Argonaut are keeping them coming at a rate of a song a month for their open-ended album, Songs from the Black Hat.
We’re fans of this, not least of all because you never know quite what they’re going to bring next.
Keeping it DIY and no-budget, Nathan and Lorna’s sixteen-year old has, for the second month, made the video to accompany the track. Simple, but effective, it’s very much in keeping with the Argonaut ethos.
Check it here:
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Manchester underground music icon HARRY STAFFORD (frontman/founder of INCA BABIES) and North Carolina-based trash blues guitarist MARCO BUTCHER present their new single ‘Walk Among The Spectres’, following the resounding triumph of 2021’s ‘Bone Architecture’ LP. This is a cool piece of walking blues, with percussive Hammond organ and Butcher’s laconic backbeat. Their forthcoming album We Are The Perilous Men is out this autumn via Black Lagoon Records.
The video is fitting for this song, which is about an old friend who is fondly remembered. Our hero travels across town to put an electric piano-keyboard on his grave, discovering his own fragile mortality along the way. Directed by Stafford, this video was filmed in an expansive cemetery in South Manchester, which dates back to 1700 and was used throughout the Victorian era. Now a public park, people are invited to wander among the tombstones… to literally Walk among the Spectres.
Watch the video here:
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Scandinavian post-rock giants SPURV have announced the release of new track ‘Som skyer’ via Germany’s Pelagic Records. The penultimate single from Brefjære, the band’s fourth full-length release due September 22nd; ‘Som skyer’ sees the band layer orchestral grandeur over a shimmering, glacial guitar refrain as thunderous drums push the five and half minute piece to ever greater heights.
Having recently moved to Tromsø, a remote northern province far above the Arctic Circle, principal songwriter Gustav Jørgen Pedersen took inspiration from the forces of nature he found himself surrounded by. Despite the overwhelming presence of the mountains and the unrelenting Arctic winds, Pedersen was struck by the resilience and sheer determination of life, from the birch trees outside his window to a single butterfly battling the breeze.
This delicate balance is perfectly captured in the sheer euphoria of ‘Som skyer’ and its accompanying video. SPURV take us soaring through the sky as the sun peers over the jagged Norwegian fjørds; finding the joy of life in even the most desolate places.
Brefjære sees the band take their latent exploration of neo-classical composition even further. Throughout ‘Som skyer’, guitarist Herman Otterlei’s celestial, spiralling motif is complemented by glockenspiels, a brass section and a 14-voice choir; adding further depth to the incredible dynamic sensitivity that SPURV have carved out over their decade at the forefront of international post-rock.
Gustav Jørden Petersen on ‘Som Skyer’:
“’Som skyer’ is Spurv at its perhaps most ethereal. The song is about the wind that flies over the earth, rustles in the treetops, and plunges down over the mountain. It represents time and fleeting memories, words and ideas that are shared across generations. The song contains old melodies combined with new arrangements, and was finally realized as part of Brefjære after many years.”
Watch the immersive video here:
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London-based thrash-metal quintet LOKUST today reveal a music for a brand new song tiled ‘War Of Opposites’, which is taken from the band’s first full-length album "Infidel" also out o n28th July on CD/Digital Download.
Watch it here:
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Formed in 2017 by guitarists Alexy Khoury and Jeremy Pringsheim, London’s LOKUST initially released a pair of instrumental demo videos to advertise their search for a full lineup, including ‘Guiltless’ featuring drummer Krimh Lechner (ex-Decapitated, Septicflesh), which was very well received and attained more than two million views on Youtube.
The duo spent the next few years searching for the right vocalist, and in the meantime recruited Euler Morais on drums and Patryk Kopo on bass. The newly established four-piece then started the recordings of their debut album which was fully written by that point. Drums were tracked in Germany with Sky Van Hoff (Rammstein/Aborted) and all the guitar and bass tracks were recorded by the band themselves.
The four-piece eventually found the singer they were looking for in Alex da Costa, whose venomously expressive vocals and menacing presence finally completed the monstrous and muscular sonic attack of LOKUST. They soon recorded the newly composed vocals with Justin Hill of SikTh engineering, and to fully realise the intensity and ferocity of their new songs, recruited Mark Lewis (Whitechapel/DevilDriver) to mix and master their long awaited debut album Infidel.
Featuring eleven tracks, Infidel is a creatively complex and thunderous dose of modern metal, brimming with pummelling drums and bass, shredding guitar riffs and blood-curdling vocals – although simultaneously featuring moments of dynamic introspection and poignancy throughout the album.
”We always meant for LOKUST to exist on the border between old-school and contemporary – we use a lot of layering in our songwriting as well as aiming to integrate the full array of what a metal band can do these days, technically and production-wise – but our loyalty to imperfections, raw expression and humanity remains paramount,” Says the band about this new record. We’ve always aspired to follow in the footsteps of the bands we first fell in love with, who seemed to have a more transparent, expressive way of executing their music, rather than what we perceive as the more careful and polished approach of a lot of bands these days,” they add.
Set to be released on July 28, Infidel is packed with furious riffs and massive groove-laden hooks that will surely position LOKUST as one of the most promising and talented metal bands in the current UK metal scene.
Swedish melodic death-metal newcomers After Earth recently revealed a music video for a brand new song of the band’s forthcoming debut album The Rarity of Reason, which is set to be released on August 18th.
Titled ‘Prometheus’, this video was produced by After Earth and J. Nyman Photography. Watch it here:
The Rarity of Reason was produced, recorded and mixed by Robert Kukla at Obsidian Recording Studios, drums were recorded at Nordic Sound Lab, and it was later mastered by renowned producer Fredrik Nordström at Studio Fredman, and will available just in time for the band’s European tour supporting Swedish death metal band Mara.
After Earth was created in the fall of 2017 in Skövde, Västra Götaland, Sweden, but it was only in mid-2019 that the band found a stable line-up and crafted enough material to start playing live shows.
Then, the global pandemic forced them to cancel a few shows so they opted to record new songs instead,and in 2020 After Earth self-released their debut EP ‘Before It Awakes’, which was met with great critical acclaim.
The following two years were a bit turbulent for the band as they suffered some line-up changes, yet the Swedes still managed to release a single ‘From Age to Aeon’ in 2022, which was a heavier track clearly showing where After Earth was heading musically.
In early 2023, just a few weeks before the recordings of their debut album The Rarity of Reason started, After Earth suffered another setback when both guitarists decided to leave for various reasons. The remainder of the band (Marcus Rydstedt: vocals, Anton Vehkaperä: drums and guitars, Olof Öman: Bass and acoustic guitars) then spent two weeks together with producer and studio engineer Robert Kukla at Obsidian Recording Studios to work on the album. Anton Vehkaperä recorded the majority of electric guitars on the album (bar solos which were outsourced to Christoffer Nilsson) while Olof Öman recorded the acoustic parts as well as chords.
Drums were recorded at a later date by Anton Vehkaperä in Nordic Sound Lab. The album was mixed by Rob Kukla and then mastered by death metal studio legend Fredrik Nordström at Studio Fredman.
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TAR POND have just unveiled the fierce video clip ‘SLAVE’ as the next single taken from the Swiss doom visionaries’ forthcoming new album PETROL, which is scheduled for release on September 15, 2023.
TAR POND explain: “Although the video for ‘SLAVE’ was produced simultaneously with the clip for ‘BLIND’’, we approached the visuals in a quite different way”, vocalist Thomas Ott elaborates. “This dark and heavy song rather evokes simple and slow images. I had some interesting shots of jellyfish floating in dark water. So we decided to shoot some additional material of the band performing in the rehearsal room, filled with a maximum of smoke. That quickly turned out to be a bad idea due to the fire alarms installed in the building. Well, with the kind help of some good old friends, Marky managed to procure a much better location in no time. Initially, the video for ‘SLAVE’ was planned with more varied footage, but Fabrizio Merico’s sublime camera work, shot in only one night at the Zukunft Club in Zurich, and the absolute professional editing by Coroner’s Daniel Stoessel made us decide to just let it all go up in smoke! Sometimes less is more!”
Watch the video here:
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Solo experimental electro-industrial outfit, Nebulae Complex has just unveiled their new EP, Bryozoan Operator.
Inspired by peculiar plant and deep sea life amongst other themes, Bryozoan Operator paints an almost alien, yet familiar planetary landscape as viewed through remote sensing instrumentation. While Bryozoan Operator is not a concept EP, each track tells both its own story and also belongs in a loosely-tied and loosely-defined aesthetic universe of the entire EP.
The EP opens a new musical era for Nebulae Complex. It signifies a shift to harder-hitting electro-industrial beats with layered vocals while continuing with an intricate sound design. The sound and music morph organically and sometimes unexpectedly, albeit with solid precision and intention.
As a taster, they’ve produced a video for the track ‘Bleachburn’. Watch it here:
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SILVERBURN, the new solo project by James ‘Jimbob’ Isaac (Hark & Taint) will release its debut album Self Induced Transcendental Annihilation via MSH Group Music on August 11.
Welsh metal visionary Jimbob Isaac, known from his previous bands Taint and Hark, recorded the new album during lockdown in 2020. He handled all vocals, guitar, bass and drums himself. With this album, Jimbob has meticulously crafted a wholly uncompromising solo offering in the truest sense. It has been said that extreme conditions demand extreme responses, and Self Induced Transcendental Annihilation (‘SITA’) began as an elemental response to the almighty global gut-punch that surrounded it’s creation.
James ‘Jimbob’ Isaac about ‘Formless’: “This one’s for the metaphysics nerds! ‘ormless..’’ is an ode to solitude, meditation and cosmic implosions! The video is an extension of my real-life solo mission, in making this album and the art and video work ongoing. I mean, of course I made myself into cyborgs to play all the instruments.”
From the world-ending double-kick maelstrom of opening track ‘Annihilation’ to the cinematic, discordant chug and release of ‘Etheric Crush’ this album draws from Isaac’s beloved eras of 90’s metal and 00’s metallic hardcore, noisecore, space and sludge metal and bands like Botch, Mastodon, Knut, Converge, Keelhaul, Crowbar, Sepultura, Neurosis and Helmet.
Today Silverburn share second track ‘Formless Atomization Of Omniscient Particulate’. Check it here:
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Pic: Chris Treseder
Silverburn live are a three piece now, first confirmed dates:
Aug 12 – The Bunkhouse Swansea
Aug 18th – Arctangent Festival
Sept 8th – Oslo London w/ Mutoid Man
Sept 13th – The Exchange Bristol w/ Mutoid Man
Industrial metal band Our Frankenstein has just unleashed their new video for the single, ‘Illuminate’.
‘Illuminate’ is a song about finding the light that can exist in a barren and hopeless wasteland while building a better future for yourself. It’s about forging forward and discovering the strength in yourself to move on past a difficult time in your life.
‘Illuminate’ is available on all major streaming platforms including Bandcamp.
Watch the video here:
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French darkwave band, Divine Shade has just unveiled a live session performance video of their hit single, ‘Stars’. The song was performed on their 2022 tour with Gary Numan. Now they’ve released the video of an immersive live session at Polycarpe Studio in France.
The song’s theme is simple. It addresses the concept of our “inner child” disappearing over time. Says, Rémi Thonnerieux, “I wrote this song to talk about the fact that love and resilience are the true paths to dreaming again”.
2022 was a great new start for Divine Shade. ‘Stars’ is their way of saying "Thank You" to everyone for the year’s success.
‘Stars’ is available on all major digital platforms including Bandcamp.
Watch the video here:
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