Drudkh announce new album, release new track - 'Nakryta Neba Burym Dakhom'

     Ukraine's Drudkh, unanimously considered the forerunners of the atmospheric black metal subgenre, have had a long and storied career. From their legendary first albums - the sublime Autumn Aurora, and the blisteringly frigid Blood in Our Wells and the Swan Road - to their more recent outings (including a one-off with Alcest's Neige), Drudkh have long stood as a bastion of the style even as their stylistic descendents brought the genre into the forefront of the black metal consciousness. 

      Today, Season of Mist announced a new outing from the reclusive project, imposingly titled Їм часто сниться капіж (They Often See Dreams in the Spring), appropriately set for release on March 9th. The band also released a new single - 'Nakryta Neba Burym Dakhom', which my limited Ukrainian and google translate-fu seem to hint means 'the Sky was Covered by a Roof'.

      Regardless, as with other Drudkh outings, 'Nakryta Neba Burym Dakhom' is patient, hypnotic, but unerringly restive, eschewing the yawning synths and plodding pace of their kin in Summoning for tribal, folk-tinged blast beats, relentless guitar leads that conjure up golden sunsets on the steppe, and Roman Saenko's signature roars that rush like a gael of wind along the corridors of the song. 

Їм часто сниться капіж will be released on March 9th through Season of Mist. You can listen to 'Nakryta Neba Burym Dakhom' below:

Watain - Trident Wolf Eclipse REVIEW

       2018 sees Sweden's Watain in an awkward position. Their lukewarm previous release, 2013's The Wild Hunt, debuted to head-scratching confusion due to some artistic choices that fell flat; namely, the bizarre decision to include an 80s power ballad, some Avenged Sevenfold-lite songs, and the band's signature dedication to the aesthetic earning them the somewhat disparaging moniker of 'black metal Rob Zombie' in more kvlt circles. The black metal faithful, ever mercurial, immediately turned their backs on the group, who, indeed, went on to carry the torch (metaphorically and literally, for anyone who's seen their live shows) as one of the most recognizable acts in black metal for most of the five-year interim. Watain toured with Mayhem twice, cementing their place as a heavyweight in the scene, even as the hype and controversy around The Wild Hunt slowly evaporated. 

      Five years later, it was with no undue amount of trepidation that I placed the needle on the band's newest offering Trident Wolf Eclipse. Forerunning single 'Nuclear Alchemy' was promising, delivering the signature blistering style of Watain's strongest modern material with none of the theatric silliness that had made prior outings fall flat, but ultimately, Trident Wolf Eclipse transcends the carnival goofiness of the Wild Hunt and, five days into the new year, stands unopposed as the year's finest black metal outing so far. 

     Black metal, for all of its fixation on isolation, is inherently an incredibly theatrical genre. Its signature subject matter - unspeakable rituals, the depths of self-loathing, crystalline, hivernal forests - are all presented with a flair for the dramatic, and always have been since the days of Bathory and Celtic Frost (This is heavy metal, after all!). 

      But this, in turn, begs the question - how much melodrama is too much? 

      Big-name Swedish black metal, for some reason, always seems to have an issue nailing what I'm going to call 'tasteful aesthetics', and has a tendency to embrace the already-over-the-top black metal aesthetic so profoundly that the music loses all sense of legitimacy and becomes just silly to watch. Watain, with their pig's-blood-drenched live show resplendent with candelabras and skulls, have always been notable for taking this to a new extreme, but this aesthetic choice, more often than not, crept into their music over the years, to mixed results. 

       In this regard, Trident Wolf Eclipse sees the band reigning in their theatrics, while nevertheless unleashing nine tracks of frenetic, furious, depraved black metal. Even more laudably, Watain bring the songwriting chops they had on the Wild Hunt - undebatably the best part of eye-rollers like 'Outlaw' - to bear with a classical black metal bent. 'Furor Diabolicus', which opens with a furious riff, buttressed by an incendiary guitar lead and vocalist Erik Danielsson's signature roar, is a perfect example of this, and flows between sections effortlessly, even throwing in a quick solo for good measure. 'Towards the Sanctuary', some three tracks later, features some of the tightest Watain guitar playing this side of Casus Luciferi, and immediately sees the crushing guitar enter a frenzied back-and-forth with Danielsson's eerie whispers. Watain balances these frenzied, riff-led tracks with several eerie, atmospheric outings, such as 'the Fire of Power' and 'A Throne Below', which eschew the fire-and-brimstone of the former for more nebulous, yawning textures. 

         In a sense, this is the band's return-to-form. Trident Wolf Eclipse has Watain return to their roots, to great success, and is a worthwhile listen for anyone who enjoys excellent songwriting and unrestrained fury in their black metal.  

     

January 2018 belongs to...Austria?

...And we're back.

Happy new year! Welcome to 2018, where we all realize we really are in 'the late 2010s' and the crushing existential weight of the years gone by swells in magnitude...but, never fear! 

With the inevitable changing of calendars has come an absolute flurry of new album releases. Over the past five days, we've gotten teasers from the likes of Panopticon, A Forest of Stars, Soft Kill, Destroyer 666, Hellripper, Urfaust, Lebanon Hanover, and potentially even Nachtmystium, and that's mostly just metal bands! This week in particular, two great new metal albums from the homeland of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Sound of Music, and schnitzel.

Most people don't really tend to associate Austria with heavy metal. Metallum claims that the early 90s saw some kind of 'Austrian black metal syndicate' a handful of demo-only projects took part in, but as a whole the country has remained largely unrecognized on the worldwide stage, with the obvious exceptions of Summoning, the legendary atmoblack duo that single handedly invented a new
genre of black metal in the late 90s.

Summoning need no introduction - Silenius and Protector have been purveying synth-driven, epic, Tolkien-inspired black metal for two decades, and today released their newest offering With Doom We Come in what may possibly be Nuclear Blast's only worthwhile release for 2018. With Doom We Come wastes no time, and commences with the bombastic 'Tar-Calion'. Fuzzed-out guitar lines dance in the misty gloom, buttressing symphonic synth leads and the endless, plodding drum machine Summoning are known for. Together, the quintessential Summoning sound materializes for eight long-form tracks, and leads the listener on an epic journey into the heart of Middle-Earth.

Stream With Doom We Come on Spotify here.

On the other hand, Abigor are one of Austria's best-kept black metal secrets. Since the early 90s, mastermind Peter Kubik has been quietly releasing a veritable library of albums, EPs, splits, and more, even as the band has largely evaded widespread recognition. Abigor's newest full length, Höllenzwang (Chronicles of Perdition), continues the band's evolution, mixing frenetic black metal with off-kilter, layered guitars and some of the project's finest vocals ever into a schizophrenic, pulsating, evil mass. The result, which sounds like a fine-tuned mix of Blacklodge, Mayhem, and even a little Deathspell Omega thrown in for good measure, is an absolute beast to listen to.

You can Höllenzwang here.

Thangorodrim - Gil-Estel REVIEW

Obscurity, in the current year, has become a hot commodity. Gone are the tape-trading days of the pre-internet epoch, where word-of-mouth, label flyers, and the occasional zine were the only connection one had to the shadowy, reclusive underground of the music scene. In its place, for better or for worse, is the ability to expose oneself to most of the music anyone has ever created. If you have an 8-track and an acoustic guitar, the abyss known as Bandcamp will allocate you your own bit of abyss to host your music. During the summer of 2013, I singlehandedly acquainted myself with black metal using nothing but YouTube album streams and Metal Archives. Two years later, equipped with a handful of recommendations and handmade charts, I did the same for shoegaze and neofolk. With the right curiosity, the limiting factor in discovering new music is one's own time.

This ease of access to music has fomented its own issues, which I'm not going to delve into in this post, because that runs the dangerous risk of turning into a rant. But, even as the internet has cast a light into the darkest corners of the underground, there have been recesses of it that have largely resisted the cloying light, remaining hidden and obscure even as the mainstream remained merely a handful of well-placed clicks away. And the tenacity of those corners to remain obscure has made them all the more appealing. Perhaps the crown jewel of those forever-outsiders is dungeon synth.

The name might sound goofy, but the genre has been around for at least twenty years - arguably longer, with some devotees citing Tangerine Dream's soundtrack for 'the Keep', released in 1984, as the first example of what would become dungeon synth. Nevertheless, the genre experienced its aesthetic 'birth' at roughly the same time as black metal roared into existence. Burzum's seminal compositions 'Den Onde Kysten' and 'Han Som Reiste' (off Det Som Engang Var) are considered the founding moments of the genre. Later refinements would come from Austrian band Summoning, Norwegian project Mortiis, and German act Depressive Silence, among others, but I'm getting ahead of myself. 

Dungeon synth is characterized by its aesthetic - namely, the monochrome of black metal with a decidedly medieval twist - and instrumentation. The latter features long, droning, minimalist synth lines that channel its fraternal twin black metal's fixation on generating vast soundscapes, oftentimes reminiscent of 90s role-playing games. Arizona's Thangorodrim, a modern project that incorporates elements of dark ambient into its expansive, Tolkien-themed work, have risen to prominence as one of the pre-eminent modern dungeon synth projects in recent years. Last year's Taur-Nu-Fuin, an epic, four-song foray into the sinister depths of Mordor, assisted by yawning, imperceptible vocals, was my first exposure to the project, which, in the absence of any social media presence, dropped its newest album Gil-Estel earlier last month. In true underground fashion, I was only alerted to this release by a poster on a music forum, which I would be lying if I said didn't add to the appeal of unearthing and listening to Gil-Estel.

Gil-Estel picks up where Taur-Nu-Fuin left off - anthemic, sprawling, chilling, sinister dungeon synth lacking in the neoclassical flourishes of other pioneers. Thangorodrim favors long, orchestral pieces that build on themselves to an epic sword 'n sorcery climax that channels the foggy forests and ancient crags of Tolkien's fantastic world, with sensible, slow melodies that are at once haunting and expansive.

Thangorodrim's strength lies in this long-form songwriting, wherein the ideas develop slowly over more than ten minutes. By contrast, Chaucerian Myth's monolithic, nearly four-hour dungeon synth interpretation of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which flirts with neoclassical instrumentation to channel the medieval aesthetic of the genre, often falls flat, and transcends the narrow line between endearing and excessive cheese. With a genre as atmospheric as dungeon synth, subtlety is king, and this is where Gil-Estel reigns supreme - the music is patient, pensive, sublimely simple, yet equally nostalgic and epic, melding the minimalism of dark ambient with the emotional and instrumental maximalism of the heavy metal subgenre that spawned its style.

You can stream Gil-Estel here.   

New Music Wednesdays - Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Perturbator, and Street Sects

Welcome back ladies and germs, to a new segment I've decided to call New Music Wednesdays, wherein we try our best to get through Hump Day with some new tunes worth checking out!

This week has seen new music premiere from old fixtures and scrappy newcomers alike - Canadian post-rock mainstays Godspeed You! Black Emperor, French synthwave titan Perturbator, and Texas industrial lunatics Street Sects.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor (henceforth 'Godspeed') require no introduction. The collective singlehandedly defined post-rock's controversial "second wave" in the late 90s and early 2000s with a handful of seminal masterpieces, only to reemerge in the early 2010s with a decidedly more experimental, drone-tinted output. The third LP of this incarnation of the band, Luciferian Towers, is slated to be released in late September on Montreal's Constellation Records (you can preorder the record here) and made waves with its politically-charged press release which included, among other statements, a blanket ban on the album's export to Israel. Nevertheless, Godspeed have released two singles from the album - 'Undoing A Luciferian Towers'[sic]', the introductory track, which premiered over the weekend, and, this morning, the Quietus debuted 'Anthem For No State Pt. III', the LP's closing track. You can stream 'Undoing' on the band's bandcamp here and 'Anthem' on the Quietus here.

Godspeed's music has always been an exercise in length, with long-form tracks flowing between numerous themes, moods, textures, and melodies over their hefty duration. However, 'Undoing' commences Luciferian Towers with five minutes of flitting between ephemeral, heavy atmospherics and uncompromising, cavernous drone, echoing the band's most recent record Asunder, Sweet, and Other Distress. The song builds in tension over its eight-minute duration, exploding into a melodic, guitar-and-violin-driven climax to close out the song. 'Anthem', conversely, sees the band at their most triumphant, with chaotic, turbulent noise transforming almost immediately into the awe-inspiring, sublime beauty that the collective have been purveying for over twenty years. The contrast between both tracks begs the question - what goes on in between? We'll have to wait for the 22nd to find out.

Perturbator, in a bit of a left-turn, are arguably the champions of the synthwave movement, an 80s revivalist cult that channels the decade's artistic cheese and obtuseness into a dark, dystopian, electronic context. Perturbator rose to prominence in 2014 with their Dangerous Days LP, finding a fanbase in both electronic and metal communities alike, and bringing their stylistic niche to the public eye. Since then, the genre has all but exploded as part of a ubiquitous nostalgia for the 80s that's gripped underground music for the past three years. Even Dan Barrett of Have a Nice Life fame has dabbled in it.

With two LPs and a handful of EPs under his belt, Perturbator's newest release New Model sees the synthwave forerunner slowing down, creating a darker, more brooding atmosphere that lacks the bright fluorishes of prior Perturbator outings - though that's not to say New Model doesn't have its fair share of anthemic moments (the drop on 'Tactical Precision Disarray' is absolutely jaw-dropping), but that the EP is less 80s motorcycle chase and more John Carpenter's gnawing dread. The penultimate track, 'Corrupted By Design', which veers between mid-tempo grooves and eerie, atmospheric synth lines, epitomizes this niche. Ultimately, New Model is a departure from Perturbator's previous style and, true to form, nails the aesthetic even as it pushes the genre into new territory.

New Model is out now on Blood Music (digitally). Physical releases will be released October 20th. You can stream the album here.

Lastly, Texas' Street Sects are veritable newborns, with just one album, End Position, released last year on weird rock/metal label the Flenser. The project, which melds blistering industrial beats with sampling and the raw fury of hardcore, are arguably one of the most unique listens in contemporary rock (please prove me wrong and clue me into something similar if I am), and are set to release an EP, Rat Jacket, on October 6th. Similar to Godspeed, after dropping the EP's debut track 'Blacken the Other Eye' a few weeks ago, released 'In Prison, At Least I Had You', a seven-minute (an eternity by Street Sects standards) affair that completely eschewed the duo's signature howled, screeched vocals in lieu of haunting cleans even as the industrial instrumentals rage behind them. With half the EP released, Rat Jacket may surpass the uncompromising, destructive rage of End Position. You can stream 'In Prison, At Least I Had You' here.

death's dynamic shroud.wmv - Heavy Black Heart REVIEW

For a genre that started out as an ironic joke among internet forum-goers, vaporwave has undergone a stylistic revolution in the five short years since the genre broke into the underground with Macintosh Plus' Floral Shoppe, widely considered the genre's ur-text (ur-album? Ur-listen? Whatever.). Initially consecrated and characterized as a bizarre offshoot of plunderphonics (that is to say, music synthesized from existing samples cobbled together) with a sardonic anti-capitalist subtext, various producers and projects have latched onto both the genre's existence and its aesthetic, and, in the process, vaporwave has gone from loquacious inside-joke to a post-ironic genre into itself. The popularity of "Simpsonwave" last summer, which even prompted a Pitchfork article, is the ultimate proof that the genre has gone from vaguely unnerving slowed-down Donna Summer songs to something with broad appeal. More anecdotally, Blank Banshee, one of vaporwave's patron saints and the forerunner of the needlessly niche "vaportrap" sub-subgenre, sold out most shows during a North American tour earlier this summer, indicating that what some people dubbed the first "post-internet" genre is encountering a lively childhood.

Yet even as the genre grows in popularity and moves further away from its roots in sampling obscure 80s/90s muzak, there's another half to the equation, as a handful of underground projects push the genre to its experimental limits, dissecting the genre's aesthetic and technique. Among these latter explorers is Philadelphia project death's dynamic shroud.wmv (DDS). The project first came to my attention in 2015, with their record I'll Try Living Like This, which eschewed the sugary, sterile atmosphere of a vaporwave record with a more cloying, pervasive sense of tension, assisted by glitched-out production and an almost strident, urgent feel to the record's numerous songs. Two years later, DDS have released a new record, Heavy Black Heart which, while it lacks the ghostly unease of I'll Try Living Like This, provides an intriguing, multifaceted listen.

Heavy Black Heart's most striking features aren't the glitched-out vocals that seem to writhe and stammer on top of tight, compressed beats, nor is it the almost sound-collage-y assortment of samples that blast into being from the first few seconds of the record and continue at an off-kilter, irregular pace - all of those could be seen as a natural, albeit jarring, evolution of the repurposed elevator muzak of vaporwave's genesis. Rather, it's the record's mounting sense of chaos that builds and pervades every second of Heavy Black Heart, contrasted against the spic-and-span samples and throaty, Rick Astley-like vocal clips (albeit in Japanese).

Newer vaporwave outings have had a tendency to toy with ambient, immersing the listener in the strange, idyllic, self-contained microcosm that advertisements seem to exist in. 2814's Birth of a New Day, one of my favorite releases from 2015, nailed the sentiment perfectly, transporting the listener into a hazy, rainy Japanese late-night journey. This is not the case with DDS, and certainly not with Heavy Black Heart, whose glitchy production, especially the vaguely danceable 'Life Should Be Easy', forces a more cerebral experience. What's more, the release toys with that latter's ambience, with the delicate synth lines that open 'You at Night' being interspersed by gnawing noise and goofy, out-of-place vocals before exploding into a punishing, bass-driving, drawn-out beat. Ultimately, the song collapses in on itself, before re-igniting into the almost-industrial-tinted 'Pennington Acres'.

Heavy Black Heart isn't going to be making it into compilations of chill lo fi anime beats any time soon, but ultimately it represents a far more experimental take on the sample-based origins of the genre, representing a further refinement of its aesthetic, albeit in a warped, esoteric, and oftentimes gloriously cacophonous way. DDS have never made easy-to-listen music, but Heavy Black Heart is its most daring, experimental outing yet, and ultimately begs third and fourth listens in order to ply its deceptively deep crevasses.

[Thee] Oh Sees - Orc REVEW

Usually, I'd start a record review with a brief discussion of where this album fits into the overall stylistic evolution of a genre. But, unfortunately, that's not quite possible here. It might not occur to most people, but psychedelic rock is one of the longest-lived extant styles of rock music in total. With a genesis in the mid-to-late 1960s, psych rock outstripes even heavy metal, which in fact diverged from the former at the dawn of the 1970s. As such, placing a modern psych rock release into context in the nearly 55-year history of the genre is exceedingly difficult, since psych rock has been in a continuous state of evolution even as it has influenced every subsequent style of rock to come after. While that sounds like a nightmare for someone trying to write a retrospective of psych rock, it's actually incredibly freeing - the genre's monolithic influence and history are so diverse, so omnipresent, that almost any artist, band, or project purveying it can, in most cases, be considered in a near-vacumn, connected only to their direct influences.

Enter Oh Sees, formally with a "Thee" in front of their name, an exceedingly prolific psych rock act out of San Fransisco that have been putting out at least one record a year without fail since 2008. Orc, their thirteenth album in nine years, sees the band purveying breakneck, fuzzed-out rock riffs that competes with phantasmagoric interludes, during which the band toys with psychedelic arrangements. The interplay between both, reminiscent of Australian band King Gizzard and the Lizzard Wizzard, helps to break up the record's seeming endless barrage of top-tier riffs. Orc's first half is an angular, unpredictable listen that left me surprised on my first listen multiple times. The mid-track tempo-change on 'Keys to the Castle', where the band veers from mid-range groovy guitarwork into a much slower, drum-dominant section, and finally into a stoned raga-rock finale, nearly gave me whiplash.

Orc's second half, however, sees the band screeching to a halt abruptly, as 'Cadaver Dog' abruptly pulls the rug out from under the chugging riff-train, and the band recommences at a glacial pace. Penultimate track 'Drowned Beast' is the record at its most torpid, as the thick guitar leads grind to a near-halt, hashing out and repeating themselves, with vocalist John Dwyer's vocals adopt a liquid, distorted twist. 

As with prior [Thee] Oh Sees outings, the band runs the gamut of different styles, influences, tempos, feelings, and textures, tied together by vocalist John Dwyer's vocals, which veer between gruff grunts and more intimate crooning. Despite sounding uniquely like themselves, sections on 'Nite Expo' echo Melt Banana's frenetic, unhinged, distorted assault; Orc kicks off with a pop-y distorted guitar line in the vein of the aforementioned King Gizzard on 'the Static God'; and the drone-y conclusion to 'Keys to the Castle', as the sitars collapse in on themselves, brings Earth's later records to mind. 'Jettison', which features intricate drumwork courtesy of Paul Quattrone, features a nearly jazz-like break in between distorted guitar lead licks. 'Cadaver Dog', which sees a Hammond Organ form the backdrop against which the guitars rage, is another altogether unique case.

In summary, Orc brings the sonic variety [Thee] Oh Sees have been known for throughout their prolific career. Orc appeals equally to my metal-honed riff-o-philia, as well as my soft spot for jam-tinted psych explorations. Comparisons to King Gizzard's Nonagon Infinity may be unavoidable, but in the absence of a King Gizz record able to top last year's output, Orc may be one of the finest fuzz-addled psych release of the year.

Orc will be released August 25th via Castle Face Records. The entire album can be streamed here.