What was the first bit of heavy music you ever heard in your life? Did you level up, gaining mana from the ear-peeling riffs and shouts? Lovers of extreme metal surely have had experiences like this in their lives, where their entire world is tossed upside-down a new band, or a clutch of new demos from an emerging scene. This is how my ears felt hearing Grief Symposium, with a new take on the Death / Doom sub-genre with their debut, …In The Absence of Light (Church Road Records). Although mysterious and secretive, they did not set out to reinvent extreme music, but rather invent themselves, and a sound that should echo for a long time.
Back in the tail end of the seventies, Bon Scott of AC/DC sang “if you want blood, you got it.” Over four decades later in 2022, we might hear a comparable rallying cry from vocalist/guitarist Ryan Osterman and his post-rock/shoegaze band Holy Fawn. However, on Dimensional Bleed (Wax Bodega) — the Arizona natives’ second album — the message would be more like “if you want relentless, beautiful sadness, you got it.”
Banefyre (Season of Mist) is the twelfth album from Crippled Black Phoenix, the category-defying collective centred around Justin Greaves, a former doom metal drummer (for bands such as Electric Wizard and Iron Monkey) turned multi-instrumentalist songwriter. The current studio lineup of the band has Greaves joined by longstanding vocalist Belinda Kordic, plus more recent recruits Helen Stanley (keys, synths, trumpet), Andy Taylor (guitars), and new second vocalist and third guitarist Joel Segerstedt.
The season of the witch is upon us!!!! With Halloween just days away, it seemed more than fitting to check out some new Black Metal. Why not listen to some truly “scary movie” music with my favorite holiday just at hand. With that being said, the new cut from Ghost Bath Is a musical force to be reckoned with.
The role of mythology is to inspire both individual and collective growth through storytelling. Myths do that by making sense of the world. Vital (Southern Lord) byBIG | BRAVE is a mythical-sounding album that does just that. Of the colossal yet intimate Vital, theDoom-Sludge trio from Montreal featuring Robin Wattie, Mathieu Ball, and Tasy Hudson says, “This album involves what it means navigating the outside world in a racialized body and what it does to the psyche as a whole while exploring individual worth within this reality.”Vital tells a story through sound that makes sense of the modern world, prompting growth for those who listen.
Rammstein has been busy getting us sufficiently pumped up for next months new album, Rammstein due outMay 17th via UmE/Spinefarm in Europe and Caroline Records in the US. After the band shared five snippets of new songs today via their YouTube and released the full track listing and album artwork, the band has teased a new video, due out Friday, April 26th. Watch it now! Continue reading →
As we previously reported, Rammstein will release their new self-titled album May 17th via Ume/Spinefarm in Europe and Caroline Records in the US. Yesterday the band shared five snippets of new songs today via their YouTube. Now they have released the full track listing and album artwork, very apropos of the bands’ wild live performances, an image of an unlit match. Last month, Rammstein released a nine-minute Specter Berlin-directed video for ‘Deutschland’, their first new single in nine years. Continue reading →
Anticipation can cloud over artistic impact. After the best part of a decade, single ‘Mein Land’ and live opener ‘Ramm4’ are the only glimpses of new material the world has seen from the mighty Teutonic titans. Since 2009’s stellar Liebe Ist Für Alle Da (Universal), the world has held its breath in baited wait for a seventh Rammstein studio album. Does this towering decade of monolithic expectation dull the impact of brand new single, ‘Deutschland’?Continue reading →
Even in this musically idiosyncratic world of genres, sub-genres, tribes, sub-tribes and singleton geniuses, the desire for Finnish psychedelic folk rock may not have been top of your musical shopping list. You should change that forthwith now that Hexvessel’s third album, the striking When We Are Death (Century Media), has arrived for our collective delectation.
Four years ago, their second album, No Holier Temple was a curious and often compelling blend of Woods of Ypres inspired atmospherics, Opeth tinged acoustics and an obvious and deep-seated love of drug influenced 60s and 70s rock, particularly that made by Mr. Jim Morrison and his partners in crime in The Doors.
No Holier Temple was about the trip and the mood; it was inviting and beguiling. By contrast, When We Are Death initially appears as a straightforward folk rock record. Before you jump to a logical conclusion that they have thrown the baby out with the Finnish bathwater, hold your psychedelic horses. The band’s love of psychedelia remains resolutely intact: when you have songs called Drugged Up On the Universe and Mushroom Spirit Doors it is fairly self-evident how the band spend part of their leisure time but there is also a much more deliberate attention to song structure and that oft-ignored discipline of the tune in distinct evidence here. Have a listen, for example to the sparky, keyboard soaked friskiness of When I Am Dead or the smoky jazz backdrop of the reflective and melancholic Mirror Boy and you’ll immediately understand what I’m getting at.
At the heart of this collective endeavour is the vocal prowess of British born Mat McNerney who has a fragility and emotional heft to his voice that does three things particularly well. First: it brings an authenticity to the songs that cuts through with striking immediacy. Second: as narrator, his range is never overbearing nor irritating. Third: he does the best Jim Morrison you’ve heard in ages. Oh and, yes, this is the same Mat from Beastmilk, by the way.
Hexvessel are an intoxicating proposition. They are not, repeat, not, a heavy metal band. Not in the stereotypical sense of the phrase anyway.However, Hexvessel share some of the same qualities and attitude that underscores the metal aesthetic. This is a record is a record of charm and wit and invention. It is a record that is warm and inviting and, being released in the depths of winter, you cannot say any fairer than that. So we won’t.
