=== ORDER NOW! === on I, VOIDHAGER Records : metalodyssey.8merch.com 3xLP TRIFOLD SLEEVE (incl. Bandcamp Digital Download and Streaming) • Colors vinyls (marble or color in color) / black • Deluxe 6-Panel vinyl gatefold • Limited to 300 copies • Poster 3xCD DIGIPACK (incl. Bandcamp Digital Download and Streaming) • Limited to 300 copies • Deluxe 8-Panel Digipack CD • Booklet _________________________ Belgium's NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM (aka NNMM) is a community of “cultural engineers” with a variable line-up, mixing drone metal with spiritual free jazz and psychedelic music. The project was initiated in 2018 by multi-instrumentalist Guillaume Cazalet (Czlt, Jenny Torse, Aksu), who brought together veteran saxophonist Jean Jacques Duerinckx (Ze Zorgs) and two drummers, Sebastien Schmit (K-Branding) and Pierre Arese (Aksu). In 2020, Stephane FDL and Lukas Bouchenot took the drums. Reshma Goolamy (bass), Romain Martini (guitar), Alice Thiel (synths, guitar), Joaquin Bermudez (saz, setar), Didié Nietzche (soundscapes) joined in 2019, thus changing the band into a real drone orchestra. By exploring the evolution of the human species, NEPTUNIAN MAXMALISM question the future of the living on Earth, propitiating a feeling of acceptance for the conclusion of the so called "anthropocene" era and preparing us for the incoming “probocene” era, imagining our planet ruled by superior intelligent elephants after the end of humanity. As Guillaume Cazalet explains, “for certain scientists, if we hadn't rule the Earth, elephants were supposed to be at the top of the pyramid of terrestrial life.” The ambitious album trilogy of “Éons” is a musical experience of gargantuan proportions where each chapter is part of a fascinating ritual, a cosmic mass of light and darkness recalling the works of SUNN O))), EARTH, ALUK TODOLO, ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE, SWANS, MOTORPSYCHO, SUN RA and the late JOHN COLTRANE. The intoxicating bacchanal starts with “To The Earth (Aker Hu Benben)”, a heavy tribal music affair influenced by stoner metal, noise rock and free jazz. “It's a balance between sacred and profane, and resumes lots of human feelings or their consequences, such as love, war, hate, ritual dance, transmutation, strength, feminine/masculine juxtaposition, etc,”, says Cazalet. With “To The Moon (Heka Khaibit Sekhem)” the band opts for a slightly different approach, surrealistic yet brutal, occasionally steering towards black-doom metal. Cazalet: “Here the rhythm section plays an important role, fueled by an obscure power that plunges the listener into a magic, occult trance; this album is characterized by shamanic invocations and summonings of the ancients by using animal-like growls and the homo-sapiens' proto-language as reconstructed by Pierre Lanchantin, an English researcher/archeologist from the University of Cambridge.” The third and final chapter encompasses the interstellar meditations of “To The Sun (Ânkh Maât Sia)”, described by Cazalet as a solar drone opera: “We worked on the power of frequencies and tonality, chthonian deep vibrations and iridescent high lights by using huge amplified baritone sax and guitars, spectral soundscapes, antic cinematographic views and tribal percussions.” Wrapped in a phantasmagoric painting by Japanese master Kaneko Tomiyuki, NEPTUNIAN MAXIMALISM's “Éons” is with no doubt the quintessential mystical and psychedelic journey of 2020. 𓁹♆𓁹
Veterans from countless successful releases including a seminal split album (“Sol”, 2013) that cemented their friendship and earned them unconditioned esteem and love from the atmospheric black metal aficionados, SPECTRAL LORE's sole member Ayloss and Jacob Buczarski from MARE COGNITUM join forces once again for another mystical trip through the stars. Monumental and daring in its length and scope, "Wanderers: Astrology Of The Nine" is a thematic journey through our solar system, illustrating and anthropomorphizing it into mythology which parallels our own humanity with the science of these mysterious formations. “Inspired by Gustav Holst's Planets suite, we continue the exploration we began many years ago with 'Sol',” explain the artists; “we traverse outwards from the sun to each planet, weaving fables through a synthesis of their distinct physical features and a mythical personhood representing these features.” Graced with a wondrous cover painting by the inimitable Elijah Tamu, “Wanderers: Astrology Of The Nine” is nothing but a never ending quest for mankind's cosmic origins, a celestial and philosophical observation on the notes of MARE COGNITUM and SPECTRAL LORE's music, perfectly in the balance between progressive yet furious black metal, and moments of ecstatic, melodic beauty. “While we wish to capture the awe of the raw, natural beauty of our cosmic surroundings, we have also created our own cosmically inspired lore with each planet as our muse,” say Ayloss and Buczarski; ”therefore, each track is a narrative which represents our admiration for each cosmic entity: the psychic manifestations that were conjured through our own wonder of the majestic planetary system we call home.” --- Love Metal // Hate Fascism
WAYFARER is black metal of the American West. A cavalcade of fury, melancholia, and dust-laden storytelling; the band is informed by the fierce and adventurous spectrums of heavy music, along with the stark Americana of the “Denver Sound” artists that carved the identity of their home. In “A ROMANCE WITH VIOLENCE”, their most fully realized effort to date, WAYFARER presents a searing silver-screen requiem for the myth of the West. This new work sees them at their most intense and triumphant, as well as at their most pensive. Bold, rhythmic and riff laden, the band’s pointed expedition across the frontiers of black and extreme metal are tinged with the grit and genuine air of artists like Sixteen Horsepower and Jay Munly, and the majestic heights of the Ennio Morricone/Sergio Leone collaborations. Through seven harrowing anthems of the high plains, the album paints a poignant exploration of heroes and killers, the setting sun on a romantic era, and the shadow it has cast on the world we live in today. Recorded in the midst of the pandemic by Pete deBoer (Blood Incantation, Dreadnought), A ROMANCE WITH VIOLENCE was mixed by the inimitable Colin Marston (Krallice, Gorguts), and Mastered by V. Santura (Triptykon, Dark Fortress). The album will see release on October 16, 2020, on CD/LP/Digital on October 16, 2020 by Profound Lore Records. WAYFARER, from Colorado’s “Queen City of the Plains”, has origins beginning around 2012. Guitarist/vocalist Shane McCarthy formed the band with drummer Isaac Faulk, bassist/vocalist James Hansen, and original guitarist Tanner Rezabek. They would release 2014’s “Children of the Iron Age” and 2016’s “Old Souls” via Prosthetic Records, after which they would replace the departed Rezabek with longtime collaborator Joe Strong-Truscelli as full-time guitarist. Partnering with Profound Lore Records in 2017, the band released “World’s Blood” in 2018 on the label, ushering in the current chapter and paving the way for this new release. The last few years have seen the band take their visceral live show across the US, Canada, Mexico and Europe, touring alongside artists such as Inter Arma, Saor, Krallice, Primitive Man, Falls of Rauros, Dark Buddha Rising, Thantifaxath and others. Taking the stage around Roadburn, Fire In The Mountains, and Northwest & Austin Terrorfests, WAYFARER have made a name for themselves as a live act, with the intensity of their performance leaving an impression among its audiences. With the release of A ROMANCE WITH VIOLENCE, the band fully manifests a sound that is uniquely theirs, and is unlike anything before it. Following its release, they will soon be seen bringing their shattered view of the American West to stages across the world.
Since forming in 2014, the Ontarian sludge/doom duo Vile Creature has railed against oppression of all stripes while promoting a pro-LGBTQ and pro-vegan stance. The band’s third album, *Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm!*, sees drummer/vocalist Vic and guitarist/vocalist KW sawing off a trio of sprawling, crawling, and abrasive salvos before enlisting the angelic choir of Laurel Minnes and Minuscule alongside pianist Tanya Byrne (of Bismuth) for the alternately ethereal and caustic two-part title track.
Warping minds and matter with their two track 2018 demo, Bedsore came to the attention of 20 Buck Spin, who together in twisting conspiracy now issue the full length album ‘Hypnagogic Hallucinations’. A fitting title for the dark lucid dreamscapes and obscure fantasia Bedsore deliver on their debut. Like an Argento film the Roman band paint the canvas of Death Metal in vivid bright washes of ornamented color and stabs of inventive horror that belies the corporeal grotesquery of the band’s name. Probing into the brain through psychedelic digression and winding hypnotic prog a protean world of weird organic contours and mysterious meaning take shape. A debut album of considerable imagination and subconscious peculiarity, ‘Hypnagogic Hallucinations’ is an uninhibited first step for a band emboldened to travel to the farthest reaches of the possible within the celestial spheres of Death Metal. LP / CD / TAPE AVAILABLE THROUGH 20 BUCK SPIN
With their fourth album, metal duo Spirit Adrift wanted to create a sharp contrast to the doom and gloom of their first three. As such, *Enlightened in Eternity* is an upbeat and triumphant record that recalls the chalice-hoisting classics of a bygone era. “I\'ve put enough energy into making really emotionally devastating and painful music,” guitarist, vocalist, and founder Nate Garrett tells Apple Music. “That\'s been pretty much everything Spirit Adrift has done up to this point. So I wanted to make something that was a little more empowering and uplifting. It still deals with death and pain and suffering and trauma and all of this stuff I\'ve always been trying to unpack and analyze, but I feel like it focuses more on the solutions rather than just the problems.” Below, Garrett shows us the path to heavy metal enlightenment. **Ride Into the Light** “I didn\'t even know that I was working on a new album—I just picked up the guitar and started playing some of those riffs. But then I kind of realized that it was taking on a shape of what sounded to me like an epic, classic type of opening track to a heavy metal album. So it became this completely unapologetic, badass heavy metal song. I tried to make it really aggressive and intense, kind of in the tradition of the classic, epic album openers like \[Judas Priest’s\] ‘Electric Eye’ and songs like that.” **Astral Levitation** “When I started playing around with this, it was pretty obvious to me that I was drawing from the Iommi School of Riffs, but every era of Tony Iommi. It\'s taken me a little bit of maturity and more open-mindedness to appreciate the later stuff, like the Tony Martin era of Black Sabbath, so I wanted to represent the entire history of that school of thought. When I was trying to come up with fitting lyrical content, I thought about a story in his autobiography where he explains without a hint of irony that he has the ability to astral project. To me, it seems to explain a little bit how he is able to just keep cranking out these archetypical, powerful songs for so long. So I took that concept and applied it in a more general sense. The song ended up being about how to achieve and maximize your full potential as a human being.” **Cosmic Conquest** “I was getting tattooed, and I heard a certain drumbeat in the tattoo shop and I realized it was that straightforward, faster rock drum beat that we hadn\'t utilized yet. I don\'t even remember what song I was listening to, but I wanted to incorporate that. I was also listening to a lot of Rick Rubin-produced metal albums at the time, like Danzig and Slayer and Trouble. Then I tried to turn my mind into Rick Rubin\'s mind and produce a Spirit Adrift song. That\'s ‘Cosmic Conquest.’ Lyrically, I like to talk about science fiction and religion and spirituality and where they all intersect. I feel like it\'s a good literary tool to chip away at some deeper questions. I\'m definitely doing that on that song.” **Screaming From Beyond** “Track four on our last few albums has been important—we’ve been doing the track-four ballad thing that so many bands have done over the years. But I got really tired of tripping over my foot switch all the time to change from dirty guitar to clean guitar, so I decided I wasn\'t going to do a ballad on this album. That\'s why there\'s no clean guitar anywhere this time. But I still wanted to make track four special, so I decided to write what I felt like would be our radio hit in the vein of bands I grew up with, like Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath, and AC/DC. And then I put a sludge ending on it, like a nod to New Orleans to not make it too much of a hit, you know? Lyrically, it’s a ghost story, but the real issue I’m trying to address is grief and death and what it means when a loved one dies and how that haunts people.” **Harmony of the Spheres** “I like to do things that are heavier and faster than anything we\'ve done before, and I like to do things that are slower and more melodic and more psychedelic than we\'ve ever done before. Obviously, this one is more towards the aggressive end of the spectrum. The lyrical content was inspired by a book I was reading about John Dee, who was into chaos magic and influenced \[Aleister\] Crowley. So that sort of mystical creepiness kind of ties it back to our last album.” **Battle High** “On this song, again, I was trying to put myself in Rick Rubin\'s shoes and also returning to the Tony Iommi School of Riffs. But probably it’s more from the perspective of the Matt Pike School of Even Chunkier Riffs. I was listening to a podcast and I heard someone use the phrase ‘battle joy’ to describe someone that is completely euphoric and at peace only when they are in the heat of absolute chaos and physical violence. I started thinking about that concept and I thought ‘battle high’ sounded cooler, like somebody literally getting a high off of violence and war. But the song is more about how the military programs people to get to a place emotionally and psychologically where can they turn off their conscience and experience that battle high. But then, when they come back from war, there’s nothing to deprogram them and turn them back into human beings. So it ended up being an anti-war song, which I think is an important statement to be making.” **Stronger Than Your Pain** “Much like ‘Harmony of the Spheres,’ I wanted to write a song that was pushing the limits of what\'s expected from us in terms of aggression and heaviness and tempo. As for the lyrics, I was reading this book—*The Power of Now* by Eckhart Tolle. At first, I didn\'t think that sort of self-empowerment type of stuff was necessarily the most metal subject matter, but then I started thinking about all of my favorite metal albums—*Vulgar Display of Power*, *Powerslave*, *Screaming for Vengeance*, *Heaven and Hell*—they all kind of have this underdog mentality that it\'s us against the world. So I realized that self-empowerment is metal as fuck.” **Reunited in the Void** “This started off almost as an inside joke to myself, because I get such a kick out of people trying to force labels on us. First they said we\'re a doom band, which at the time was probably accurate. Then they said we\'re not a doom band. Some people still call us ‘stoner doom,’ which I completely don\'t understand. So I figured it would be funny to make a whole album of these pretty concise, aggressive, upbeat metal songs, and then hit them with a song that\'s ten and a half minutes long. It\'s super slow and downtrodden and melodic. Lyrically, it’s about the hope for the possibility of some sort of reconnection with everything that you love after death. Both of our dogs died around this time, so we put their collars on the last half of this song as alternate percussion. If you listen close enough, you can hear it.”
Spirit Adrift refuses to slow down. With ‘Enlightened In Eternity’, Nathan Garrett, alongside drummer Marcus Bryant, has created yet another monument to the timelessness of heavy metal. And while ‘Enlightened…’ builds on the sizable foundation established by previous albums, it also sets itself apart in formidable new ways, widening the scope of what Spirit Adrift can be. What Spirit Adrift have mastered, where others have failed, is the ability to invoke the power of metal’s past, whether it be the 70s, 80s or even the 90s as we hear on ‘Enlightened…’, without ever feeling throwback or ’retro’. Spirit Adrift urgently represent the sonic and emotional zeitgeist of 2020. “Enlightened In Eternity” carries the same enormous magnitude of the most significant metal records of every era, but Nathan Garrett has carved out his own place among the greatest of songwriters, by crafting uniquely classic and instantly recognizable songs. Vocally, Garrett again showcases an obvious evolution of his already high-level ability with more soaring soul and snarling venom injected into his classic metal form. The gorgeous guitar leads, melodies, harmonies and unforgettably heavy riffs benefit from a huge, timeless production quality. Drummer Marcus Bryant has elevated his playing to new levels of intensity and tasteful subtlety. And as always, the tracks remain imprinted on the mind long after the album has finished. Whether it’s the ever-expanding catalog of incredible albums and songs or the searing live performances, the dominance of Spirit Adrift upon the current Heavy Metal landscape is now undeniable. And while ‘Enlightened In Eternity’ already marks the band’s fourth album, Spirit Adrift have only just begun. credits
\"When we were finishing everything up and getting this music finalized, this record feels like all of our previous stuff wrapped up together, which you don\'t always end up with,\" vocalist/guitarist Brett Campbell tells Apple Music about Pallbearer\'s fourth album. Equally cathartic and melancholic, the record\'s eight tracks grapple with the strangeness of memory and the concept of time, with heavy subjects surrounding disease, death, and loss anchoring songs like \"Caledonia\" and the title track. Produced by Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Earth), *Forgotten Days* incorporates moments of soaring prog-rock (\"Stasis\" and \"Silver Wings\"), furious thrash (\"The Quicksand of Existing\"), and sweeping aggression (\"Vengeance & Ruination\") into the band\'s relentless doom metal sound, threaded together in a cohesive collection that showcases Pallbearer at their darkest. \"I like the dynamism in general,\" says Campbell. \"I feel like on this album, each song is notably different from each other while maintaining some similar elements as well.\" Below, Campbell walks Apple Music track by track through *Forgotten Days*. **Forgotten Days** “This song was inspired by these ideas of identity and memory, sort of inspired by seeing my grandmother go through Alzheimer\'s over the last several years and just watching her slip away. She\'s still alive, but there are fewer and fewer recognizable moments of her being in there. I just used it to explore the themes of how much your memories of your life or your conception of yourself—how does that define who you are? If you can only remember versions of yourself from long ago, are you lost in time? A lot of Alzheimer\'s patients seem like they are displaced, because they have these memories that to them seem current, but it could be from 50 years ago. I feel it\'s got to be a very strange way to exist.” **Riverbed** “The skeleton of that song is from \[bassist\] Joe \[Rowland\]. So he demoed it and sent it to us, and I really liked it from the very initial moment. It sounds new, it sounds different than our old stuff. It\'s got the trade-off vocals—Joe does the softer vocals, and I do my typical thing. It will probably end up being a live staple, if we ever get to play shows again.” **Stasis** “I\'ve been flirting with writing more rock-ish songs lately. I wanted to have more of a swagger and groove to it rather than either something that hammers or big sweeping sort of stuff that we often do. I just wanted to test the limits of the Pallbearer format. The lyrics on that are essentially a reminder to not get stuck in shitty behavioral patterns that just drag down. Because you really only have so long to live, and if you waste lots of time just wallowing in misery or just the patterns that you\'re comfortable with, you don\'t get that time back.” **Silver Wings** “I always like to write at least one long, epic song per album. That\'s probably my favorite of mine on the album. And it\'s kind of concerned with similar ideas as \'Forgotten Days.\' I think I sort of have a fixation with this sort of concept in general. Just the idea of the unstoppable march of time and the inevitability of change. You find a person at a time that they\'re much different than they once were.” **The Quicksand of Existing** “We ended up really kind of having a ball over Devin \[Holt\]\'s guitar solo. We do a trade-off in the middle. Mine is the sort of more florid-sounding one, and then Devin just comes in with the fucking face-melting, fucking *Reload* guitar. You can hear the black-nail-polish-era Kirk Hammett rocking out. We were losing our minds in the studio when he recorded that, laughing our asses off. It\'s probably our simplest song we\'ve ever done, but it\'s a lot of fun to play.” **Vengeance & Ruination** “I\'ve had kind of a difficult time coming up with lyrics for that song because the music itself is so aggressive. I was kind of trying to approach it almost like a hardcore song, although it really ended up not sounding like that. I saw these pictures from probably 120 years ago of these victims of the death by a thousand cuts where they\'d like flay you alive, this Chinese capital punishment. It\'s horrifically, incomprehensibly cruel. And I use that as a jumping-off point as a kind of discussion of a state-sponsored cruelty.” **Rite of Passage** “Solstice is kind of one of our influences from early on. And we\'ve always really enjoyed that stuff, just kind of classic epic doom. And we haven\'t really done a straightforward Solstice-esque song before. So we just went for it. I think that the chorus ended up being pretty cool in that, because once we got to the studio, one of Randall\'s suggestions was to play the chorus on the toms instead of just playing it through, which I think was a really great suggestion and it opened up the chorus a lot.” **Caledonia** “It\'s pretty fucking weird. The really bizarre guitar solo from Devin, quadruple-track harmonies on there, I think it\'s pretty rad. But it\'s also just crushingly sad. That was another one of those songs about dealing with his mother\'s death. It\'s pretty heavy subject matter, but I like all the various textures and directions that that song goes in. It feels inherently progressive in the sense that there are so many different sonic directions throughout that song. It flows really well together and doesn\'t seem disjointed, which it could have felt with all the different things going on.”
The third album and follow-up to 2017's "II: Morphosis" sees Lantern continuing on their unique path blending eerie melodies with and top notch riffs topped off by the one-of-a-kind vocals of Necrophilos. "Dimensions" is destined to be one of 2020's finest efforts. Artwork by Timo Kokko Mixed and mastered by Dan Lowndes at Resonance Sound Studio.
Featuring guitarist/vocalist Aaron Turner (Old Man Gloom, ex-Isis), bassist Brian Cook (Russian Circles, ex-Botch), and drummer Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists), Sumac is a metallic supergroup that specializes in bone-rattling riffs, lengthy compositions, and general uneasy listening. They’re also incredibly prolific: Since debuting in 2015, they’ve released four albums and an EP. *May You Be Held* is very much a continuation of the trio’s last album, 2018’s *Love in Shadow*. “Some of the foundation of this record was built off things that were recorded during the *Love in Shadow* sessions,” Turner tells Apple Music. “And there were lyrical themes I was working on with the last record that I felt didn’t cover the full extent of what I was trying to express. That record really came together right around the time of our last presidential election, which was, in my view, a turning point in our American culture. Everything that kind of started there has only grown and become more exacerbated in the intervening years, so I felt like there was more to say.” Below, Turner takes us through the twists and turns of *May You Be Held*. **A Prayer for Your Path** “This was the very last thing that was recorded when we were in the studio, and even before we mixed it I immediately felt like this had to be the opening to the album. Luckily, Brian and Nick agreed. It’s got an enveloping atmosphere but also this kind of peripheral tension to it. It seemed like a gentle opening into the world of this record, which is actually pretty tumultuous and even pretty caustic at a number of points. So we wanted to ease people into what is overall a pretty rough ride at times.” **May You Be Held** “The opening riff for the song just kind of sounds like an AC/DC riff, and I wasn’t sure how that fit into the parameters of what we do as Sumac. Yet the more I played it and the more I thought about the impactful simplicity of it, the more I felt that my discomfort with it was an indicator that it needed to be pursued. And by the time we had fleshed it out as a band, the AC/DC comparison had diminished quite considerably. Lyrically speaking, the song is kind of divided into two halves. The first half is centered around my fear of the future on an existential level, but also on an individual level, as it pertains to being a parent. After having brought a child into this world and looking at what the world is like at the moment, I can\'t help but think forward to what the future is going to be like for his generation. The second half of the song addresses the idea that regardless of what does happen, I have zero control over the path that we take collectively, and that my son has his own path before him.” **The Iron Chair** “Thrill Jockey suggested this song as a ‘single,’ and even though we are in no way a singles band, we agreed that offering this tangled piece as an introduction to the album felt like the right move. Given the climate that we’re all in currently, it also seemed appropriate because \[this song\] is a way of kind of harmonizing the inner state with our external world. Things are confusing right now, and nothing is familiar in the sense of what we\'ve been accustomed to up to this point. And for me, there\'s no immediately obvious emotional signifiers for this song. It covers a wide range in terms of the emotional directives in it, so I felt like that was a good way to sort of lay the groundwork for the record emerging into the world.” **Consumed** “Brian pointed out something interesting about the contrast of the two kind of pillars of the record, ‘May You Be Held’ and ‘Consumed,’ in that ‘May You Be Held’ starts off kind of frantic and then diminishes into this very bleak and almost barren anti-structure by the end, and this song is kind of the opposite—it starts out slowly and very minimal but by the end kind of escalates into this blown-out frenzy. That wasn\'t intentional, but when we look back on the record as a whole, it\'s kind of neat to see that arc having happened again on a totally subconscious level.” **Laughter and Silence** “It’s interesting to try to title instrumental tracks. This may seem like a trivial example, but there is something that I\'ve observed in children, and this was even before having a child of my own: The moment of greatest exhilaration and laughter and energy and exuberance is often immediately followed by a violent accident and tears. And I feel like that speaks to the human experience in a lot of ways—and also the present moment we’re in, which of course means different things for many people. But I just feel like we have had to take a prolonged silence and breath to look at where we are and more deeply consider the result of being thrust into isolation and separation—and also upheaval.”
“As an artist in this time of significant upheaval, society seemingly having reached the end of its current iteration, it’s of critical importance to absorb and interpret this process of dissolution - and of the transformation that hopefully follows it” says Aaron Turner, guitarist and vocalist for the expressionistic metal ensemble SUMAC. “While I don’t believe we’re on the brink of collective destruction precisely now, this is clearly a pivotal stage in the story of humankind - and there is something that feels right about this music at this exact and very uncertain moment.” In this case, the music in discussion is May You Be Held, the latest album for the American-Canadian trio. Picking up where the band left off with 2018’s Love in Shadow, SUMAC push further into the extreme polarity of their sound with their latest collection of long-form composition and free-form exploration. Meticulously detailed and complex one moment, rudimentary and repetitive the next, and completely untethered and unscripted at seemingly random intervals—it’s an album that fluctuates between extreme discipline and control on one end and an almost feral energy on the other. SUMAC’s work has always been about transition between different states of being. Our sense of normal, and indeed our sense of life, is now being shaken. We don’t know what is coming next. We are looking for pointers towards the future, as well as things to hold onto in the moment. This is a fundamental aspect of May You Be Held’s larger theme. Musically, it’s about continual unification and divergence—and is imbued with the uncertainty inherent in that cycle. In that uncertainty there is also hope, frustration, madness, and a desire for connection. All this too is part of this moment in our history—everything happening at once, the simultaneous emergence of humanity's best and worst characteristics. Lyrically, May You Be Held follows the humanistic themes explored on Love in Shadow, partially informed by Turner’s navigation of fatherhood and family life. “It’s clear humans have figured out many ways over the centuries to acclimate to adverse circumstances, and even to thrive in them,” Turner says. “My hope for our family, humanity and future generations, is that we find our way by doing what we have always done—invent, adapt, band together, and ideally, hold each other up through love and kindness.” This compassionate tone stands in stark contrast to the misanthropic and death-obsessed nature of most heavy metal music, and perhaps even seems diametric to the caustic and aggravated tone of May You Be Held. It may make more sense to approach the album as if it were a free jazz record or an abstract noise piece, where the emotional resonance isn’t bound up in melody as much as it is in performance. Here, Turner’s bellows and howls seem less threatening than wounded, primal, and mammalian. On guitar, his subversion of melody and penchant for noise seems less like aural punishment and more like an open horizon for frequencies and timbre. In a traditional metal context, drummer Nick Yacyshyn’s dexterous beats, exhilarating fills, and creative flourishes might seem like the pinnacle of rhythmic ferocity, but on May You Be Held there’s a kind of ecstasy in his performance, a fluidity and ability that conveys both urgency in purpose and joy in execution. Bassist Brian Cook glues it together with a heavy handedness that could be seen as hostile or malicious if it didn’t also provide the clearest path to navigating the band’s thorny arrangements. May You Be Held opens with “A Prayer for Your Path,” a composition culled from improvisational exercises centered on the interplay between Turner’s guitar drones and Yacyshyn’s bowing of a vibraphone. Threaded together with warming bass swells, it serves as the entry point for the album’s increasingly tumultuous and unpredictable strategies. The album’s title track is more in line with SUMAC’s established tactics: fusing heavy riffage, knotty structures, and expressionistic forays into an epic narrative arc that winds and weaves through so many peaks and valleys that it spills across two sides of an LP. The band’s free moments hit their apex with “The Iron Chair,” a fully unscripted spontaneous moment in the studio that sounds both completely uninhibited while also locking into some kind of alien logic. From there SUMAC launches into their second long-form orchestrated composition—the imposing “Consumed.” The track is perhaps their most ambitious work yet, morphing and evolving across multiple recording sessions at different locations over the course of several years until reaching its final form where SUMAC’s troglodyte force slowly ramps it up over its twenty-minute run time to a near panic-inducing frenzy. The album is bookended with a final improvisation exercise, the somber and subdued “Laughter and Silence.” While past SUMAC records have been concentrated efforts churned out in short flurries of activity, May You Be Held is a record that came from seemingly out of nowhere. Pieced together from vestiges of the Love in Shadow session with Kurt Ballou at Robert Lang Studio in Shoreline WA, a session at The Unknown recording studio in Anacortes with Matt Bayles at the engineering helm (where the band’s sophomore album What One Becomes was tracked), and supplementary work at House of Low Culture out on Vashon Island in the Puget Sound, May You Be Held reflects the temporal shifts and protracted scope of its genesis. It’s a record that feels more human than anything else—at times flawed and wounded, at others, triumphant, purposeful, and pensive. The music is by no means a salve or anodyne, but neither is it nihilistic. Rather, its forceful approach and challenging timbres are like a confrontation, a baptism by fire, a therapeutic razing. Ultimately, May You Be Held is a reminder of the life force that binds us together and a clarion call to be an active participant in an evolving world.
One year after the release of “The Telluric Ashes of the Ö Vrth Immemorial Gods”, France's ESOCTRILIHUM return with a new and majestic work, “Eternity Of Shaog”, where the band's unique black/death metal style reaches new peaks of dark visionariness and overwhelming intensity. Sole member Asthâghul has injected new lifeblood in his creature by emphasizing the symphonic and mystical aura of the compositions, once again dense, complex and meticulously crafted. Infectious violins, piano and synths are skilfully blended with scorching guitars and mesmerizing melodies of cosmic proportions, often overflowing into raging melancholy or a delirium of omnipotence. The concept behind “Eternity Of Shaog” is one of psychic transmutation and demonic possession, and further explores the ill worlds of the immemorial gods to form a diptych with the previous album. Through a series of songs/gateways, the listeners are conducted in front of Shaog Og Magthoth, the most unfathomable among the Sovereigns of Nothingness, introduced by ESOCTRILIHUM on the "Pandemorthium" album and reminiscent of Lovecraft's Ancient Ones. In the context of this fantastic, elusive lore imagined by Asthâghul, Shaog is an omnipotent god living an endless and solitary existence outside of time and space; a hungry wild beast from a nightmarish dimension watching us with gnashing teeth, like the space vampire on Alan Brown's mind-blowing cover painting. Shaog resides at the centre of an empty, dead universe, imprisoned in a cage of monotonous desperation from which he tries to escape by possessing the unsuspecting voyager who ventures into his world of ruins through dreams... On closer inspection, Shaog is nothing but our evil self from the other side of the mirror, a metaphor for both the insanity hiding in man and the solitude of the artist. And of Asthâghul in particular: like an involuntary medium, he “receives” the blackened death metal music of ESOCTRILIHUM from unspeakable forces lurking in the dark corners of his mind, negative energies that leak out from its cracks and drip onto our reality.
With the hotly anticipated follow-up to their 2017 debut *Blood Offerings*, Oakland power trio Necrot has delivered a master class in old-school death metal, underpinned by the mother of all existential themes: mortality. “For us, talking about mortality and impermanency is a positive message, because you can’t get sad about something that is inevitable and is a shared destiny,” Italian-born vocalist/bassist Luca Indrio tells Apple Music. Musically speaking, Indrio and his bandmates—guitarist Sonny Reinhardt and drummer Chad Gailey—somehow created an even more impressive album than their highly regarded debut. “There was definitely more pressure to do something really good because *Blood Offerings* was super well-received, but we were also so much more prepared,” Indrio explains. “For us, it was never a question that this album was going to be better.” Below, he breaks down each song on *Mortal*. **Your Hell** “This track talks about how trauma creates more trauma; the effects that any negative or violent action will have on the person that is the victim is eventually going to create the next perpetrator of trauma and violence. ‘My hell will be yours’—that’s what the lyrics say—it’s a cycle of pain that gets perpetuated by marking people and creating more trauma. It’s like contagious hate. Fixing things now will benefit future generations more than ourselves, but the way we are conducting our lives is creating more pain in the future for people that are born right now.” **Dying Life** “This song talks about the mortal human condition. It talks about taking off your skin—like taking off your mask that you created to live in society. It’s about being more conscious of what you really are, which is a struggling body holding together a mortal life that is every day getting closer to the end. People forget that they’re going to have to die—and not only in the physical sense of dying, but also we often lose so much in terms of people, situations, or a job or a house or a family—things you thought you were going to have forever. But it’s important to be able to let things go instead of living in this facade of being here forever or maintaining the things that you have.” **Stench of Decay** “‘Stench of Decay’ talks of human greed and how money drives 90 percent of everybody’s actions and thoughts, even on an artistic level. So many things we do are related to money and success, and lots of times it’s like we get influenced by the results. We are driven by wanting more for ourselves rather than the bettering of everybody. We are living by a standard that is destroying pretty much everything. And that’s why lots of people feel empty in society and out of place—because not everybody wants to be driven by these things. But we live in a world that teaches you that if you’re not producing and making money, you’re pretty much wasting your time and you’re a loser.” **Asleep Forever** “This goes back to the mortal theme of the album and of ‘Dying Life,’ which is acknowledging that you’re dying, acknowledging that everything is going to end. You’re going to be asleep forever. Most people don’t want to think about that, but other people can find comfort in it, because the truth is that you get to let go and suffer less. When you accept that idea, you can live more fully rather than hiding behind thinking that things are meant to be forever.” **Sinister Will** “‘Sinister Will’ talks about soldiers going to war. I’ve met a lot of veterans at our shows and heard a lot of stories, so I felt driven to write a song about war from the perspective of the person who is there before they become a soldier. Because once you become a soldier, you’re just following orders and you’re completely expendable. Often people go to war driven by bigger ideals but after you’ve been there—if you survive—you kind of wonder why you went. So it’s about people deciding to go to war and then having the realization that they’ve been used and that actually this greater purpose didn’t exist.” **Malevolent Intention** “This kind of goes back to \[the theme of\] ‘Stench of Decay,’ but it focuses on power more than money. If your goal is being more powerful, the things you’re going to have to do often have a malevolent connotation. Because when your actions are driven by the goal of gaining more power, you’re not trying to make things better. You’re not doing things to help anybody. Your actions are not for your spiritual growth or growth as a person. You’re forced into a game where there is not much space for morality or anything else.” **Mortal** “‘Mortal’ is the ultimate reminder that you’re going to die. A lot of our songs talk about this, like ‘Shadows and Light’ on *Blood Offerings*. And it’s not just your physical body that dies—your memory is going to disappear along with everybody else’s. Everything is 100 percent impermanent, but you believe differently because you don’t understand time or you have a limited way of seeing time that only goes like a hundred years after your death or something. So this is about acknowledging that you’re a mortal being on a place where everything disappears if you wait long enough.”
The unmistakeable sound of ULCERATE finds its emotional apex on 6th album “Stare Into Death and Be Still”, as the band emerge from the claustrophobia and dissonance of their recent past to present a next-level exploration of melody, harmony and power. The band’s signature ultra-atmospheric blend of highest order unorthodox Death Metal with the texture of futurist Black Metal is here pared-down with the consummate hand of experience, giving stunning credence to the riff, the song and the meaning. Embracing production clarity, ULCERATE use these songs to fully showcase their otherworldly musicianship: a vocal performance from Paul Kelland of unadulterated authority, Michael Hoggard’s guitar and Jamie Saint Merat’s percussion working in tandem with startling skill and originality, simultaneously skewed and heart-rending, often addictively succinct and revelling in strident motifs that hook, haunt and transform the listener with their expressive honesty. Thematically the album explores the concept of “death reverence” – drawing on recent personal experience to confront the truism that death and tragedy aren't always sudden or violent, that people are often passive observers trapped “in the silent horror of observing death calmly and cleanly”. “Stare Into Death and Be Still” is the deepest, purest and most meticulous form of ULCERATE: a soul-searching conflagration of atypical melodicism, immaculate virtuosic dexterity and sublimated psychological upheaval. A breathtaking new beginning for one of the most uniquely talented bands in extreme music.
Martin Khanja (aka Lord Spike Heart) and Sam Karugu emerge from Nairobi's flourishing underground metal scene as former members of the bands Lust of a Dying Breed and Seeds of Datura. Together in 2019 they formed Duma (Darkness in Kikuyu) with Sam abandoning bass for production and guitars and Lord Spike Heart providing extreme vocals to the project. Recorded at Nyege Nyege Studios in Kampala over three months in mid 2019 their self-titled debut album fuses the frenetic euphoria, unrelenting physicality and rebellious attitude of hardcore punk and trash metal with bone-crunching breakcore and raw, nihilist industrial noise through a claustrophobic vortex of visceral screams. The savant mix of brutally adrenalized drums, caustic industrial trap, shredding grindcore inspired guitars and abrupt speed changes create a darkly atmospheric menace and is lethal on tracks like the opener "Angels and Abysses" , "Omni" or "Uganda with Sam". The gruelling slow techno dirges and monolithic vocals on "Pembe 666" or "Sin Nature" add a pinch of dramatic inevitability bringing a new sense of theatricality and terrifying fate awaiting into the record's progression. A sinister sonic aggression of feral intensity with disregard for styles, Duma promises to impact the burgeoning African metal scene moving it into totally new, boundary-challenging experimental territories. VIDEO FOR LIONS BLOOD HERE: youtu.be/zd35MhHqjhc VIDEO FOR OMNI HERE: youtu.be/ffxLsl8MWXE
Tape version with digital download available at tridroid.bandcamp.com "The ones who got us in this mess will never get us out." Seattle's Adzes crafts dirges of atmospheric sludge with elements of noise rock, post-metal, and shoegaze, a musical counterpart to the oppressive green and grey of the winters of the Pacific Northwest. Lone member Forest Bohrer's snarling bass collides with thundering drums amidst roiling guitar feedback on songs that howl protest against the accelerating human and environmental crises produced by our capitalist system. Adzes is doomy and bleak music for a world on fire. Following 2018's ISIS- and Godflesh-influenced Climate//Capital EP, a bleak look at the havok wrought by capital on a personal and global scale, No One Wants to Speak About It expands both sonic palette and outlook. Clearer, more spacious production reveals a grimy bass presence and a wide range of influences, from Paradise Lost's gothic doom-death to 90s grunge and shoegaze and even to Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich. These songs continue the too-timely lyrical themes of the EP, zooming out to excoriate rising fascist sentiment and endless imperialism, but also turning inward to focus on personal stuggles and the reality of one's mortality. Frantic riffing, mournful sludge, and moody post-metal carry the listener through a harrowing but cathartic listen. On this record Adzes establishes itself as a forceful voice of dissent in a burning world. FFO: ISIS, Godflesh, Kowloon Walled City, early Mastodon "Building on influences from that range from doom and sludge to industrial, noise rock and shoegaze, No One Wants to Speak About It is cold and groovy with a sense that things could break down at any moment." - Vince Bellino, Decibel www.decibelmagazine.com/2020/06/22/five-must-hear-sludge-releases-from-2020/ "...leaving you feeling like you’ve been trudging through enormous slabs of concrete." - Valley of Steel valleyofsteel.net/2020/05/27/adzes-climate-capital-a-forest-digging-in-the-dirt-2019-no-one-wants-to-speak-about-it-2020/ "...a thick soundscape of sludgy, shoegaze-influenced metal." - Alex Payne, Sleeping Village Reviews www.sleepingvillagereviews.com/reviews/adzes-no-one-wants-to-speak-about-it-review "His music combines elements of black metal, punk, noise, doom, hardcore, and plenty of other heavy flavors, and the eight tracks that stretch over about 50 minutes....smashes through boundaries as he puts together these songs, splashing in every influence at his disposal, which makes for a rich, diverse listen." - Brian Krasman, Meat Mead Metal meatmeadmetal.com/2020/06/26/
