Last spring we premiered a pulse-pounding track from a multi-faceted new album named Transactinides by the Massachusetts-based “metaltronica” project Planepacked. We summed it up then as “a head-spinning trip of changing moods and soundscapes”, bringing music which “includes ingredients that should appeal to fans of extreme metal, but adventurously mixes those with both boisterous and mesmerizing electronica and dramatically varying vocal styles”.

Planepacked (named after a glitch in the game Dwarf Fortress) identified a smorgasbord of influences for that album, including the likes of Autechre, Igorrr, Devin Townsend, and Susumu Hirasawa (among others), as well as the urban fantasy fiction series Endian Project created by the woman behind Planepacked, Jessica Kagan.

Planepacked‘s creative fires have continued to burn since then, and one result is a new single that we’re premiering today — a song named “Harrowhark” in which Planepacked has doubled-down on the project’s more extreme influences — providing a death/thrash flavored take on the more usual Planepacked sound. Continue reading »