BrooklynVegan froths over the latest Demons album Privation as a set that “recalls ‘90s Touch & Go/AmRep type stuff (or newer bands like METZ) and puts a fresh, exciting spin on it." That was good enough to grab us, for a start, and now Demons have unveiled a music video for the track "Play Acting Virtue" which is now streaming here:
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Demons’ Zach Gehring says, "We are playing our first show in over a year this Friday, so we wanted to share this video from the last show we played back in March of 2020 with DOA and Dead Kennedys at the Norva."
The heavy, experimental project of Gehring (who also plays guitar in Mae) Demons dropped their latest album Privation, on April 30 via Spartan Records.
Of the album’s title, Gehring explains, "(it’s) concerned with loss, deprivation, and lack, In our context — this is reflective of where we are at personally, culturally, and politically. It’s a structural aspect of our lived experience — and it is particularly aggravated of late.”
Drawing from the spirit of bands like Metz, Gulch, Converge, Propagandhi, the Demons crew (the aforementioned Gehring, Chris Mathews [vocals/guitar], Jonathan Anderson [bass], Drew Orton [drums]) punishingly delivers ten tracks of raw and confrontational fury, motivated from within a spiraling sociopolitical landscape that evokes critical self-reflection and frustration
Hot on the heels of their debut full length album, Mountain Caller return with a new EP, Chronicle: Prologue, the follow up and conceptual prequel to their debut Chronicle I: The Truthseeker. That album was released to wide acclaim, as well as a passionate response from an already devoted fanbase.
Chronicle: Prologue gives further depth and insight into the conceptual story that embodies their output, as well as their own musical journey. On latest single, ‘Something Stirred From Beneath The Rubble’, guitarist Claire Simson comments,
“Something Stirred From Beneath The Rubble” represents the beginning of everything Mountain Caller. Not only was it the first track written by the instrumental progressive post-metal power trio, it represents the beginning of the Chronicle saga in which we find The Protagonist slowly regaining consciousness under a giant pile of rubble. She struggles to free herself of the jagged rock and twisted metal and as the thick black smoke begins to clear she realises she is in the middle of a levelled and deserted city. Beaten and bloodied she surveys the devastation. Then from the quiet darkness, an intruding lone thought.. “Who am I?”.
Listen now:
Recorded alongside the debut album, ‘Prologue’s tracks consist of the very earliest material written by the band. Opener ‘Something Stirred From Underneath The Rubble’ was the true genesis of the band’s dynamic mix of heavy, expansive and progressive metal. It’s the culmination of three distinct musical voices collaborating and letting the music lead them, without aiming for any specific genre. ‘Beyond This Black Horizon’ follows, a live fan-favourite and the band’s love letter to the riff. ‘Stripped Of All But Purpose’ closes, with the band exploring the widest ranges of their soundscapes and heaviness, while providing some of the most fist-pumpingly metal moments of their career. These tracks highlight the band’s fundamental make up of ambition, passion, and sheer love for creation.
Chronicle: Prologue is released on July 9th on very limited vinyl and digital formats.
Warm Gadget, the recording trio made up of multi-instrumentalist/ producer Colten Williams, bassist Austin Williams and vocalist/part time instrumentalist Tim Vester has self-released a brand new alternative metal/industrial E.P. entitled Rituals.
The Rituals E.P. showcases five brand new, original songs, as well as remixes by notable electronic artists such as SNOWBEASTS and WITCH EYES. This E.P., which features the band’s signature blend of industrial and alternative metal, was released in digital format exclusively to the WARM GADGET Bandcamp page.
This new release, Rituals is filled with the band’s brand of hard-hitting songs, electronic beats, synth melodies, un-melodic synth chaos and hook-laden, crushing guitars. It also showcases the longing, bleak, dismal yet aggressive lyrics and deliveries that the band has perfected. Colten Williams has topped everything off in the studio by producing an album that sounds crisp, heavy, and intense. The Rituals E.P. also marks the band’s return to writing & recording together after a 3-year hiatus, showing that they have violently shaken the dust and cobwebs off and have come out swinging.
With strong hints of NIN and Filter, they’ve unveiled a video for ‘If Only I Could’. Watch it here:
Joe Cardamone (formerly of The Icarus Line) returns with his second solo offering: the soundtrack to his film series Quarentina. The album will be released physically on July 2nd via Sonic Ritual, and it’s available on DSP’s now.
Joe has now shared the video for new track ‘Baby Blue’. He says: "Crying on the dancefloor just to impress the woman that has already left the building. She’s checking her phone while you spill your heart out. Fuck it might as well put on a suit and sing your face off into the mirror".
Two decades into their journey as ritualistic black metal conjurers, Wolves In The Throne Room have emerged from the forest with Primordial Arcana, their most majestic album to date, and their first release via Century Media Records (outside of USA and Canada) and Relapse Records (USA and Canada) out August 20th.
Watch the ‘Mountain Magick’ music video, directed by Wolves In The Throne Room, here:
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Primordial Arcana is the band’s first completely self-contained work: In addition to composition and performance, brothers Aaron and Nathan Weaver alongside guitarist Kody Keyworth handled all aspects of recording, producing and mixing at their own Owl Lodge Studios in the woods of Washington state.
Primordial Arcana is out August 20 via Century Media Records outside of USA/Canada and available in the following formats with the Ltd. Gatefold 2LP & LP-Booklet & Poster variants being cut to 45rpm and coming with an additional track, “Skyclad Passage”:
Ltd. Gatefold olive green 2LP & LP-Booklet & Poster (limited to 1.600)
Ltd. Gatefold deep blood red 2LP & LP-Booklet & Poster (limited to 1.000) only available at Kings Road Merch Europe (Official Store)
Ltd. Gatefold clear 2LP & LP-Booklet & Poster (limited to 300) available at Distro Wholesale EU
Ltd. Gatefold dark green 2LP & LP-Booklet & Poster (limited to 200) only available at Supreme Chaos
Ltd. Gatefold transp. light blue 2LP & LP-Booklet & Poster (limited to 200) only available at Evil Greed
Ltd. Gatefold creamy white 2LP & LP-Booklet & Poster (limited to 200) only available at EMP and Nuclear Blast
Ltd. brown LP & LP-Booklet (limited to 300) available at all UK Indie outlets
Ltd. transp. sun yellow LP & LP-Booklet (limited to 200) only available at Consouling Sounds
AMENRA share the official ‘Voor Immer’ music video from the forthcoming Relapse debut full-length De Doorn (June 25). Watch the full video on YouTube here:
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AMENRA vocalist Colin H. van Eeckhout comments:
“What you lose in the fire, you will find in the ashes”
"Voor Immer” (“For Ever”) was one of the first songs we have written for De Doorn. We played it for the very first time in 2018 on the city square of Dixmude, West Flanders Belgium. Accompanied by the carillon, its bells a typical instrument from Belgium and the low countries, we connected the earth with the sky. It was initially written for a commemoration ceremony of the ending of the first world war.
Images of widows and mothers bereft of their sons. Destroyed cities and whom was left to die. Finding strength and courage to rebuild what once was there, without what was theirs.
The last time we played it live was in Menen, West Flanders Belgium end 2019. That night we gathered and burnt all our unacknowledged loss. Revealing by fire the 20feet high bronze AMENRA statue glowing red, a symbol of hope.
This is a song about finding that hope, the strength to carry on. Its content ever present in the world today.
Additionally, AMENRA announce a livestream event celebrating the release of De Doorn. The fire ritual will commence on June 27 at 9pm CET. More info at tickets are available HERE.
Norwegian genre-bending innovators She Said Destroy have recently shared another track from their long-awaited third full-length album Succession, due out later this year via Mas-Kina Recordings.
Check out this new track titled ‘Not Only Bridges’ here:
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Picking up where they left off with their 2012’s EP “Bleeding Fiction”, “Succession” was recorded at guitarist Snorre Bergerud’s studio Ymir Audio, located in Vilnius, during January and February 2020 and contains a collection of material written between 2007 and 2019, and as with earlier She Said Destroy efforts displays a wide range of musical styles. Thematically “Succession” is a natural continuation of She Said Destroy’s exploration of human nature on past releases. This time around the impact of the Anthropocene era on our psyche and our surroundings rears its ugly head throughout the album. These are songs of frustration, despair and hatred, but also of love and wanting to cling on to hope even when not believing that striving for a better world will bear fruits.
Stone Giants – the new alias of electronic musician Amon Tobin – shares the third and final single "A Year To The Day" from the debut album West Coast Love Stories, arriving 2nd July on his Nomark label.
“Your phone cheerfully recalls where you were this time last year. What executive committee decided it would be a good idea to have moments from your past randomly intrude on your present day? Memories you’ve either, carefully compartmentalized or buried so safe and deep you daren’t scroll through your photo history. Now at any moment you can be ambushed by an algorithmically generated montage of your most fragile memories set to music. It’s like an AI Psy-Op designed to send us into some kind of spiralling despair.” – Amon Tobin
Glasgow based darkwave/post-punk duo Hanging Freud have just unveiled their sixth full-length album Persona Normal. The band states: "We were living between the UK and Brazil, going back and forth. These were two societies going through extreme change. The whole world was changing in a way that felt scary."
Some themes of Persona Normal deal with detachment, dissociation, what it means to be human, political issues and about strong, irrational cults. These are approached in tracks like “I beg you” and “We don’t want to sleep”. Persona Normal is also a record about transformation, and growth, accepting losses and coming to terms with the loss of innocence.
Persona Normal is available now in physical and digital formats on HANGING FREUD’s label, Tiny Box. Persona Normal was written produced and recorded by the duo with mastering duties from James Plotkin (Khanate).
They’ve released a video for ‘Antidote/Immune’ by way of a taster for the album: watch it here:
Following the announcement that the new Darkthrone album, Eternal Hails, is to be released on 25th June, the band have premiered “Hate Cloak” – the first and only track to be revealed ahead of the album’s release. The 9min 17 seconds, Fenriz penned, hallowed epic “Hate Cloak” is steeped in the majestic thunder of vintage heavy doom metal. Fenriz comments “Hate Cloak is certainly the slowest song on the album, there are plenty of “fast" parts on Ted’s songs, middle tempos and slow as well. The whole point of us having long songs is variation in tempos/pace, hence the epicness”
Watch ‘hate Cloak’ here:
Eternal Hails will be released on Peaceville on 25th June
Aural Aggravation 