(written by Islander)
As you can see, I have selected the music of six bands today, all of them coincidentally brandishing one-word names. I’m leading off with a group of singles from forthcoming records and concluding with a recently released EP that I think qualifies as “saving the best for last”.
In the case of those singles, I arranged them in a way that creates some musical connections (at least in my own head) between the opening pair and then a different kind of connection in another pair, with a ruinous barrage standing between the two groupings.
I’ll also take this opportunity to inform visitors that the coming week at NCS will create a bit of a break. Beginning on Wednesday I and my old friends Andy Synn and DGR will be in Seattle working on Northwest Terror Fest (they will be doing a lot of heavy lifting while I provide essential supervision and autographs).
But fear not, we will still be posting things on Wednesday through Friday because DGR has already loaded us up with a big batch of reviews for that purpose, though I doubt I will have my usual columns next weekend (the fest runs through Saturday, and on Sunday we’ll be loading out festival gear and supplies from the venues).
FAUSTIAN (Australia)
There are two musical trios named Faustian out in the world. One is in Louisiana and the other calls Australia home. My first musical choice today is from an album by the Australian group, which follows up their 2023 debut EP We Come as Angels.
The lineup of this Faustian should command for them a fair share of attention. It consists of drummer Dave Haley (Psycroptic, The Amenta, Werewolves, etc.), guitarist Matt Wilcock (The Antichrist Imperium, The Amenta, Werewolves, The Berzerker, etc.), and bassist/vocalist Sam Bean (The Antichrist Imperium, The Berzerker, Werewolves, etc.)
As you can see, these three have worked together in other bands, but the music they’ve made together in Faustian isn’t really like what any of those other groups have done. Here’s how Sam Bean describes it:
We believe our upcoming album, Parable Of The Sewer, is a stunningly dark album of black art that will surprise everyone. If Werewolves is us trying to compete with Panzer Division Marduk, then Faustian is our attempt to outdo Anthems To The Welkin At Dusk.
The first single, “Broken Better“, is indeed very dark, and you can get a strong hint of its mood just by staring at the album’s cover art.
The music seems to grievously moan and wail. It creates a wrenching mood, even when punctuated by booming jolts. The anguished riffing grows more feverish just as the drums begin to thunder and ravaging snarls burst out. Eventually, the guitars rapidly roil and writhe in displays of even greater emotional distress.
Sam Bean also hauntingly sings and violently screams in the midst of searing torrents of sound, and he seems to distantly mutter as the song slows and the guitars generate a ringing throb. But that moody break is eventually overtaken by pummeling beats and dismally wailing chord vibrations.
The multi-toned vocals trade off again, and the surrounding music also continues to change dramatically and frighteningly, like sonic manifestations of hallucinatory psychosis caused by pain.
Parable Of The Sewer will be released on July 24th by Apocalyptic Witchcraft.
https://orcd.co/apw062
https://apocalypticwitchcraft.co.uk/
https://apocalypticwitchcraft.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/faustianblackmetal
VERZAUBER (Ireland)
Verzauber is the solo work of a music-maker located in Cork, Ireland, with a second album named Dire Garden of the Ages that’s set for release on May 29th by Naturmacht Productions. The label describes the album as one that “reprises the marriage of mythological Black Metal and ambient works established with the project’s debut, albeit now permeated with a distinct electronica presence”.
Two songs from the 11-song album are now available for listening. The first one, “Etruscan Blossom Sanctuary“, intriguingly shines but then discharges a blizzard of knives and cutting screams. Even with shrill flickering tones in the high end and cracking beats driving the pace, the music seems to slowly roll like a dismal tide of death.
But the music also panoramically expands as it flows, and clear-toned notes whistle and dart above the dark symphonic vastness like ephemeral sprites. The vocals continue to display violent torment, and although the song is peppered with ingredients of beauty and wonder and includes some wild keyboard exercises and vivid martial drumming near the end, it’s still mainly a dark and daunting experience.
The other song out now is “Pyrocumulus Pharynx“, and you can hear it if you let the player below continue to run. It’s even longer and perhaps even more multi-faceted than the first one, a fascinating alchemical interaction of black metal and varieties of electronica that creates sonic visions of imposing grandeur, maelstrom-like turmoil, apparitional mystery, poignant grief, and classical elegance. The vocals vary as well, but are usually scary as hell.
It’s very easy to get lost in the song and carried away by all of its elaborate and mood-changing facets.
More information about the album’s interesting thematic concepts can be found at Bandcamp. Mitchell Nolte created the stunning cover art.
https://verzaubernp.bandcamp.com/album/dire-garden-of-the-ages
https://www.facebook.com/VerzauberOfficial/
ISHIMURA (U.S.)
Like Faustian above, there are two metal bands that go by the name Ishimura. This is not the Serbian one but the U.S. duo of multi-instrumentalist Jared Moran and vocalist Rob Fusco, and the song you’re about to hear is from their forthcoming second album Msster (that’s not a typo).
Ishimura’s label Centipede Abyss describes the music as something like “Portal meets Wrathprayer“. The band provide this legend for the album: “Fathomless emptiness in parallel with undscovered darkness; aurally substianted [possibly a typo] with the brutality the unknown merits.”
The song titles on the album aren’t conventional. The name of the one you can hear now is “King O(f B rok 3N LiMBs“. As I hinted up above, it’s a ruinous assault that’s not for the faint of heart… or anyone with an egg-shell skull… or anyone who cares too much about preserving their sanity.
The vocals are absolutely insane, whether screaming or roaring. In the shrill end of the range, the music itself seems to scream (whether in delight or in pain is open to interpretation), and in the low end you’ll be subjected to brutally ramming thrusts and dense, gouging abrasion.
Of course, Moran puts on a hell of a show with his drumming, constantly shifting tempos and patterns, while whatever other instruments are in use create various phases of chaos and madness. Earthquakes and vulcanism persist down below, and shrieking contortions have their way in the upper reaches — with abrupt stops and starts making sure (as if there were any chance) that listeners don’t get comfortable.
Msster will be released by The Centipede Abyss on May 28th.
https://centipedeabyss.bandcamp.com/album/msster
https://www.facebook.com/TheCentipedeAbyss
VERTEBRAE (Spain)
Prepare now for a dose of “DEATH BLACK N’ROLL”, which is how the Spanish band Vertebrae describe their music. The band’s new single, “Spiritual Beast“, earns that label, but the music turns out not to be as simple or predictable as the appellation might lead you to believe.
It’s a feral, swaggering, hard-slugging beast of a song, one that will get muscles moving and likely leave bruises. The vocals are themselves stunningly bestial, like the enraged offspring of a panther and a bear with its throat choking on blood and bone (sometimes accompanied by fervent gang yells).
But while the song’s opening phase is primitive and black-hearted at its core, even then it’s laced with woozily squirming guitar arpeggios and freakishly frantic soloing. Moreover, at nearly three minutes in, Vertebrae step on the accelerator and send their beast into marauding mode, though there’s something jubilant and even dance-like about that vibrantly pulsating experience too. You might even imagine repeating bursts of horns in the mix!
Even the sounds of the heavily humming and throbbing bass (which gets kind of funky) sound joyful, and a tremendous extended guitar solo, which pulls from wells of influence outside of heavy metal, seems downright ecstatic.
I’ve been trying, and failing, to put my finger on the different musical genres that Vertebrae work into this song. It certainly didn’t go where I thought it would go based on the opening few minutes. It’s also so catchy that I’ve listened to it repeatedly since discovering it yesterday.
https://linktr.ee/Vertebrae
https://vertebraeofficialband.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Vertebraeofficialband
NECROBEAST (Netherlands)
These next two songs, as I hear them at least, have a musical connection to the one from Vertebrae that you just heard. The first of them, “In Communion With Satan“, includes an overture that sizzles with menace, blares with fiendish hunger, and booms like an avalanche in progress. And it continues doing that, though at a more thrash-paced tempo.
The vocals are absolutely savage, a crazed array of snarls, screams, and roars that might make you think of a pack of gnashing demons set loose by their hellish masters. The rocking and racing grooves are heavy as hell too, and the riffing boils and burns but also dismally drags and claws. And there’s a gloriously white-hot guitar solo lying in wait near the end — just before a brief piano outro that sounds like it was lifted from a century-old recording
In short, that song is a thoroughly diabolical, hard-rocking, and heart-racing experience. The second song, “Promethean Flame“, is shorter but also a big attention-grabber. Sirens wail and the earth rumbles at the outset, and then the music begins to lumber ahead like a big, shaggy hell-beast, albeit laced with quivering, fleet-fingered arpeggios.
Almost mid-way through, the pace significantly accelerates, those terrorizing vocals charge in (sometimes doubled for extra terror), and the riffing begins to boil and slash — though still laced with those bits of quivering fretwork. The music viciously hammers and mauls, but yet again, the song includes a terrific guitar solo.
These songs are the lead singles from Necrobeast’s debut album Iron Baphomet, which will be released on May 25th by Witches Brew (CD and LP) and Urolig Sjel (cassette tape). Necrobeast is the solo work of Seb Kings, initially based in Valdivia, Chile, and now in Maastricht, Netherlands.
https://uroligsjelrecords.bandcamp.com/album/iron-baphomet-cassette
https://witchesbrewthrashes.bandcamp.com/
https://witchesbrew.eu/en
https://necrobeast.bandcamp.com/track/promethean-flame
SVRM (Ukraine)
As I mentioned at the outset, I’ve saved the best for last. I don’t mean to denigrate any of the music stacked above this final choice today, but the emotional power of svrm’s new EP is so stunning and the music so completely immersive that it tends to obscure other attractions in its vast shadow.
The EP, Мертвий край, includes five new songs, and sadly I’m about out of time and thus can’t give each of them their full due. Maybe it’s enough to say that they are shattering in their expressions of devastating sorrow — and the devastations that caused the sorrow. Not only the music, but the wrenching, ragged-edged vocals express that, like someone tearing themself apart in their torment.
Yet, as svrm’s label rightly says, “the melodies and sweeping atmosphere give the sorrow a strange sense of beauty and grandeur”. The music often reaches zeniths of truly panoramic scope, though even then what it sometimes seems to be channeling on an immense scale is pain — as well as wonder, wistfulness, and resilience. The music also takes turns that are soft, bright, poignant, and indeed beautiful (hauntingly beautiful).
In thinking about the emotions expressed and inspired by these songs, I can’t help but be influenced by the knowledge of where svrm is located and the horrors that have befallen that country at the hands of Russia’s predatory tyrant. But I think even without that knowledge, I would be tremendously moved by what svrm is doing.
Vendetta Records is releasing the EP on CD and vinyl in an edition that also includes the previous svrm EPs Скорбота and Мовчання і смерть. The new EP is also available digitally from svrm (a name-your-price download at Bandcamp).
As an aside, here’s how Google Translate renders the Ukrainian song titles into English (you can find the lyrics at Metal-Archives here):
Night has fallen
Last light
Dead end
Ash
Wound
https://vendetta-records.bandcamp.com/album/–6
https://svrm.bandcamp.com/album/–16