldom song) I came back to it often enough that I was able to see it during one of the few episodes of internet connectivity.
The first two choices were records I intended to include at the end of last week’s edition of this column, to complete a triptych of releases I was drawn to because of the cover art. I ran out of time last Sunday before I could get to them, so I’m starting with them today. And to complete a new triptych I followed them with a song where the cover art was also the first seduction.
After those first three you’ll find three others, one from a legendary name, another from a very new name, and a third from a band whose notoriety is in between.
And by the way, I forgot to set any clocks ahead last night, including the one at my bedside. Of course I did. My wife forgot too, but she’s married to me so her judgment is already suspect. Thus, this column is arriving later than I thought it would, and although there’s still a lot here, there’s not as much as I’d planned.
FINNR (Italy)
Here’s the first recent release I felt compelled to check out for last week’s edition of this column because of the cover image (created by the artist Warhead). It’s the self-titled four-song debut of the Italian trio Finnr which was officially released by the Extreme Chaos label on March 7th.
The music is a formulation of depressive black metal, described by the label as “Old-school raw sound descending into misanthropy, haunting melancholy, and relentless darkness”. This is all true, but I would add that Finnr’s music is also wild, and wildly exhilarating. The riffing feels like steel wool being vigorously applied to our faces, but it roils and writhes in ways that often feel crazed; the (thankfully prominent) bass performances are as nimble as rabbits on the run; and the drums often sound like stallions racing hell-for-leather, chased by wolves. In tandem with all that, the acid-spray vocals (ejected by more than one screaming voice at once) are also unhinged.
Even when the mood of the music is more miserable and even desolate (especially in “The Quiet Decay”, which isn’t quiet at all, and even more so in the slower-paced “Enfolded In Emptiness”), it still has a feverish quality, like an emotionally splintering delirium in progress. Part of this is due to the racing of the razor-edged fretwork (which rarely slows even as it channels despair) and the usually propulsive throb of the bass, as well as the vocalists’ terrible shrieks and cries.
I should add that in the totally bereft “Enfolded In Emptiness”, there might be singing, or it might just be a lead guitar that’s wailing in such stricken terms; the dense crackle of the riffing makes it hard for my beleaguered ears to tell.
Prepare for raw music that will leave you raw in flesh and forlorn in feeling, but also often invigorated (well, until that soul-sinking final song). The striking cover art suits most of the music on the EP very, very well.
https://extremechaos.bandcamp.com/album/finnr
https://www.facebook.com/extremechaosrecords/
EUCLIDEAN (Switzerland)
And here’s another recommendation I was induced to explore by the cover art, which in this case is quite startling — though I hasten to add that I would have gotten into this recording eventually, based on how impressed I’ve been with Euclidean’s previous releases. This newest one is an EP named Outworn, which came out on February 27th.
Only three songs here, but because two of them tip the scales at over 7 minutes, they add up to 20 minutes. And beyond what the ticking of the clock measures, Euclidean pack a lot of experiences into each track.
The serrated-edge, mind-blown vocals are relentlessly harrowing, and the rhythms are thunderously heavy, even when the band slow down. The caustic riffing surges like storm-driven seas, dense and expansive, but within those scathing assaults more clean-toned instruments create ethereal, spiraling emanations or ring like stricken chimes, which make the music haunting as well as scathing.
The rhythm section play a vital role in making each song such a dynamic and wide-ranging experience. The drummer shifts tempos and patterns over and over again, tumbling and somersaulting as well as booming and battering, and the abyssal bass-lines are equally variable (furiously undulating and also heavily groaning).
Rach song also brings changes in melody and mood, though to be sure, the moods created by the guitar layers are shades of bleakness — some frenzied, some heart-broken, some incurably hopeless. The two long songs create especially striking changes, and they even fashion tragedies of orchestral expanse; it’s probably mostly just the guitars at work instead of synths, though it also sounds like massed strings in the mix.
In both sound and mood, these songs are strikingly intense. Euclidean call their new record Outworn, and it’s the sounds of souls worn down and worn out, not completely forsaken or surrendered but still striving, yet almost at their last gasp.
https://euclidean.bandcamp.com/album/outworn
https://www.facebook.com/euclidean.music/
DEMONOLOGISTS (U.S.) w/ VAINORAS (Australia)
Now we come to one more album that initially riveted my attention because of the cover art. The press materials we received from the Aesthetic Death label were also very intriguing. They described it as a true collaboration between an Indiana band “renowned for their version of blackened horror electronix” (Demonologists) and Australian multi-instrumentalist Terry Vainoras, whose recent music the label describes as “downtempo jazz-influenced doom-ridden loungecore”. And then there was this:
Vainoras brings voice, guitar and Tenor Saxophone that is at times melodic and other times dissonant and squalling to the dark sprawling demonologist world of sound. Amidst it all is a subtle eeriness, a lysergic glow – which perfectly fits the album concept, Plantae Arcanvs being a compendium of poisonous, hallucinogenic plants
Are you not intrigued too? Well, I was, and thus had to listen to the album’s first streaming single, “Verbana Officinalis“. It’s accompanied by a visualizer that makes creepy use of the macabre cover art (you’ll see).
“Verbana Officinalis” is the kind of song that’s a real challenge to dissect and then write about without threatening to sacrifice its magic. It pulls together so many disparate sounds and styles, and unexpectedly the results don’t sound unforgiving or completely alien.
At the outset the electronic music throbs and seems to viciously snarl, but also ethereally shimmers and rings. Something horrid gasps in the background, and something else brightly ripples. The saxophone slowly arises, smoky and sultry, along with drifting piano chords and squiggly electronics. The drums get jazzy too, but then a harrowing howl of sound puts the shivers down our spines. The saxophone becomes soaring and expansive (or is that an arcing wordless voice?), surrounded by electronic spasms and heavily thumping grooves.
I hope I didn’t cause the music to lose its magic. There are 10 other songs on the album, but this one alone fits the album’s concept – poisonous and hallucinatory.
Aesthetic Death will release Plantae Arcanvs on April 10th.
https://aestheticdeath.bandcamp.com/album/plantae-arcanus
https://vainorasandthealtar.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/vataotd
https://demonologists.bandcamp.com/
http://www.facebook.com/demonologists
TRELLDOM (Norway)
I put this next song here because I thought it made such a fine follow-on to the one above, because it too is horrifying and hallucinatory (and it includes a saxophone). The video that presented it amplifies the music’s unsettling effects by presenting an amalgam of black-and-white archival footage (I would guess from World War I or II) showing scenes of towns lying in piles of smoking rubble, destroyed by warfare.
The song is the title track from Trelldom’s new album …by the word…, which is due for release by Prophecy Productions in late May. Trelldom’s name is the stuff of Norwegian black metal legend, but after an extended hiatus that ended with 2024’s …by the shadows…, the music is now far, far away from how it began. It is, as the label says, “twisted and unhinged”, an “exploration of avant-garde dissonance, wicked rhythm patterns, and wild ideas [that] again destroys preconceptions and demands intense listening.”
Whatever is making the song’s overture – whether saxophone, guitar, or keys (or all of them together) – the music is chilling, haunting, and increasingly stricken in its mood. After the drums begin to rattle and boom, the music uncomfortably soars and sears.
The song includes remarkably diverse expressions of Gaahl’s vocal talents. He growls like a monstrous beast; he solemnly sings and wretchedly wails as the music dissonantly rings, frantically swirls, and eventually swarms; he utters words in ominous tones as the song heavily undulates. The music also seems to convulse, to blare in madness and misery, and Gaahl again growls and roars.
The guitars also brazenly swirl, perhaps with an exotic Eastern influence in their melody, and Gaahl screams like a banshee and sings in dramatically soaring and frighteningly descending tones while the drums mimic a rhythmic avalanche and Trelldom submerge listeners in contorting swaths of perilous sonic brilliance.
It is indeed a musical hallucination… of a high order… distressing for sure, but fascinating in all its reality-warping maneuvers.
P.S. The current lineup of Trelldom includes not only the mastermind Gaahl (Kristian Eivind Espedal) but also guitarist Stian “Sir” Kårstad (Djerv), drummer Kenneth Kapstad (formerly Motorpsycho, Spidergawd, Thorns, etc.), jazz saxophonist Kjetil Møster (Møster!, Röyksopp, The End), and bassist Eirik Øien.
https://trelldom.bandcamp.com/album/by-the-word
https://spkr.store/collections/trelldom
https://www.facebook.com/Trelldom1992
AKYROS EXPANSE (Canada)
Now we have a debut EP (though it’s long enough to be an album, so that’s what I’ll call it) named Sagittarius* from Akyros Expanse, a band whose members are anonymous but who I have reason to believe include some well-known figures from other extreme metal bands rooted in Vancouver BC.
Before listening I searched for the meaning of akyros and found that it’s a Greek word which means something like void or null, which seems to fit the band’s description of their ethos:
The Akyros Expanse revealed itself from the celestial nothingness as formless force of non-sentience and absolute indifference.
The only language it speaks is emptiness, the only religion it observes is nothingness, the only currency it trades in is radiation.
One of this band’s hallmarks is their unbridled ferocity and burning intensity, and that comes through loud and clear in the 37-minute album’s breathtaking first song, “Storms of Reverence”. That song does begin with a swelling phase of wondrous but also unsettling celestial symphonics, but it then erupts in a blast front of furious drumming and boiling riffage that seems to writhe in pain. Monstrous gutturals and hair-raising screams expel the words as the all-consuming whirlpool of pain intensifies through freaked-out lead-guitar contortions.
The fury in the music is undeniable, but so is the traumatic nature of the riffing — the sheer distressing impact of its agonies. The layered tremolo riffing dominates the other four songs too; it’s usually dense and deleterious, abrasive and ravaging, but interspersed with episodes of viciously slashing chords and pierced by shrieking guitar leads.
The band do find other ways of shaking things up, principally through the dynamism of the rhythm section, and especially the unpredictably veering but constantly head-hooking nature of the drumwork. They also remind us a few times at the end of songs (and at the beginning of the last one) that they’re void-farers, by inserting doses of freezing, hostile, and/or alien ambient sound; those are also the only times during the album when you might be able to sneak a breath.
While the vocals, both very low and very high, are scary as shit, they play a diminished role in comparison to the gale-force sonic and emotional intensity of the riffing and the rhythm section’s charismatic adventurism. And to be clear, the whirring guitars’ incendiary and wholly immersive emotional intensity takes its high-octane fuel from overflowing tanks of pain and despair, un-leavened by hope and un-treated by comfort.
It’s not just the opening song that’s breathtaking, it’s the whole record. The music is so penetrating and engulfing, so blazing and blistering, that there’s no room for any spare thoughts. Whatever thoughts you might be able to muster once your heart-rate returns to its resting state and your eyes sink back into their sockets are likely to be troubled.
https://akyrosexpanse.bandcamp.com/album/sagittarius
HUBRIS (U.S.)
To close for today, I have the title song from Acts of Sedition, the forthcoming second album by Hubris from Buffalo, New York.
I already commented (at length) about a single released from the album last October — “Lightless Lantern“. At one point I called that song “a destructive war zone of bloodthirsty delirium.” Further on I explained that the riffs were variable, “creating moods of mayhem, madness, murder, and feral ecstasy”, and that near the end “the music also expands into a phase of diabolical grandeur”.
“Acts of Sedition” (the song) is explosively violent from the word Go! The drums pump and hammer like turbocharged pistons; the guitars deliriously swarm and swirl, torrential in their envelopment and tempestuous in their energy; the bass feels like bubbling iron; the vocals roar like a monstrous tyrant and scream like unhinged demons. The music is thoroughly engulfing, but you can still hear the mad convlsions of the lead guitar from within the pyroclastic storms.
But as in the album’s first single, Hubris do change things up before listeners will run out of breath. The drums vanish; the music dismally moans and wails; the vocals cry out in mind-splintering agonies; and when the rhythm section return, the riffing flows in a way that sounds desolate, and the guitars utter peals of pain before they swarm and writhe again, and seem to frantically plead for mercy in the music’s upper range. All of that makes for an extravagant finale.