Denmark Death Dealers Undergang will release its third album Døden Læger Alle Såron CD and digital formats via Dark Descent Records July 10. The vinyl version will be released on Me Saco Un Ojo Records. Long live the new flesh!
Døden Læger Alle Sår was recorded at Earhammer Studio, California subsequent to UNDERGANG’s three-week U.S. tour in July 2014. The new material is a blend of the suffocating and filthy heaviness heard on the band’s previous two albums, Indhentet Af Døden (2010) and Til Døden Os Skiller (2012), whilst adding more twists and neck-breaking brutality to the mix. The new album will out just in time for Undergang’sEuropean tour with Stargazer.
At long last, Blasphemic Cruelty return from the dead with a new mini album, Crucible of the Infernum, set for international release on July 20th on both CD and vinyl formats. Seven long years after their debut album for Osmose, Devil’s Mayhem. Led by six-string assassin Gene Palubicki (Perdition Temple, ex-Angelcorpse), this power-trio remain committed to deathrash rooted in the 1980s but loaded up with modern arsenal.
Check out the first promo track on their facebook upload.
Hailing from Ukraine, Bureviy (Буревій = Hurricane) play a modern take on black metal which makes use of old school sub-styles by keeping them relatively uncontaminated but subsumed under the band’s personal voice. In Concealed Beyond the Space we find the folk-oriented black metal with rock sensibilities of Nokturnal Mortum, the swaying of long melodies of Drudkh, and a collection of strumming, tremolo picking and metal riffing that meld as diverse raw material for a black metal language descended and definitely compatible with but ultimately different from the more uniform black metal of old.
This approach is somewhat of a signature among Eastern European and Québécois black metal bands. The phenomenon is interesting when found in albums that manage to channel this almost faceless style into beautiful and meaningful expression. It demands a stricter attention to musical coherence in composition as the link between musical ideas will not be found in stylistic uniformity. Bureviy even makes use of acoustic guitars to decorate or fill passages that at first may feel like misplaced filler. A closer and paradoxically more comprehensive look also shows these passages are in line with the sections they connect and are not gimmicky interludes but articulations, points of exhalation.
A single spin of this will pass unnoticed. It is like a dense temperate forest, you need to get close and see the trees, the rocks and the streams. It takes more time and familiarity with the album to experience what it is trying to transmit. Ancient Slavic nature-worship and the mystic contemplation in tune with the proud mountains, the warm hillsides and the powerful rivers is channeled through Concealed Beyond the Space.
German Death/Thrash Outfit Dying Humanityhave revealed the details for upcoming album Deadened. The album is set for a June 12 release on Bastardized Recordings.
On fourth record Deadened, Dying Humanity unveils a more versatile approach to songwriting, not the least of which is due to the new vocalist Marcus Friedrich. Deadened is fast, tough, and gains attention through sophisticated arrangements. The album, which was recorded in Jörg Uken’s Soundlodge, features horror-style artwork and is jam packed with powerful songs dealing with mental disorders. The new material plants its hooks in the front of the cerebral cortex and there it will remain.
Vietah are announcing the release of their full-length album, Czornaja Cvil:
Pierced with the double-edged misanthropic depressive thoughts and melody.Hostile to friendly buster campaigns and cheerful nature.Praising the starless sky staring blankly at the corpse of the Fall dismembered by Winter.
Smelling like smoke of snow-covered fire from dried leaves.
Old Moon with the new winter lifeless face again in the night sky!
4 joyless Black Metal tracks decorated with 8-page black-and-gray booklet without silver, lacquer, sequins and other embellishments. Only slightly dried black mold on some of the copies.
Obsequiae, Minnesota’s organic, medieval metal outfit, is preparing for the release of their sophomore LP, Aria Of Vernal Tombs, through 20 Buck Spin later this month. While the anxiously awaited album is already reaping critical pre-release acclaim, the physical embodiments of the record has been very slightly delayed, so in response, the band and label have issued another new passage of glorious audio from the platter to the masses. American Aftermath has lent their assistance in issuing In The Absence Of Light through an exclusive premiere from Obsequiae’s Aria Of Vernal Tombs.
You can listen to In the Absence of Light on Soundcloud.
Obsequiae’s debut, Suspended in the Brume of Eos, was featured on DMU’s best of 2011 album selections.
Tagged as black metal and ambient, Wende is a one-man project that attempts to not only appropriate Burzum’s style, but also build on it, effectively using it to express something different. In this release we find riffs that are not right out of early Burzum, but that one could easily associate with Hvis Lyset Tar Oss. But the approach is not smooth and layered as in that album. There is a diversity of expressions in Vorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft but it is presented as a series of pictures which are not necessarily strongly connected to each other in a musical way, requiring the listener to make somewhat of a leap and follow the song by maintaining the emotion and atmosphere in mind. In regards to this organization, this album is more similar to Filosofem, more ambient-oriented. It even has the long dungeon synth sections and songs.
Although the subtlety of Burzum is not lost on Wende, and patience is certainly not lacking in this release, the savant genius of Vikernes makes all the difference in the world. The strong link that one can find between Master Vikernes’ riffs and how his songs build up and flow is completely missing here. On the other hand, there are very good riffs that morph naturally over relatively long stretches of time. Riffcraft here is good, but evocative songcraft may fall a tad of the magical offering Varg made to the gods again and again.
The synth music in this release is not allowed to sink into the listeners mind as Tomhet does, slowly extending only to fade away ever so gently. Wende integrated the synth ambient music as sections within metal instrumented songs and experimented with the possibilities this might open. The risks of this decision are not small and the strength of the final creation was visibly affected by it.
Props to Wende for not falling into the trap of being a clone of the band he admires. He took it and ran his own way, attached his own ideas, and made what he deemed were corrections of some sort to the weaknesses in Burzum’s music. The intention is worthy of praise, and the end result is interesting. The end result ofVorspiel einer Philosophie der Zukunft is not on par with the masterworks of the Norwegian sage, but it is an outstanding disciples’ effort worthy of attention.
Two weeks away from the release of their next full-length album, Obliteration, Entrails are giving the public a small taste of what is to come. Captured by guitarist Jimmy Lundqvist at his own Bloodshed Studios and mixed and mastered by the famous musician and producer Dan Swanö (Edge Of Sanity, Bloodbath, Aeon, Hail Of Bullets etc.) at Unisound, Obliteration is a nine-track old-school Swedish death metal album.
Producer Dan Swanö commented:
I guess Entrails have sold their souls to the Devil because there is no other way to explain how a band that’s been doing the same style of SweDeath for more than twenty years, can keep making better and better records! In fact, some of the tracks on this album are among the best death metal songs I have ever heard. Such a great album…it pisses me off!
For those of us who think that life is much more than buying the latest technology gadget we don’t need, watching the latest Hollywood TV commercial disguised as a movie or taking photo “selfies” pretending to be into something you really aren’t, romanticized medieval fantasy, ancient myth and legend provide not an escape from reality, but a highlighting of what is worthy of praise in life and human beings. This is the fantasy of Homer, Tolkien, Virgil or Lovecraft. Underneath the enveloping myth of the story, their stories preserve eternal truths about human nature and show it in a more realistic way than the candy-flavoured, shock-oriented realism of George R.R. Martin.
Today, we shall explore the idealist fantasy that sings to us in poetry of the gods, of virtue, and of the indelible kinship to nature as a whole that man has almost forsaken. In an inverted world in which greed has slowly attained a position of honor and in which ideals, philosophy and non-profitable values are systematically mocked, we sometimes find ourselves in need of a reminder that we are not just deluded madmen upholding untenable precepts of a long-forgotten age or even worse, believers of ideas that have never been in line with reality at any point in history.
Between the bushes we stared
At those who reminded us of another age
And told that hope was away
Forever
We heard the elven song and
Water that trickled
What once was is now
Away
All the blood
All the longing and pain that
Ruled
And the emotions that could be stirred
Are away
Forever
The band’s debut full-length features eight tracks of battle-ready audio full of mid-paced riff glory, melodic death flourishes and lyrics inspired by ancient Greek tragedies and tales of war. The Spear and the Ichor That Follows is available on CD, vinyl and digital formats. Order it all HERE.
Side A
1. Trenches of Fortune
2. Messenger of a Shaken Host
3. Throne of Chariots
4. Oresteia – The Unforgotten Scorns Side B
5. Heir to the Crown of Sodom
6. Beasts of Antiquity
7. Veiled in Dignities of Wrath
8. The River Black
