Featuring classic 1970s artwork by Sci-Fi god Bruce Pennington, “Hidden History of the Human Race” promises to be both a meditative inquiry on the Mystery & Nature of human consciousness, and a dynamic foray into the realms of progressive, brutal & atmospheric death metal, as revealed by BLOOD INCANTATION. Recorded completely analogue at World Famous Studios in Denver, CO, “Hidden History of the Human Race” expands the sonic cosmos explored on BLOOD INCANTATION’s critically acclaimed debut “Starspawn” (Dark Descent Records) and contains the following new tracks: 1. Slave Species of the Gods - 05:31 2. The Giza Power Plant - 07:06 3. Inner Paths (to Outer Space - 05:38 4. Awakening From the Dream of Existence to the Multidimensional Nature of Our Reality (Mirror of the Soul) - 18:05
To put it mildly, San Diego-based artist Kristin Hayter’s second album under the Lingua Ignota name is not for the faint of heart. (Her first, it’s maybe worth noting, is called *All Bitches Die*.) A dark communion of neoclassical strings, industrial atmospherics, and Hayter’s classically trained vibrato, *Caligula* is an arresting meditation on abuse, recovery, and revenge. The opening “Faithful Servant Friend of Christ” sets the album’s tone early, showcasing both Hayter’s stirring vocal range and the complex religious themes that underpin most songs. On the funereal “Do You Doubt Me Traitor,” she sharpens her lyrics into weapons, even enlisting the Devil himself as an ally in her personal war against her abuser and herself (“I don’t eat/I don’t sleep/I let it consume me/How do I break you/Before you break me?”). This is not an uplifting journey through trauma to peace, however—the strangled wails and purgative screams of “Butcher of the World” and “Day of Tears and Mourning” speak to a catharsis without resolution or relief, only riddance. It’s an exhilarating, intense, apocalyptic jeremiad told with disarming honesty and starkness.
“CALIGULA”, the new album from LINGUA IGNOTA set for release on July 19th on CD/2xLP/Digital through Profound Lore Records, takes the vision of Kristin Hayter’s vessel to a new level of grandeur, her purging and vengeful audial vision going beyond anything preceding it and reaching a new unparalleled sonic plane within her oeuvre. Succeeding her self-released 2017 “All Bitches Die” opus (re-released by Profound Lore Records in 2018), “CALIGULA” sees Hayter design her most ambitious work to date, displaying the full force of her talent as a vocalist, composer, and storyteller. Vast in scope and multivalent in its influences, with delivery nothing short of demonic, “CALIGULA” is an outsider’s opera; magnificent, hideous, and raw. Eschewing and disavowing genre altogether, Hayter builds her own world. Here she fully embodies the moniker Lingua Ignota, from the German mystic Hildegard of Bingen, meaning “unknown language” — this music has no home, any precedent or comparison could only be uneasily given, and there is nothing else like it in our contemporary realm. LINGUA IGNOTA has always taken a radical, unflinching approach to themes of violence and vengeance, and “CALIGULA” builds on the transformation of the survivor at the core of this narrative. “CALIGULA” embraces the darkness that closes in, sharpens itself with the cruelty it has been subjected to, betrays as it has been betrayed. It is wrath unleashed, scathing, a caustic blood-letting: “Let them hate me so long as they fear me,” Hayter snarls in a voice that ricochets from chilling raw power to agonizing vulnerability. Whilst “CALIGULA” is unapologetically personal and critically self-aware, there are broader themes explored; the decadence, corruption, depravity and senseless violence of emperor Caligula is well documented and yet still permeates today. Brimming with references and sly jabs, Hayter’s sardonic commentary on abuse of power and invalidation is deftly woven. Working closely with Seth Manchester at Machines With Magnets studio in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Hayter strips away much of the industrial and electronic elements of her previous work, approaching instead the corporeal intensity and intimate menace of her notorious live performances, achieved with unconventional recording techniques and sound sources, as well as a full arsenal of live instrumentation and collaborators including harsh noise master Sam McKinlay (THE RITA), visceral drummer Lee Buford (The Body) and frenetic percussionist Ted Byrnes (Cackle Car, Wood & Metal), with guest vocals from Dylan Walker (Full of Hell), Mike Berdan (Uniform), and Noraa Kaplan (Visibilities). “CALIGULA” is a massive work, a multi-layered epic that gives voice and space to that which has been silenced and cut out.
With their second album, Arizona death metal squad Gatecreeper would like to coin a phrase: Stadium death metal. “Our goal has always been to write catchy songs,” Gatecreeper vocalist and co-songwriter Chase Mason tells Apple Music. Like its 2016 predecessor, *Sonoran Depravation*, *Deserted* sees Mason taking lyrical inspiration from the blast-furnace temperatures and arid landscape of the band’s home state while indulging in some handy double meanings. Musically, he and guitarist and co-songwriter Eric Wagner take cues from Swedish death metal masters like Entombed and Dismember while incorporating unlikely sludge and funeral doom influences. Here Mason takes us track by track through *Deserted*. **Deserted** “I wrote this song with the purpose of it being the intro track. It’s got a D-beat-type chorus on it, which is something we\'ve never done before; usually we\'re doing verses faster and then the chorus slows down a little bit. This is the opposite. And there’s a riff on there I was jokingly calling ‘the Papa Roach riff’—for some reason, it reminds me of their song ‘Last Resort.’ And for the first time in any Gatecreeper song, it has two guitar solos trading off. Nate \[Garrett\] does a solo and then Eric does a solo. The lyrics and title are pretty literal—about the end of mankind and apocalyptic sorts of themes.” **Puncture Wounds** “This is a song that started out as an Eric song and then it kind of became a collaboration. It has a cool dive-bomb intro, a very Slayer sort of thing. I wanted to try to incorporate some Freddy Madball into the vocal performance, so it’s a hardcore-influenced chorus. And then the second half is very Dismember *Massive Killing Capacity* with a super Iron Maiden harmonized lead, which I think is cool. When we were writing it, we thought, ‘This is the circle pit song.’ Lyrically, it’s a more of a traditional horror/violence Cannibal Corpse kind of thing. It’s basically just about stabbing somebody.” **From the Ashes** “This is another mostly-Eric banger. It’s definitely more melodic for us. I know it’s influenced by Amon Amarth and bands like that, so we went full melodic on a lot of the parts—way more than we usually do. For the lyrics, it’s sort of motivational: It’s about overcoming difficulties, getting rid of things that are holding you back and facing your fears head-on. So I think that’s something people could relate to.” **Ruthless** “For this one, I tried to write the most simple song that I could. Riff-wise, I wanted to use as few frets as possible and see what I came up with. So it’s super Obituary- and Celtic Frost-influenced. There’s also some different kind of Motörhead double-bass beats on there. The part at the end is like the push-pit part, where people are going to take their shirts off and push each other around. It’s fun to write songs with that in mind. Lyrically, I’d say this is the dirt-doer’s anthem. It’s about committing crimes, basically—just not giving a fuck and doing what you want.” **Everlasting** “This was one of the first songs I wrote for the album. The stuff I write tends to be kind of more murky, atonal death metal stuff, so this one was definitely influenced by that—and a lot of Finnish death metal. I do this kind of black-metal yell in the middle of the song, which is something I’ve never done before. I just tried it in the studio and everyone was like, ‘Yeah, we gotta keep that!’ And then it has a part at the end that’s like a New York death metal slam part. The lyrics are about a higher power or some sort of supreme force—something that’s bigger than me and you—but it’s intentionally vague.” **Barbaric Pleasures** “This is an Eric song. It’s very catchy, very Carcass/Dismember-influenced. To me, it’s almost kind of poppy-sounding at times while still being death metal. It has a kind of groove to it, and I think it\'s a really cool song. On our last album, I did a death metal love song, ‘Rotting as One,’ so I wanted to keep that theme going lyrically. But this isn’t necessarily a love song—the lyrics are just about fucking, I guess. It’s a very horny song. It’s like a cool, obscene version of a love song.” **Sweltering Madness** “We initially released this song as a single \[in 2017\], and then re-recorded it for this record. It’s not too much different than the original, but I think the vocals are a little bit different—not lyrically, but performance-wise, because I think I’ve improved since the last time we recorded it. Lyrically, it has a typical Gatecreeper heat and desert sort of theme. It’s about having the heat boil your brains to the point where you go insane and lose control. It’s kind of a desert anthem.” **Boiled Over** “Eric mostly wrote this one, but we collaborated on it and it’s definitely got a Bolt Thrower influence. It just sounds like a tank rolling towards you. Then, in the bridge part, it kinda sounds like Crowbar. We wanted to incorporate that into the death metal formula, which I don’t think a lot of bands are doing. This song could also be interpreted as having a desert theme, but what I was really going for in the lyrics was more of the idea of being angry or resentful and letting it boil over until you explode—or like a fire inside that eventually burns you to death.” **In Chains** “This is another song that Eric came up with the idea for, but then we collaborated. I want to say it almost has some Six Feet Under or Jungle Rot influence, as far as the verses. The chorus has some cool melodies, but it’s not *too* melodic. Vocally, I tried to do the Cannibal Corpse, more traditional death metal sort of style. And then Eric actually helped me write some of the lyrics. He sent me an article about that sex cult that the girl from *Smallville* was in—NXIVM, I think it’s called. So the song is about this idea about the leader of a sex cult branding the members and having them almost as slaves.” **Absence of Light** “Eric came up with the first riff for this, and I thought it sounded really sad. I’d been wanting to do a slower death/doom sort of song to end the record—the same way we did on the last one. So I took what he had and wrote the rest of it. It’s basically funeral doom, but in the Gatecreeper style. It’s slower than what we usually do, and there’s a part in there with a three-part guitar harmony, which we’ve never done before. There’s also a little bit of keyboards in there that Nate played. The lyrics I think are on par with the music—I just wrote about depression and suicide. I thought it was fitting to have the album end with a funeral.”
GATECREEPER return with their highly anticipated new album Deserted. The new album, a furious mix of snarling guitars and driving, rhythmic pummeling takes death metal from its 80's Floridian roots and 90's Swedish expansion straight into the here and now. In fact, the vanguard of death metal in 2019 can be found under Arizona’s searing sun. That’s where GATECREEPER members—Chase Mason, guitarist Eric Wagner, bassist Sean Mears, drummer Matt Arrebollo and guitarist Nate Garrett—make their homes. Of course, the band nodded to their scorching home state with the title of their 2016 full-length debut, Sonoran Depravation. The theme continues on Deserted, which boasts songs like “Sweltering Madness,” “Boiled Over” and the double-meaning title track. You can hear the results on “From The Ashes,” a crushing cut primed for the European festival circuit. Over on side two, “Boiled Over” fuses classic BOLT THROWER with the pulverizing power grooves of sludge titans CROWBAR. Album closer “Absence Of Light” upholds GATECREEPER's tradition of finishing their records with a deathly doom dirge. Deserted was recorded at Homewrecker Studios in Tucson, where GATECREEPER co-produced the album with engineer Ryan Bram. CONVERGE guitarist Kurt Ballou handled the mix at Godcity in Salem, MA, and Brad Boatright mastered the album at Audiosiege in Portland, OR. Deserted’s hallucinatory cover art was created by Brad Moore (TOMB MOLD, MORPHEUS DESCENDS, and more.)
CRYPT SERMON return with their highly anticipated new album, “The Ruins of Fading Light”! A follow up to 2015's critically acclaimed debut "Out of the Garden", "The Ruins of Fading Light" is a collection of existential meditations set to the backdrop of looming, apocryphal vestiges from a lost dark age. The lyrics explore the limits of faith and family, life and loss, strength and pride. Between thundering riffs and plaintive moments of acoustics, the music explores new territories on the landscape of epic doom and heavy metal. Still, one message echos as Crypt Sermon march onward, "We're doomed."
Hallucinogen begins a new era for BLUT AUS NORD, ending the cycle of clandestine industrialised dissonance that culminated with previous transmission Deus Salutis Meae and moving skyward into freshly melodic territories of progressive clarity. Interweaving dreamlike choirs, inimitable harmonic developments, reflective clean guitars, palpable organic drumming and a welcome rock and roll swagger, Hallucinogen is a spacious, emotionally wide-ranging record that finds BLUT AUS NORD more open than ever, full of life and revelling in the element of surprise. Hallucinogen is yet another coherent universe from a band who have moved away from familiar tropes, aesthetics and comfort zones to unite - with Dionysian spirit - under/overland, surface/void, metropolis/mountain and the vastness of the mind’s eye into an indispensable addition to their unparalleled body of work.
Flashback to 2017: Spirit Adrift dropped its 2nd LP ‘Curse Of Conception’ via 20 Buck Spin, a huge step forward following the debut, landing at #2 in Decibel Magazine’s best albums of the year and carving out a sound now patently its own. Lazily labelled Doom by some, the band is in fact the true representation of what modern Heavy Metal should be, a direct descendent of the widely-appealing arena-filling superstars of the ‘80s and ‘90s without a whiff of anachronistic cosplay fantasies. Spirit Adrift’s third album ‘Divided By Darkness’ delivers on the promise first revealed on ‘Curse Of Conception’ and then advances far beyond it in every way achieving a timeless album for the ages. First single ‘Hear Her’ pummels with the concise urgency and unforgettable chorus of a vital radio hit while ‘Angel & Abyss’ has the classic progression that leads from reflective ballad to rapturous anthemic triumph. The continued evolution of Nathan Garrett as a top vocal talent in modern Heavy Metal shines through amidst the masterful musicianship and huge production value engineered by Sanford Parker. Among the many stylistic divergences within rock and metal, Spirit Adrift’s ‘Divided By Darkness’ understands that there is no substitute for huge ambition, soul-bearing lyricism and most importantly the ability of a pristinely penned riff and impassioned chorus to alter hearts and minds. Astonishingly ‘Divided By Darkness’ is Spirit Adrift’s heaviest and most accessible album to date and will stand as the apex of Heavy Metal songcraft in 2019.
False return with the most pivotal record of their career, "Portent". A redefining of the extreme underground, "Portent" sees the band harness their shared experiences of pain and loss, and use that energy to create a truly monumental album for American Black Metal that is expansive, wholly engrossing, daring, and above all, honest and genuine. 4 tracks span the width and scope of the band's approach to the genre. The defining trait of the band reveals itself from the onset; the urgency in "Portent" is palpable.
FULL OF HELL make their Relapse debut with their most explosive album to date, Weeping Choir. Dynamic, pissed, and wholly urgent, the highly anticipated Weeping Choir is a definitive statement of intent by one of the underground’s most dynamic and virulent entities. FULL OF HELL have once again culled the extreme elements from hardcore, metal, and power electronics to redefine darkness and sheer brutality. Distorted guitars, and ominous, disparate electronics grind and gnash against rapid-fire drumming, as FULL OF HELL take themes of religion, loss, hatred, and set them ablaze. Recorded by the critically acclaimed Kurt Ballou at GodCity Studio, Weeping Choir sees FULL OF HELL fully unleashed. Abrasive, confrontational, none equal!
Vinyl, CD, and cassette available at mizmor(dot)bigcartel(dot)com (link in side panel). -------------------------- "Cairn" is an emotional exploration of the absurdity of life - man's constant search for meaning in a chaotic universe devoid of an ultimate purpose. This absurd premise prompts the individual to choose between a leap of faith into an ultimate purpose, suicide, or acceptance of reality. "Cairn" asserts that there is but one viable option, acceptance, and that one must build monuments to the other two as guide posts forbidding return. It declares that one must revolt and live in the present face of this absurdity and create in enjoyment the meaning necessary for life. From A.L.N.: ""Cairn" clocks in at just under one hour of new original music. I recorded the album over the course of three months in my home studio. I took the long way, sparing no expense or detail in my recording. I sought to take the project to a new territory tonally, starting with my education. I won't get into too much detail lest I bore the majority of you, so I will leave it simple: this is the highest resolution recording of the most thoroughly written and rehearsed Mizmor material there's ever been. I was purposefully the pickiest I've ever been with myself at all stages of this album's production and coming through the other side, I'm extremely happy with the result. I'm incredibly honored and thrilled to again have worked with Sonny DiPerri and Adam Gonsalves). Together, the three of us crafted the sound of "Yodh" and have now taken "Cairn" well beyond the prior's sonic limits. I am also floored by the final product of the extremely personal commissioned painting by Mariusz Lewandowski. Continuing in the vein of the polish surrealist master, Beksinski, Lewandowski has beautifully interpreted the theme's of "Cairn" into his painting "Time Immemorial," which sprawls to grace both covers of the album."
THE NORWEGIAN BLACK METAL LEGENDS MARK THEIR RETURN WITH A SUBLIME NEW SLAB OF RELENTLESS RIFFING IN THE TRUE SPIRIT OF THE UNDERGROUND Over the course of 30 years, Norway’s Darkthrone has become a staple of the global black metal genre, forging a legacy as one of the most renowned and influential bands in its illustrious & often infamous history. In their formative years, Darkthrone initially started making their mark with a strong concoction of thrash & then death/doom metal experimentation, before the debut album ‘Soulside Journey’ was unleashed in 1991. Never ones to follow convention or stand still even then, the band soon embraced a much darker, more primitive form of expression with the now iconic second album ‘A Blaze in the Northern Sky’, & the rest became history. Now the longstanding duo of Fenriz and Nocturno Culto return with their first studio album since 2016’s hugely popular ‘Arctic Thunder’ opus, in the shape of ‘Old Star’. With a mastery and endless dedication to the art of the riff, the Norwegian legends cut through 6 new epic tracks, taking in the best of the old school of heavy & extreme metal plus a large dose of doom-laden riffing, & channelling it through the grime of the underground. Engineering and production duties were all carried out by vocalist/guitarist Nocturno Culto, complemented with a perfectly organic mix courtesy of Sanford Parker (Voivod) at Hypercube Studios, & mastered once more by Jack Control at Enormous Door. The stellar cover artistry comes courtesy of Chadwick St John, titled “The Shepherd of the Deep”.
To all lone wolves & leftovers outthere who still worship the long forgotten maxim: -black metal shall be gruesome, ugly and cold- this truly is for you! Nearly 5 years after the release of the succesful “The Archer Takes Aim” debut, the new Funereal Presence album named „Achatius“ finally will be unleashed on february 15th, 2019. A grand intonation of a grotesque vision of fey faith that exhales the spirit and the feeling of a long forgotten era. Funereal Presence again ignores all fashion, trends & stereotypes but truly invokes an archaic beast with a new terrible face, sharp claws and insatiable hunger... and a stiff middle finger. „Achatius“ is an elder vision of sound, performance, thematics & presentation the titan bands once had before the `market´ started to explode, and the ingenuity, idiosyncrasy and danger in the movement started to implode. Funereal Presence is synonymous with pure fucking obsession for the core of black metal and beyond and „Achatius“ is the result of setting a determined focus on translating the pulsating darkness into tones and rhythm. Bestial Devotion once said: „ I do the music that no one does for me anymore“. No more words needed.
As longtime critics of human behavior, Cattle Decapitation once offered a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Humankind: The greatest natural disaster of all time.” Such is the theme of the San Diego death metal squad’s eighth album, *Death Atlas*, an interlude-laden extremity featuring contributions from an international cast of musicians including Riccardo Conforti of Void Of Silence, Laure Le Prunenec of Igorrr, Dis Pater of Midnight Odyssey, and, naturally, Jon Fishman of Phish. “This album is about how we’re an extremely destructive species,” Cattle Decapitation vocalist Travis Ryan tells Apple Music. “We’re like flies on a carcass. It’s an extremely pessimistic and sad record.” Below, Ryan takes us track by track through *Death Atlas*. **Anthropogenic: End Transmission** “The intro music is a collaboration we did with Riccardo Conforti from a phenomenal band called Void Of Silence from Rome. The transmission is meant to symbolize humanity’s place in the universe. At the end, it cancels out—the End Transmission—because we’ve been destroyed. We had to get clearance from NASA to use the sample that’s in this. It’s the 55 languages of planet Earth, taken from the Golden Record that’s on the Voyager space probe that was sent out in the late ’70s. The lady at NASA was super cool and we got everything cleared. It’s by far the best intro we’ve ever had on an album.” **The Geocide** “I came up with the title before we even had the song to go with it. I have an ongoing list of probably 150 song titles that aren’t even used yet—I’ve had it for years. With ‘The Geocide,’ I was thinking it’s weird that no one’s ever used it before. It’s not even a real word, I don’t think, but any idiot can look at it and figure out what it means: the destruction and death of a planet. So the song is basically talking about what’s happening on the album cover.” **Be Still Our Bleeding Hearts** “I actually went into this one wanting to call out people like myself. I don’t want to get into politics or anything, but I think it’s fair to say that I’m left-leaning. I can’t be considered a bleeding-heart liberal, though—I just have too many fucked-up ideas and thoughts on life. But to me, that’s true liberalism. You have to take everything into consideration. But that’s not what’s happening \[in the world\] right now. People are staying on their own side and not really wanting to hear anybody out. So the song is basically just saying, ‘Chill out. We\'re not really worth it.’” **Vulturous** “This started out as a song about being very angry at certain people in our lives, but it took a different turn. I like the idea that we\'re vultures. It’s another way of explaining the human condition. This was also the first song where I started getting poetic in the lyric writing, which I didn\'t really see coming. I didn\'t go into this going, ‘I\'m going to be all Johnny Poetic’—it just ended up being this way, and I had a lot more fun with it.” **The Great Dying** “This interlude has my sister on it. She’s awesome—she quit her job and sailed the Pacific Ocean with her husband for about a year. She comes home, trying to figure out what to do for a job, and she just wakes up one day and goes, ‘You know what? I’m going to get into voice-over.’ And she did. Within six months, she’s making insane money, makes her own hours, and I couldn’t be more proud of her. For this, I wanted her to sound robotic, like a computer, and she completely nailed it. Then I did all the synthesizer stuff myself. It’s neat to be able to collaborate with your sister on a death metal release.” **One Day Closer to the End of the World** “I was looking through some old paperwork from when I was in kindergarten and doing bad in school. I was hyper and distracted, and they were trying to figure out what was wrong with me. It was the ’80s, with Ritalin hysteria and all that, and I was diagnosed with ADHD. I saw this analysis from the therapist, and one of the things he said, which still rings true today at age 45, is, ‘Travis sees each day as an opportunity for failure.’ That really bummed me out, because I realized I\'m still that way. So that\'s where this song actually came from. It’s like the extreme metal version of therapy, but in a very pessimistic way.” **Bring Back the Plague** “So we put this song out and of course there’s all these keyboard warriors going, ‘The plague never went away—look at China!’ Dude, I know. The song is supposed to be cheeky. There\'s a concurrent thing, while we\'re dealing with really sad topics or very important topics, there’s always a tablespoon or so of tongue-in-cheek-ness to it. I think that comes from me being the class clown, but it’s also a coping mechanism. I like to throw some comedy in there to try and cover as many dynamics in the spectrum of human behavior and thought as possible. But yeah, the plague never exactly left. It’s just not taking out millions of people anymore.” **Absolute Destitute** “This was originally going to be called ‘Despair Porn,’ but the entire band fought me on it. I can’t remember a time when I wrote a song title or a lyric and everybody unanimously went, ‘You’re *not* going to fucking call it that.’ They were like, ‘Dude, we can’t have a serious song with the word “porn” in the title.’ I think they’re crazy, but I get it. Anyway, this is a song about how our behavior seems to suggest that we are obsessed with destruction, or that we’re in love with being sad or being depressed or having a problem. It’s like we’re getting off on it.” **The Great Dying II** “This is literally part two of the first ‘Great Dying’—the same text was used, but this time it’s me and a vocoder, and I’m doing some more synths. I went for a slightly different feel on this. I like noise and ambient stuff and just brought a little more weirdness to it. It ends with a really cool clincher statement, too: ‘Annihilation is necessary.’ These interludes will also double as filler during live shows so I don’t have to talk to the crowd—because I honestly don’t like it. I’m not good at being a hype guy.” **Finish Them** “This is a fun one—this is the album’s ‘Forced Gender Reassignment,’ I guess you could say. It’s a heavier song, and I did some really weird vocals on it that I’ve never done before. It’s just a brutal beatdown, talking about purging everything with fire, just deleting everything. So it’s a very angry song, but it also has a bit of a funny vibe to it. One of the lyrics is ‘We fuck biology’s eye sockets, we skull-fuck futures for our profits.’ It’s just talking about how ridiculous we are.” **With All Disrespect** “This is just a very point-blank call-out to the human race—with certain people in mind, but we won’t really get into that. I’ve never been a fan of hardcore or punk because I’ve always felt it was too blatant and too ‘Fuck the government—oi!’ There’s not enough art in there for me, I guess. But I fall into that trap sometimes, too. So this song is just me being pissed off.” **Time\'s Cruel Curtain** “This song is about how time is actually our enemy, and it doesn’t give a shit. It’s static, there’s no changing it, and it doesn’t give a fuck about you and your feelings. In that way, it’s rather cruel. And the curtain is the actual closing of your life, of any person’s life, whether it’s all of humanity or one single person. It’s one of our more...I hate to say pretty, because we’re talking about extreme death metal...but it’s 2019—come on. It’s one of the more emotional songs on the album.” **The Unerasable Past** “So this is actually Jon Fishman from the band Phish talking on this one. He’s a big Cattle fan, which still trips me out, because that dude has sold out Madison Square Garden three nights in a row. He came to see us maybe 10 or 11 years ago—it was \[drummer\] Dave \[McGraw\]’s first tour with us. He saw Dave playing and his jaw dropped. Then he bought our record and looked into what we were about, and now he’s seen us a bunch of times, which blows my mind. So we gave him this text to read, which he recorded out at his place in Maine, under the night sky—you can hear crickets in the background. He ad-libbed a little line at the end which is very Phish, very psychedelic. And we got the dude from Midnight Odyssey, this very obscure Australian one-man band, to do the music. It just fell right the fuck into place.” **Death Atlas** “Whereas ‘Geocide’ is the actual act of destruction, ‘Death Atlas’ is the aftermath, the conclusion. It has the longest fucking fade-out ever—the fade-out is longer than half our discography. I went into this song saying, ‘Guys, I want that feeling like your dog just died. Just utter despair.’ Why? I don’t know. Maybe I just don’t see it being done in extreme music. But it’s a side that we all share and maybe don’t show. The track ends with this lady, Laure Le Prunenec from Igorrr, this phenomenal operatic singer, basically giving you goosebumps.”
Purchase: gileadmedia.net gileadmedia.bandcamp.com/album/patterns-in-mythology The 5th full-length from Falls of Rauros, titled "Patterns in Mythology," is both an expansion upon what was explored on "Vigilance Perennial" and a detour towards another direction entirely. Engineered, mixed, and mastered by Colin Marston at Menegroth, this record became both the heaviest and the most intricately detailed in the band's career without forsaking the foundations the band is built upon; black metal operating in tandem with a melody more often heard in the folk and rock spheres. Thematically "Patterns in Mythology" touches upon the repeated failures of humanity, the subsequent rejection of human myth, and the uncertainty and vulnerability that follows. Engineered, mixed and mastered by Colin Marston at Menegroth, The Thousand Caves, Dec. 2018 - January 2019 All music composed, arranged, and performed by Falls of Rauros “Sunlight on the Coast,” “High Cliff, Coast of Maine,” and “Early Morning After a Storm at Sea” by Winslow Homer (1836-1910) Layout & design by Falls of Rauros Falls of Rauros is: Evan / Ray / Jordan / Aaron
Richmond's INTER ARMA, reigning masters of the slow build, continue to trace a distinctly ambitious trajectory through modern metal. Their impulses tend toward the epic, but never bloat; they meld several styles — doom, sludge, and hard psych — without coming off like dilettantes. This newest full-length, Sulphur English, finds them mining deeper in the proggy organic doom fields that made both Paradise Gallows and Sky Burial so thrilling while expanding further the on the psych-folk strain that made those albums' peaks seem so lofty. Few metal bands have ever made such effective use of acoustic instruments in truly heavy environments as INTER ARMA do; the acoustic guitar that stitches "Stillness" together is as effective as any overdriven bass; a two-minute gloomy piano-and-feedback piece titled "Observances of the Path" rolls out the carpet for "The Atavist's Meridian," an album highlight that rides a gigantic, roomy drum sound into realms akin to a murkier Paradise Lost, a more aggressive Om, and a dreamier, more stoned Kylesa all playing together at once. Few bands make music as engrossing as INTER ARMA; their lengthy, almost meditative songs rumble patiently forward until you're ready to get thrown off a bridge — and then they throw you, with great force. - Words by John Darnielle
NO ONE KNOWS WHAT THE DEAD THINK: Rob Marton - Guitars, Bass (ex Discordance Axis) Kyosuke Nakano - Drums (ex Cohol) Jon Chang - Vocals (ex Discordance Axis) The definitive ending to the piloted bullet hell grind album series started in 1992, No One Knows What the Dead Think documents eight original stages plus a hard reboot of the Discordance Axis stage Dominion
For their 13th album, Swedish metal titans Opeth did something they’d never done before: They recorded two versions—one in English, one in Swedish. But if you’re hoping for a deep, meaningful reason behind it, you’ll be sorely disappointed. “There is no why,” vocalist, guitarist, and bandleader Mikael Åkerfeldt tells Apple Music. “For the most part, I don\'t know why I do things. The lyrics are very spontaneous and impulsive. I don\'t sit around pondering. The decision was made in the car, taking my daughters to school. It doesn\'t sound cool. I wish I could say I was at the top of a mountain, that I’d just climbed Mount Everest. But I was in my old Volvo.” Meaning or not, there are plenty of layers to *In Cauda Venenum*, a Latin phrase meaning “the poison is in the tail.” “I want music that you can play over and over again and always discover new things,” he says. Below, Åkerfeldt talks through each track on Opeth\'s most dramatic, diverse album to date. **Garden of Earthly Delights** “We used to open our concerts with a piece by a German band, Popol Vuh, who wrote scores for a lot of Werner Herzog films. It’s from *Nosferatu*, one of my favorite films of all time. We used it for many years, and when the guy who wrote it, Florian Fricke, passed away, the publishing was taken over by his son, who wanted a lot of money from us. I wrote ‘Garden of Earthly Delights’ trying to almost rip them off—to get something that sounded like Popol Vuh, but it\'s ours. It’s supposed to pull the listener into the record, as if you’re about to hear something special.” **Dignity** “When I was working on this piece, I knew I needed something here. I found a speech by Olof Palme, this colorful, controversial politician who led the Social Democratic Party from the ’60s until he was killed. It’s a New Year’s speech to the nation. There’s no political agenda. It’s basically about concerns about the future, the turning of the year. I knew I needed it, but of course you can\'t just put it out or you’d get sued. Eventually I got the number of one of Palme’s sons. I explained what we were doing and sent him a demo. He replied a few days later, saying that it was a beautiful presentation of his dad. Out of all the samples that we had, that was the one I wanted to get cleared the most.” **Heart in Hand** “I wanted a song that began sounding chaotic, but feels calm and nostalgic by the end, like the sun is shining. It sounds straightforward, but it’s written in a weird time signature. I was inspired by pop songs written in odd signatures, like Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights.’ Obviously, being Swedish, I grew up with ABBA, but I rediscovered them in the middle of our career and had this epiphany with their music. I heard it differently to when I was a child, when they were just big pop songs. Now, it’s like, ‘My god, it\'s genius.’” **Next of Kin** “The working title for this one was ‘Floyd’—as in Pink Floyd. I was trying to emulate Syd Barrett during the opening part. It took about 10 seconds until I realized that\'s a bad working title—it doesn\'t sound anything like Floyd. It escalated into something that almost sounds like a Broadway musical. People could almost dance to it on a stage.” **Lovelorn Crime** “I wanted to do something heartfelt and beautiful and big, with a nice guitar solo at the end courtesy of Fredrik \[Åkesson\]. I remember playing that song to both my girls, and \[prolific Canadian musician\] Devin Townsend, who was staying at my place one night. He just went, \'I love that one. I love it.’ If you like ballads, especially our type of ballads, you\'ll probably love this song.” **Charlatan** “Both myself and Fredrik played bass for this song; there are no actual guitars on it. We brought the kids into the studio—Fredrik’s daughter and my two—and we asked them big questions. ‘Who is God?’ ‘What happens when you die?’ It was the first time I’d heard them say anything on those subjects—I don’t talk to them about God because I don\'t believe in God. And I edited it because I wanted it to sound eerie and spooky, not cute. But of course it still sounds very cute to me. It’s my children!” **Universal Truth** “This was the first one we finished, and it sounded nice, but there were so many parts in the song, and it didn\'t really make sense to me. So I basically rewrote it, and now it sounds like a prog-rock musical. I really like it.” **The Garroter** “This one could have been absolute shit. When we try a different genre to the one we\'re comfortable in, we want it to sound as authentic as possible. I want to sound like a jazz band, not like some metal guys trying to play jazz. And I wanted it to sound dark, with lots of strings, which is a major part of the whole record. I presented it to the guys in the band and thought they were going to hate it, but they didn’t. I especially remember our bass player—he sat up straight and got really, really excited about how much stuff he could do with this song. Oddly enough, the people that have heard it, even some of the more hardcore metal fans, seem to like this song the most.” **Continuum** “I’m really happy with this song because it’s so different; there are weird chords I never usually use, like major chords. I\'m careful with major chords. I don\'t think I\'ve written anything like it before. The ending really came out nicely too.” **All Things Will Pass** “Out of all the songs, we decided early that it was going to be the last one. I wanted something really heartfelt and epic, with a magical touch. Honestly, I\'m not always a fan of my own music. I like it, but it’s a different thing to me. The songs are not going to open up to me like they hopefully will for other people. But I knew what I wanted with this song, and to me, it’s almost perfect. You never know if you\'re going to do more records. If this is the last record for us—not that I’m saying it is—then this is a nice way to end it.”
Swiss black metal vanguards SCHAMMASCH return with their brand new album 'Hearts Of No Light’, which lays its foundation in the heights of their past work whilst presenting their most flowing and organic approach to date - jet-black at its core whilst vast and expansive in experimentation.
3rd lp released 3/29/2019 - cheaper to buy from the label 20buckspin.com
By now, Savannah, Georgia, metal band Baroness is down to one original member—singer/guitarist and album cover artist extraordinaire John Baizley—and based in Philadelphia. But the steady turnover during the past decade and a half hasn\'t made Baroness feel any less cohesive or consistent. Their fifth full-length album throws in a few stylistic changes (the post-rock interludes “Assault on East Falls” and “Sevens,” the hushed acoustic guitars comprising the first minute of “Tourniquet,” and “Blankets of Ash,” which is a little bit of each) but is as much of an endpoint for the band as it is a springboard. Baizley has said this will be the last Baroness album to be named after colors, an overarching concept that stretches back to 2007\'s *Red Album*. Whatever that portends, it won\'t be due to a lack of ideas. Frantic pulse-quickeners like “Throw Me an Anchor,” “Seasons,” and “Broken Halo” sit alongside the beat-heavy, atmospheric “I\'m Already Gone,” which Baizley himself has described as “Massive Attack meets TLC\'s \'Waterfalls.\'”
Toxic 2.0 detonates like doomsday all over Primal Future: 2019, an ambitious new mission statement from the man whose guiding forces remain Discharge, Megadeth, Venom, English Dogs, Nuclear Assault, D.R.I., and G.B.H., all juiced by the unrelenting, feverish, urgent power of a modern metal trailblazer. A dystopian technological takeover drives the album thematically, but the passionately delivered music is vintage Toxic Holocaust, taking things all the way back to the band’s early origins. “When I started the band in 1999 I never imagined I’d still be doing it in 2019,” Grind explains. “I took everything I learned over the last twenty years and used it even as I rewound back to where it started. I recorded Primal Future by myself, even playing drums again, like the early days. I won’t alienate my fans and I also won’t just pander to them. This album bridges the gaps between every era of Toxic Holocaust.”
"Candlemass have come full circle: their first singer Johan Langquist (who left the band after singing on the legendary 1986 debut Epicus Doomicus Metallicus) has returned! The Door To Doom unsurprisingly follows the plotline mastermind, songwriter and bass player Leif Edling established in the past years: epic world class doom metal that relies on slow mammoth riffing. With Johan Langquist`s highly dramatic vocal style and the love for details, the band made this album to the next “Epicus”. This masterpiece is rounded off by a beautiful guest appearance by none other than Black Sabbath`s Tony Iommi on ‘Astorolus – The Great Octopus‘." © NAPALM RECORDS
VASTUM’s Orificial Purge offers a distinctive blend of sinister atmosphere, punishing brutality, and an unparalleled lyrical and visual imagery that traces connections between perversion, mortification, and "an abyssal mysticism of sin." Elements from previous albums are preserved on Orificial Purge, but they are evolved and devolved at once. The usual mid-paced dirge and cave-dwelling riffs are intertwined with slicing melodic dissonance and a celestial frenzy in the solos and the leads, all of which is set against the background of a bulldozing rhythm section. The dual vocal and lyrical exorcisms of Daniel Butler and Leila Abdul-Rauf combine to deliver unsettling, dichotomous meditations on “abjection as life, life as tragedy, and tragedy as an eviscerating, eroticized rapture through which an evil and useless humanity comes into being.” With its members playing in Acephalix, Necrot, Ulthar, Mortuous, Ionophore, Cardinal Wyrm, Fyrhtu, and others, the band’s dedication to their craft is showcased throughout the underground. After three standout albums over the course of the last eight years, the effect of VASTUM’s influence has by now seeped into the wider death metal scene, leaving an indelible mark due to their singular amalgam of aural primitivism and aesthetic originality. Their most markedly refined and tortured oblation to date, Orificial Purge represents the dominant return of VASTUM, a death-doom band driven by the horrors of psychic and corporeal life. Recorded with Greg Wilisonson (Necrot, Nightfell, Ulthar) at Earhammer Studios, and visually represented by the brooding abstraction of San Francisco artist Laina Terpstra, Orificial Purge is one of the year’s most vicious and hypnotic LPs. Fans of Bolt Thrower, Undergang, Autopsy, Necrot, Asphyx, Mortuous, Tomb Mold, and Scorched are orificially summoned to take note. LP / CD / TAPE AVAILABLE THROUGH 20 BUCK SPIN
'Times of Obscene Evil and Wild Daring' is the debut full-length by epic heavy metal band Smoulder. Released by Cruz del Sur Music. Recorded at The Lincoln County Social Club & Swift Road Studios Mixed and Mastered by Arthur Rizk Cover Art by Michael Whelan www.michaelwhelan.com Love Metal | Hate Fascism ________________________ "Remember that scene in The Return of the King when Éowyn whips her helmet off, snarls “I am no man!” and blows up the Witch-king of Angmar’s fucking head? Smoulder’s debut album sounds the way that scene feels. Its six tracks of chugging, solo-ripping vocal-soaring capital-m Metal both pay loving tribute to the history of epic doom and inject new life (and tons of catchiness) into the genre’s most niche-and-nerdy caverns. Somewhere in the Halls of Mandos, Ronnie James Dio smiles on these Canadian upstarts. " - Decibel Magazine, Top 40 of 2019 "What we’ve got here is metal of the dragon-slaying, ass-kicking, stick-to-your-ribs variety, packed full of solos that cleave and chug, vocals that glide and soar, and arrangements that stampede on and on miles." - Bandcamp Daily; This Week’s Essential Releases "The band is brilliant.. sounding as comfortable playing at an Iron Maiden gallop as they are at a Candlemass crawl." - Bandcamp Daily; The Best Metal on Bandcamp April 2019 "Canadian newcomers Smoulder play one of my favorite traditional metal varietals: epic doom, of the sort we rarely hear performed at this level, except by cult acts like Atlantean Kodex, Reverend Bizarre, Scald, and Solstice." - Stereogum "Let’s say there are two types of bands inspired by Black Sabbath: the kind that love Ozzy Osbourne’s drugged out “Sweet Leaf”, and the kind that like Ronny James Dio’s epic “Sign of the Southern Cross.” OK, there’s way more than two types of bands that mine that creative vein, but the point is, Toronto’s Smoulder are the latter." - Consequence of Sound "Times of Obscene Evil and Wild Daring brings to mind epic doom outfits like Gates of Slumber and Khemmis. Whereas those acts just used mythological trappings, though, Smoulder don’t hesitate to go full fantasy." - MetalSucks "[A] six-track masterpiece... Spun from the musical clothe that gave life to Black Sabbath and Dio." - Maehem Underground Media "The epic dork doom album of the year." - Toilet Ov Hell Smoulder "paint evocative pictures, sometimes of grim atmosphere and some others of heroic deeds, instantly transferring the listener to the Mythical & Magical world of their lyrics." - Ride Into Glory "Powerful as an elder mage’s magic.” - Everything is Noise
Philadelphia's DEVIL MASTER stake their claim as one of the most venomous, twisted entities in the underground with their hellish debut, Satan Spits on Children of Light. The album, recorded, mixed, and mastered by Arthur Rizk (POWER TRIP, MAMMOTH GRINDER, OUTER HEAVEN, and more,) rattles the very gates of hell with a vile dose of black metal-infused punk mayhem. Commanding the steel of VENOM, the fury of BATHORY's earliest years, and the raw, uncompromising nature of the notorious GISM, Satan Spits on Children of Light sees DEVIL MASTER emerge from the grave and reach new blasphemous heights. Give in to the Satanic panic and obey your DEVIL MASTER!