May 132015
 

(In this post Dan Barkasi continues his monthly series recommending music from the previous month.)

Welcome back to Essential Entries. April has already passed, and it’s hard to believe. It feels like we – at least those unlucky enough to live in areas that deal with winter – were just freezing ourselves stiff, and now the temperatures are in the 80s. Thank goodness. Winter is awful. Thankfully, good music is the antithesis of such, and we’re loaded this month.

Also, my apologies for getting this up a bit late. Yours truly was out of town for over two weeks, and that resulted in a ton of catch-up listening in order to do this right. No way will this column ever be done half-heartedly!

With that out of the way, let’s get to the tunes.

 

Abyss – Heretical Anatomy

Gritty Canadian death metal. Abyss proves that it’s not all maple syrup and politeness up there. Equal parts catchy and punishing, this proves to be a great debut full-length. Continue reading »

Apr 292015
 

 

KevinP sort of stole my thunder yesterday on our site when he named Abjvration’s debut one of the Top 5 releases of April. But I’ll go him one better: The Unquenchable Pyre is one of the best releases I’ve heard all year.

The EP comes our way from Caligari Records. Originally, it was to be released exclusively on tape, but yesterday the label decided to begin making some of its offerings — including this one — available for digital download on Bandcamp. In the format in which I’ve listened to the EP, and as you can hear it on Bandcamp, the five tracks are in a single audio file. With just a couple of exceptions, it’s not entirely clear when one song ends and the next one begins; they flow from one to another, for the most part without discernible breaks. And they work supremely well that way. It’s like a single concerto of horror and pain. Continue reading »

Apr 282015
 

 

(We’re nearing the end of the month, and that means it’s time for KevinP to name the releases this month that most impressed him.) 

We’re a quarter of the way through 2015 already.  This month was stacked to the gills with quality releases, the best yet.  Even though they didn’t make my Top 5, I feel obliged to mention Infernal War, Macabre Omen, Tribulation, Haar, and Kommandant, which are all worthy of your time.  But now, on to the creme de la creme.

5.  Abjvration – The Unquenchable Pyre

This was a last-minute entry and pushed one of the bands mentioned above off this list.  Think Portal, if they transformed into a Finnish doomy death metal band.  Sure, that makes no sense.  But does this band being absolutely terrifying and hailing from France make sense?  They are so kvlt, they’re not even listed on Metal Archives and have only a few hundred Facebook likes. Continue reading »