undertow

pull the body down. let the words go

I keep writing this damn post in stop/start fits due to the deluge of top notch preview tracks hitting the inbox and youtube feed.

For instance, as I get back to the column, today, November 21, 2023: hitting me with white light from the mouth of infinity Swans doused under Pity Love Beyond Dawn. New track by Kill The Thrill. Is this the first thing since the split with Overmars? I’m too lazy to check. You’ll just have to trust me. And if not me, Season of Mist.

Before we get into the thick of it 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.

Once again, the curtain to the Sleepytime Gorilla Museum draws open. Tour in 2024.

After a couple of ambient minutes of drift Mynskh add traditional instrumentation and warp it along with layers of vocals before launching into a torrent of rage. Song runs a gauntlet of different textures and atmospheres. Very cinematic in terms of patches and depth of mix. Almost a Queensryche “NM 156” gone black metal in demeanor.

Back in college days, even before Starkweather, there was an insane influx of alternative bands on major labels getting pushed via MTV 120 minutes and record store promos jockeying for position and sales to be the next big thing. One such act, Australia’s BIG PIG was touted for having multiple percussionists and full on tribal rhythms. Well, it fell far far short of expectations that US press raised. A bunch of us were thinking, “Holy shit, this could be Einsturzende Neubauten meets Swans and Test Dept,” While, BIG PIG and Bonk were far from shit it didn’t come close to the heavy percussion industrial informed music one expected from the US promo machine shilled. It’s far more pop with heavy r&b and funk influence and Sherine Abeyratne’s big voice. Fast forward a million or so years and here is an act out of Slovenia The Stroymachine making good on prospects of post industrial tribalism. This band has been lurking in the periphery for a couple decades. Appears this album comes almost 15 years after first EP, Vacuum. After one pass, even with a misstep here and there, and the bandcamp default track being the bastard spawn of Sepultura’s “Ratamahatta” and Schooly D’s “Saturday Night,” augmented with brass, I’d venture to say this is more physical and percussive than the exceptional Nihiloxica.

A couple Elysium Now tracks from Narbo Dacal. Polish (be)witching metal that is heavy on the noise rock, post punk, gloomy atmosphere. A more metal Made Out of Babies? Djunah with black metal riffs? Whatever the case, Narbo Dacal prove convincing with combining disparate styles into a killer cauldron concoction. Vocalist/bassist Eli/Eliza Ratusznik’s singing voice reminds me of Patty Donahue (the Waitresses - “I Know What Boys Like”) with more grit and sinister intent. Guitarist Drut (Grzegorz Włodek) and drummer Bartek (Bartłomiej Kliś) round out this trio and do more than their share of heavy lifting: Drut with pedal damage weilding a sound somewhere between 45 Grave and Mighty Sphincter that in turns unleashes black metal fury and cement mixes of sludge and doom. And Bartek the jackhammer rhythmic pulse to the careening madness within Elysium Now.

Transcending Obscurity unleashing holy hell with a pair of announcements aligned to the Cult of the Steeve Hurdle Sonic Cloth.

First out of the gate is new Replicant. Great stuff from the toxic wilds of New Jersey. “Pain Enduring” isn’t as Obscura laced as some adherents can be as there are Hate Eternal speed runs, Immolation choppiness, knuckledragger mouthbreather rhythmic paces that will forever be associated with Machine Head and Prong. Just when you think you’ve figured it out, somewhere from Dimension Hatross drops Piggy chords, Hurdle screams and a pair of memorable solos (one pushing intense levels and the other more composed and melodic.)

Maere with the first taste off And The Universe Keeps Silent has more than a few through-lines and doodles of a decidedly “Illuminatus,” “Faceless Ones,” “Sweet Silence” bent. Man, oh man, Maere offered themselves up as a vessel for Steeve to access this earthly realm. And seeing that Luc, Kevin, Colin and Patrice are in writing mode I’ll take this unearthly, lurching piece of atonality and dissonance for sustenance. At least until new Ingurgitating Oblivion vomits forth.

DVVAD is a Hungarian monstrosity displaying a sludge laden black metal style on this preview track for their Talheim Records Germany debut. Feast your eyes on that cover image… cosmic horror certainly awaits. The first half of this song has an almost Eyes of Fire atmospheric, synth enhanced plodding style before detonating into a full-on astral black metal racket before crashing back to terra firma in a screaming heap of burning wreckage comprised of twin guitars, bass, drums, and electronics.

Centipede Abyss creepy crawl skittish experimental act Act of Entropy return with five hallucinatory trips into free form expression of schizoid, frenetic, eerie darkness. Discombobulated soloing, dislocated vocals, unhinged drum programming, noise textures leaking from other dimensional realms appearing and disappearing at random. One may even think this is an exercise in randomness a la John Zorn’s Naked City pull a number out of a hat performances and things go awry. You could be correct, you could be completely wrong. What you will get is off kilter, walking on eggshells holding handrails psychedelia parceled out with discordance bearing little regard for a listener’s sanity and owning up to the project’s name.

Mêlée des Aurores track off forthcoming Aube Cannibale on Sepulchral Productions. Elements of black thrash, dissonant black metal and noise could make one think Voivod, Axis of Perdition, Ebonylake and Blut Aus Nord were sucked through the Portal of the Event Horizon gravity drive and reassembled as this chimera of uneasy sound. Even the production comes across like a Dr Frankenstein’s creation cobbled and stitched from different sessions.

Something low end this way comes: ocoↄo . ocoↄo was announced via Irhagar - unsure if this is the continuation of or rebirth or something different all together. Irhagar has quite a bit of Black Sheep Wall / Admiral Angry grudge filled sludge crush whereas the full length ocoↄo comes off with more of an experimental electronic industrial bent. The 31 minute track that came out not so longer after the debut continues the ambient doom snail trail slugging along across a razor for 31 minutes with a couple diversions into battering ram osdm.

Always great news when Nevoa decide to grace our ears with new music. Once again a huge pivot in sound. This time out an experimental instrumental acoustic style that would not be out of place on ECM. Even the cover art screams ECM.

With the name Option Paralysis you sort of know where this is headed. While there are Dillinger Escape Plan morse-code staccato patterns it is wrapped in additional dissonance with unquestionable presence Atheist nuance.

Etch is a side project from Option Paralysis’ guitarist. Where that project revels in knotty twists and turns, Etch has a more relaxed feel it retains high caliber musicality. What begins as Angelo Badalamenti tribal lounge launches into Killing Joke meets Cynic free jazz sci-fi territory.

More manna from heaven when you travel to No Clean Singing for the premiere and review of TodoMal’s A Greater Good. Early 90s Anathema and Paradise Lost locked in Queensryche’s Promised Land. In what has been a stellar year for off center doom this Spanish duo make a late push to add their epic operatic album to the list. I’m sure Ilias has heard it all before, but there’s nothing but clean singing on A Greater Good - a bit of it sounding somewhat like Ian Astbury. You will all call me out for the keyboards being a prime component in the TodoMal arsenal. How these guys employ them is akin to Deep Purple, ELP, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath - born again. More weaponized and musical offering a very thick, vintage analog sound than rinky dink dungeon synth casio nonsense that should never have been given the C.M.I. green light in 1994. This album is so on point when it comes to the vocal harmonies, huge riffs, serpentine rhythmic crawl and majestic power. Could be down the line A Greater Good is going to rank highly with the likes of MonumentuM’s In Absentia Christi.

And with this I leave you the dulcet tones of Gnaw Their Tongues… Check the preview of the new album The Cessation of Suffering at Pop Matters.