Tubal Cain: Slime Abyss
Out 27th February on Darkness Shall Rise
It remains curious to look at black metal as the completion of metal’s evolutionary circle. A symptom of the hysteria and panic that gripped metal fans as death metal bands proudly displayed their tracksuits and time signatures. Black metal’s closer alliance with linear heavy metal – and occasionally retro thrash – as a result is hardly surprising. It’s not uncommon to meet fans that will bypass death metal entirely, confining their listening rotations to heavy metal and its descendants only, and will happily fold black metal – at least at its most unambiguous – into this branch of the familiar tree. Tubal Cain are one such node cementing this link further. Essentially a group of musicians clearly raised on early heavy metal but – for reasons known only to them – coat it in a black metal aesthetic, namely through an atypically rough production and vocal style. Unlike many bands that could lay claim to straddling the borders between black metal and a pre-1990 DNA, there really are no riffs on ‘Slime Abyss’ that one could in all good conscious label as black metal. The experience is closer to Grand Magus with goblinoid characteristics than anything remotely black metal. For fans that approach black metal through the vector of death metal then, this will seem like a needless regression. The riffing and overall construction of this album is above average for overtly retro metal, but has little to offer fans outside of melodic heavy metal. The jeopardy of adjacent bands in Absu, Agatus, Zemial, or even early Sigh is once removed for the sake of metal celebrating itself. In that regard, ‘Slime Abyss’, despite my stylistic quibbling, is quite the celebration, outclassing many in modern heavy metal (the comparison to Grand Magus intended to be nothing but favourable), but listeners with less patience than myself may find this offer too restrictive to be worth further attention.
Hirax: Faster than Death
Out 28th February on Armageddon Label
Katon W. de Pena gets the band back together to release a barely expanded version of the EP of the same name released last year. The vocals may be rougher than the Hirax of 80s vintage, but the childlike glee that sets them apart from the desperate rage of crossover remains intact. It is at least refreshing that this new lineup assembled in 2024 traverse early speed metal territory with greater emphasis, the diversity of early extreme metal laid down as the framework of each track, relegating modernist power chord thrash to accent each transition, or else emphasise the carefree aggression of the vocals. Drums inject punk austerity into the mix, anchoring the music into simple, grounded, linear runs that allow the gut punches of percussive transitions to speak for themselves through the uncluttered gaps in the music. Playful lead guitar work completes the picture, often cut short owing to an apparently strict adherence to brevity. This latter feature marks it out as distinctively thrash/crossover despite the more obvious metallic preoccupations of the guitar section. Songs go undeveloped, brief salvos of urgent grandstanding. Consigning any grander narrative to mere implication, a setup without a payoff, and allowing Hirax to firmly pin their colours to the punk mentality despite the metal flourishes being front and centre.
Act of Impalement: Profane Altar
Out 28th February on Caligari Records
Basic, muscular death metal creates the simulation of having an experience but leaves the thirst of an audience craving character and substance unsated. The dogged loyalty to simplicity deserves praise insofar as the pieces are transparently knowable, pivoting on the clear communication of ideas in logical sequences. But this is a project of diminishing returns as developmental material, if it is present at all, remains limited in substance and design. I guess we could say this is analogous to reading the outline to an engaging and tightly structured story, the details and artistry of which we are yet to be furnished with. In this regard the death/black metal label continues to creak under its many burdens, continually weighed down in its application to any black metal band with bass alongside any death metal act with an overtly evil or occultist vibe, as if these things were not baked within the genre since its inception. Act of Impalement stand above their obvious influences in the likes of Archgoat thanks to emphasising their death metal heritage, with any black metal riffs functioning as decorative flourishing, complementary to what is otherwise a decidedly death metal experience. The substance and intelligence is there, propping up the aesthetic, we await the allure of a deeper underlying ethos.
Ritual Ascension: Profanation of the Adamic Covenant
Out 28th February on Sentient Ruin
God this is getting boring. Another “death”/doom band that seems incapable of stringing more than two ideas together. The opening number ‘Womb Exegesis’ conveys a single theme, shifted around and adorned with increasingly intense cycles of distortion, vocal histrionics, and reverb. I get it. The band are called Ritual Ascension after all. But if your intension is to disguise or – to put it more charitably: repurpose – compositional minimalism in the aesthetic of maximalism, chasmic production, massive droning chords, panned layers of multiple guitar tracks, than you have to at least make sure the vibe is somehow unique, novel, or otherwise intriguing. But given that I get about five releases a week trading in this brand of overbearing, apocalyptical doom drone there is very little reason to acknowledge the comms achingly teased out across these tediously lengthy tracks. The style was perfected by the time ‘Transcendence into the Peripheral’ came out, any addendums from an Anatomia or even a Spectral Voice are welcome but hardly revelatory, this leaves very little space for further elaboration. The lack of content to be mined from ‘Profanation of the Adamic Covenant’ (that frankly looks like lack of effort from where the listener is sitting) is not compensated by anything particularly noteworthy as a study in ambience or drone.
Unholy Impurity: Oculus Mortis
Out 28th February on Masked Dead Records/Sulphur Music
The black metal equivalent of a pint of lager and bag of ready salted. Energetic, frenetic, light on atmosphere but replete with mystical opulence. ‘Oculus Mortis’ deserves praise for its ability to serve as mood music without relying on overt aesthetic flourishes, leaning entirely on riff language to transmit its identity and intent. Despite the obnoxiously no thrills presentation, a clear artistic message rooted in the tense ritualism of early second wave black metal is returned with interest. That being said, it, like so much modern extreme metal, fails to step beyond the process of scene setting. Each track is intriguingly open ended, the riffs sequenced with intelligence and forethought that both drags the listener along without spoon feeding them thematic intent. But in terms of further contouring, stepping beyond exposition, Unholy Impurity find themselves leaning on sleight of hand tricks such as switches to half time, clean vocals, or simply moving the same material up an octave. All garden variety techniques that can work well, but one gets the sense that this music is building to some moment of melodramatic import that never quite arrives. This, ultimately, is often what separates the aristocratic 90s from the bureaucratic present. Competent and professional, but lacking a degree of timeless flair.
Exordium Mors: Sworn to Heresy
Out 1st March on Praetorian Sword Records
Attempts to bottle the restrictive energy of Absu circa ‘Tara’ onwards, and in this regard it achieves the essence of galloping intent, lifting the high mysticism of black metal and repurposing it in a mix of intense thrash physicality and the bombastic regalia of heavy metal. Choppy atonality bookended by jagged licks platform the dynamic vocal attack, creating the illusion of (and sometimes achieving) information overload, a wall of active noise determined to manifest itself. There is a tendency to lean on guitar leads to create the sense of narrative direction. Whilst Exordium Mors are noteworthy for their ability to communicate the transition from one passage to the next, at times it feels like they would be better served by allowing these developments to organically grow within the process of composition as opposed to signalling them with the blustering fanfare of showy guitar leads. The underlying material is strong enough to infect the listener with its forward momentum, demanding more of them than passive regard. It should be noted however that the slight detriment of this overcompensation on the part of Exordium Mors is a miner grievance in an otherwise refreshingly confident refurbishment of the blackened thrash territory.
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