Fleshcrave: Godhand
Out 20th February, self-released
Debut EP from this Indian outfit showcases energetic, Slayer derived death metal, integrating a mechanical and foreboding inevitability with a playful modernist hue. The production is oddly anachronistic, grasping at a muscular digitalism that dates it toward the early 00s despite the older vintage behind the stylistic reference points. One dimensional blasts of violence akin to Malevolent Creation are softened by a strong melodic edge, one that finds its substance in an older thrash influence, here sharpened up in both complexity and delivery. Vocals veer between a punk derived bark and the early death metal articulations of the Tampa scene, adding a welcome drop of all too human immediacy and aggression to offset the impersonal superstructure of the music itself. As with much death metal produced outside of the Western “core” but still referencing Northern European and American stylings it approaches the genre with a refreshing vigour, and one is left satisfied that old forms are still capable of renewal in the right pair of hands. All is familiar, but given a new lease of life through the imaginative rendering found here, and a drop of guile drenched enthusiasm.
Daemonium Regni: Daemonium Regni
Out 17th April on Darkness Shall Rise
The debut album from this solo entity achieves that rare thing in histrionic doom metal, a fine balance between lofty melodrama and compositional focus. Aesthetically it leans heavily toward tragedian black metal, an inconsolable threnody of despair. But these incidental mannerisms burrow down into the music, manipulating its very form into austere, trancelike, sparse endeavours. A substrata of minimal chord progressions and basic, linear back-beats are overlaid with the rank maximalism of the flamboyant vocal performance and orchestral layers of guitar textures. The production emphasises this intent, offering a cavernous space through which the music can exercise implied muscle, an imposition on the listener’s bandwidth over and above the relative simplicity of the material. The result is a suffocatingly active iteration of despondency. All is motion, as overtures of grief compound on one another without relief. But from this panorama one is still granted vignettes of intrigue and clarity through sharp lead refrains or clean vocal melodies. There is contrast and motion to be found across this album to reconcile one to the cloying blackness.
Ignobleth: Manor of Primitive Anticreation
Out 17th April on Caligari Records
Essentially a love letter to blackened grind, a genre that, perhaps thanks to the inexplicable rise of acts like Teitanblood, is enjoying a period of favour despite developing little beyond its blueprints in Blasphemy, Impaled Nazarene, and early Archgoat. Ignobleth attempt to go longform for their debut album, extending the swelling anarchy of the blasting sections with – relatively – articulate lead material and a cavalcade of rolling fills and staccato accents. Despite the rather cliché attempt to expand the scope of the album with dark ambient interludes there is life in this beast, but it largely comes when Ignobleth pull away from the subgenre they most closely align with. Welcome solidity comes from solid thrash and proto death metal riffing, gaining greater currency from the chaotic delivery no doubt, but a welcome cerebral impetus is discernible regardless, one unfortunately cloaked beneath what can only be described as pandering to a stylistic convention that just happens to be in vogue, but one that serves no immediate purpose within the wider context of this music.
Mylingar: Út
Out 17th April on Amor Fati
Carries on in the spirit of Ildjarn in that it transfers the contours of garden variety rock and punk into an extreme setting, as a cacophony of dissonant noise smuggles in domestic phrasing and rhythmic patterns to pose as a parody of music. But Ildjarn was a rarity. A uniquely unpleasant and monomaniacal individual committed to this musical project with a near rampant fanaticism that alienated any potential listener base. Mylingar, by contrast, exhibit all the restlessness of the post digital creator who has at their disposal the riches of all music history to pull from. The result is a confused mess, premised on a “bit”, namely a form of dissonant blackened grind leveraging the nihilism of noise with a view to overwhelming the listener with static. A meaningless fanfare that serves no other purpose than to dazzle. But Mylingar are unable to “commit to the bit” so to speak, and can’t resist working in a cacophony of postmodern metal furniture. Although this is most obviously borrowed from various dissonant threads, the residing impetus treats extreme metal as a sandbox, a plaything through which to dump out various extreme expressions with little regard for how they fit together or what they are actually saying, assuming that extremity and abrasiveness are ends in themselves that carry their own artistic weight with no further finessing required.
Vaeovon: Spiritual Nullification
Out 20th April on Gutter Prince Cabal
Takes the irredeemable gloom of Black Funeral and injects it with some energy and muscle, sometimes to the detriment of the atmospheric intent of the music. Frantic, blasting, dissonant passages are intercut with more cerebral fragments of mournful, reflective lamentations which are no less vicious for the fact. Strained, throaty vocals consolidate the jagged packaging of the material. All is coated in a mechanistic, industrial sheen that lends the music a cold degree of clarity despite the latent romanticism buried beneath the melodic character of the riffs. This is offset by the nihilism of atonality and a peripheral noise influence. But ‘Spiritual Nullification’ keeps a refreshing eye on traditional forms, updating the depressive turn black metal took in the early 00s with a degree of intention and lyrical whimsy despite the undeniable violence of the overall presentation. This balance between abstraction and traditional metaphor, between the haunting surrealism of black metal as it attempted to reach a maturity that never came with the exuberance and reverence of its youth makes this album worth returning to despite the at times obnoxious gestures scattered across its runtime.
Archaic Oath: Determined to Death and Beyond
Out 24th April on AOP Records
Symphonic black metal in the sense that – despite keyboards being largely suppressed when not absent entirely – the music feels orchestral, a regal melodicism enhanced by the ponderous rhythms and frequent transitions from hues of dark to light. ‘Determined to Death and Beyond’ is a refreshingly unapologetic celebration of black metal at its most bombastic, and perhaps accessible given the fact that, despite the extremity of the presentation, a good chunk of the riffs would be legible to the uninitiated. Layers of rhythm guitars fill out the space in the mixed, spiced with well articulated lead refrains that work as a neat companion to the raspy vocal performance, offering lyrical threads to bind the music together with a sense of narrative intimacy, often dancing between symphonic micro-refrains and more explicitly folk oriented melodies. Drums take a back seat, making their presence known more through the unrelenting momentum they impose on the lead instruments. Despite the significant sugar coating applied to this material, Archaic Oath avoid the charge of pure candyfloss black metal. There is substance, vigour, nuance, and intrigue to offset the rampant playfulness. In this sense ‘Determined to Death and Beyond’ is a welcome reprieve in the modern extreme metal landscape in that it rebuts the often unsuccessful attempts to modernise the genre into more abstract terrain without leaning too far in the other direction toward pure retro crowd pleasers. A simple celebration of known forms reconfigured by musicians clearly intimate with the material and in love with it enough to inject it with life.
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