(written by Islander)
Welcome to The Department of Broken Records. I know that’s what I’ll sound like if I explain how tough it was for me to make choices for this roundup or how late I slept this morning, so I’ll just skip that (get it?) and go straight to the songs and videos, which I hope you’ll enjoy as much as I have — even though the oversleeping has made the collection briefer than average.
UNDERDARK (UK)
When I see or hear the name Nottingham two other names simultaneously jump to mind — Robin Hood and Andy Synn. The former may never have existed except in myth but I can testify the second is a real person who lives in Notts, despite the fact that I used to call him a figment of my imagination. The third name that springs to mind is the Nottingham-based post-black metal band Underdark. That’s a consequence of how much I’ve enjoyed their past music, to which I was first introduced by the afore-mentioned Mr. Synn.
Adding to their discography, which so far has included a debut EP and a pair of albums, they will have a new album released in November by Church Road Records. Its name is O Come Forth Annihilation. I’m opening today’s collection with its first single, “Non Linear Warfare“, which recently arrived with a really well-made and electrifying performance video.
The song is a very arresting, very dark, but very blood-rushing piece of work. The riffing creates a dense and deleterious swarm of sound around heavily moaning bass tones and methodical drum shocks. The vocals’ depth-charge roars and possessed screams match the searing intensity of the boiling guitars — and the intensity swells even more as the drums attack with greater fury and the riffing slashes and soars.
The music is powerfully dynamic all the way through, exploding in torrents of furious derangement, discharging muscle-throbbing low-end thunder, expelling chords of blazing defiance — and suddenly seeming to end, but instead dramatically shifting into an interlude that’s soft, wistful, perhaps wondering, but stitched in the background with tormented snarls.
The interlude’s glinting notes gradually flow into a closing phase of building intensity that nevertheless carries the melody forward via a vibrantly trilling lead guitar.You might find yearning, torment, anguish, or fierce striving in the music — or all of that. It makes a powerful impression, made even more powerful by the visuals (especially the attention-seizing sights of vocalist Abi Vasquez).
https://underdark.bandcamp.com/album/o-come-forth-annihilation
http://www.facebook.com/Underdarkuk
LIZARD CULT/LŌTICO (Brazil)
As frequent visitors know, I enjoy building these roundups as musical roller-coaster rides, and so I’ll veer you away from Underdark’s blackened intensity and into a couple of very different experiences. These next two songs are the two halves of a split released in July by a pair of Brazilian bands, which I discovered just a couple days ago.
The first one is “Samsara” by Lizard Cult. Make no mistake, it’s also a musically intense experience with its own brand of cauterizing vocals, but it’s a big heaving beast of sludge — a groaning, braying, and throbbing menace.
Extravagant yells trade off with the paint-pealing screams, while a very adept rhythm section crack the whip and slug the abdomen. A frenetically rippling guitar solo adds fire to the song’s heaving and slugging immensity, and eventually the riffing begins to swarm and the drums more furiously hammer, driving the song to a distressing crescendo of torment.
The song is almost equal parts bleak, bruising, flame-throwing, and body-moving, and its final segment is equal parts unnerving and breathtaking.
The second song on the split is “Redenção” by São Paulo’s lōtico. With a mysteriously ringing and reverberating melody that’s gentle in tone and melancholy in mood, it immediately creates a dramatic contrast with the torrential close of “Samsara“. lōtico then bring in big tumbling beats and haunting, clean-sung wails.
Those big-grooved rhythms stay in place but the music seductively shimmers, becoming panoramic and mesmerizing, and the ghostly vocal melody is a big part of the spell the song casts. Yet as lōtico approach the song’s midpoint they deliver a sudden shock, deploying scarring howls, body-ramming beats, and roughened riffing that exudes agony. And things get heavier and harder still as time passes.
You’ll experience rhythmically jackhammering trauma, siren-like tones that seem to slowly and exotically writhe as they ring their warning, and swells of pealing melody that sound like despair. The music swiftly starts and stops, charges and screams, and keeps climbing toward its final crescendo of bone-smashing, head-wrecking energy — albeit with one final ethereal reminder of how the song began.
This is a very impressive split, featuring two songs by bands worth watching that work extremely well together.
https://lotico.bandcamp.com/album/split
https://www.facebook.com/lizard.cult/
https://www.facebook.com/lloottiiccoo/
OF WOLVES (U.S.)
The federal regime is prosecuting a former head of the FBI for posting a photo on social media of seashells arranged to spell out “8647” on a beach. The prosecution is a batant display of vindictiveness and an authoritarian attempt to punish dissent and stifle protest, and not nearly the worst example of that since the current regime took office. At least the defendant will have his day in court and (probably) walk free eventually. But if the dude had been behind the mic in Of Wolves’ new song “Headless“, he’d be cooling his heels in Gitmo by now. Fingers crossed that an underground metal band from Chicago won’t get the same kind of repressive attention as a former FBI official who incurred the ire of you-know-who.
If you’re the kind of person who cheers on the lies, broken promises, corruption, deviancy, cruelty, fear-mongering, war-mongering, racism, mysogyny, and incompetence that have increasingly defined the last 18 months in the U.S. and elsewhere, you’ll be enraged by “Headless” and the hyper-active video that accompanies it. If you’re disgusted, frustrated, and infuriated by what’s been happening, you’ll probably get some cathartic release from it, and might even enjoy yelling “Watch Them Roll!” and “Burn It! Burn It All All Down!” right along with Steve Wolves.
The fury in the music is red-hot and quite clearly genuine, though in other ways it’s pretty bleak, but such are the times we live in. I wouldn’t call the song a “slow burn” because even though it opens with a big slow throb, the ragged and raging vocals are already at their wits’ end. But the song does gradually build into an explosive riot that seems to stride a line between despair and determination.
That heavily throbbing groove transforms into caustic bursts; the maniacal vocals scream, roar, and quaver in a way that makes them feel like they’re tearing apart at the seams; and after a needling guitar-bridge the music generates a boiling miasma of sound.
The song also abysmally heaves and brutally lurches again, leaving the vocals to be the main channel of unhinged intensity, but then the music sears, slashes, batters, and surges. The intensity pushes and pulls throughout, but Of Wolves swarm and slug with truly visceral intensity at the end.
P.S. To be clear, I don’t endorse literal decapitation and conflagration as the solution to the regime’s assaults on democracy and the oligarchy’s gorging itself while powerless people suffer. Doing it figuratively by encouraging people to stand up for themselves and throwing the bums out at the ballot box is worth trying first (assuming the fascistic autocrats allow those things to happen, and AI doesn’t wipe us out first).
P.P.S. It’s likely no coincidence that Of Wolves released “Headless” on 9/11, since we’re still living within the sprawling wreckage wrought by that tragedy.
https://linktr.ee/ofwolves
https://ofwolves.bandcamp.com/music
https://www.facebook.com/ofWOLVES/
METHEDRINE (Italy)
I was unfamiliar with the Italian crossover-thrash band Methedrine before deciding to check out their video for a song called “Tell Me Lies“. But once I saw and heard it, I thought it would fit in just fine right after “Headless“. Much like the drug for which the band named themselves, it’s highly stimulating, euphoric, and addictive — as well as very pissed-off.
It opens with a twitchy riff that’s quickly catchy, and then Methedrine deftly carry that forward with guitars that blaze as well as ripple, while kicking into compulsively rocking grooves. The vocals are compulsive too — gritty and raw yet capable of catching hold of a near-sung pitch and rising into ferocious yells for the song’s title.
The song’s twitchy pulse and rocking rhythms are a big part of its infectiousness, but so is the freaked-out guitar solo. The gang-yells work very well too, and I’m sure Methadrine would be very happy for you to join right in.
The video directed by Frank Pellegrino is a high-octane film of the band throwing themselves into the song’s performance, and the appearance of new vocalist Arty is especially fired-up and furious. There’s another character in the film too, a stand-in for many of us, I suppose.
The song is off an EP named Death Punk that Methedrine will self-release on October 10th, in digital format and on LP. It’s described as “some of the catchiest songs from the band’s current live set” and also as “a salute to punk and to the hardcore background that shaped the band.”
https://linktr.ee/methedrine
https://methedrinedeathpunk.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/MethedrineHC