Bergrizen: Orathania
Out 22nd September on Purity Through Fire
Concocts disparate but well thought out textural passages somewhere between the arcane naturalism of Ildjarn and the floating space ambient of Midnight Odyssey. Whilst neither comparison may be all that welcome, crafting ambient in program vignette form based on cultural or geographical source material is a sure way to invite influence mining. The pure synth passages are offset by jaunty neofolk trances that lend a certain synthetic, almost rave like industrialist reimaging of Kroda, Nokturnal Mortum, or indeed Lord Wind. The album was clearly intended as a sounding board for various non-metallic ideas as a way to complement the second half of the work, which is predominantly instrumental black metal. And whilst such a pursuit is instructive, the question remains whether it warranted an official release. For those versed in Bergrizen, or particularly enthusiastic when it comes to black metal’s liminal concerns, there is quality material to sink the teeth into, but for the most part these compositions pose as afterthoughts or sonic post-it notes presaging a project yet to be realised.
Shavalyoth: ΜΑΡΧΩΣΙΑΣ
Out 11th October on Hellenic Metal World
Brief but eccentric EP seeking to recast primitive black metal as bright, hopeful music despite the inherent violence. Busy but simple melodic refrains dance by, carried along by flowing blast-beats, articulated via a mixture of oddly clean guitar tones, accented by intermittent distorted rhythm guitar expanding the atmosphere. The effect is not unlike a Greek version of ‘A Thousand Swords’ era Graveland, miniaturised and made warm by a focus of intent that – if I didn’t know better – could be described as catchy. Rich orchestration supplements this pleasing jumble of aesthetic ephemera, knitting together a sense of punk intimacy with the grandeur of myth. Shavalyoth offer an uncanny concoction on this EP, one that visits a surprisingly wide array of traditions within black metal. But cohesion is retained thanks to a clear melodic vision, one that leaves its mark on the raw distortion of the lead guitars through to the distant waves of synth supplementing the theatrical link phrases, lending a sense of majesty that sits easily alongside an earthy realism.
Overthrow: Ascension of the Entombed
Out 13th October on Redefining Darkness Records
Actually achieves a pretty convincing synthesis between early Morbid Angel and latter day Incantation, if such a thing were necessary. The evolutionary thrash of early Azagthoth receives a new lick of paint, posing as butler welcoming us in to an energetic menagerie of North American death metal calling cards, where playful atonal barrages meet crumbling dissonance, hacked up transitions, and where flowing grindcore is collided against barrages of muscularly direct riffing. Musically then, the package is refreshing in its total lack of affectation. Although the distinction is hard to pinpoint, this is a band communicating original ideas via a very familiar death metal vocabulary, as distinct from OSDM that communicates purely through the voice of the past. The only thing that perhaps betrays a retroist discourse are the vocals that, despite the competent performance, exhibit an overly cavernous reverb and liberal divergence of pitch that – although probably intended to offer textural diversity – result in a lack of focus. Despite this, the EP shines like a fresh basket of vegetables amidst endless crates of processed consumable matter.
Malformed: The Gathering of Souls
Out 13th October on Extremely Rotten Productions
Nuance emerges from barbarism. A linear progression is discernible via Suffocation’s evolutionary approach to thrash riffing, progressing them into a complex of three dimensionalities until something categorically new emerges. Malformed behave as if the last twenty five years of technical death metal never happened, with results indicating that this is a good thing. Gems are a rarity in this field, and sometimes the best way to jettison the baggage of history is to ignore it entirely, reset the clock, and go back to first principles. ‘The Gathering of Souls’ connects up with external metallic furniture via thrash, early death metal, and grindcore, but recasts these familiar characters into a clearly technical setting, undulating forth with chromatic oddities, welcomely unpredictable tangents, and a clear joy taken in contrasting the primitive with the refined. Even at the level of presentation, Malformed behave like a garage band, adopting a blue collar poise that grounds the music with a sense of realism, a clear connection to history, and a rough honesty. Smuggling in esoteric easter eggs and surprise refinement looks all the more subversive in this back to basics setting when taken against the overly cluttered mixes many death metal bands have been shooting for recently.
Afterbirth: In But Not Of
Out 20th October on Willowtip Records
There’s two ways to read this album. The naïve reading is of a group of talented lads getting together for some jams that got out of hand. One likes djent, another post metal, another math rock, and a fourth death metal. There is no band leader. All have an equal say, and this is reflected in the music, that lurches between styles with abandon. The cynical reading is a group of talented lads with tediously contemporary influences that just scream boring white guy, showcasing their ghastly lack of artistic focus. A vision of nothing but content, cycling round whatever hot trend churning around the brainier end of rock and metal fandom in the hope that eclecticism will paper over just how little is actually going on here. ‘In But Not Of’ is perhaps less insulting to death metal fans than comparable releases in this regard. Death metal is just one unwilling victim thrown into the meat grinder on this album. Others go so far as to use the façade of death metal as a platform for vulgar genre hopping with no motivation behind it other than a pretence of intellectualism. There’s still plenty of that going on here, but at least no one genre is singled out for particularly graphic mutilation.
Baring Teeth: The Path Narrows
Out 20th October on I, Voidhanger
Notable among the current crop of dissonant progressive death metal for its ability to weave together a coherent sonic direction across each track, one that is tracible despite the plethora of active transitions and unexpected tangents. It lifts the post 2000 Gorguts formula and places it in a more explicitly jazz environment. The tight mechanisations of the death metal lineage are slowly stripped back to more fluid blast-beats, loose drones, and arrested momentum, all of which are anathema in a traditional metal setting. Whilst this approach works, and marks Baring Teeth out enough to justify our scrutiny, there is a tendency to allow left-field redundancies to become too dictatorial, resulting in music that was probably more interest to compose and play than it is to listen to. That being said, artistry has not entirely absented itself. Operating over and above the dense interchange of musical esoterica are clearly discernible threads of creative intent, calling out to the listener with anomic desperation.
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