“Our main lyrical concern is just writing about death—not necessarily dying or anything being killed, but shit about dead stuff.” That’s what Undeath guitarist and main lyricist Kyle Beam tells Apple Music when asked about the theme of the band’s second album, *It’s Time…To Rise From the Grave*. Building on the breakout success of their 2020 debut, *Lesions of a Different Kind*, the Rochester, New York-based death metal crew honed their songwriting into a tighter and even more effective verse-chorus-verse format this time out. “We just wanted to take what we had before, make it a bit more concise, a bit more focused, to make sure the songs really stand on their own,” Beam says. The album even has a loose storyline that reads like *Army of Darkness* meets *The Terminator*. “It’s basically about dudes in hell equipping undead soldiers with sick guns,” he offers. Below, he discusses each track. **“Fiend for Corpses”** “We get a lot of comparisons to Cannibal Corpse just because we love them so much. I’d say this is the most Corpse-esque song on the record, so it had to be brutal lyrically. It’s a song about digging up bodies in the cemetery and banging them and eating them. It’s the first track on the record, so we just wanted to set the tone.” **“Defiled Again”** “When you first read the title, it sounds way more brutal than the song actually is. You’re kinda like, ‘Oh, no. Is this a sexual assault song or something?’ I didn’t mean for it to sound like that—I just wanted it to be brutal. The lyrics are just about reading a spooky book in a cemetery. It’s not the main character’s first time reading this book, and every time he reads it, it’s like his mind gets melted by the eldritch truth.” **“Rise From the Grave”** “This one is like the modus operandi of Undeath lyrics. It’s just skeletons with bronze swords and shields and bows and arrows, and they’re fucking clambering over parapets to get your village. It’s the title track, basically.” **“Necrobionics”** “This song gets into the nitty gritty of how the army of the dead is outfitted and equipped in the next track, ‘Enhancing the Dead.’ It was inspired by this game Quake 4, where your character is human in the first part. In the second part, he gets captured by alien forces, and they cut off his arms and legs and attach sick robot arms and legs so you can reload faster and run faster—all kinds of shit. But you don’t even have to be alive for it to work.” **“Enhancing the Dead”** “This one is sort of the overarching story of this conflict. The first lyrics are, ‘Cities of life, now cities of dead, bolstering the undead army,’ because the more people fall, the bigger the army gets—and eventually the whole planet is done. There’s nothing left, so they take off, onto the next planet. When they peace out, the lyric is like, ‘Take this foot beyond this earthly realm,’ or some shit like that.” **“The Funeral Within”** “This one is about going crazy. It’s about the death of oneself on the inside because of all the terrible things you’ve done.” **“Head Splattered in Seven Ways”** “This is about an interrogation. It was really inspired by Cannibal Corpse, too, because they have a track on *Kill* called ‘Five Nails Through the Neck.’ It’s the fifth song on that record, and a couple parts of the song are in five. Ever since I was a kid, I just thought that was the coolest thing. It’s kind of nerdy but brutal at the same time. So, ‘Head Splattered in Seven Ways’ has got seven syllables in the title, the whole song is in seven, and it’s the seventh track on the record.” **“Human Chandelier”** “If Corpse did this one, I like to think it would be about how this guy’s actually going out and killing people, taking their bones, and making them into a chandelier. But it’s actually a tamer track for us, lyrically and musically. Maybe not intensity-wise, but harmony-wise. It’s less grammatically dense and less atonal. It’s about a guy who lives alone in this dark-as-fuck mansion like *Beauty and the Beast*, and he goes to the local cemetery to pick out bones for the human chandelier he’s building. He’s not malicious—he’s just a weirdo.” **“Bone Wrought”** “Most of the riffs on this song are from our bass player, Tommy \[Wall\]. I gave him some direction for the lyrics, but he wrote those as well. I think they’re some of the best lyrics on the record. It talks more about how the army of the dead are forging the weapons they use.” **“Trampled Headstones”** “The lyrics to this one are kind of goofy. It’s about a cemetery cult who eat flesh, but they also eat gravestones. They can’t get all their nutrients just from eating each other, so they eat rock as well. They take bites right out of the headstones.”
When Cave In released their 2019 album, *Final Transmission*, many thought it might be just that. The band’s beloved friend and bassist, Caleb Scofield, had passed suddenly during the recording’s early stages, and it seemed—understandably—that heartbreak might prevent them from carrying on. Instead, vocalist/guitarist Steve Brodsky, drummer J.R. Conners, and guitarist/vocalist Adam McGrath enlisted their old friend and Converge/Old Man Gloom/Doomriders member Nate Newton to help them play benefit shows for Scofield’s family. In doing so, they breathed new life into Cave In and soon wrote an album that combines the band’s killer metallic hardcore and breathtaking space-rock eras with new and exciting musical forays. The result is *Heavy Pendulum*, Cave In’s first album recorded by Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou since their 1998 classic, *Until Your Heart Stops*. Below, Brodsky discusses each track. **“New Reality”** “A song about the new reality of Cave In without Caleb on this earthly plane. The verse riff was something he wrote years ago during the *White Silence* days. I always remembered it, and ‘New Reality’ seemed like a good opportunity to give it a home. There’s mention of the Old Man of the Mountain, the face of New Hampshire, \[where Caleb is from\]. Even after its collapse, it’s still part of the state imagery. I thought this was a beautiful way to illustrate how we keep Caleb in our memory.” **“Blood Spiller”** “We’re all fans of Nate‘s band Channel from his pre-Converge days. This one goes there musically—channeling Channel with a member of the band. Lyrically, this relates to the heated political nature of 2020, but it’s not as direct as, for instance, the song ‘Searchers of Hell.’ This song is also a call to action against anyone in your life who throws around their weight in a way that’s disruptive or destructive to your well-being—basically, bullies and assholes who need to be confronted on their bullshit.” **“Floating Skulls”** “Musically, this one had a pretty wild trajectory. It was originally in a different key, different tuning, different time signature, with wildly different lyrics. It took several trial runs before we got into Deep Purple’s *Burn* territory and it finally started to click. Lyrically, this is probably one of the more lighthearted songs on the record. I had a whole concept for a music video using helium balloons printed with skulls attached to headless mannequins...could be a cool stage prop, actually.” **“Heavy Pendulum”** “This is the first song that materialized as a full band demo when writing the album. We demoed it remotely at a time during lockdown when people still didn’t feel comfortable getting together in a room. If AC/DC had jumped on the ’90s grunge bandwagon, they may have pulled this one out of the ether before we got it. Kurt thinks it sounds kinda like ‘Fever Dog,’ which is fine with me because who doesn’t like *Almost Famous*?” **“Pendulambient”** “J.R. took to the song ‘Heavy Pendulum’ so much, he insisted that we make it the title of the record. This Interlude takes the five dominant notes from that song and spins them into a kaleidoscopic foundation created by J.R. in his German synth lab man cave. Most of the overdubs are from the original remote demo recording, either flipped backwards or made into some audio mutation. I think it’s a nice return to the vibe of having segues between songs like we did on the *Until Your Heart Stops* album.” **“Careless Offering”** “I wrote this on an acoustic guitar, which I guess officially makes it a protest song. During the George Floyd protests, I was seeing people with significant reach on social media use these platforms to encourage excess violence, and I felt this was the last thing we needed. Their words were like careless offerings to an already fucked-up situation, just being thrown like raw meat to people for the sole purpose of creating destruction. On a lighter note, one of the bands that Cave In fully embraced as an influence on this album is Into Another, and here it really shows in the whole spacey midsection of the song—that’s totally us worshiping the *Ignaurus* album.” **“Blinded by a Blaze”** “Out of the five or six songs from my initial burst of writing, ‘Blinded by a Blaze’ was the one that got everyone in the band equally hyped. Later on, Nate wrote the heavy, chugging bridge part and Adam came up with the artificial harmonic guitar line that sounds kind of like the music you might hear coming from an ice cream truck on Mars. In just eight lines, I did my best to capture a picture of driving along the Pacific Coast Highway at golden hour several years ago, and what it felt like to share that moment with someone I was in love with at the time.” **“Amaranthine”** “One night at rehearsal, Nate turned on his bass amp and the main parts for this song seemed to just fly out of him. At some point, Caleb’s wife, Jen, gifted us a notebook that belonged to Caleb. It contained lyrics, writings, and drawings that she felt could be of some use to us. Lyrics to a song called ‘Amaranthine’ really stood out, and we didn’t recognize them to be associated with any music that Caleb had written. Combining his lyrics with the first bit of music that Nate ever wrote for the band made a really cool concoction.” **“Searchers of Hell”** “The main riff was inspired by a song from the first *Between or Beyond the Black Forest* compilation, which is a bunch of European off-the-grid jazz-fusion shit recorded in the ’70s. Aside from ‘Amaranthine,’ I think this is the only other song conceived entirely in the full-band stage of making demos for the album. Lyrically, I was inspired by some of the coded language being used by people with power in the world of politics addressing others through the media. The lines ‘You’re dropping a bombshell/You wish each other well’ is a specific example of this. I guess the takeaway here is that we should always question what the media is telling us, but also what the media is selling us.” **“Nightmare Eyes”** “Leading up to the summer of 2019, I was, like most Tool fans, anxious for the release of *Fear Inoculum*. I was so excited for a new album that I literally dreamed I was hearing it one night. I rarely dream about music, so when I woke up, the feeling of this really struck me. I grabbed an acoustic guitar and made a quick recording of the song I heard in my dream, transposed to the best of my ability. It took 10,000 days, but I finally combed through every song on every Tool album, trying to find some likeness to my recording from the night before. Thankfully, I came up empty-handed and realized it was fair game. So, thank you, Tool, for gifting me—in serotonin form—the best song you never wrote.” **“Days of Nothing”** “I think Adam was inspired to create this shortly after the Cave In/Old Man Gloom tour in 2020, which ended about a month before the pandemic hit. He came up with a bunch of cool segues for the band to use. When it came to sequencing the record, I felt that we needed a good palate cleanser after the sonic rubble left by the ending of ‘Nightmare Eyes,’ and this did the trick. It’s also the only track on the album recorded entirely outside of God City \[Studios\] and mixed by someone other than Kurt. If I remember correctly, the song title references the fact that our calendars were essentially wiped clean at the height of the pandemic.” **“Waiting for Love”** “The sound at the beginning of this track spawns from one of my favorite effects pedals ever—the DOD Envelope Filter. The use of this pedal dates back to bands that me and J.R. were in even before the formation of Cave In, so hearing it on a Cave In album is a nice little nostalgic trip for us. Maybe if Van Halen had successfully gone grunge in the ’90s, they would’ve done something like this. The song is meant to be comforting for anyone searching for love and coming up short. Remember that you’re not alone, and it might just be a matter of time.” **“Reckoning”** “I believe this to be one of Adam’s finest moments as both a songwriter and a vocalist. He and I have been doing acoustic/electric duo shows for a number of years, and it’s pretty thoughtful of him to construct a song that works especially well in that setting. The way we recorded the lead guitar part was inspired by ‘Torn by the Fox of the Crescent Moon,’ a song from what is easily my favorite Earth album. Overall, the production on this song was necessitated by the fact that J.R. was dealing with an issue with one of his wrists, so we had to make do with a drummer functioning at less than 100 percent. In hindsight, I think it’s pretty unique because of it. Lyrically, I think Adam really hit the nail on the head when it comes to accepting grief after losing someone close to you and doing our best to manage it.” **“Wavering Angel”** “We knew this would be the closing track on the record, so we made no bones about song length or pulling any punches when it came to throwing everything into the pot from all songs previous to it in the sequence. Led Zeppelin has ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ so this one’s our ‘Stairway to Methuen,’ the town in Massachusetts where me, J.R., and Adam grew up. I tried my best to be honest about wading through trenches of heartbreak while reaching for a song to guide me along. Sometimes that song has wings, and if you just hold on tightly enough, you can let yourself fly. I hope that feeling inspires others in a time of need.”
From the depths of the Adirondack wilderness comes Blackbraid, a solo Native American black metal project as raw and powerful as the mountains from whence it came...
It’s been five years since Immolation released a new album, but *Acts of God* is worth the wait. “It’s a lot darker than our most recent records, both musically and lyrically,” vocalist/bassist Ross Dolan tells Apple Music. “The pandemic gave us a lot more time to really craft and absorb these songs.” Eleven albums into a career that began in 1988, this New York death metal institution is still on top of their game. Dolan and his bandmates—original guitarist Bob Vigna, drummer Steve Shalaty, and lead guitarist Alex Bouks—deliver uncompromising brutality and precision with a feel for dynamics that most death metal bands lack. Just don’t ask Dolan to explain his lyrics. “I don’t wanna get too specific, but just to be clear, this is not a pandemic record,” he says. “We just comment on what we see happening around us, and around the world.” Below, he discusses each of the album’s non-instrumental tracks. **“An Act of God”** “Bob suggested this would be a great opening track, and he was spot-on. It doesn’t relent, and it has a lot of really cool elements. It’s got that really weird, creepy acoustic part in the middle that explodes into the big, heavy section. It has moody parts and fast sections—and some great lead work from Bob at the end there.” **“The Age of No Light”** “When I first heard this song, I loved it. We chose this as the second song for the rollout because it’s just a concentrated burst of energy—really fast and aggressive. But it goes to a couple different places, especially in the middle section with that slow, creepy riff with the fast drums behind it. It’s a very dynamic, extreme song. Lyrically, it’s taking a look at humanity’s progress. It seems like every time we take a step or two forward, we always take three steps backwards.” **“Noose of Thorns”** “This was the first song Bob wrote for this record. He sent it to us back in 2018, so this was our first peek at how the album was gonna shape up. It starts very slow, but then explodes right after that. It’s got a lot of cool parts that don’t really repeat. It’s definitely one of the darkest songs on the record. It talks about organized religion and its hold over a lot of people.” **“Shed the Light”** “This is a very unique song compared to the others. The whole beginning, the way the drum patterns were designed—and the super-heavy, weird flow of it—were a selling point for me. As soon as I heard it, I could see it developing into something. I really like the ending, too—that riff is kind of unnerving. It’s also one of the darker songs on the album. It touches on religion again, but a different side of religion.” **“Blooded”** “We debuted this song last summer at the two festivals we did—Psycho Vegas and the Decibel Metal & Beer Festival. We all wanted to play a new track, and we agreed on this one because it’s short and very dynamic. It has all the Immolation elements that I think our fans enjoy—and a really sick midsection. It moves fast, hits hard, and doesn’t relent. Lyrically, it was inspired by a criminology class that I took over the pandemic just to keep sane.” **“Overtures of the Wicked”** “The beginning of this song has an old-school German thrash vibe, almost like early Kreator or Destruction. That’s very different for us. I like how this song moves from section to section, just building in intensity. Then, it explodes at the end into that sick lead section. Lyrically, it’s based on everything that was happening around the world during that time, but specifically here in our country. It’s a very hopeless song.” **“Immoral Stain”** “That’s one of the creepier songs on the record. I love the little acoustic kind of lead-in to the song. It’s got some of my favorite lead work on the record—Alex’s contributions, which are really dark and melancholy sounding here. Lyrically, I stumbled across this really disturbing story during lockdown and got obsessed with it. As I started reading more articles about it, I got inspired to write the lyrics for this.” **“Incineration Procession”** “This was one of the earlier songs as well. I like it because it’s different sounding for us, but still has those cool Immolation elements. It started out much more simplistic in a lot of ways, but Bob built on those basic rhythms and really made it shine. It’s a slow-moving song—very dark and foreboding—but when it gets to that big, epic section midway through, you know it’s gold.” **“Broken Prey”** “That’s probably our drummer’s favorite song on the record. He spent a lot of time crafting the drums to that one, and it’s one of his shining moments. It’s really bombastic with a lot of creepy, heavy sections. I think Steve’s drumwork on the whole record is just next level, but especially on this song. There’s a lot of cool cymbal patterns. It has some great leads by Alex at the end, and it’s kind of a nod to the old school.” **“Derelict of Spirit”** “This was probably the obvious choice for one of the first rollout singles because it’s the only song on the album that’s mid-paced all the way through. It doesn’t have many fast parts. It’s probably the most accessible track on the album—I mean, for an extreme death metal record. But because it was the obvious choice, we kept it back. Lyrically, it’s about hypocrites—people who are very quick to judge, but they never look in the mirror at themselves.” **“When Halos Burn”** “This was one of the last songs written for the record, but it’s a classic, old-school Immolation song. It’s just a burner from start to finish, with a lot of elements from our earlier days—but in a fresh way. I think it’s really well-written, with a lot of intensity. It sounds especially good after ‘Derelict of Spirit,’ which is slower.” **“Let the Darkness In”** “This is one of my favorites just because of the flow of the song. It starts off slow, but it has one of my favorite endings of any Immolation song. We actually had Danny Lilker from Nuclear Assault and Brutal Truth scream with me at the end, going into the last section. It was cool to have him be part of the record, and it worked out perfectly. It’s a more personal song for us, and it has to do with that dark place we all went to during the pandemic. But there’s also more to it than that.” **“Apostle”** “This is another one that was lyrically inspired by the criminology class I took. We actually recorded this song musically back in the day as ‘Fall in Disease’ on the first record. We just didn’t have the ‘Apostle’ concept until now. The lyrics were inspired by a book based on true events that happened in our neck of the woods in New York a while back. It’s another one of my favorites on the record. I’m super happy with this one.”
Seeing a record called *Hate Über Alles* come out of Germany in 2022 says much about the world we’re living in. Of course, Kreator aren’t proclaiming their hatred for anything—except maybe our current state of political and social discourse. “It’s based on the current way people communicate with each other,” Kreator guitarist, vocalist, and mastermind Mille Petrozza tells Apple Music. “We never agree to disagree. It’s more like, ‘If you’re not on my side, you’re against me.’ That’s what inspired me to call the album *Hate Über Alles*.” In keeping with their nearly 40 years of metal excellence, the Teutonic thrashers deliver an album replete with old-school bangers, a spaghetti western-inspired intro, and a killer cameo from German pop queen Sofia Portanet. “A lot of bands nowadays focus on singles instead of albums,” Petrozza observes. “We want this record to feel like a musical journey from start to finish.” Below, he discusses each song. **“Sergio Corbucci Is Dead”** “I had this piece of music obviously very influenced by spaghetti westerns, and I decided it would become the intro for the record. Then it’s always a bit of a challenge to name an intro. The music sounds like it could have come from either a Sergio Leone or Sergio Corbucci movie, but I heard that all of Corbucci’s movies were a statement against fascism, tyranny, and oppression because he grew up in fascist Italy. So, it seemed to fit.” **“Hate Über Alles”** “A lot of this is about communication on social media—people saying really rude things they would never say to your face. Musically, this was there already in the beginning of 2018, when I started recording demos. But the chorus came to me when we were in England, preparing for the Bloodstock festival. I thought it was a cool combination of strong words that combined German with the English language. And it’s a cool title, perfect for a Kreator record.” **“Killer of Jesus”** “This is a brutal thrash-metal song, straight to the point. Lyrically, I’m talking about icons and ideas that are 2000 years old that are, for some people, still relevant—even though the world has changed so much. Human history is on a totally different spiritual level than it was when these religions were developed for people that couldn’t read. So, it’s not about killing the person Jesus. It’s more about killing icons and ideas from the past and moving on.” **“Crush the Tyrants”** “This is one of the first songs I wrote for the album, and it’s more like a midtempo track. Lyrically, it’s about oppressors—crushing the tyrants, very self-explanatory. I like the groove of it. I wanted to do something like ‘Holy Diver,’ for example—a real anthemic metal song with a midtempo riff. This is the modern Kreator style.” **“Strongest of the Strong”** “The song talks about believing in yourself and believing in change. It’s about a spiritual awakening and moving forward, believing in the individual rather than following. It’s got a very old-school metal vibe and a killer groove, like our songs ‘People of the Lie’ or ‘Renewal.’ That’s the kind of vibe I wanted to create with this song.” **“Become Immortal”** “I’m reflecting on the past. I’m talking about the very beginning of the band and the years 1984 and 1985. I was a teenager when I had my first record deal—my mother had to sign for me. As a band from Essen, an industrial town in a rural district, to go to West Berlin to record our first album we had to cross the border through East Berlin, to this city with a wall. It was a strange adventure, but we felt more freedom than ever.” **“Conquer and Destroy”** “It’s based on a dream that I had about this entity coming to me, telling me that everything I do is on the right path. I felt this energy of somebody talking to me—it was probably my subconscious. The song talks about how, even if there is something that is a challenge in your life, you should go forward and face it rather than ignoring it. Musically, it has a very strong riff, double kick, and a nice melody. It’s definitely one of my favorites off this record.” **“Midnight Sun”** “The song was inspired by the Ari Aster movie *Midsommar*. The main character is a very strong female who goes from not believing in the cult at all to becoming a part of it, so I thought it would be a good idea to have a female singer. I connected with Sofia Portanet, who I’m a real big fan of, via Instagram. She had this album in 2020 called *Freier Geist* that I was listening to most of the time during the pandemic. We’ve never had a female guest on an album, so I thought it was about time to do that. And she really fits the song.” **“Demonic Future”** “Musically, I’ve had this for a while. It’s very old-school thrash, like it could be from the early days or on the first Metallica. It’s our tribute to that time. Lyrically, it talks about racism. Just when you thought you’ve seen it all, suddenly there’s a new racist movement in Germany. Refugees that are coming in from war countries are getting attacked. We did a version with German lyrics also, which might be on a later release.” **“Pride Comes Before the Fall”** “This is a continuation of the ‘Hate Über Alles’ theme. People are so arrogant when they’re in their safe zone in front of the computer, putting down people’s creativity. They are not daring to tell you their opinion in your face. It’s almost a little bit like ‘Conquer and Destroy’ as well—it talks about facing a situation and going through it with a clear mind and clear vision. Stay strong and keep your focus, no matter what other people are saying.” **“Dying Planet”** “I wrote a song in 1990 called ‘When the Sun Burns Red,’ which talked about global warming already. Now we’re coming full circle and global warming is causing lots of catastrophes. A lot of things I talked about in ‘When the Sun Burns Red’ are now becoming a reality. With this song, I went a step further. It’s talking about the planet as a living organism fighting off the disease of humanity because we’re the ones destroying the planet. There’s a spoken word part where I’m explaining that we had it all, but we fucked it up.”
When working on material for their eighth album, the members of Canadian noise-rock quadrangle KEN mode ended up writing twice as much as they intended. This creative outpouring left vocalist/guitarist Jesse Matthewson, his brother and drummer Shane, bassist Skot Hamilton, and saxophonist/pianist Kathryn Kerr with a decision to make. “From a writing and story standpoint, we wanted it to all be one big piece,” Jesse tells Apple Music. “But for a band of our size and style, a big double record is a really bad idea. But the material is really good, so we figured we could divide it into two distinct stories that build off of each other.” As a result, *NULL* is the first half of a collection that will be completed by a second album—aptly titled *VOID*—at some point in the future. Below, Jesse discusses each track on *NULL*. **“A Love Letter”** “This was one of the first songs I started writing while I was teaching myself how to do preproduction on a digital audio workstation, so I probably rewrote it six times. When it came time to get the saxophone going, I wanted Kathryn to make a sound like a dying elk, and that’s the sound that you hear in the verses. When we were writing the chorus parts, she whipped out this mildly obscure jazz lead that felt part Miles Davis, part war horn. It sounded so special to me that it really set the stage for how I wanted to utilize saxophone on all our writing.” **“Throw Your Phone in the River”** “I wrote this shortly after George Floyd and the subsequent internet eruption. Obviously, it was a horrible act, but I couldn’t deal with how awful everyone was being to each other during the fallout. I get it—we were all in lockdown and people were freaking out and frantic, but it was fucked up. This song is largely about my inability to help those around me cope with their own mental health problems, because I just couldn’t keep my shit together. I mean, it’s no secret that social media is destroying the fabric of society, and I feel like more people would be better off if they pitched their smartphone in the river. At the same time, we need them for almost everything these days.” **“The Tie”** “I’ve been messing around with synthesizers since 2019, but during lockdown, I really got to experiment a little bit more. Skot and I wrote the bones of this one together, just messing around on my synths, creating a loop and getting together with Kathryn to throw some saxophone on top of it. The lyrics are entirely Skot’s because since he joined, I’ve been attempting to get him to contribute lyrically to the band because he’s a very good writer. You’d have to ask him about the motivation behind it, but I feel like it’s him facing his artistic ego head-on.” **“But They Respect My Tactics”** “This will make me sound like an old man, but you know how the kids say, ‘This one slaps’? I feel like it gets misused a lot, but for me, the riffs on this one slap. Lyrically speaking, it’s very much a commentary on social media and marketing in and of itself, with a mild disappointment in the world. It’s very much an existential circling-the-drain situation where I don’t want to become someone who clings for dear life onto a former version of myself. I get why that happens, but it just seems sad to me.” **“Not My Fault”** “One of the very first lines in the song is about dealing with an unnerving tension in the air. You just want to help get people through it, but it’s all for naught and you have the weight of that crushing you every day. This one was another of the early tracks that I wrote when I was starting to feel comfortable writing all by myself again. When I came up with the first riff in this song, I was just really happy with how catchy it was. Which I know sounds silly when it’s something you wrote yourself, but that’s usually a good sign that you’re onto something.” **“Lost Grip”** “This is another one that I wrote with Skot, and it’s very much a humans-abusing-the-planet song. It’s also a commentary on Western culture and everyone’s obsession with wealth and power and megalomania. It’s very much coming from the perspective of, ‘We deserve this pandemic. We had it coming.’ I can’t help but feel that there’s a lot of people on this earth that, no matter how they spin it, don’t mean well for everyone at all. They’re just trying to sell everyone their agenda. It’s also one of my favorite songs we’ve ever written.” **“The Desperate Search for an Enemy”** “I wrote the bassline for this on a synth and all the drum parts in MIDI without actually playing it, so Shane had to figure out how the hell he was going to apply that to an actual drum kit. Lyrically, it very much goes back to ‘Throw Your Phone in the River,’ about everyone feeling more virtuous than the other side that they’re raging against—and their obsession with making an enemy out of anyone who doesn’t agree with the way they think. I hate to come across as some bullshit centrist, but that’s where most of the world actually is, and I’m getting so tired of watching everyone fight all the time.” **“Unresponsive”** “After I came up with that one riff that’s like total Swans/Black Flag worship, I tried to create dynamics utilizing percussion and my voice alone. My brother has said he feels this is the strongest vocal performance I’ve ever had on any of our records, so I’m happy that he feels that way. Lyrically, it’s about feeling, like, this rise in tension just never gives. I was writing it when there was a storm rolling in that just never seemed like it was going to reach its crescendo. It felt like a metaphor for everything that was going on in the world.”
NULL, the band’s brand-new aural abrasion, may be the group’s quintessential statement of mental collapse and despair made sonic, a direct psychological reaction to the collective experience of the last two and a half years. Drawing from not only the desperate noise and industrial sonics of the 80’s and 90’s ala Swans, Einsturzende Neubauten, or even a Nine Inch Nails, the band has mixed in a decidedly more desperate tone to their already pointed metal/hardcore influenced “extreme noise rock” (see Melvins, Today Is The Day meets Converge and Botch), that has become their signature. Featuring 8 new tracks recorded and produced throughout the fall and winter of 2021 by Andrew Schneider, mastered by Carl Saff, with artwork and layouts by the band's longtime collaborator Randy Ortiz. Recorded October 2021 @ Private Ear Recording in Winnipeg, MB, Canada by Andrew Schneider, cello on 'Unresponsive' by Natanielle Felicitas. Guilty Parties: Jesse Matthewson, Shane Matthewson, Scott Hamilton, Kathryn Kerr.
Four years after their critically-acclaimed debut album, Mortuous returns with their second full-length offering, "Upon Desolation". Features eight tracks of sheer twisting brutality Available in Europe from Extremely Rotten
There’s a sick irony to how a country that extols rhetoric of individual freedom, in the same gasp, has no problem commodifying human life as if it were meat to feed the insatiable hunger of capitalism. If this is American nihilism taken to its absolute zenith, then God’s Country, the first full length record from Oklahoma City noise rock quartet Chat Pile is the aural embodiment of such a concept. Having lived alongside the heaps of toxic refuse that the band derives its name from, the fatalism of daily life in the American Midwest permeates throughout the works of Chat Pile, and especially so on its debut LP. Exasperated by the pandemic, the hopelessness of climate change, the cattle shoot of global capitalism, and fueled by “...lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of THC,” God’s Country is as much of an acknowledgement of the Earth’s most assured demise as it is a snarling violent act of defiance against it. Within its over 40 minute runtime, God’s Country displays both Chat Pile’s most aggressively unhinged and contemplatively nuanced moments to date, drawing from its preceding two EPs and its score for the 2021 film, Tenkiller. In the band’s own words, the album is, at its heart, “Oklahoma’s specific brand of misery.” A misery intent on taking all down with it and its cacophonous chaos on its own terms as opposed to idly accepting its otherwise assured fall. This is what the end of the world sounds like.
SUMERLANDS have returned from the astral plane with their hotly anticipated new album, Dreamkiller. The Ultimate Sin inspired haze of the first album has been turbocharged with bigger hooks, Jan Hammer worthy synths, and forays into Badlands gone doom! But although doom crackles at the edges of Dreamkiller, this is metal forged with the melodrama of the Scorpions, the emotional heft of Foreigner, and Dokken with an extra dose of depression. In the driver’s seat is critically acclaimed producer, engineer and guitarist Arthur Rizk, who polished these 8 metallic gems at Philadelphia’s Redwood Studios. Coming off of recent production credits with Kreator, Soulfly, and Show Me The Body, Rizk needs no introduction. His past work behind the boards with Power Trip, Sacred Reich, Ghostemane and many others have blown minds for over a decade, while SUMERLANDS fulfills his dream of melancholic chug. The band’s alchemy is on full display as bassist Brad Raub (Eternal Champion, Leather) smirks behind his P-Bass while drummer Justion DeTore (Innumerable Forms, Dream Unending) stares you dead in the face, swinging. New vocalist Brendan Radigan (Magic Circle, Stone Dagger) sings of lost souls in a world gone mad in his confident Graham Bonnet meets Ray Gillen wail. Rizk and guitarist John Powers keep their “Strats only” policy intact while wheeling in the full Marshall stacks to douse the record in glorious solos (witness the album closing duel of “Death to Mercy”). Galloping lead single “Dreamkiller” is an uptempo tour de force with an instrumental break to make Brian May blush and that festival worthy chorus. Make no mistake, Dreamkiller is a triumph of traditional heavy metal fuel!
SHIPPING UPDATE: CDs will now ship starting July 25th. The LP jackets suffered some flaw in the folding/collating process so they are being reprinted. They could be in our hands as early as July 25th, but if not, the arrival date should not be much far past that. An interview for this album has been posted at www.bardomethodology.com/articles/2022/03/30/negative-plane-the-pact-interview/
SpiritWorld DEATHWESTERN
With their third album, Portland metal experimentalists EIGHT BELLS have sharpened their songwriting approach to create a soundtrack for the end of the world. "Legacy of Ruin" again features the trio's trademark haunting vocal harmonies along with sometimes blistering, and sometimes impressionistic guitar riffing to create heady atmospheres of dark and light. Lyrically, "Legacy of Ruin" focuses on themes of the human condition, natural destruction, death, regret, loss, malice, and retribution. EIGHT BELLS were conceived as the brainchild and songwriting project of Melynda Jackson in 2010. The guitarist and vocalist named the band after the final album of her previous act, SUBARACHNOID SPACE. While the trio evolved through several line-up changes in the beginning, Melynda is now supported by vocalist and bass player Matt Solis (CORMORANT, URSA) Brian Burke (NO SHORES, CAVE DWELLER) on drums. Following the release of the "Isosceles" EP (2011), EIGHT BELLS gained international recognition for their debut album "The Captain's Daughter (2013)" and tour support for SUBROSA across North America. With their sophomore full-length "Landless" (2016), EIGHT BELLS consolidated their reputation as one of the up and coming acts, joined VOIVOD in the US and received an invitation to Psycho Las Vegas, which the trio gladly accepted. Now EIGHT BELLS are poised to share their music with a wider audience. "Legacy of Ruin" was engineered and produced by the masterful Billy Anderson (AMENRA, BELL WITCH, LEVIATHAN, SWANS), and has enabled the trio to reach a new dimension of sound quality. "Legacy of Ruin" is forceful confirmation that contemporary metal can be artistically impressive, and at the same time novel and expansive in its expression. Time to lean back, close your eyes and let EIGHT BELLS' haunting and beautiful swansong to a dying planet crash all over you in sonic waves.
Wise Blood Records is proud to present "Where the Shadows Adorn," the new album from Melodic Death/Doom guardians Mother of Graves. The album is a masterpiece of crushing darkness and exquisite gloom, mastered by death metal legend Dan Swanö (Edge of Sanity, Bloodbath). Their debut EP In Somber Dreams received acclaim from Decibel Magazine, with Chris Dick calling it “the stuff of melodic (the dark and evil kind) legend.” Jon Rosenthal of Invisible Oranges commented, “Katatonia's lineage is felt here, but Mother of Graves doesn't practice the art of abject mirroring. [They are] distinctly heavier, with an ear for keyboard-laden atmospherics.” The EP’s title track was also featured on the Metal Blade Records compilation Metal Massacre XV, along with Midnight, Ripped to Shreds, and Temple of Void. Named after a mythological Latvian protector of cemeteries (Kapu māte), Mother of Graves' music honors the memory of a fallen bandmate. "Where the Shadows Adorn" explores mortality and loss in every growl and crestfallen note. Founding guitarists Chris Morrison and Ben Sandman—who also recorded and mixed the record—fill the album with mournful melodies. As Morrison summarizes, “We wanted to write songs that were more melodic, heavier, darker, and memorable.” The result is an album that perfectly matches the stunning cover painting by Paolo Girardi. Brandon Howe’s acclaimed growls resonate with riveting dark poetry. The album is catharsis through creation. The foundation of old school death/doom is embellished with black blossoms of goth rock and evocative keyboards. Lyrically, the songs were borne from tragedy and pandemic isolation. “Even after the world began to open back up, I still preferred and chased solitude,” Howe shares. “I didn’t mind the quiet, or the alone time, but it also made it easy to get trapped in your thoughts more often than usual. To really reflect on and face the deepest pits of the self. There became a certain comfort and familiarity in the darkness of things. I suppose you could say “Where the Shadows Adorn” was a place where I found my solace.” Mother of Graves release "Where the Shadows Adorn" on October 14th with Wise Blood Records. The album will be available on Vinyl, CD, Cassette Tape, and Digital. ----------------------- "If this isn't the underground feel-bad hit of the autumn then I don't know what is." - Wonderbox Metal "Where the Shadows Adorn is an instant classic...this will have you drenched to the bone in solemn atmosphere, mournful melodies, introspective interludes, and massive riffs." - Deaf Forever "I was waiting for the rain and for the sun to be blotted out of the sky as soon as I started this." - Necrotic Nick, Thralls of Metal "Where The Shadows Adorn strikes an immaculate balance between subdued and straightforwardness. As a hybrid metal act, Mother of Graves' relationship with both visceral death metal passages and ethereal doom has been prioritized, and they've discovered a dichotomy that employs both sides of their sound as their peak." - Brandon Nurick, Invisible Oranges "There’s a directness (not aggression) at play with Mother of Graves that complements the group’s marche funèbre. Perhaps it’s the occasional Edge of Sanity barrage (as inspired by stateside legends of yore) or maybe it’s the streetwise grit that underpins everything on offer that sets the group apart. Either way, it rules." Chris Dick, Decibel Magazine
Led by guitarist/vocalist Andrew Lee, RIPPED TO SHREDS emerge from the West Coast underground with their ferocious new album, 劇變 (Jubian). The death metal trailblazers unleash their most fully realized and visceral work yet. Recorded and mixed by Lee in his home studio and mastered by Damian Herring at Subterranean Watchtower, 劇變 (Jubian) proves to be RIPPED TO SHREDS at their most focused and refined. The album bursts wide open with “Violent Compulsion for Conquest,” an elegantly dark, new kind of chainsaw sound teeming with acidic vocals gnashing out lyrics inspired by the Mukden Incident. From its lightning-flash solos to those immensely killer echoing “Ough!”s, this absolute scather, according to Lee, was born to lead. Elsewhere, longtime RIPPED TO SHREDS fans will find the latest chapter of the ongoing ‘Sun Moon Holy Cult’ saga to be its most thrilling episode thus far. One of the album’s most impressive and catchiest tracks,“漢奸 (Racetraitor),” represents that “straight-up melodeath” banger Lee says he’s always wanted to produce while also giving vent to his experience as a minority in America. The charring “Reek of Burning Freedom,” Lee says, is “an anti-war song” that incites to remind its discerning listers of the the United States’ “indiscriminate bombing” campaign waged on North Korea during the Korean War. Chainsaw guitars, relentless drumming, dizzying solos and disgusting growling throughout - 劇變 (Jubian) is undeniably ripping death metal. All of the intensity of power coursing through 劇變 (Jubian) is somehow perfectly captured and rendered by Chinese artist Guang Yang, who also painted the cover of the last RIPPED TO SHREDS album. The statue on the cover is Mazu, the Taiwanese sea goddess. The setting of the painting was inspired by several of the local temples Lee has visited in Taiwan. “I felt like it was important to have something standing in for Chinese people," Lee says."The cultural context and impact of RIPPED TO SHREDS as a Taiwanese-American band cannot be understated; Lee declares that a driving force behind RIPPED TO SHREDS has been “to increase the visibility of ABCs [American-born Chinese] in extreme metal by being very blatantly Chinese.” It’s not about taking over. With 劇變 (Jubian), which translates to ‘upheaval,’ RIPPED TO SHREDS make their intentions clear.
This summer, furious old school mastery returns to Dark Descent Records in the form of Castrator’s long-awaited debut album Defiled in Oblivion. Nearly seven years have passed since their No Victim EP set the scene aflame… yet these were mere warning shots across the bow. With their third release to date, the New York four-piece have perfected their blend of fierce old school USDM to a fault. More uncompromising and ruthless than ever before, Castrator’s zero-fucks-given approach rips and shreds across 9 hypnotically violent new tracks (alongside a cover of Venom’s Countess Bathory) and make Defiled in Oblivion a release to be reckoned with. Boys club beware!
“We’ve always tried to create a weird world with our lyrics, so it’s not the same thrash-metal themes about nuclear war or the president sucks again.” So says Municipal Waste vocalist Tony Foresta about *Electrified Brain*, which takes its title from a lyric on the Richmond, Virginia, thrashers’ 2005 breakout album. “We have, like, six or seven running themes on our albums, and that one’s from the ‘Deathripper’ storyline that started on *Hazardous Mutation*,” Foresta tells Apple Music. “We also do Kurt Russell songs—although not on this album—and songs about Municipal High, which is a fictional high school we made up. On our seventh record, we still crack up about some of the dumb shit we think of. Wait, not dumb shit—I mean brilliant shit.” Below, he discusses each track. **“Electrified Brain”** “This is part of the storyline from ‘Deathripper,’ which was the first song on *Hazardous Mutation*. There’s a lyric about ‘seeking out justice with an electrified brain,’ which is where the title comes from. We made a video for this song that’s out of control. Norman \[Cabrera\], the director, is a fucking genius. It’s kind of cool and inspiring to have a visualization of someone else’s take on the lyrics.” **“Demoralizer”** “Lyrically, this is about overcoming obstacles—not just overcoming them but obliterating them. I got the concept from when we had these basketball tournaments in Richmond. If you were up by, like, eight points and then, instead of getting the last point to 21, you shoot a three-pointer just to shove it in someone’s face even further—we call that ‘the demoralizer.’ I think it’s one of the stronger tracks on the record. It’s got a real old-school Metallica vibe to it.” **“Last Crawl”** “This is one of our obligatory drinking songs—there’s a few more, of course. It’s just about looking out for each other when you’re out late at night and everyone is raging. You’ve got to keep track of your surroundings and make sure everyone gets home safe. It’s like a youth-crew song, but it’s about going the long haul at a bar.” **“Grave Dive”** “This one is \[guitarist\] Ryan \[Waste\]’s baby. He wanted to write a song about digging up our dead fans and throwing their corpses into the audience—so, instead of ‘stage dive,’ it’s ‘grave dive.’ I think I said somewhere that it’s supposed to be an inspirational song for the kids or some dumb shit like that, but corpses in the mosh pit is actually what it’s about.” **“The Bite”** “Blaine from The Accüsed does guest vocals on this. The Accüsed are a huge inspiration to us, which is probably obvious to anyone who listens to heavy metal. The other fun thing about this song is that our drummer, Dave Witte, wrote the lyrics, and then I adjusted them to fit the song. Sometimes it sucks writing lyrics because we have so many fucking songs on every record, so I was stoked that he wanted to do this. It’s about the lawnmower scene in *Dead Alive*.” **“High Speed Steel”** “We have a couple of heavy metal-leaning songs on the record, all written by Ryan, and this is one of them. He wrote the lyrics to this one, too, and he likes writing songs about heavy machinery going fast down roads. If you’re a fan of his other bands, Bat and Volture, I think both of those bands have songs about being in a car and driving fast. So, this has got that rolling-down-the-street, running-over-shit vibe to it.” **“Thermonuclear Protection”** “I think this was kind of inspired by Dog the Bounty Hunter—it’s not actually about him, but it’s more about that type of dude. Not the racist shit, but the persona, if that makes sense. I always wanted to write a song called ‘Thermonuclear Protection’ because of the Oakley ads I saw when I was a kid. Whenever I see a guy like that, I’m like, ‘Don’t fuck with that guy. He’s got thermonuclear protection.’ So, it’s not about Dog per se, but that kind of energy.” **“Blood Vessel / Boat Jail”** “This idea came from when we played one of those metal cruise-ship things, like Barge to Hell or something. I was sitting at the bar with Tomas from At the Gates and our friend Greg when we saw this dude on the ship just punishing everybody and throwing shit around, just being a total piece of shit. Then these big guys came out of nowhere and took him away. We never saw him again for the rest of the four days we were on the ship. So, the song is about partying too hard on a boat and getting sent to boat jail.” **“Crank the Heat”** “I always wanted to write a seasonal song, like ‘Cruel Summer,’ you know? Especially living up north, you’re pent up all fucking winter, just waiting to get out. But this kind of means a little extra because everyone has been pent up for two fucking years. Now everyone is going out to the festivals and having a good time—everyone’s just extra excited to see each other and be out again. So, this is a positive, fast thrash song, like, ‘Let’s get up and go outside.’” **“Restless and Wicked”** “That’s another one of the heavy metal songs that Ryan wrote. I like singing over his version of writing. When he writes this type of song for Bat, it’s for him to sing, but when it’s for us, I’m obviously singing it. I also really like how the vocals came out on this one. I was doing something a little different than what I normally do. To me, it’s a standout track because it sounds way different than our other shit and it’s really catchy.” **“Ten Cent Beer Night”** “This is about an event that happened in Ohio in the ’70s. It was based around a feud between the Texas Rangers and the Cleveland Indians. They got into this gnarly fight during a game in Texas, and both teams were talking shit before they went to Cleveland. I’m gonna fuck up the story, but basically the stadium decided to serve 10-cent beer in order to pack the place, and shit just escalated into a huge riot with fans storming the field, throwing shit, and getting naked. It got to the point that the players who were fighting each other had to team up to fight their way out.” **“Barreled Rage”** “This song is cool because \[bassist\] Phil \[Hall\] sings on it. He doesn’t sing on many Waste songs, but I always encourage him to because he’s, like, the evil genius of the band. He writes a ton of shit and has a lot of input on our records, but he likes to sit back in the cut. Another cool thing is that Phil and Witte teamed together to write the lyrics. They’ve never done that before. The title is a beer reference, obviously.” **“Putting on Errors”** “I did an interview with someone in Europe yesterday, and I had to explain that this is a play on ‘putting on airs.’ They had no idea what I was talking about, but the song is basically saying that we’d rather be fuckups than what society deems proper. I feel like it fits the band pretty well. It’s actually a really chaotic song, but it has some cool sing-along parts. We got Barney from Napalm Death to do guest vocals to make it extra confusing.” **“Paranormal Janitor”** “Hopefully, we’ll do a TV series about Municipal High one day. There’s definitely a lot of shit we could work with there. This is about a person who is sentenced to work as a janitor at Municipal High for eternity. They’ve gotta pick up grime and shit and slime and trash and whatever else. We’ve got some spooky sound effects in there to get the vibe we were going for.”
Nearly six years after ‘As Was’ made its mark, Black Anvil is returning with its aptly titled fifth full-length, ‘Regenesis’. With a new record label, a new album, and a newfound exploration of dark and black metal, ‘Regenesis’ represents a new dawn for the New York City collective. Make no mistake, ‘Regenesis’ is not a departure from Black Anvil’s identity, but rather serves as the latest progression in the band’s ever-evolving sound. The unrelenting and polished aggression hangs in the balance above dark melodic passages, presenting a dynamic soundscape that serves as the band’s most devastating and existential offering to date. This isn’t just black metal, this is NYBM.
In keeping with the theme of their last two records, Imperial Triumphant have focused their fifth album on their hometown of New York City. “It’s about different perspectives of New York, and different lenses that people can live life through in a major city,” vocalist and guitarist Zachary Ezrin tells Apple Music. “New York has such an extreme duality to it, where there’s such highs and lows within a few blocks, and I thought that was inspiring.” The neo-classical black-metal trio welcome a diverse array of guest musicians on *Spirit of Ecstasy*, including string quartet Seven)Suns, Japanese vocalist Yoshiko Ohara, Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick, Voivod vocalist Snake, Mr. Bungle guitarist Trey Spruance, and—perhaps most remarkably—smooth-jazz saxophonist Kenny G. “We always like to collaborate,” Ezrin says. “And I think that’s becoming a huge part of who we are as a band. I think that stems from the jazz backgrounds that some of us have, where it’s all about playing with new people. It’s exciting to work with musicians who come up with things that I would never come up with.” Below, he comments on each song. **“Chump Change”** “I think this might have been the first tune we started working on after *Alphaville* came out in 2020. We wrote this one together, and I enjoy those the most—when it’s all three of us in the studio jamming, coming up with ideas and then developing them. As far as an opener goes, it’s just sprinting out of the gate. The opening riff is one of my favorites because we’re all playing in different rhythms. It’s disjointed, but sort of like a rusty clockwork, the gears still turn. That one minor-chord stab in the middle is played by Seven)Suns, a string quartet here in New York City.” **“Metrovertigo”** “This is a very different piece written entirely by our drummer, Kenny Grohowski. We have Trey Spruance from Mr. Bungle providing some choir inputs and sonic textures, which really fill out the piece. I love all those dissonant choir parts—they’re so perfectly buried in the mix, like musical Easter eggs. I know that Mr. Bungle has a song called ‘Retrovertigo,’ but that’s just a coincidence. I didn’t make the connection until someone pointed it out afterwards. The idea came from our bass player actually suffering a bout of vertigo, which was an intense situation.” **“Tower of Glory, City of Shame”** “This is another one we all wrote together, and it stems from a simple concept—we wanted to do a waltz. Again, there’s a lot of polyrhythms. And then, in typical Imperial Triumphant fashion, there’s a gigantic climax. The orchestral intro is performed by Seven)Suns again, and the voiceover is by Jonas Rolef. We also have Yoshiko Ohara, this very talented Japanese vocalist who used to live in New York and work with the band Bloody Panda, on this one. She’s been on Imperial Triumphant records for almost a decade now. She has a unique style of layering vocals with loops and screams, and it’s always perfect for the song.” **“Merkurius Gilded”** “This is primarily my composition—our bassist, Steve, did the last part—and it was me doing my best Bernard Herrmann impression. If you’ve heard the music he did for *Taxi Driver*, you’ve heard ‘Merkurius Gilded.’ I was really leaning into those dystopian, vintage chord progressions. We have Sarah Woods and Andromeda Anarchia providing choirs, and then we have Max Gorelick, who used to be in Imperial Triumphant and now plays in an amazing band called The Mantle, doing a solo duel with his father, Kenny G. Max really pushed his dad out of his comfort zone into dissonance, and they turned in a masterpiece.” **“Death on a Highway”** “This was written by Kenny Grohowski, and it’s kind of funny because I don’t think he wrote it for the band. He wrote it almost as an exercise, like, ‘What would it be like if I wrote a Suffocation or Cannibal Corpse track?’ So, it has these moments of classic barbarity but filtered through the lens of Kenny, who, as a composer, will often stray from simple ideas. I wrote a lick in there that’s sort of my impression of Adam Jones from Tool. And then we’ve got Trey Spruance on the santur, which is an Eastern stringed instrument kind of like a hammered dulcimer. I feel like this track is almost like a palate cleanser for your next course.” **“In the Pleasure of Their Company”** “This is basically just a 12-bar blues—at least the first part is. Then we came up with the idea of getting people to come play over it, like a late-night jam session at a downtown jazz bar. We\'ve got J. Walter Hawkes on trombone and Ben Hankle on trumpet, who are part of the horn quintet that played on ‘Swarming Opulence.’ Then we have Alex Skolnick from Testament, who plays in a free-improv jazz group with Kenny Grohowski. We also have Percy Jones from Brand X, which is another band Kenny was in, on bass. And that’s just in the first section of the piece. In the second half, we have an incredible guitar solo from Trey Spruance.” **“Bezumnaya”** “‘Bezumnaya’ translates to ‘crazy’ or ‘insanity.’ This is the third sort of Russian doom song we’ve done, and this one is about the Dyatlov Pass incident. It’s a true story from 1959 about missing explorers in the arctic of Russia, but it has this sort of Lovecraftian atmosphere. I wanted to write it in the style that Lovecraft would; there’s so much mystery and intentionally leaving bits of information out that make you want to keep turning the page. So, we tried to approach the song structure that way, leaving the listener little breadcrumbs of information before showering them with so much information that it becomes too much.” **“Maximalist Scream”** “This piece was written by Steve Blanco, our bass player. It’s very heavily inspired by mid-century American automotive mentality and everything that stems from that sort of culture. You can pretty much tell that, on this record, we definitely got into cars. The album title, *Spirit of Ecstasy*—that’s the name of the hood ornament on the Rolls-Royce. As everyone’s playing started becoming more enginelike, more machinelike—it became about one degree of separation from Voivod. We did a Voivod cover on our last record, and we heard they liked it, so we asked Snake if he would do some vocals. He was gracious enough to do so, and I was really happy with what he did. If I had sung those lyrics, it wouldn’t have been the same.”
While many musicians felt paralyzed by the pandemic and its lack of touring and recording opportunities, Jamie “Athenar” Walters completed three full Midnight albums. That’s just one of the many advantages of being a one-man band—Walters plays all the instruments in the studio himself and then enlists touring musicians for the road. “I recorded *Let There Be Witchery* first, almost exactly two years ago, so that’s why it’s coming out first,” Walters tells Apple Music. “I wanted to keep everything in order.” In keeping with Midnight’s two-decade tradition of sleazy speed metal and lascivious rock ’n’ roll, *Let There Be Witchery* channels Venom and Motörhead while extolling the virtues of sex and Satan. “Maybe it’s a bad motto, but mine is, ‘If it’s a challenge, fuck it,’” Walters says. “Whatever comes out, it happens pretty naturally. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Below, he discusses each track on the album. **“Telepathic Nightmare”** “When I made demos of these tunes, this didn’t sound like an opener to me. But in the studio, the delivery of the vocals was just so commanding that it seemed like the first lines of the album. It just comes out and socks you in the face. It’s got kind of an ominous intro, and then it busts into these Voivod chords, which I thought was unique for a Midnight opener. It was one of those surprises that turned out a lot better than what I intended it to be.” **“Frothing Foulness”** “What can be said that the title doesn\'t already expose? All these songs have a certain general theme running through them—carnal pleasures, and the good and bad that they bring. That’s the theme of the album, but here it’s all laid out. You could say ‘Frothing Foulness’ has to do with elements of the human body.” **“In Sinful Secrecy”** “The way the chords are in this, you could turn it into a pop song. It opens up with the vocal line ‘In sinful secrecy,’ which was my sleazeball attempt at ‘In my dreams, you’re still the same’ by Dokken, which is one of my favorite bands. I wanted to open up with a vocal line like that song and—I hate to use this as a reference because I don’t like the song necessarily—the Bon Jovi tune ‘You Give Love a Bad Name.’ This is the sleazeball version of those velvety numbers.” **“Nocturnal Molestation”** “It’s funny that the label chose this as the single, just based on the title alone. But you know, just because someone’s getting molested doesn’t mean it’s a one-way street. It could be mutual molestation—that’s how I envision it. Musically, it was my attempt at that monotonous kind of MC5 ‘Looking at You’ type of riff. But then, a buddy of mine recently pointed out that the song is the same as ‘Lipstick’ by the Fun Things. And holy shit, it is! It’s one of those things that came out subliminally without me even realizing it.” **“More Torment”** “Lyrically, this one of those devil-on-one-shoulder, angel-on-the-other-shoulder type of things. Musically, I thought of it as your standard Hellhammer-ish *boom-boom-bap* type of thing, but then another buddy of mine said it reminded him of Samhain’s ‘Halloween.’ And I was like, ‘Aw, fuck. Can I not make up an original song?’” **“Let There Be Sodomy”** “Sodomy is a recurring theme in Midnight, but let it be known that sodomy doesn’t always have to be with the butthole. Anything other than the way George Carlin says, ‘Man on top, get it over with’ could be sodomy. And it’s just a cool-sounding word. It rolls off the tongue nicely. It should be a soft *o*, but it’s a hard *o*. And Sodom is one of my favorite bands. I like this one because the verses are all pumped up and aggressive, but the chorus is just open chords that you can sing along with.” **“Devil Virgin”** “It was bound to happen. No heavy metal musician worth their salt is not going to put a Mercyful Fate disco hi-hat in one of their tunes eventually. It just took me a little longer than others. These are the first lyrics I wrote for the album, and I thought they were very Petrus Steele. Carnivore is one of my favorites of all time, and I could imagine him saying these lyrics. It’s probably my favorite tune on the album.” **“Snake Obsession”** “I guess there are multiple ways you could look at it, depending on your definition of snakes. I was coming from the Chinese astrology side of it. You know, snakes, oxes, that kind of thing. But the snake person can lure you in with their hypnotizing eyes, you know? That’s a theme that’s been used before in rock ’n’ roll and heavy metal. Musically, it was the first one I wrote, and it’s pretty Motörhead-ish at points.” **“Villainy Wretched Villainy”** “I’ve always loved the *Sabbath Bloody Sabbath* or *Scream Blacula Scream* kind of thing, so I finally did it. And ‘wretched’ is such a great word to say. It really comes from the gut when you say it. You can’t smile and say that word, really. Lyrically, it’s about being the villain, the bad guy. Musically, I wanted that ‘Countess Bathory’ kind of feel, where it’s just chords, and maybe Geoff Tate could sing over it. But instead, you have me barking over it and sounding gross.” **“Szex Witchery”** “The reason for the *z* was because we were in Hungary in 2019, and we just kept going by this area with the ‘szex’ shops. That’s how it was spelled. Having a 13-year-old brain, I was just like, ‘Whoa, that’s funny. Szex!’ So, we started putting *z*s into words wherever it seemed appropriate. And the song just sounded a lot slimier with the *z*. Musically, this was my attempt at a Tank ‘Shellshock’ type of riff. *Filth Hounds of Hades* is one of my favorite records.”
VIDEOS: "God will understand why you're horny for kids" youtu.be/0fSBZCGAOvw ----------------------------------------------------- "Gums" youtu.be/x_Z-ALHePmc
On their 12th album, Japanese black-metal experimentalists Sigh contemplate mortality. With assistance from vocalist/saxophonist Dr. Mikannibal, bassist Satoshi Fujinami, Kreator guitarist Frédéric Leclerc, and Fear Factory drummer Mike Heller—plus an array of traditional Japanese instruments—Sigh mastermind Mirai Kawashima faces down death on *Shiki*. “This turned out to be a heavy, dark, and very Japanese album,” Kawashima tells Apple Music. “As I wanted to express my fear of getting old and my fear of death as honestly and straightforwardly as possible, I had to use my own language instead of English this time. I always wonder what the point of making extreme music is when you are 50, but I believe this is an album only 50-year-old me could make—and this could be an answer to my own question.” Below, he describes each song. **“Kuroi Inori”** “An album intro that consists of only my voices. The title stands for ‘Black Prayer,’ and my voices are prayers in a fear of death.” **“Kuroi Kage”** “The title stands for ‘Black Shadow,’ which definitely implies death. This is the first track I wrote for the album. At first, I was thinking of making something in the vein of *Scorn Defeat*, and I guess this slow and heavy track has its remnants.” **“Shoujahitsumetsu”** “The title means ‘All the Living Must Die’ or something like that, which reflects a very Japanese/Asian/Buddhist view on life. Yes, I know, but still—I do not want to die. This is the fastest and the most straightforward song on the album.” **“Shikabane”** “The title simply means ‘A Corpse,’ and again, this is about how I am afraid of death. This is another very straightforward song with a strong Celtic Frost or Bathory feel. You can hear a great percussion solo by Mike Heller.” **“Satsui - Geshi No Ato”** “This one is a combination of two totally separate songs—the former means ‘Intent to Kill’ and the latter ‘After the Summer Solstice.’ ‘Satsui’ shows my personal view on the death penalty and ‘Geshi No Ato’ implies a fear of getting old. ‘Satsui’ is probably the catchiest number on the album, while ‘Geshi…’ is pretty much experimental, which means, musically, these two songs are poles apart too.” **“Fuyu Ga Kuru”** “The title stands for ‘Winter Comes.’ Now I am 52, and if a life had four seasons, I’d be in late autumn and winter is coming soon. There’d be no spring after that. Probably the weirdest song on the album, with lots of jazzy saxophones and flute on it.” **“Shouku”** “The title means ‘You Suffer Because You Live,’ which is a very Buddhist way of thinking. The song has a bit of a strange structure, and the second half is based on the rhythm Mike Heller came up with. The ending has a feel of Italian horror movies from the ’80s.” **“Kuroi Kagami”** “The title stands for ‘Black Mirror.’ This is an excerpt from a track which we decided not to use. It turned out that this part was cool enough to be included, though!” **“Mayonaka No Kaii”** “Definitely my favorite song on the album. It’s got everything from a cool guitar solo by Frédéric Leclercq to Hammond solo, flute solo, shakuhachi solo, vocoder, whistle scream, throat singing, and more. So many scenes are layered in this only five-and-a-half-minute song. The title means ‘A Strange Incident at Midnight,’ and this is based on an eerie experience I had to go through. The details are at the end of the video and in the booklet of the album.” **“Touji No Asa”** “This is our album outro, and it’s kind of a reprise of ‘Kuroi Inori.’ It ends with a high whistle played with an instrument named iwabue, which is just a small stone with a hole. The sound of the instrument represents the salvation of your soul.”
THE NEW STUDIO ALBUM FROM THE JAPANESE LEGENDS. AN OPUS OF DARK & ECLECTIC BLACKENED HEAVY METAL, SHROUDED IN TRADITIONAL EASTERN INFLUENCES Cult Japanese black metal legends Sigh formed in 1989/90, featuring mainman Mirai Kawashima, Satoshi Fujinami & Kazuki Ozeki. Following initial demos, Shinichi Ishikawa was brought in to replace Kazuki, and Sigh set about recording the masterpiece debut ‘Scorn Defeat’ for Euronymous’ Deathlike Silence Productions, going on to become one of the country’s greatest and most revered metal exports. With a journey through the strange and the psychedelic, incorporating a whole eclectic mix of genre styles & experimentation throughout their career, Sigh has remained a vital creative force in the avantgarde field whilst maintaining their old school roots. ‘Shiki’ marks the latest chapter in the Sigh legacy, and includes some of the band’s heaviest and darkest material for some years; a fine hybrid of at times primitive black metal akin to early influences such as Celtic Frost amid more epic melodic heavy metal riffing and solos. The album also utilises a whole host of instruments to give further texture and dynamics to the compositions and eerie atmosphere, incorporating traditional oriental instruments such as the Shakuhachi & Sinobue flutes. The word "Shiki" itself has various meanings in Japanese such as four seasons, time to die, conducting an orchestra, ceremony, motivation, colour. The two primary themes for the album are "four seasons" and "time to die". The concept and artwork is based around a traditional Japanese poem, and on ‘Shiki’ Mirai explores how at this stage of life he himself is going through Autumn, with Winter coming soon, and so empathises with the contrasting sentimental feelings from watching cherry blossoms (a symbol of spring) in full bloom. Joining Mirai and Dr Mikannibal for this release are Frédéric Leclercq of Kreator, plus US drummer extraordinaire, Mike Heller of Fear Factory, along with an appearance by longtime member Satoshi Fujinami on bass. ‘Shiki’ was recorded across multiple studios, and mixed and mastered by Lasse Lammert at LSD studios in Germany.
Behind black shrouds of obscurity and desolation, the men of GAEREA deliver their odes in cascading maelstroms of aggression and beauty with full-length number three, ‘Mirage.’ Emerging from the age of pandemic to whatever awaits humanity next, the Portuguese horde remains on the frontlines of the next generation of extreme metal. The beauty of GAEREA lies in the directness and simplicity found within their florid tapestry of extremity and aggression. With talons dipped in the inky blood of black metal and scraped across the flesh of human suffering, GAEREA is leading a charge into the future of darkness, and all those who find beauty and power in the dark side of existence would do well to take heed.
The death metal subgenre of death-doom isn’t known for its grunge influences, but that hasn’t stopped Temple of Void. The Detroit-based band weave subtle nods to Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, and even Smashing Pumpkins into their crushing and melancholy fourth album. “I don’t want people to ever really pick up on it,” guitarist Alex Awn tells Apple Music. “If they do, it means we were too heavy-handed or we didn’t make it Temple of Void enough. If we telegraph it like, ‘Here’s the grunge part,’ it’s a failure to me.” Lyrically, vocalist Mike Erdody approached *Summoning the Slayer* from a more existential perspective than previous Temple of Void albums. “It’s essentially about looking at yourself in the mirror,” Awn explains. “We’ve got this Lovecraftian monster on the front cover, but the real horror is being face-to-face with yourself and your failures. You have to summon the courage to fight your internal demons.” Below, he details each song. **“Behind the Eye”** “This is a high-energy stomper to start the record. We’ve never had any riffs that have any space in them, so we wanted to include that as an element you didn’t see coming. Chuck Schuldiner from Death was an influence on the writing of this one—it’s kinda like Death by dummies. It has a note in it where I normally would’ve done a pinch harmonic, but I had been listening to ‘Them Bones’ by Alice In Chains, so I added that kind of feeling instead. That’s how we bring grunge into our records. It doesn’t sound like grunge, but the inspiration is there.” **“Deathtouch”** “If you don’t like this song, you probably won’t like Temple of Void. This is almost like a standard-bearer for what we do with death-doom. It’s a lengthy track, and it was definitely inspired by Paradise Lost. The very first death metal show I ever saw was Paradise Lost on the *Icon* tour with Sepultura, and that show has stuck with me to this day. The verse kind of has Type O Negative vibes, but when I play it, I imagine the ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ video. I see the cheerleaders and hear that drumbeat when we ring out that chord.” **“Engulfed”** “The working title for this was ‘4th of September,’ a reference to the Soundgarden song ‘4th of July.’ I just came up with those opening three chords—it’s very simple, but it has this really heavy Soundgarden vibe to it. It’s probably my favorite song to play when we do it in the practice room. It’s like a four- or five-chord song—nothing super complicated, but it’s the way it’s put together. Sometimes there’s magic in simplicity. But it’s a pretty bleak song. If you’re on an emotional journey, this is the low point.” **“A Sequence of Rot”** “There was a Smashing Pumpkins song that actually influenced the main riff—‘Bodies’ off of *Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness*. He’s just rolling on three notes or something to drive the song forward, and I just really dug that momentum. So, I wrote that riff with that in mind and slammed it together with a melancholy doom sort of lead over the chorus. And then there’s a part that was inspired by Quicksand. Of course, it doesn’t sound like Quicksand. If you listen carefully to the end of the song, you can hear some tambourines going on. I get a kick out of that.” **“Hex, Curse & Conjuration”** “\[Guitarist\] Don \[Durr\] and I wrote this one really quickly, and it’s the shortest song on the record. For me, it definitely has a Deicide influence—a real face-ripper. But the structure of the song is kind of a Rorschach mirror image thing—we play riffs 1, 2, and 3 and then 3, 2, 1. It’s like an aural palindrome. The outro was inspired a little bit by a Craft song called ‘I Want to Commit Murder,’ and then Don put this really nasty Morbid Angel-influenced lead at the end.” **“The Transcending Horror”** “This one has this real laidback riff I wrote that reminds me of 40 Watt Sun. When I brought it to the guys, I thought it was maybe kind of pushing it for us—and we had to work on it quite a bit. But sometimes when that happens, those songs end up being the best songs on the record. When I hear it, I imagine myself or the listener sitting in that boat getting ferried into the cave on the cover of our last record. And then we’re entering the cave on this record. It’s not terribly metal, but it might be my favorite song on the album.” **“Dissolution”** “We give Mike free reign to do whatever he wants for one song on every record because he’s the best guitarist in the band, but he doesn’t get to play guitar on most of our songs. So, he did acoustic pieces on our first three records, and he carried on with the acoustic thing here—but this one needed vocals. So, he wrote this really cool-sounding, very Nick Drake-oriented piece. I think he was inspired by some of Nick Drake’s open tunings. Of course, you could reference ‘Planet Caravan’ by Sabbath, but this definitely feels organic and vintage. It works really well in the flow of the album, too.”