Gloombound: Dreaming Delusion
Out 21st November on Gruesome Records
Scrapes together the more downbeat elements of death/doom as a means of conjuring up a foundation for self-indulgent, achingly tedious balladeering. Much like Ahab before them, the pacing and content of these compositions is a hollow façade, leaning on depressed tempos to contrive tension and drama where no original ideas are forthcoming. Contrast is achieved through the deployment of generic rock euphoria that no amount of death metal vocalisations and church organs can cover up. Gentle, lethargic guitar leads reminiscent of the dead plodding post rock runs of Sólstafir complete an otherwise trivial picture of barren emotive sentiment.
Terror Corpse: Ash Eclipses Flesh
Out 21st November on Dark Descent Records
Muscular, energetic death metal bridges the genre’s primitivism with a stark showing of gothic horror. Undergirded by Texan veteran Dobby Beverly’s strong rhythmic foundation, the music swings between tight, beat driven mid-paced marches begetting a sense of doom laden inevitability, contrasted with wilder swings into anomic discordance, as the music splits apart into multiple directions only to coalesce into razor thin blasting runs rented from black metal. At times a little too random for its own good, if anything Terror Corpse suffer from an over abundance of ideas, leaving some underdeveloped whilst other, less interesting vignettes are given too much airtime. That being said, the shifting, undulating pace of the music leaves one guessing, forcing the listener to repeatedly tune in to the meandering plotlines, a refreshing experience given the pathological predictability of much modern extreme metal. Although the stew of influences from classic death metal features all the usual suspects, Terror Corpse have made a convincing case for once again reconfiguring these older modules into new and potentially idiosyncratic forms. A strong if slightly understated reassertion of Texan death metal.
Locusts and Honey: Shadow of my End
Out 21st November on Distant Voices
Laboured funeral doom achieves a sense of despondency, the drizzly, glum atmosphere that can sometimes only be articulated through music from the British Isles. But it fails to reach beyond its grey hue and articulate much of substance, leaning on effective if tired repetition to conjure a sense of tension that transcends the gaps between each spacious beat. Themes are stated with clear purpose, capitalising on recapitulation to further envelope the music in a sense of irredeemable hopelessness. Despite the admirable leveraging of a black metal aesthetic – something a lot of modern funeral doom seems to have forgotten how to do – the guitar tone, drums, and powerful bass presence all serve to present a somewhat warmer although no less malevolent front. Rasping vocals plug the gaps between beats, accentuating the torturous, overwrought flow of each piece as if to highlight the music at its most intentionally unpleasant. Noise interludes and ambient passages bookending this EP complete the soundscape, offering a thick brume of static to contextualise the near orchestral power of the metallic segments.
Hyver: Shaâtaunoâr
Out 25th November on Antiq
Folksy black metal framed by dungeon synth interludes aping the structure of classic point-and-click games or quest books harkening back to the age of imagination. Despite the gimmicky structure, bouncy folk licks, driving rhythms, and a generally playful nature reassure us that there is no unwarranted pretence behind the music. Flowing heavy metal melodies sieved through sweeping tremolo runs create a cinematic sense of adventure, elevating otherwise simple melodies with the contrivance of depth. Vocals are perhaps a little overzealous in their presentation, the impassioned wails and wild gesticulations undermining what could otherwise have been a piece of entertaining theatre. Because of the explicit narrative framing device, the music is forced to evolve in simple, sequential episodes. In this sense development achieves the bare minimum so many modern acts are apparently incapable of in that it makes sense. But this does not fully compensate for just how predictable and at times generic the arrangements and phrasing can be. A piece of cheerful and relatively un-obnoxious folk metal sits just beneath the surface regardless.
Infernal Presence: Fiery Paths
Out 26th November on Darkness Shall Rise Productions
Dark, orchestral black metal achieves tension through chord progressions that unfurl in exploratory, developmental flows, incrementally articulating thematic material in ways both engaging yet transparent. The guitar tone seeks to achieve that sweeping, grandiose style innovated on Mayhem’s debut, eking out an immersive, atmospheric experience for the listener to dwell in. Although tonally a little one dimensional, for a debut EP setting out its stall, Infernal Presence set a clear balance between reiterating the love of their influences through the explicitly riff based approach of early Swedish black metal and adding their own specific angle to this style. Vocals seek to bottom out the atmosphere with a heavily processed, guttural growl that aligns with modern tastes for chasmic, monolithic mixes. But where many of Infernal Presence’s contemporaries lean on the mix to fill in any gaps where composition is lacking, there is a clear effort here to engage with the historic riff language this EP draws upon, and tentatively add new dimensions to the form.
Puritan Bone: Ecstasy on the Frontier of Blood
Out 26th November on Into Endless Chaos Records
Apes the Blazebirth Hall school in aesthetic and scene setting, but fails to grapple with the discipline required to commit to minimalism to the extent that characters like Kaldrad were able to. The result is a series of tracks that entice with their strong atmospheric showing, but inevitably collapse into serviceable but ultimately tedious plods of lazy and derivative black metal riffing, relying on the strong aesthetic current to carry the material through. The music entices for brief moments, but in a sense fails on two fronts. One as a piece of minimalism, as individual ideas are not dwelt on to the degree required to imbue them with majesty. And secondly as a piece of more active black metal leveraging the development of a riff dialogue to undergird the strong atmospheric offering. Here this endeavour is relegated for the sake of “acting” like a piece of minimalism whilst failing to commit to the moment. The raw materials remain satisfying as an immediate experience, but as an effort of long form, panoramic metal it falls short of the traditions it attempts to draw upon.
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