Berlin based CARNAL TOMB detonate the massive title track of their forthcoming new album Embalmed in Decay into the death metal hungry ears on this planet. The third full-length of the German old school death dealers is slated for release on November 3, 2023.
CARNAL TOMB comment: “I wrote the title track of our new album, Embalmed in Decay, shortly after our first album Rotten Remains was released", guitarist and singer Cryptic Tormentor lets on and continues; "It is a classic death metal song in the sense that it was heavily inspired by old bands that we all know and love. The track comes with fast and furious heavy riffing and a catchy melody in the chorus. The lyrics were inspired by the movie Tombs of the Blind Dead, which was also the main influence for the cover artwork. It took us some time to decide which track should become the title of the new album. We finally settled for ‘Embalmed in Decay’ because it features everything that should be in an old school death metal song: It is a straight forward and hard hitting song which to me are the very qualities that the eponymous song of an album should have.”
Cirkeln, the black-metal project of the Stockholm-based underground musician known as Våndarr recently unveiled another from track his third album The Primitive Covenant, which is set to be released on November 3rd via True Cult Records.
“Writing this song was probably the most fun I’ve ever had writing for Cirkeln”, says Våndarr. “Usually, the process is quite laborious and takes a long time. There´s rarely a spark of inspiration that then flow naturally into the recording process. But, with the Witch Bell I knew I wanted to take a rawer approach to writing and recording. At that point I knew the mission of the record was to strip away and get down to the basics. I set up the recording as close to a live scenario as I possibly could in my living room-based studio. This meant that the drums were laid down first and then I tracked all the guitars and all the bass in one take for each instrument. There was no editing or refining of the recordings after the fact. There were rarely even second takes. I think this gives the song a sense of unapologetic ugliness and momentum. There was no click track, so the pace of the instruments is entirely dictated by listening to the drums. It’s not the tightest Cirkeln track – but to me it’s the one that sounds the most alive. I also wanted to experiment with incorporating a different vocal technique and style on this album – and the Witch Bell is one of the best examples of this. To me, this is the point where Cirkeln doesn´t allow itself to be confined by one idea of what Black Metal is. There’s more than one shade to darkness.”
On the follow-up to his critically second album A Song To Sorrow, Våndarr is once paying homage to the forefathers of black-metal, yet this time The Primitive Covenant sees the Swedish musician incorporating more elements of old-school thrash-metal, primeval death-metal and even punk.
After the announcement of their new album Ashes, Organs, Blood and Crypts, Autopsy peel back the skin of their new record with a bloodied single, ‘Throatsaw’. The track is whirling dervish of razor sharp riffing and serrated vocals that slice through the mix delivering that signature Autopsy sound.
Regarding the single, Chris Reifert had the following to say:
“For this selection we have decided to cast aside musical acrobatics, high-brow labyrinthian showings off of scales, sweeps and noodlings, lush sonic passages and deep audio journeys rare and untold, egotistical trains of thought and neo-classical wizardry and well…just cut your fuckin’ throat wide open and giggle like cretins while the blood sprays in every direction. Doesn’t that sound like fun, kiddies?”
The single is accompanied by an animated lyric visualiser created by Andrea Mantelli Productions.
Watch it here:
Hot on the heels of 2022’s universally lauded opus, Morbidity Triumphant, the US death metal greats now return for a new sermon of sickness, with ‘Ashes, Organs, Blood & Crypts’, featuring brutal bouts of riffery feral attacks, soul crushing doom and all out skull splitting heaviness.
Emerging from their sepulchre comes yet another horrendous piece of art from long time collaborator Wes Benscoter (Bloodbath / Slayer). Inspired by the title, the band let Wes’ imagination run amok, conjuring up yet another horrifying monument to Autopsy’s latest musical offering.
Berlin based CARNAL TOMB reveal the crushing single ‘Defiled Flesh’, which is taken from the German old school death dealers’ forthcoming new album Embalmed in Decay, which is scheduled for release on November 3, 2023.
Listen here:
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CARNAL TOMB comment: “Starting off with a dive bomb followed by fast riffing, ‘Defiled Flesh’ is one of, if not the fastest song that we have ever written”, guitarist and singer Cryptic Tormentor enthuses. “The track is filled with tempo changes, various melodies, and zombie fueled lyrics. Written by the guitar team, i.e. Goat Eviscerator and myself, it is hardly surprising that ‘Defiled Flesh’ is quite riff-driven and arrives with heavy rhythm patterns and was influenced by Swedish acts such as Bloodbath and Grave. ‘Defiled Flesh’ is also guaranteed to find its way into our live set.”
‘We are living in troubled times and it is hardly surprising that this is reflected in any form of art including music. On Mazzaroth, Sodomisery have spun a dark lyrical yarn about mental illness in society, religion, and the struggle of the individual, which is running like a red thread through their sophomore full-length. The Swedish melodic death four-piece are underlining their loosely conceptual approach with a remarkable musical evolution’, says the bio which accompanies this album.
There’s no misery like Sodomisery. At least, that’s what I’ve heard. For reasons I haven’t explored, while society has progressed – and I do mean this broadly and generally, being most aware of the fact that homosexuality and many things more widely accepted remain not only illegal but subject to severe punishments in a large number of countries – the word ‘sodomy’ carries brutal connotations which continue to hold currency in the circles of the
blackest of metal and industrial and power electronics. It’s true that Whitehouse’s Erector (with its blatantly unsubtle ‘cock’ cover) was released in 1981 and things have moved on a bit since then, but how much? Many of these bands are, as far as I can discern, less concerned with contemporary perceptions of anal penetration, whereby in permissive western society, it’s generally accepted regardless of sex or sexuality, and in pornography, it’s more or less considered essential, and more preoccupied with the harsh, perverse connotations of the writings of The Marquis de Sade – one of the few writers whose work still has the capacity to truly shock. And in this context, sodomy connotes the worst of sexual tortures, the infliction of pain, a statement of the ultimate power dynamics. It all seems appropriate given the band’s objectives.
This album had an interesting evolution, too: ‘When all the new tracks were written and pre-produced, SODOMISERY decided to create two versions of the album. One mix included keyboards and orchestration, while the other version had no such additions. After an extensive period of deliberation and many listening sessions, the Swedes decided that the new dimension and cinematic feeling added by the keyboards was exactly what their songs needed.’
Without hearing the two versions side by side, I’m in no position to comment, but the fact of the matter is that the keyboards certainly have not transformed this into some twiddly prog-rock effort: instead said keyboards are low in the mix but serve to fill out the sound with elongated droning tones against the relentless, thunderous fury of frantic fretwork and double-pedal drumwork that’s faster than the eye or ear can process.
There are some moments of such tunefulness that one has to take pause and breathe for a moment. We’re not just talking clean vocals or tuneful; there are moments, albeit brief, of outright pop sandwiched between the furious rage and overloading distortion. But rather than diminish the album’s power, I find myself respecting the band all the more. To have a softer breakdown in a song is one thing: to be so unashamedly clean and crisp and tuneful is bold.
‘Delusion’ balances all of the various elements nicely, coming together to forge a blasting yet grand and graceful dirty monster of a track which even packs in a heroic guitar solo near the end. Juvenile snickering ensues here with ‘A Storm Without Wind’, and I know it’s not funny and the delivery is entirely serious. Not least of all the lung-ripping bass that prefaces the throat-ripping vocals which snarl over guitars which alternate between old samples and snippets stolen from the present.
It feels scary, like being left alone on a platform and staring into the abyss. Any minute and it could retreat, and leave you falling into the void, and on the evidence here, you’d incinerate in seconds. Ultimately, we’re all scared. Mazzaroth is a worthy soundtrack to that fear.
There aren’t many guitar-based genres of music where one-man bands are particularly commonplace. Of course, I’m not talking about folk or acoustic-based music, but the kind of music where, on listening, you’d expect a full band. Industrial is something of an exception because early exponents like JG Thirlwell – aka Foetus – developed through the use of tape loops and studio experimentation, and the same is also true of later exponents like Nine Inch Nails, with Trent Reznor’s studio-based project evolving from being largely synthetic into a live proposition.
But black / death metal are genres unto themselves. One might joke that it’s because most of the people who make this kind of stuff have no mates or are too antisocial to form bands, although it may not be much of a joke. Either way, Melbourne-based Aaron Osborne is one of those one-man operations, handling all aspects of writing and playing to create the sound of several. And what a sound it is. If you want dark, dense, and sludgy, with bowel-loosening guttural vocals, then you’re in luck.
Into the Maze – a twenty-seven minute album – or mini-album – actually comprises two new songs plus four cuts previously released as the Collector EP.
You don’t listen to this stuff to be uplifted – but you do dive into it for escape, and Into the Maze brings that cathartic release.
The title track is monster slab of downtuned darkness. There are some guitar screeches which emerge from the relentless trudge that call to mind Fudge Tunnel, but this is denser, slower, doomier, and somehow less organic-feeling, like early Pitch Shifter but with live drums, and passing a nod to how they take ‘the swagger and groove of Entombed’s Wolverine Blues and infuse it with the tar-thick pull of doom’. But against Wolverine Blues, it’s half the pace and the lyrics are unintelligible grunts, so it’s very much an example of taking an influence and steering it in a different direction. And this is a good thing. The production is perfectly dingy and oppressive, and over the course of just short of half an hour it really grinds you down in just the way it should. In all, it’s pretty bloody brutal. I dig.
Gutter Prince Cabal is proud to announce the release of Melbourne-based sludgy death-metal project AGLO new EP "Into The Maze", now set for release on February 16th on vinyl/digital download.
With ‘Into the Maze’, this one-man doom project created by Aaron Osborne unleash 6 filthy and crushing tracks that take the swagger and groove of Entombed’s ‘Wolverine Blues’ and infuse it with the tar-thick pull of doom. Lumbering like some slow-crawling and atrocious beast through the murk of a polluted swamp, AGLO seem to take pride in all that is rusty and ugly, delivering exceptionally murky and nasty riffs, slow and powerful drumbeats and tormented growls.
Today, AGLO unleash the title-track of the EP, check it out here:
If you’re after something subtle, melodic, and imbued with rich emotional depth, stop here. Because with song titles like ‘Aborted Eggs Benedict’, ‘Hymen Drizzled Hotcakes’, Rancid Risotto’, and ‘Fetal Fajitas’ the food-themed debut album from this ‘tech/brutal death’ act from Ohio is none of these things.
They’re keen to stress that while not entirely bereft of humour, they’re by no means a parody or novelty act, pointing out that the album ‘serves enough morbid and bizarre courses to fulfill the craving for extreme and wild. On top of that, the Northwestern Ohio group is serious about their music and does not deem their band as a fun or side project. To make their live shows more vivid, A La Carte members perform with the same characters displayed thematically and dress in maître d’ outfits’. Not that the lineup of Chef Cuck, Chef Highman, and The Maitre d’ remotely hints at anything even vaguely comedic.
The tile track, which lifts the lid on this crazy concoction of an album, is a whirl of psychedelic and theatrical flamenco-flavoured strangeness, before the heaving and churning begins with the sample-soaked intro to the technical thrash of ‘Aborted Eggs Benedict’, thrashing its way hard into a frenzy of guttural vocals and squealy notes emerging from the gnarly grind like flames spurting from a molten volcano. The lyrics are indecipherable, but thankfully, they’ve shared them, so it’s possible to grunt along with corking couplets like ‘When Boiling The Fetus Adjust The Oven Rack / With out Consent I Poach Your Tusks From A Elephant Add A Dash Of Vinegar Hatch A Meal So Sinister / Lower Fetus Boiling Immolate Carefully So It Dosent Seperate Make Sure You Only Cook A Little Skin Is Tough Gooey In The Middle / Breakfast Is Served All Atop A Carved Out Toasted Flaky Womans English Muffin’.
If only the instructions were so clear and straightforward for the majority of recipes I find online! And not that any of this translates in the listening, where the vocals mostly sound like phlegm-thick garglings of ‘Gurrrhgggghhhhh!’.
It would be ridiculous to criticise Soup Dejour for being puerile, and while it is largely cliché, it also shows some real creative flair. Not because it’s bombastic or theatrical, but because of how it pulls in a range or elements and presents some quite distinctive bass runs that aren’t genre-typical.
The twiddly guitar does get a bit much, and the crisp production only highlights the dominance of the fretwanking, and at times it works, and at others, it just feels excessive – and it’s by n o means the kind of excess that points towards the palace of wisdom, and, to turn to Blake’s proverb, ‘you never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough’.
Listening to Soup Dejour, I believe I may have made that vital discovery. That is, it’s solid and consistent as an album, the musicianship is absolutely faultless, but small servings are recommended.
Seven long years following the release of their critically acclaimed debut full-length album Heavy Over The Home, Perth-based death-metal outfit Sanzu finally unleash new material in the form of a visualizer video for a new track off the band’s album Our Behaviour When Drowning.
Titled ‘Throne Of Rope’ this new song was written and recorded by Sanzu, mixed and mastered by George Lever at G1 Productions, and the video for the song was created by Leovannmusic.
Watch the video here:
Comments the band: "It’s great to finally be able to release something to our fans. People have been continuously asking us for new material for 7 years and that’s not something we’ve taken lightly or ignored. We’ve constantly had a duality of situations that have helped and hindered. We had the fundamental agreement that we still wanted to make music together and wanted to pursue it under the stylistic SANZU "idea". But, also month after month, year after year, massive personal and interpersonal changes, complex situations, changing tastes, members going, members going then coming back, health issues and evolving standards and ideas for music and life. All these factors were rapidly turning over faster than we could hope to produce music."
"So it’s at this point that we are really pleased to release a couple tracks we’re proud of and to show some different shades and tones being experimented with. We know and understand there may be real disappointment that the promised full length isn’t a reality yet. But we hope that the people who saw that announcement and our lengthy explanation of the trails leading to that point can trust us in knowing that the trails have not stopped! And yet we’re one step closer and one toe out of the door. So, easy does it!"
"Throne of Rope is from a handful of songs we have written over the last few years that have concepts around having children. This one is maybe more abstract and less literal than our other material as it loosely brings together ideas about toxic parenting, ownership and projected expectations. As well as the frustration a lot people can have with an outdated education system that seems at odds with human and childlike nature. This song has some deceptive qualities, if you surrender to its tone in the given moment it tends to pull you around and down without much consideration for where you were before. Coincidentally the structure also sets a frame for the concept of childhood and education that the lyrics address. With its free and flowing beginning, being full of potential that then descends into turbulence and militancy."
There’s catharsis and there’s catharsis. Extreme times heighten the tension and anxiety, and increase the urge to purge. This split release from Tchornobog and Abyssal – a truly international effort, with Tchornobog hailing from Portland, Oregon, and Abyssal representing the UK with their brand of Death/Black/Doom Metal that explores, according to Encyclopaedia Metallum, themes of oppression, and decay.
Tchornobog take this approach to catharsis and purging completely literally. As the press summary notes, ‘Any track opening with a multi-layered recording of a number of vomiting sessions is bound to continue on the darker side of the musical spectrum.’ And so it does, delivering on the threat / promise that “The epic song ‘The Vomiting Choir’ delivers 24:08 minutes that form a descending spiral into a bottomless pit filled with a mostly dissonant sonic miasma of pure negativity and surprising complexity.”
The sounds of regurgitation, guttural coughs and choking and spluttering echo on for a good minute and aa half before the band piledrive their way into an extended workout that finds them burrowing deep into the thick sods of the earth towards the molten pits of hell.
It’s relentless and brutal, and proper old-school: the lyrics are impenetrable and so are the guitars, as a thundering, grey blast of impenetrable distorted guitar blasts away hard and fast and dark and heavy against pummelling percussion, and delivered at a breakneck pace, there are rasping, dead walker noises. There are tempo changes, and mood shifts. And there is deep, dark, anguish and throbbing pain. ‘The Vomiting Choir’ is dark, dark, dark, heavy, and oppressive. Thirteen minutes in it feels like an eternity has passed, an entire album’s worth of anguish squeezed into an excruciating document of torture. But no: there is more, much more, as the next wave and the next movement crash in. For a moment, around the 14/15-minute mark there’s a feel of Joy Division being covered by a black metal band, and the piece drives on and on, ever harder, ever darker, toward the piece’s crushing conclusion with a heavy, throbbing riff of swirling hypnoticism.
Abyssal offer no relief whatsoever, not that you’d really want them to. ‘Antechamber of the Wakeless Mind’ could well be summary of my lifetime as an insomniac. There’s no chance of sleeping through this twenty-four minute barrage of jolting, jarring metallic rage, where everything blurs in a blizzard of fretwork and drums faster than an industrial knitting machine.
It’s a truly exhausting experience; after just five minutes of busted-lunch growling and wheezing against a screeding backdrop of mangled guitars and beats that explode like machine-gun fire, the experience is exhausting – but also exhilarating in the most primitive, purging, cathartic fashion. It’s an extended release, one that’s punishingly intense and physical as well as cerebral.
As a pairing, this split is truly harrowing, mentally and physically draining, dragging its way through the darkest depths.
Aural Aggravation 