A Year Doused in Gasoline
Bring 2023 to an end already.
When I first thought about this follow up to the last post Killing Joke’s Geordie Walker had passed away after succumbing to a stroke. Then, as I was compiling data, Shane McGowan died. Further attempts to kickstart this post and news of author Mark Samuels crossing over began to disseminate across the web. An absolute maddening year given all the death and mass insanity. How to process? Embrace the art and light of those who have escaped this burning globe and remember them fondly for the time they blessed us with.
Decoherence Breathed Into Forms dropped as a raging memorial to Geordie Walker on November 27. Stroda has always displayed a penchant for warping Killing Joke designs into a black metal forge, this one is raw testament and gospel. Three minutes and change into “Derivative From Consciousness” strains of Geordie percolate to the surface to insinuate into your psyche until being sucked back under a turbulent black miasma.
Debemur Morti Productions unleashes the unholy quartet: EITRIN. Take Dehn Sora (Throane, O V T R E N O I R, etc), Marion Leclercq (Mütterlein / ex Overmars), Vindsval and W.D. Feld (Blut Aus Nord, Yerûšelem) and you know you're getting a complete working over that resides in a realm one would expect with the murderer’s row in place: black metal done dissonant and seasick with noise treatments. Strikes me as somewhere between the underrated Reverence - Chamber of Divine Elaboration, the less noise saturated BAN releases, Throane and where Marion completely channels the late great Dawn Crosby at different turns. “PHENOL - Sinister” skewing toward Within the Veil Fear of God with its reverbed out Celtic Frost guitar sound and multi-voiced passages. Let’s be honest, Marion could recite a telephone directory (remember those? you’re as old as me!) and I’ll be all in. Once again, here she is with an end of the year release to disrupt top album lists. Yes, this is that good, and, with the pieces involved why would you think otherwise?
Next few I’m going to cop a plea and acknowledge assists from Yatsu guitarist and author Lane Oliver.
First in the don’t blame me, blame Lane game is an EP from bruising Chi-town noise rock unit Dust Muscle. Did you get overwhelmed by the sheer audacity of Sprain’s The Lamb as Effigy…? Not only will I belittle you and call you a coward, but, this abbreviated version of that instant classic of unhinged corrosive noise will bludgeon you by way of Scratch Acid meets Drive Like Jehu sucked down an autopsy table drain.
Again, blame Lane. Godot features one of his Yatsu cohorts, Imran Syed playing bass in a different sandbox. “Emo sludge” is the name of the game here where angular choppy hardcore goes off the rails into noise rock, grind and sludge terrain under the screaming orders of an insane conductor. Hell of a racket. Looking forward to more.
Now, this circles back to the guitarist himself: Lane Oliver. Not only can you blame him but the entirety of Yatsu on It Can’t Happen Here. Here Lane and his merry band of miscreants go full throttle 17 songs in 22 minutes. This could very well be Swiz gone grind as vocalist JD Sweat sounds a lot like Shawn Brown using short, clipped delivery of Tim Singer during his Deadguy stay. Maybe Coalesce covering Ozma or the underappreciated Ipecac on Napalm Death? You decide. Do it quickly before it is all over. Piledriving drum and bass tandem in doses of grinding power violence wrapped in Sam Black Church guitar churn adorned with treatments of electronic noise.
Serpent Column is gone, long live Theophonos. Full length, Ashes in the Huron River, due in 2024 from Profound Lore of black metal informed by grind and hardcore. “No Reprieve” is at turns choppy and discordant to rampaging and pushing into crusty d-beat in an all together gnarled up affair having elements of Ion Dissonance gone crust black metal. How this will stack up against Nightmare Visions shall soon be revealed.
As I begin writing Italy’s Fiori del Male is too new for even Metal Archives. All a mystery to me as to who Tristu and Nero are and if they are involved with other kvlt activity. What you get here is a whirlwind of caustic black metal built with utmost dissonance, atonality and uneasy atmosphere. Take the Am Rep years of Today is the Day, stuff it in a meat grinder with Hornwood Fell and out spews this atonal filth. From slaughterhouse to starry expanses. Shades of the VBE Virus gone further into a slurry of microtonality, blower bass undertow and busy ass all hell breaking loose drum work.
Pushing the black metal dissonance Stateside and decidedly different from its previous ravening foray is a two track offering by The Cult of Grinning Martyrs. The black metal equivalent of the Consuming Impulse album cover artwork: buzzing insect noise aswarm a hapless lunatic screaming victim and rending to pieces until only bone remains.
Opvs I - Opróbrio marks the return of unhinged Portugese black metal trio Torpe after a four year absence. In keeping form with blackened artists above this proves to be another daunting exercise utilizing a variety of asylum screams over diseased, dissonant black metal. The songs here have more breathing room; more time in the yard, so to speak, for these patients of Gimli Hospital to stretch and wander. And wander they do with walking basslines, free wheeling drums, warping layers of guitars, synthetic textures and traditional piano haunting the margins. At spots this has the breadth and reach of something akin to Rainer Landfermann conducting malignant ceremonies with the Mighty Sphincter. All of this lunacy is brilliantly gathered together under Nestor Avalos cover art.
Again in keeping within the confines of lunacy and noctivagant behavior is an eerily melodic and coloring out of bounds black metal duo Surghiun. One mad scientist’s possessed roars, caterwauls and occult ramblings are captured from broken radio transmissions as another fortifies a bevy of retrofit instruments to harness lightning to energize a device to breach cthonic dimensions. The drum programming is diabolically demented - bringing to mind the manner in which Rob Gasperowicz would design inhuman patterns and beats after the departure of alien intelligence Wojciech Szymański from SAMO. It borders upon a war metal assault beating out fractured and kaleidoscopic percussive sound buttressed behind a wall of bass, skittery insectoid riffing and possessed electronics. If last year’s Arizmenda offering Spiders Lust in the Dungeon's Dust was in your wheelhouse Surghiun, too, should take residence there to fester and explode in a disgusting display of diseased black metal.
No Clean Singing premiered the third Saevus Finis track off forthcoming Transcending Obscurity debut Facilis Descensus Averno. If you haven’t figured out by now after almost a year that this is 2/3 of a band near and dear to my blackened heart, well, you need to train your ears and learn to read. Compact, dissonant burst of death metal fury of Concealment gone Immolation.
Before closing out please support: Everything Went Black, The Metal Dad and his fiendish five podcast, No Clean Singing, Stereogum: The Black Market, The Devil’s Mouth, Aversionline, Invisible Oranges, Horror Wolf 666, Into the Necrosphere, Sol Nox Podcast, The Book of Very Very Bad Things, Plague Rages, Thrown to the Abyss Podcast, Freedom Has No Bounds, Machine Music, Dreams of Consciousness, Doktor Dismemberment’s Midnight Murderplex and Crucial Blast’s Warhead…. most of these sites update daily and weekly, most likely more frequently than what I provide.
And, finally, I don’t feel I need to even give my penny’s worth on these. Needlesss to say, once again, Prava Kollektiv dropping anvils from the sky near year’s end. Five care packages in the form of different black metal iterations most foul. Thanks again, Prava Kollektiv for a few year end spoilers.