(written by Islander)
I mentioned yesterday that I had collected 69 new songs or complete releases as a starting point for deciding what to recommend in this weekend’s usual columns. After yesterday’s selections that magic number had diminished, but not enough to make today’s choices any easier. Still, choices must be made.
I can’t identify any musical or thematic throughline for these six recommendations, so you’re in for a fair amount of bouncing around. I do have reasons for why I arranged them in the order I did, but I doubt those are very interesting so we should just get to the music.
P.S. I want to recommend something else today besides music. After a long time of anxiously waiting for the movie Sirāt to hit streaming services, I was finally able to watch it last night (it never played at any theaters anywhere close to where I live). I thought it was a stunning as the many stunned reviewers said it was. Be forewarned: it’s a desolate and devastating story, one that creates a shroud of near-ever-present tension. But it’s also a near-perfect piece of filmmaking, and if you see it I don’t think you’ll forget it. I’ll leave this link to a more comprehensive review.
P.P.S. These lines appear on the screen when the movie begins, and explain the meaning of its Arabic title: “There is a bridge called SIRĀT that links hell and paradise. Whoever crosses it is warned that it is narrower than a strand of hair, sharper than a sword.”
DUIR (Italy)
I had to lead off with the video you’re about to see for a Duir song called “Impeto“, because it’s quite a feast for the eyes. It jumps back and forth between film of the band performing the song and a sinister narrative whose slow-motion pace contrasts with the song’s blazing momentum. The visuals of the band are quite eye-catching, reminiscent of Gaerea’s videos, but with slashes and symbols of glow-in-the-dark color on their masks, futuristic lighting on their instruments, and demonic paint on their arms.
The narrative portrays a man presenting himself to completely black-clad beings who might be Death’s acolytes and seem to be keepers of a prison of miserable creatures, there to be dressed in a World War I military uniform, but then to undergo something perhaps even worse than feeding the vast meat-grinder of that war. It’s definitely open to interpretation, but whatever its meaning I doubt your attention will wander.
As for the music itself, it’s a stirring blend of styles, at least one of which may catch you by surprise based on the band’s appearance. The music mysteriously shimmers, glistens, and momentously booms, but also thunders, sears, and shivers. The sound expands to panoramic dimensions, but its slowly writhing and fast-flickering grandeur is distressing as well as awe-inspiring.
The vocals by the band’s guest L.G. of Ellende are possessed, scorching, and begin to sound wretched as the music’s emotional quotient becomes steeped in sorrow. The part that may come as a surprise if you’re unfamiliar with Duir — the folk-metal part — includes what appears to be an electric hurdy-gurdy and a prominent flute melody. It integrates with everything else very well.
All in all, “Impeto” is a breathtaking experience. It’s drawn from an album named Catarsi, which is indeed set during the First World War and “follows a young soldier caught between pride, despair, and oblivion”. Catarsi will be released by AOP Records on June 26th.
https://linktr.ee/aoprec
https://www.facebook.com/duirofficial
https://duir.bandcamp.com
LORN (Italy)
While I was distracted by squirrels or running after passing cars, I, Voidhanger Records launched preview songs for another quartet of albums they will soon release. These four will all drop on May 15th. I’ve listened to all the advance songs, and was mightily tempted to include all four of them in this column, but thought I should try to spread the attention around more broadly — though I do strongly recommend you go here and also listen to the tracks now streaming from Midnight Odyssey, Junon, and Phoschdeux.
The one song I did decide to include — the aptly named “Searing Blood” (which is the title song and opening track of Lorn’s new album) — is tremendously intense, but its intensity ultimately flourishes in more ways than you might guess from its opening minutes.
In those opening minutes Lorn subjects listeners to dense grinding riffage and furiously hammering drums, interspersed with vivid fills and shining cymbal pops, and then elevates the chords, causing them to both dismally wail and frantically scream at the same time. Harrowing growls and rapid-fire bass notes further amplify the music’s near-overpowering feeling of torment.
The music’s furious momentum never really backs down, and those shrill, piercing guitar convulsions high up in the song’s range remain striking, but the drums also begin to athletically tumble and rumble, and nearly four minutes in, as the beats become steadier, those glittering guitar spasms are joined by slowly wafting ethereal sounds (some of them sounding like slow flutes) that add an aura of mystical splendor to the engulfing intensity.
Lorn is the solo work of Radok, accompanied by session drummer Gianni Pitzalis on this album. As mentioned, I, Voidhanger will release it on May 15th.
https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/searing-blood
https://www.facebook.com/i.voidhanger.records/
TYRANNUS (Scotland)
I kind of feel that this next song and video is a bit of a palate cleanser after those first two. I don’t mean that as any kind of put-down of the song, and it definitely won’t let you catch your breath, but it’s lean-and-mean, balls-to-the-wall black thrash, less bewildering and more reptile-brain-friendly than today’s first two selections.
Of course, thrash stands or falls on the addictive power of high-intensity riffs, and the jet-fueled, rapidly whirling riffs in “Reignfall” are damned addictive, but they’re also fiendish, like the expression of demon revels. The sharp-fanged vocal barking is also diabolical, as are the vicious, tremolo-picked chord-surges.
The rhythm section do their part to keep the adrenaline pumping, and the song also includes a shift about mid-way through, paving the way to some eerily freaked-out guitar-and-keyboard soloing, adding another dimension to the song’s hellish ecstasies. As for the video, do not adjust your set… and enjoy the appearances of a Lovecraftian monstrosity.
The song is from an album named Mournful that’s set for release on May 15th by the Grecian label True Cult Records. The terrific cover art and Tyrannus logo were made by Fabian Van Beek (Hagiophobic).
https://truecultrecords.bandcamp.com/album/mournhold
HAJDUK (Bulgaria)
A lot of years have passed since I last included Hajduk’s music at NCS, but after all, it’s been six years since their last release of any kind — a split with Sørgelig, Akantha, and Nimbifer which was the occasion for that last write-up. But now Hajduk is set to release a debut album on April 30th through Amor Fati Productions. Its title is Хвърковата чета (in English, “The Flying Band”).
From what I’ve read in the promo materials, the album is centered on the life and death of the Bulgarian revolutionary Georgi Benkovski, a leading figure in the anti-Ottoman “April Uprising” of 1876, and the cavalry detachment he led whose name provides the album’s title (you can learn more about him here). It includes “six pieces of Bulgarian classical poetry and folk songs, adapted into furious, bloody-raw, and yet hauntingly melodic black metal.”
The first track published from the album is “Кърваво писмо“, which means “Bloody letter” if Google translate is to be trusted. It launches a glorious war-charge of furiously hammering blast-beats, viciously abrasive riffing, glorious synth-led melodies in the upper reaches, rapidly flickering guitar-leads, and explosively savage snarls.
Even when the drums shift into more bounding cadences, the music remains vast and even mythic in its atmosphere, but the mood also begins to sound stricken and sorrowing (Benkovski’s heroic tale, after all, did not have a happy ending). The music’s feeling of sorrow deepens through a digression in which the drums vanish, the riotous pace slows, and the guitars slowly grieve. When the drums return, it’s in the cadence of a solemn march, and the daunting tidal waves of melody sound beleaguered but also determined.
https://hajduk.bandcamp.com/album/–6
https://amorfatiproductions.bandcamp.com/
https://shop.amor-fati-productions.de/en/
https://www.facebook.com/amorfatiprod
BANSHEE MOON (U.S.)
Things are about to get quite different, as we move from cavalry charges in 1876 to experiences beyond tangible earth or fixed time.
What’s up next is The Winged Man, the second release by Banshee Moon, whose anonymous lineup includes members of Bat Magic and Beastial Majesty if M-A is to be believed. It emerged in late march through Ordo Vampyr Orientis.
The cover art appears to depict a death’s head moth, pulled teeth, and a bundle of railroad spikes. The EP’s legend refers to an ancient curse stalking from the hills, thirsting for souls, and haunting the night, and thus the subject seems to be the Mothman, especially because Banshee Moon dedicate the EP to ufologist John Keel (1930-2009), who is best-known as author of The Mothman Prophecies.
If black metal that makes heavy use of keyboards isn’t your cuppa tea then you might not like this; after all, three of the band’s four members are credited with performing them. On the other hand, you should still give it a try, because not all keyboards across metal are the same or used in the same way. They also differ across this EP’s five tracks.
An intro track named “November 15th, 1966” (when the Mothman was first sighted in West Virginia) uses ethereal keys to create a chilling and haunting mood, then switches to organ tones to add an air of gothic menace and intrigue. As ugly, wordless, near-strangled snarls arrive, bells rhythmically toll above shivering reverberations, all of them interacting like heralds of horrors to come.
As “The Prophecy” begins, the keys resemble a gloom-shrouded string ensemble, and then those groaning, shining, and shivering organ tones manifest again — but this time joined by momentous drums and sinister, blaring chords. With a vivid drum fill announcing a change, the music expands and broils the senses above nimble bass-lines and bouts of venomous vocal vitriol. Here, we encounter the horrors from another realm; fear and despair blossom in the melodies and engulf the listener.
With “Portent“, Banshee Moon create an experience of ominous and even monstrous majesty, but overlay it with ethereal sounds of moon-like shine. The music builds tension on a sweeping scale, and those enticingly glimmering keys begin to sound distressing. The vocals are as ugly and ravenous as ever. The song also shifts into a fierce throb just before the keys wondrously swirl and swarm with blinding light.
“Cast Upon the Skyline” maintains the EP’s frightening and otherworldly intensity. It’s panoramic in its scale but also threaded with bits of instrumental quirkiness and accented by inventively variable bass-and-drum progressions. In this one, when the rhythm section pause, we hear gruesomely distorted spoken words and elegantly haunting piano keys — and then the music towers again, perhaps even more terrifying than before, but with a penultimate phase that yields the floor to a mournful string ensemble.
Banshee Moon named their Outro track “The Silver Bridge“, invoking the December 1967 collapse of the Silver Bridge over the Ohio River, which killed 46 people, an event that John Keel linked to the preceding sightings of the Mothman. It’s not a conventional outro track, in the sense that it’s the EP’s longest piece (at nearly six minutes), though it is indeed largely instrumental.
It begins with an excerpt from an old speech about some of the unsettling events narrated in the EP (I assume it’s John Keel speaking), then moves into a funereal melody rendered by organ and violin. The band layer in other vividly shivering keyboard ingredients around that persisting melody to help create an spell of mourning.
In a nutshell, I found the EP very engrossing, and hope you will too.
(Thanks to J.R. for pointing me to this release.)
https://ampwall.com/a/ovo/album/the-winged-man
LIVIDUS (U.S.)
I’ve saved this album for last because it’s the most mind-blowing music in today’s collection and I thought it might be more comfortable for you to listen to all of it at this point. It’s a remarkably elaborate and relentlessly dazzling alchemy of sensations that are hellishly sinister, frighteningly ferocious, Bacchanalian, baroque, and highly theatrical (among other things). It’s so bursting with ideas and so richly accented and embellished that it really will spin most heads all the way around.
Nameless Grave Records, which released this full-length debut on April 17th, gives some further hints about the music by proclaiming that it delivers “a sound that avoids modern technical trends in favor an older, more adventurous spirit akin to Voivod, Hammers of Misfortune, Death, and Nevermore“, “a rare project that successfully bridges the gap between the heavy, the ethereal, and the dissonant through a weird and adventurous lens.” They also mention Emperor as a reference point.
The music definitely is weird in many respects and adventurous in all of them. Among its many features, the music includes soaring singing that’s near-angelic and near-operatic in tone, but also deranged demonic shrieking that would make even the Devil afraid; creepy keyboard melodies but also grandiose fanfares; bursts of maniacally frenzied fretwork but also exhilarating displays of guitar and viola virtuosity or other displays that are beautifully fluid and seductive; and a very impressive rhythm section that’s constantly shifting gears and patterns.
And there’s more! Sometimes two voices heroically harmonize the singing (and sometimes the clean and harsh vocals are layered together); sometimes the guitars viciously thrash and slash, undergo dangerous seizures, or wildly dart about at sharp angles; sometimes you’ll hear a guitar solo that seems made for big arenas and the hoisting of invisible oranges; sometimes the viola soulfully expresses sorrow, but also jubilation; sometimes the music becomes willfully dissonant and discordant or descends into oppressive gloom, but the mid-album sixth song is spellbinding and sorcerous (though the vocals there are scary as shit as well as bewitching).
And still, there’s more, but I really ought to stop. Which of these 11 tracks might you want to hear if you just one taste-test? Honestly, I can’t pick a favorite, and it would be tough to go wrong if you just blindly stabbed your finger at any of the songs in between the brief intro and outro pieces, but I think the band made a good choice in launching the Bandcamp stream with “Amphisbaena“, so try that one.
I can’t say this album-length spectacle shocked me, but only because I had already heard the band’s debut EP Tetany, and the next one (Teratorns) — and come to think of it, what I wrote about that first release still works for this debut album: “It sounds like we’ve stepped through the curtains into a diabolical carnival, joining with an audience of demons to revel in increasingly ecstatic madness.” Here are the veteran performers from the Pacific Northwest who should take a bow for creating the album:
Vocals, viola: Uta Plotkin (ex-Witch Mountain)
Bass guitar, backup vocals: Connie Wang
Guitars: Rob Shaffer (Uada, Dark Castle)
Drums: Pierce Williams (Uada)
The band’s current lineup (pictured above) includes Christy Cather (Ludicra) on guitar (in addition to Shaffer) and Michael Thompson (ex-Silver Talon) on drums.
https://lividus.bandcamp.com/album/scarabaeus-2
https://www.facebook.com/lividusmetal/