Oh, hello there. Don’t mind me. I’m just here, reviewing another 10 records today. I did it yesterday too. I’ll do it again tomorrow. No big deal. It’s Quarterly Review time. You know how it goes.

Crazy day yesterday, crazy day today, but I’m in that mode where I kind of feel like I can make this go as long as I want. Next Monday? Why not? Other than the fact that I have something else slated, I can’t think of a reason. Fortunately, having something else slated is enough of one. Ha. Let’s go.

Quarterly Review #31-40:

DVNE, Etemen Ænka

It’s like Scotland’s DVNE threw all of modern heavy metal into a blender and hit “cohesive.” Etemen Ænka‘s lofty ambitions are matched indeed by the cohesion of the band’s craft, the professionalism of their presentation, and the scope of their second album’s 10 component tracks, whether that’s in the use of synth throughout “Towers” or the dreamy post-rock aside in “Omega Severer,” the massive riffing used as a tool not a crutch in “Court of the Matriarch,” closer “Satuya” and elsewhere, and even the interlude-y pieces “Weighing of the Heart,” “Adraeden” and the folkish “Asphodel” that leads into the finale. DVNE have made themselves into the band you wish Isis became. Also the band you wish Mastodon became. And probably six or seven others. And while Etemen Ænka is certainly not without prog-styled indulgence, there is no taking away from the significant accomplishment these songs represent for them as a group putting out their first release on Metal Blade. It’ll be too clean for some ears, but the tradeoff for that is the abiding sense of poise with which DVNE deliver the songs. This will be on my year-end list, and I won’t be the only one.

DVNE on Thee Facebooks

Metal Blade Records website

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Wowod, Yarost’ I Proshchenie

Beginning with its longest track (immediate points) in the 11-minute “Rekviem,” Yarost’ I Proshchenie is the third full-length from St. Petersburg’s Wowod, and its sudden surge from ‘unfold’ to ‘onslaught’ is a legitimate blindside. They hypnotize you then push you down a flight of stairs as death growls, echoing guitar lines and steady post-metallic drum and bass hold the line rhythmically. This sense of disconnect, ultimately, leads to a place of soaring melody and wash, but that feeling of moving from one place to another is very much the core of what Wowod do throughout the rest of the album that follows. “Tanec Yarosti” is a sub-three-minute blaster, while “Proshschenie” lumbers and crashes through its first half en route to a lush soundscape in its second, rounding out side A. I don’t care what genre “Zhazhda” is, it rules, and launches side B with rampaging momentum, leading to the slow, semi-industrial drag of “Chornaya Zemlya,” the harsh thrust of “Zov Tysyachi Nozhey” and, finally, dizzyingly, the six-minute closer “Top’,” which echoes cavernous and could just as easily have been called “Bottom.” Beautiful brutality.

Wowod on Thee Facebooks

Church Road Records on Bandcamp

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Trace Amount, Endless Render

The chaos of last year is writ large in the late-2020 Endless Render EP from Brooklyn-based solo industrial outfit Trace Amount. The project headed by Brandon Gallagher (ex-Old Wounds) engages with harsh noise and heavy beatmaking, injecting short pieces like “Pop Up Morgues” with a duly dystopian atmosphere. Billy Rymer (The Dillinger Escape Plan, etc.) guests on drums for opener “Processed Violence (in 480P)” and the mminute-long “Seance Stimulant,” but it’s in the procession of the final three tracks — the aforementioned “Pop Up Morgues,” as well as “S.U.R.V.I.V.A.L.” and “Easter Sunday” — that Gallagher makes his most vivid portrayals. His work is evocative and resonant in its isolated feel, opaque like staring into an uncertain future but not without some semblance of hope in its resolution. Or maybe that’s the dream and the dance-party decay of “Dreaming in Displacement” is the reality. One way or the other, I’m looking forward to what Trace Amount does when it comes to a debut album.

Trace Amount on Thee Facebooks

Trace Amount on Bandcamp

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Fuzzcrafter, C-D

French instrumentalists Fuzzcrafter issued C-D in October 2020 as a clear answer/complement to 2016’s A-B, even unto its Jo Riou cover art, which replaces the desert-and-fuzz-pedal of the first offering with a forest-and-pedal here. The six works that make up the 41-minute affair are likewise grown, able to affect a sense of lushness around the leading-the-way riffage in extended cuts “C2” (13:13) and the psychedelic back half of “D2” (13:18), working in funk-via-prog basslines (see also the wah guitar starting “D1” for more funk) over solid drums without getting any more lost than they want to be in any particular movement. In those songs and elsewhere, Fuzzcrafter make no attempt to hide the fact that they’re a riff-based band, but the acoustic side-finales in “C3” (which also features Rhodes piano) and “D3,” though shorter, reinforce both the structural symmetry of the mirrored sides as a whole and a feeling of breadth that is injected elsewhere in likewise organic fashion. They’re not changing the world and they’re not trying to, but there’s a mark being left here sound-wise and it’s enough to wonder what might be in store for the inevitable E-F.

Fuzzcrafter on Thee Facebooks

Fuzzcrafter on Bandcamp

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Pine Ridge, Can’t Deny

Pine Ridge‘s second album, Can’t Deny, finds the Russian four/five-piece working in textures of keys and organ for a bluesier feel to tracks like the post-intro opening title-cut and the classic feeling later “Genesis.” Songwriting is straightforward, vocals gritty but well attended with backing arrangements, and the take on “Wayfaring Stranger” that ends the record’s first half conjures enough of a revivalist spirit to add to the atmosphere overall. The four tracks that follow — “Genesis,” “Runaway,” “Sons of Nothing” and “Those Days” — featured as well on 2019’s Sons of Nothing EP, but are consistent in groove and “Sons of Nothing” proves well placed to serve as an energetic apex of Can’t Deny ahead of “Those Days,” which starts quiet before bursting to life with last-minute electricity. A clear production emphasizes hooks and craft, and though I’ll grant I don’t know much about Siberia’s heavy rock scene, Pine Ridge ably work within the tenets of style while offering marked quality of songwriting and performance. That’s enough to ask from anywhere.

Pine Ridge on Thee Facebooks

Karma Conspiracy website

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Watchman, Behold a Pale Horse

Plain in its love for Sabbath-minded riffing and heavy Americana roll, “Bowls of Wrath” opens the three-song Dec. 2020 debut EP, Behold a Pale Horse, from Indiana-based solo-project Watchman, and the impression is immediate. With well-mixed cascades of organ and steadily nodding guitar, bass, drums and distorted, howling vocals, there is both a lack of pretense and an individualized take on genre happening at once. The EP works longest to shortest, with “Wormwood” building up from sparse guitar to far-back groove using negative space in the sound to bolster “Planet Caravan”-ish watery verses and emphasize the relative largesse of the track preceding as well as “The Second Death,” which follows. That closer is a quick four minutes that’s slow in tempo, but the lead-line cast overtop the mega-fuzzed central riff is effective in creating a current to carry the listener from one bank of the lake of fire to the other. In 15 minutes, multi-instrumentalist/vocalist/producer Roy Waterford serves notice of intention for a forthcoming debut LP to be titled Doom of Babylon, and it is notice worth heeding.

Watchman on Instagram

Watchman on Bandcamp

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Bomg, Peregrination

Bomg‘s Peregrination isn’t necessarily extreme the way one thinks of death or black metal as extreme styles of heavy metal, but is extreme just the same in terms of pushing to the outer limits of the aesthetics involved. The album’s four track, “Electron” (38:12), “Perpetuum” (39:10), “Paradigm” (37:17) and “Emanation” (37:49), could each consume a full 12″ LP on their own, and presented digitally one into the next, they are a tremendous, willfully unmanageable two-and-a-half-hour deep-dive into raw blowout dark psychedelic doom. The harsh rumble and noise in “Perpetuum” some 28 minutes on sounds as though the Ukrainian outfit have climbed the mountains of madness, and there is precious little clarity to be found in “Paradigm” or “Emanation” subsequent as they continue to hammer the spike of their manifestations deeper into the consciousness of the listener. From “Electron” onward, the self-recording Kyiv trio embark on this overwhelming journey into the unknown, and they don’t so much invite you along as unveil the devastating consequences of having made the trip. Righteously off-putting.

Bomg on Thee Facebooks

Robustfellow Productions on Bandcamp

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White Void, Anti

As much as something can fly under the radar and be a Nuclear Blast release, I’m more surprised by the hype I haven’t heard surrounding White Void‘s debut album, Anti. Pulling together influences from progressive European-style heavy rock, classic metal, cult organ, New Wave melodies and a generally against-grain individualism, it is striking in its execution and the clear purpose behind what it’s doing. It’s metal and it’s not. It’s rock and it’s pop and it’s heavy and it’s light and floating. And its songs have substance as well as style. With Borknagar‘s Lars Nedland as the founding principal of the project, the potential in Anti‘s eight component tracks is huge, and if one winds up thinking of this as post-black metal, it’s a staggeringly complex iteration of it to which this and any other description I’ve seen does little justice. It’s going to get called “prog” a lot because of the considered nature of its composition, but that’s barely scratching the surface of what’s happening here.

White Void on Thee Facebooks

Nuclear Blast Records store

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Day of the Jackal, Day Zero

Leeds, UK, four-piece Day of the Jackal bring straight-ahead hard rock songwriting and performance with an edge of classic heavy. There’s a Guns ‘n’ Roses reference in “Belief in a Lie” if you’re up for catching it, and later cuts like “Riskin’ it All” and “‘Til the Devil” have like-minded dudes-just-hit-on-your-girlfriend-and-you’re-standing-right-there vibes. They’re a rock band and they know it, and while I was a little bummed out “Rotten to the Core” wasn’t an Overkill cover, the 10 songs of love and death that pervade this debut long-player are notably hooky from “On Your Own” to “Deadfall” and “Rock ‘n’ Roll Deathride,” which casually inhabits biker riffing with no less ease of movement than the band would seem to do anything else. Production by James “Atko” Atkinson of Gentlemans Pistols highlights the clarity of the performance rather than giving a rawer glimpse at who Day of the Jackal might be on stage, but there’s plenty of vitality to go around in any case, and it’s headed your way from the moment you start the record.

Day of the Jackal on Thee Facebooks

Day of the Jackal on Bandcamp

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Green Druid, At the Maw of Ruin

Following their 2018 debut, Ashen Blood (review here), Denver heavy lifters Green Druid give due breadth to their closing take on Portishead‘s “Threads,” but the truth is that cover is set up by the prior five tracks of huge-sounding riffery, basking in the varying glories of stoner doom throughout opener “The Forest Dark” while keeping an eye toward atmospheric reach all the while. It is not just nod and crush, in other words, in Green Druid‘s arsenal throughout At the Maw of Ruin, and indeed, “End of Men” and “Haunted Memories” bridge sludge and black metal screaming as “A Throne Abandoned” offers surprising emotional urgency over its ready plod, and the long spoken section in “Desert of Fury/Ocean of Despair” eventually gives way not only to the most weighted slamming on offer, but a stretch of noise to lead into the closer. All along the way, Green Druid mark themselves out as a more complex outfit than their first record showed them to be, and their reach shows no sign of stopping here either.

Green Druid on Thee Facebooks

Earache Records website

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Hello Day Two of the Quarterly Review. It started by oversleeping by about an hour, but so it goes. Yesterday went about as smoothly as I can ask a QR day to go, so I’m hoping that today follows suit despite the rough start. There’s nothing like building some momentum once you get going with these writeups. It’s about as close to ‘in the zone’ as I get. Trance of productivity.

As always, I hope you find something here you dig. Today’s round is good and all over the place, so maybe everyone’ll get lucky. Here goes.

Quarterly Review #11-20:

Jess and the Ancient Ones, Vertigo

More than a decade on from their founding, Finland’s Jess and the Ancient Ones are an established brand when it comes to cult psych rock, and their fourth full-length, issued through Svart, is gleeful to the point of witch-cackling on “Talking Board” (think Ouija) and offers rousing classically-stylized hooks on fellow early cuts like opener “Burning of the Velvet Fires” and “World Paranormal” as well as side B’s “Born to Kill,” the Dr. Strangelove-sampling “Summer Tripping Man” and the organ-washed “What’s on Your Mind” ahead of an 11-minute prog rock grand finale in “Strange Earth Illusion” that feels very much like the impetus toward which the album has been driving all along. Relax, you’re in the hands of professional mystics, and their acid rock vibes are made all the more grand by Jess‘ soulful delivery atop the ever-clever arrangements of guitar, organ, bass, drums, samples, and so on. This kind of cultish lysergic fare has never been and never will be for everyone. Listening to Vertigo, you can only really wonder why that is.

Jess and the Ancient Ones on Facebook

Svart Records website

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Dread Sovereign, Alchemical Warfare

Metallic overload! Irish assault supreme! All sentences end with exclamation points! A new Dread Sovereign record doesn’t come along every day, or year, but the Dublin trio certainly make it count when one does. Alchemical Warfare is the third LP from the Alan Averill-fronted outfit, and with Johnny “Con Ri” King (also Conan) on drums and guitarist Bones Huse (also Wizards of Firetop Mountain), the band tear through nine tracks and 51 minutes of doom-colored metallurgy, throwing unrepentant fists in the air under darkened, irony-free skies. By the time 10-minute post-intro opener “She Wolves of the Savage Season” is over, if you’re not ready to quit your job and join the legion about to set march to “The Great Beast We Serve,” it’s no fault of the band’s. “Nature is the Devil’s Church” was the lead single and is a standout hook, but the grandiosity of “Ruin Upon the Temple Mount”‘s Candlemassy riffing is too good to be ignored, and they finish with a Bathory cover, because fucking a, that’s why.

Dread Sovereign on Facebook

Metal Blade Records website

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Space Smoke, Aurora Dourada

The debut EP from Brazilian instrumentalist trio Space Smoke runs all of 12 minutes, but that’s long enough for Aurora Dourada to give an impression of where the band are coming from. Three distinct tracks — “Magia Cerimonial,” “Interludio” and “Corpo Solar” — comprise the outing, and the middle one is indeed an interlude, so it’s really the opener and closer doing the heavy lifting. “Magia Cerimonia” starts off with a sense of foreboding but makes its way instead into hypnotic repetition, bordering on a meditative lumber that doesn’t stick around long enough to be redundant, and with the interlude as a breath between, the eight-minute “Corpo Solar” rounds out as the most substantial piece of the outing, drifting guitar over languid drums and bass, dreamy and sopping wet with reverb. They push it heavier than its quiet beginning, of course, but even the howling lead work near the finish maintains the inviting and immersive vibe with which they set out. Might be a blip of things to come, but it’s a blip worth checking out. Mini-trip.

Space Smoke on Instagram

Abraxas Events on Facebook

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If it Kills You, Infinite Hum

Infinite Hum is the striking debut LP from Bakersfield, California, post-hardcore heavy three/four-piece If it Kills You, who along with the periodic charred guest vocals on half the six tracks, bring together a quick assemblage for a 12″ that readily alternates between melodic sway and shoutier roll. They groove despite unpredictable turns, and their blend of hefted tones and punker-grown-up melodies makes a welcome impression on opener “We Don’t Belong Here” or “Moving Target.” Starts and stops and a bit of winding lead work give “Repeat Resolve” an edge of noise rock — more than an edge, actually; kind of like the flat side of a brick — but If it Kills You never push to one side or the other entirely, and as the screams return for later in “Repeat Resolve” and closer “Projections,” charged every time with and succeeding at pushing a crescendo over the top, the band manage to bring sincerity and structure together with what sounds like experienced hands. Don’t be fooled by “first album”; they know what they’re doing.

If it Kills You on Facebook

Killer Kern on Bandcamp

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Clara Engel, A New Skin

I’m not sure if anyone still calls this kind of thing “neo-folk,” but I am sure I don’t care. The sense of atmosphere Clara Engel puts into her latest album, A New Skin, beginning with the shift between minimal guitar and keyboard on “Starry Eyed Goat,” uses negative space no less effectively than does the mostly-black cover art, and the eight-song/46-minute outing that ensues alternates between emotive and wondrously ambient, suited to the home recording done during (presumed) isolation in Fall 2020. Engel handles all instrumentation herself and remains indelibly human in her sometimes-layered vocal delivery all the while, speaking to a building-out process of the material, but one does not get the sense in listening to “Night Tide” and the sparse “Thieves” back-to-back that the foundation of all the songs is the same, which is all the more representative of an exploratory songwriting process. A New Skin as a whole feels likewise exploratory, a reflection inward as much as out.

Clara Engel on Facebook

Clara Engel on Bandcamp

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Maya Mountains, Era

Long-running Italian trio Maya Mountains issued Era through Go Down Records in 2020 as their first album in some six years, readily engaging with desert rock on cuts like “San Saguaro” and closer “El Toro,” working in a bit of post-Queens of the Stone Age riffy quirk to go along with less bouncing and chunkier fare on “Vibromatic” and “Baumgartner,” or “Extremely High,” which makes its speedier tempo feel organic ahead of the finish. All told, it’s 44 minutes of solid heavy rock, with variation between songs of what each is working toward doing that does nothing to pull away from the vibe as a whole, whether that’s in a more aggressive moment like “Vibromatic” or the spacier playfulness at the start of “Raul,” the band clearly unafraid of letting a little funk hold sway for a minute or two. Engaging without being revolutionary, Era knows its craft and audience alike, and offers one to the other without pretense or presumption. It’s rock for rockers, but what’s wrong with that?

Maya Mountains on Facebook

Go Down Records website

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Cave of Swimmers, Aurora

An awaited first long-player from Miami duo Cave of Swimmers — vocalist/guitarist/synthesist Guillermo Gonzalez and drummer/percussionist/vocalist Arturo Garcia — packages epic metal in tight-knit bursts of heavy rock tonality. Choruses in “The Sun” and “Double Rainbow” are grand affairs not because their tones are so huge, but because of the melodies that top them, and at the same time, with riffs at the forefront of the verses, the duo make progressive shifts sound classic in the vein of Iron Maiden or Dio with a still-prevailing fuzzy topcoat. Centerpiece “My Human” is a love song that slams, while “Looking Glass” leans deeper into prog metal but brings the listener along with a another sweeping hook, a pattern of tension and release that carries over to “Dirt” as well, which leaves “C.S” to close out with its “Sign of the Southern Cross” keyboard-and-harmonies intro en route to a poised but still thrashing finish. There’s life in heavy metal, and here it is.

Cave of Swimmers on Facebook

Broomtune Records website

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Blind Monarch, What is Imposed Must Be Endured

Straight out of Sheffield, UK, Blind Monarch first released their What is Imposed Must Be Endured four-song/56-minute full-length on Black Bow Records in 2020 and it’s been picked up for a 2LP vinyl pressing by Dry Cough Records. There’s something to be said for splitting up these tracks each onto its own side, making the whole release more manageable despite getting up to do a side or platter flip, but any way you go, “Suffering Breathes My Name” (13:45), “My Mother, My Cradle, My Tomb” (10:47), “Blind Monarch” (14:10) and closer “Living Altar” (17:54) are geared toward sharp-toothed death-sludge consumption, extreme in thought and deed. Feedback is strewn about the place like so much flayed skin, and even in the quiet moments at the start and laced into “Living Altar,” the atmosphere remains oppressive. Yet, endure one must. Blind Monarch, even among the UK’s ultra-packed underground, are a standout in how maddeningly heavy they manage to be, and on their debut outing, no less. If you missed it last year, be ready to pay extra for shipping.

Blind Monarch on Facebook

Dry Cough Records website

Black Bow Records webstore

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Cancervo, 1

Each track on Italian instrumentalist trio Cancervo‘s debut album, titled simply 1, is intended to represent an area near their home in the mountainous region of Lombardy, Italy. Their tones are duly thick, their presentation patient and their cast is broad in terms of its landscape. From “Averara,” one might see kilometers, in other words. Whether or not you’re familiar with Cancervo‘s locale, their tonal warmth and heavy psychedelic expanse resonates immersively, letting each of the two sides develop on its own from the beginnings in “Cancervo” and “Darco,” both the longest cuts on their respective halves. The fuller fuzz of “SWLABR” and the punch of bass that accompanies the tom hits on closer “1987” are subtle shifts emblematic of Cancervo‘s creative progression getting underway, and the task to which they set themselves — portraying place in sound — is no less admirable than their accomplishment of same would see to be. I’ve never been there, so can’t confirm 100 percent if that’s what it sounds like, but in repeat listens, I’m happy to take the band’s word (or riffs) for it.

Cancervo on Facebook

Electric Valley Records website

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Sahara, The Curse

Its four cuts run 17 minutes with the last of them an instrumental title-track that’s under three, but I don’t care — the entire thing is so righteously raw and garage nasty that I’m on board with however much Argentina’s Sahara want to bring to The Curse. “Gallows Noose” sounds like it was taped, and then re-taped, and then re-taped again before finally being pressed (to tape), and there’s no mistaking that’s an aesthetic choice on the part of the band, who probably have phones that could make something with clearer audio, but the in-room demo feel of “Hell on Earth” and “Altar of Sacrifice,” the rootsy metal-of-doom feel of it hits on its own level. Sometimes you just want something that comes across barebones and mean, and that’s what The Curse does. Call it retro, call it unproduced, call it whatever you want, it doesn’t matter. Sahara (bring looks that) kill it on that Sabbath-worshiping altar and sound dirt-coated all the while, making everything everything else in the universe seem more complicated than it needs to be.

Sahara on Facebook

Helter Skelter Productions website

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DVNE have set March 19 as the release date for their new album, Etemen Ænka, which is to serve as their debut on Metal Blade Records. The arrival of the record would seem to have been a while in the making — the band had inked a deal with RidingEasy in 2019, shortly before they made a return appearance at Psycho Las Vegas, there they’d made their US live debut the prior year (review here) — but certainly the fact that it’s on Metal Blade that the full-length arrives is notable in itself. It’s not every day a band like this puts out a record on a label like this.

And when it comes to “a band like this,” DVNE stand largely apart despite pulling together familiar stylistic elements of progressive and post-metal. In their new single, “Sì-XIV,” their penchant for atmospherics does little to undercut the impact of harder-hitting stretches. This is actually the second audio to make its way to the public behind the issued-on-its-own Omega Severer (review here), which will also appear on Etemen Ænka when it arrives in March.

The PR wire has art and info to spare:

Dvne reveals details for new album, ‘Etemen Ænka’; launches video for new single, “Sì-XIV”

On March 19th, Dvne will release their sophomore album, Etemen Ænka, via Metal Blade Records. For a first preview of the record, a video for the new single “Si?-XIV” can be viewed at: metalblade.com/dvne – where Etemen Ænka can also be pre-ordered in the following formats:

– digisleeve-CD
– 180g black vinyl (EU exclusive)
– raisin rouge marbled vinyl (EU exclusive – limited to 400 copies)
– grey / yellow-green marbled vinyl (EU exclusive – limited to 300 copies)
– gold / black dust vinyl (EU exclusive – limited to 200 copies)
– clear / black dust vinyl (Kings Road exclusive – limited to 100 copies)
– dark goldenrod marbled vinyl (US exclusive)
– clear ash gray marbled vinyl (US exclusive)

Dvne comments: “With the context of covid and the strong travel restrictions we’ve had in the UK and Europe, shooting ‘SI-XIV’ was a real challenge, but we’re glad we could make it happen.
The video was split between two shoots: we worked once again with our close friends Just-Aurèle Meissonnier, Louis Macéra, Gilles Garniers and Michel Jocaille for the creature part of the shoot (shot in Paris); the rest of the video footage was shot in Edinburgh by Calum McMillan and our light tech Sam Jones.

We’ve always loved prosthetic effects and wanted to use our own creations in the video, but the overall aesthetic takes no small amount of inspiration from some of our favourite 70/80s sci-fi horror films. We had this concept of a weird humanoid-type creature facing the overwhelming harshness and the hopeless nature of its existence.

The video symbolically follows the narrative theme of the track within the new album, with the creature attempting to escape its nature through metamorphosis throughout the video. It was an incredibly fun few days setting up and shooting all the creature parts in Paris.”

Dvne are a band of great contrasts, weaving titanic heaviness and intricate gentleness together, complex lyrical ideas with engaging storylines, and this has only been expanded upon and concentrated on second album Etemen Ænka. “It’s an album that has a narrative musically, and we hope that will encourage the listener to explore the universe we’ve created around it,” states guitarist/vocalist Victor Vicart. “It is a very dense and layered album which will reward multiple listens, and while this is becoming a recurring aspect of our music, we feel that we went further with it this time. It’s also a very polarizing album, emotionally speaking. The heavy sections are, well, very heavy, while the clean sections are much more intricate and delicate – and in a way wouldn’t be out of place in a Studio Ghibli anime soundtrack.” Exploring everything in greater depth in every way, it is a profound step forward from 2017’s Asheran, starting an exciting new chapter in the existence of one of the most thrilling and imaginative metal bands active today. “We knew we wanted to include keys and synths in the equation. We wanted to be able to add new textures and new sounds that weren’t on our previous releases, and we felt that this was something that will give us more options creatively. Looking back, that was a great decision because we’ve used synths for everything, with ambient sounds, heavy subs and actual leads, which really added a new dynamic to this album. We’ve also kept this balance between down-tuned heavy riffs and clean movements, which were already present in ‘Asheran’, but we really wanted to make sure we could capture more details and subtleties once recorded,” explains Vicart. Synths are in fact so present, and at times so unapologetically 80s, that they sound like the soundtrack to a classic sci-fi, which may well surprise fans, the band confident in every step they took musically.

Etemen Ænka is also Dvne’s second collaboration with producer Graeme Young in Edinburgh’s Chamber Studio, having developed a great working relationship with him on Asheran – “he acts like an extra member of the band and really pushes us to do better takes.” This made for a smooth and productive recording process, the challenging part coming before they entered the studio. “The composition was challenging because we second guess every riff that gets written. We want to keep things fresh, and we want to keep the energy high too, so the initial creative stage can become intense. Then, because our tracks are pretty big and dense with ideas and movements, we didn’t finalize each track structure until we started laying down the drums. But I think it’s what made the whole recording process so much fun too, because it allowed us to really think about the different options available without committing to a final structure too early in the process.” The record also features guest vocals courtesy of Lissa Robertson, who sings on “Omega Severer” and “Asphodel” and contributes spoken word on “Weighing Of The Heart” – her voice adding yet another depth to the heavily layered collection.

Tracklisting:
1. Enûma Eliš
2. Towers
3. Court of the Matriarch
4. Weighing of the Heart
5. Omega Severer
6. Adræden
7. Sì-XIV
8. Mleccha
9. Asphodel
10. Satuya

https://www.facebook.com/DvneUK
https://twitter.com/SongsOfArrakis
https://www.instagram.com/dvne_uk/
https://songs-of-arrakis.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/metalbladerecords
https://www.instagram.com/metalbladerecords/
https://www.metalblade.com/

DVNE, “Sì-XIV” official video

Kind of a spur of the moment thing, this Quarterly Review. I’ve been adding releases all the while, of course, but my thought was to do this after my year-end list went up, and I realized, hey, if I’ve got like 70 records I haven’t reviewed yet, maybe there’s some of that stuff worth considering. So here we are. I’ve pushed back my best-of-2020 stuff and basically swapped it with the Quarterly Review. Does it matter to you? I seriously, seriously doubt it, but I believe in transparency and that’s what’s up. Thought I’d let you know. And yeah, this is going to go into next week, take us through the X-mas holiday this Friday, so whatever. You celebrate your way and I’ll celebrate mine. Let’s roll.

Quarterly Review #1-10:

Boris, No

As a general project, reviewing Boris is damn near pointless. One might as well review the moon: “uh, it’s big and out there most of the time?” The only reason to do it is either to exercise one’s own need to hyperbolize or help the band sell records. Well, Boris doesn’t need my push and I don’t need to tell them how great they are. No is 40 minutes of the widely and wildly lauded Japanese heavy rock(s) experimentalists trying to riff away existing in 2020, delving high speed into hardcore here and there and playing off that with grueling sludge, punk, garage-metal and the penultimate “Loveless,” which is kind of Boris being their own genre. Much respect to the band, and I suppose one might critique Boris for, what?, being so Boris-y?, but there really isn’t a ton that hasn’t been said about them because such a ton has. I’m not trying to disparage their work at all — No is just what you’d expect as regards defying expectation — but after 20-plus years, there’s only so many ways one wants to call a band genius.

Boris on Thee Facebooks

Boris on Bandcamp

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DVNE, Omega Severer

Kind of a soft-opening for Edinburgh’s DVNE as an act on Metal Blade Records, unless of course one counts the two songs on the Omega Severer EP itself, which are post-metallic beasts of the sort that would and should make The Ocean blush. Progressive, heavy, and remarkably ‘next-wave’ feeling, DVNE‘s awaited follow-up to 2017’s Asheran may only be about 17 and a half minutes long, but it bodes remarkably well as the band master a torrent of intensity on the 10-minute opening title-cut and answer that with the immediately galloping “Of Blade and Carapace,” smashing battle-axe riffing and progressive shimmer against each other and finding it to be an alchemy of their own. Album? One suspects not until they can tour for it, but if Omega Severer is DVNE serving notice, consider the message received loud, clear, dynamic, crushing, spacious, and so on. Already veterans of Psycho Las Vegas, they sound like a band bent on capturing a broader audience in the metallic sphere.

DVNE on Thee Facebooks

Metal Blade Records website

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Hydra, From Light to the Abyss

There’s no questioning where Hydra‘s heart is at on their debut full-length, From Light to the Abyss. It belongs to the devil and it belongs to Black Sabbath. The Polish four-piece riff hard and straightforward throughout most of the five-track offering (released by Piranha Music), and samples set the kind of atmosphere that should be familiar enough to the converted — “No One Loves Like Satan” reminds of Uncle Acid in its initial channel-changing and swaggering riff alike — but doomly centerpiece “Creatures of the Woods” and the layered vocal melodies late in closer “Magical Mind” perhaps offer a glimpse at the direction the band could take from here. What matters though is where Hydra are at today, and that’s bringing riffs and nod to the converted among the masses, and From Light to the Abyss offers no pretense otherwise. It is doom rock for doom rockers, grooves to be grooved to. They’re not void of ambition by any means — their songwriting makes that clear — but their traditionalism is sleeve-worn, which if you’re going to have it, is right where it should be.

Hydra on Thee Facebooks

Piranha Music on Bandcamp

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Jason Simon, A Venerable Wreck

Dead Meadow guitarist/vocalist Jason Simon follows 2016’s Familiar Haunts (review here) with the genre-spanning A Venerable Wreck, finding folk roots in obscure beats and backwards this-and-that, country in fuzz, ramble in space, and no shortage of experimentalism besides. A Venerable Wreck consists of 12 songs and though there are times where it can feel disjointed, that becomes part of the ride. It’s not all supposed to make sense. Yet what happens by the time you get around to “No Entrance No Exit” is that Simon (and a host of cohorts) has set his own context broad enough so that the drone reach of “Hollow Lands” and sleek, organ-laced indie of closer “Without Reason or Right” can coexist without any real interruption of flow between them. The question with A Venerable Wreck isn’t so much whether the substance is there, it’s whether the listener is open to it. Welcome to psychedelic America. Please inject this snake venom and turn in your keys when you leave.

Jason Simon on Bandcamp

BYM Records website

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Cherry Choke, Raising Salzburg Rockhouse

You won’t hear me take away from the opening psych-scorch hook of “Mindbreaker” or the fuzzed-on, boogie-down, -up, and -sideways of “Black Annis” which follows, but there’s something extra fun about hearing Frog Island’s Cherry Choke jam out a 13-minute, drum-solo-inclusive version of “6ix and 7even” that makes Raising Salzburg Rockhouse even more of a reminder of how underrated both they are as a band and Mat Bethancourt is as a player. Look no further than “Domino” if you want absolute proof. The whole band rips it up at the Austrian gig, which was recorded in 2015 as they supported their third and still-most-recent full-length, Raising the Waters (review here), but Bethancourt puts on a Hendrixian clinic in the nine-minute cut from 2011’s A Night in the Arms of Venus (review here), which is actually less of a clinic than it is pure distorted swagger followed by a mellow “cheers, thanks” before diving into “Used to Call You Friend.” A 38-minute set would be perfect for an vinyl release, and anytime Cherry Choke want to get around to putting together a fourth studio album, well, that’ll be just fine too.

Cherry Choke on Thee Facebooks

Cherry Choke on Bandcamp

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Pariiah, Swallowed by Fog

It’s a special breed of aggro that emerges as a result of living in the most densely populated state in the union, and New Jersey’s Pariiah have it to spare. Bringing together sludge tonality with elder-style New York hardcore lumbering riffs on their Trip Machine Laboratories tape, Swallowed by Fog, they exude a thickened brand of pissed off that’s outright going to be too confrontation for many who take it on. But if you want a middle finger to the face, this is what it sounds like, and the six songs (compiled into four on the digital version of the release) come and go entirely without pretense and leave little behind except bruises and the promise of more to come. They’re a new band, started in this most wretched of years, but there’s no learning curve whatsoever among the members of Devoid of Faith, The Nolan Gate, Kill Your Idols, Changeörder and others. I’d go to Maplewood to see these cats. I’m just saying. Maybe even Elizabeth.

Pariiah on Bandcamp

Trip Machine Laboratories website

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Saavik, Saavik

So you’ve got both members of Holly Hunt in a four-piece sludging out with spacey synth and the band is named after a Star Trek character? Not to get too personal, but that’s going to pique my interest one way or the other. Saavik — and they clearly prefer the Kirstie Alley version, rather than Robin Curtis, going by drummer Beatriz Monteavaro‘s artwork — are damn near playing space rock by the end of “He’s Dead Jim,” the opener of their self-titled debut EP, but even that’s affected by a significant tonal weight in Didi Aragon‘s bass and the guitar of Gavin Perry, however much Ryan Rivas‘ synth and effects-laced vocals might seem to float overhead, but “Meld” rolls along at a steadier nod, and “Horizon” puts the synth more in the lead without becoming any less heavy for doing so. Likewise, “Red Sun” calls to mind Godflesh in its proto-machine metal stomp, but there’s more concern in Saavik‘s sound with expanse than just pure crush, and that shows up in fascinating ways in these songs.

Saavik on Thee Facebooks

Other Electricities on Bandcamp

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Mountain Tamer, Psychosis Ritual

There’s been a dark vibe all along nestled into Mountain Tamer‘s sound, and that’s certainly the case on Psychosis Ritual, with which the Los Angeles-based trio make their debut on Heavy Psych Sounds. It’s their third full-length overall behind 2018’s Godfortune // Dark Matters (review here) and 2016’s self-titled debut (review here), and it finds their untamed-feeling psychedelia rife with that same threat of violence, not necessarily thematically as much as sonically, like the songs themselves are the weapon about to be turned on the listener. Maybe the buzz of “Warlock” or the fuckall echo of the prior-issued single “Death in the Woods” (posted here) aren’t out there trying to be “Hammer Smashed Face” or anything, but neither is this the hey-bruh-good-times heavy jams for which Southern California is known these days. Consider the severity of “Turoc Maximus Antonis” or the finally-released screams in closer “Black Noise,” which bookends Psychosis Ritual with the title-track and seems at last to be the point where whatever grim vibe these guys are riding finally consumes them. Mountain Tamer continue to be unexpected and righteous in kind.

Mountain Tamer on Thee Facebooks

Heavy Psych Sounds on Bandcamp

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Centre El Muusa, Centre El Muusa

Hypnotic Estonian psychedelic krautrock instrumentals not your thing? Well that sounds like a personal problem Centre El Muusa are ready to solve. The evolved-from-duo four-piece get spaced out amid the semi-motorik repetitions of their self-titled debut (on Sulatron), and that seems to suit them quite well, thanksabunch. Drone trips and essential swirl brim with solar-powered pulsations and you can set your deflectors on maximum and route all the secondaries to reinforce if you want, there’s still a decent chance 9:53 opener an longest track “Turkeyfish” (immediate points, double for the appropriately absurd title) is going to sweep you off what you used to call your feet when that organ line hits at about six minutes in. That’s to say nothing of the cosmic collision later in “Burning Lawa” or the just-waiting-for-a-Carl-Sagan-voiceover “Mia” that follows. Even the 3:46 “Ain’t Got Enough Mojo” lives long enough to prove itself wrong. Interstellar tape transmissions fostered by obvious weirdos in the great out-there in “Szolnok,” named for a city in Hungary that, among other things, hosts the goulash festival. Right fucking on.

Centre El Muusa on Thee Facebooks

Sulatron Records webstore

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Population II, À La Ô Terre

The first Population II album, a 2017 self-titled, was comprised of two tracks, each long enough to consume a 12″ side. Somehow it’s fitting with the Montreal-based singing-drummer trio’s aesthetic that their second long-player, À la Ô Terre, would take a completely different tack, employing shorter freakouts like “L’Offrande” and “La Nuit” and the garage-rocking “La Danse” and what-if-Jefferson–Airplane-but-on-Canadian-mushrooms “À la Porte de Demain” and still-more-drifting finisher “Je Laisse le Soleil Briller” amid the more stretched out “Attaction,” the space-buzzer “Ce n’est Réve” while cutting a middle ground in the greaked-out (I was gonna type “freaked out” and hit a typo and I’m keeping it) “Il eut un Silence dans le Ciel,” which also betrays the jazzy underpinnings that somehow make all of À la Ô Terre come across as progressive instead of haphazard. From the start to the close, you don’t know what’s coming next, and just because that’s by design doesn’t make it less effective. If anything, it makes Population II all the more impressive.

Population II on Thee Facebooks

Castle Face Records website

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This is as crucial a moment as I can think of Demon Head as having in their career. Certainly since their first album, anyhow. With the details of their fourth long-player and label debut for Metal Blade Records, Viscera, the five-piece aren’t just sharing a track off the record like it’s nothing, business as usual. They’re basically introducing themselves to a new listenership thanks to their new home’s larger distribution and promotional footprint. Don’t get me wrong, it was a big deal when they put out Hellfire Ocean Void (review here) and set about moving deeper into the darkened reaches of their own sound, but “The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony” has a pivotal role to play as preorders launch for Viscera.

And Demon Head don’t shy away from it. For those who’ve followed the band, the new track/video shows immediately that they’ve continued to progress. It’s arguably the most atmospheric song they’ve done as a group, and they’ve never been shy about setting a mood. And for those new to the band, “The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony” serves as an exciting outside-genre look at a band come into their own sound. The fact that it’s the closer alone makes it a brave choice as a first single. I can’t wait to hear the rest of the LP.

From the PR wire:

Demon Head reveals details for new album, ‘Viscera’; launches video for new single, “The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony”

On January 29th, Demon Head will release their new album, Viscera, via Metal Blade Records. For a first preview of the record, a video for the new single, “The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony” (created by Justine Morrow aka lathe.of.heaven), can be viewed at: metalblade.com/demonhead – where Viscera can be pre-ordered in the following formats:

– hardcover digisleeve-CD
– 180g clear deluxe edition vinyl w/ o-card, backpatch, and poster (Kings Road exclusive – limited to 300 copies)
– 180g black vinyl (EU exclusive)
– clear ash grey marbled vinyl (EU exclusive – limited to 250 copies)
– dark red / black marbled vinyl (EU exclusive – limited to 250 copies)
– clear / black dust vinyl (Kings Road exclusive – limited to 100 copies)
– clear brown marbled vinyl (US exclusive)

Demon Head is comprised of five internationally based and widely acclaimed musicians; Mikkel Sander Fuglsang, Birk Gjerlufsen Nielsen, Marcus Ferreira Larsen, Thor Gjerlufsen Nielsen and Jeppe Wittus. Though hesitant to compromise the description of the music they perform through generalizing terms of genre, they’ve coined the term “diabolic rock” as an appropriate presentation.

Their fourth full-length – Viscera – is a new beginning for Demon Head. Recorded during the first months of 2020 between the legendary Sweet Silence Studios by Flemming Rasmussen (Metallica, Morbid Angel, Rainbow) and a remote country house in Sweden, the album was mixed by Martin ‘Konie’ Ehrencrona (In Solitude, Tribulation, Nifelheim). The production shows the impeccable qualities of joined forces, where old techniques meet new aesthetics, and major label possibilities meet underground, uncompromising DIY dedication. The resulting 10 songs showcase acoustic instruments, flourishing mellotron strings, brass instruments, tape manipulation and church organ – displayed in equal measure to the sound of the crushing drums of J.W, cryptic guitars of brothers B.G.N and T.G.N, pounding bass lines of M.S.F, and the vocals of M.F.L combined with the eerily captivating falsetto and baryton of B.G.N.

Demon Head comments: “We are now ready to offer You ‘Viscera’. It contains more of us than any album we have made before, and we hope that You will welcome it as sincerely as it will welcome You.”

Viscera track-listing
1. Tooth and Nail
2. The Feline Smile
3. Arrows
4. Magical Death
5. The Lupine Choir
6. A Long, Groaning Descent
7. In Adamantine Chains
8. Black Torches
9. Wreath
10. The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony

Demon Head will play a release show on January 30th at Pumpehuset in Copenhagen. “A release ceremony will take place in Copenhagen when this year is newly dead. Tokens for the passage are available here: https://pumpehuset.dk/koncerter/demon-head-slaegt-shaam-larein/

Demon Head line up:
Mikkel Sander Fuglsang – bass
Birk Gjerlufsen Nielsen – guitars
Marcus Ferreira Larsen – vocals
Thor Gjerlufsen Nielsen – guitars
Jeppe Wittus – drums

https://www.facebook.com/Demoncoven/
http://www.instagram.com/demonhead_official/
http://demonhead.bandcamp.com/
https://demonhead.bigcartel.com/
http://www.demonhead.org
https://www.facebook.com/metalbladerecords
https://www.instagram.com/metalbladerecords/
https://www.metalblade.com/

Demon Head, “The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony” official video

It’s not every day you run into a Lost Goat connection. Sanhedrin, newly signed to Metal Blade for their upcoming third album, is fronted by Erica Stoltz, whose pedigree includes not only that largely-lost three-piece from the pre-social media, turn-of-the-century days of heavy rock, but also to Amber Asylum, the pioneering chamber-doom outfit from whence also sprang Worm Ouroboros, Giant Squid, Grayceon, Culper Ring, etc. A not insignificant CV.

Guitarist Jeremy Sosville and drummer Nathan Honor have their own lineages, between Black Anvil and Vermefug, respectively, but as 2019’s The Poisoner readily demonstrates, Sanhedrin‘s sound is more singularly indebted to the classic metal end of doom. One imagines seeing them share a stage with Magic Circle and bringing forth roughed-up NWOBHM gods with copious spells of summoning.

Oh yeah, and I guess Metal Blade‘s pedigree is pretty good too. Remember that time they put out Show No Mercy?

Info from the PR wire:

Metal Blade Records is proud to welcome Brooklyn’s Sanhedrin to its worldwide roster!

Formed in 2015, Sanhedrin have released two albums to-date: A Funeral For The World (2017) and The Poisoner (2019). The trio (which consists of former Amber Asylum/Lost Goat bassist/vocalist Erica Stoltz, Black Anvil guitarist Jeremy Sosville and drummer Nathan Honor) blends doom and classic metal into gripping, instantaneously memorable songs with lyrics that delve into the darker elements of humanity and the cyclical nature of destructive ideas. Thought-provoking and inherently catchy at the same time, Sanhedrin is unafraid to venture into unchartered territory.

The band will enter the studio to record their third full-length – and Metal Blade Records debut – in spring 2021.

Sanhedrin comments: “We are excited and humbled to join Metal Blade Records! Their legacy spans four decades and countless amazing artists, many of whom have inspired us over the years. We are proud to be part of its future, and look forward to what this new partnership will bring for Sanhedrin.”

Stay tuned for more news about Sanhedrin coming soon!

Sanhedrin line-up:
Jeremy Sosville – Guitar
Erica Stoltz – Bass, Vocals
Nathan Honor – Drums

https://www.sanhedrin.nyc/
https://www.instagram.com/sanhedrin_official/
https://www.facebook.com/sanhedrinband
https://thesanhedrin.bandcamp.com/

Sanhedrin, The Poisoner (2019)

New Dread Sovereign. No-brainer. Listened to it once; already stuck in my head. Can’t wait for the whole record.

It’s really as simple as that. The upcoming third album from Dublin-based Dread Sovereign, titled Alchemical Warfare, will arrive Jan. 15, 2021. That’s nearly four years after its 2017 predecessor, For Doom the Bell Tolls (review here), and prior to its slow-down-and-rip-yourself-apart finish, first single “Nature is the Devil’s Church” is actually speedy enough to warrant the Slayer pun in the album’s title. Bassist/vocalist Alan “Nemtheanga” Averill (also Primordial), guitarist Bones Huse (also Morass of Molasses) and drummer Johnny King (also Conan, among a slew of others) bring together classic, dark heavy metal swirlings and a worship-ready hook with “Nature is the Devil’s Church,” and if you weren’t already looking forward to this album just by knowing that it exists, the video for the single is at the bottom of the post here.

But like I said at the outset: No-brainer. Can’t wait.

From the PR wire:

Dread Sovereign reveals details for new album, ‘Alchemical Warfare’; launches video for first single, “Nature Is The Devil’s Church”

On January 15th, Dread Sovereign will release their third full-length, Alchemical Warfare, via Metal Blade Records. For a first preview of the record, a video for the new single, “Nature Is The Devil’s Church”, can be viewed at: metalblade.com/dreadsovereign – where Alchemical Warfare can be pre-ordered in the following formats:

– digipak-CD
– 180g black vinyl (EU exclusive)
– slate blue / grey marbled vinyl (EU exclusive – limited to 200 copies)
– raisin rouge marbled vinyl (EU exclusive – limited to 150 copies)
– gold / black dust vinyl (Kings Road exclusive – limited to 100 copies)
– white / black marbled vinyl (US exclusive)

Dread Sovereign was formed in Dublin, Ireland in 2013 by Primordial vocalist Nemtheanga to give praise to filthy cult old doom, black and heavy metal. Their first EP – 2013?s Pray to the Devil in Man – came out on Roadburn/Burning World Records to coincide with the band’s live debut. Soon after, two full-lengths were released by Van Records: All Hell’s Martyrs (2014) and For Doom the Bell Tolls (2017). And now, in early 2021, the band will release their new album, Alchemical Warfare, through Metal Blade Records.

“Our motto when we started was ‘The World is Doomed’…and it seems life is imitating art…as we are looking like filthy prophets!” says vocalist/bassist Nemtheanga. “Several years in the making, the new Dread Sovereign is ready for the End of the World, which might be next year in case you didn’t know! A bit more reckless and up-tempo than the previous releases, yet the template remains doom, ‘Alchemical Warfare‘ just has a bit more Venom and Motorhead thrown into the mix. If it’s the end of days we might as well go out with middle fingers raised right?”

“Alchemical Warfare” track-listing
1. A Curse on Men
2. She Wolves of the Savage Season
3. The Great Beast We Serve
4. Nature Is the Devil’s Church
5. Her Master’s Voice
6. Viral Tomb
7. Devil’s Bane
8. Ruin Upon the Temple Mount
9. You Don’t Move Me (I Don’t Give a Fuck) *CD+digital bonus track only

Dread Sovereign line-up:
Nemtheanga – vocals/bass
Bones – guitars
Johnny King – drums

https://www.facebook.com/DreadSovereign
https://www.instagram.com/dreadsovereign
https://dreadsovereign.bandcamp.com
https://www.facebook.com/metalbladerecords
https://www.instagram.com/metalbladerecords/
https://www.metalblade.com/

Dread Sovereign, “Nature is the Devil’s Church” official video

‘From mountain top to valley deep
From shore to cursed shore
What nation? What state? What land is this?’
— “As Rome Burns”

Dublin, Ireland’s Primordial released their sixth album, To the Nameless Dead, on Nov. 16, 2007. I remember it was so late in the Fall of that year both because it’s information readily available on the internet and because it’s the latest release I’ve ever made my album of the year. Hearing it, I felt like there was no other choice. The songs forced themselves into the consciousness.

Primordial had made their debut on Metal Blade two years earlier with The Gathering Wilderness, which saw them continuing to move beyond their more strictly black metal beginnings toward distinct, Celtic-informed fare, readjusting the balance of elements at work in their sound to incorporate more melody in the guitars of Ciáran MacUiliam and Micheál O’Floinn and a cleaner vocal take from frontman Alan Averill — who also mastered the album and mixed with producer Chris Fielding (now also of Conan) — atop the affirming, drivingly metallic rhythms of bassist Pól MacAmlaigh and drummer Simon O’Laoghaire. By the time 2007 came around, that transition-to-something-else could only be called complete, and while one would still call their roots black metal, and that can be heard across the album in the guitar tones and in songs like “Gallows Hymn” or even the electric parts of the declarative “Heathen Tribes” — lest one not mention the more willfully charred “Traitors Gate” and the earlier verses of closer “No Nation on This Earth” — the emphasis in To the Nameless Dead was less adherence to genre than adherence to the songs themselves. Running seven songs and 53 minutes, it is an impeccable clarity of sound honed by the band while still coming across with any semblance of a natural impression, and the nuance of this particular moment in the development of their style happens to coincide with a front-to-back batch of memorable works of genuinely epic metal.

Beginning with opener “Empire Falls,” Primordial‘s lyrics tell tales of crumbling hedonism that are cast in ancient frames but applicable to modernity just the same. In 2007, Ireland and Northern Ireland — having been embroiled in violent conflict since the ’60s that continues to resonate across the two nations to this day and there are murals of murdered people all over the walls of Belfast to prove it — were less than a decade out from signing the Good Friday Agreement, and with the cultural corruption that was unveiled with the Catholic church’s sex abuse scandal (also ongoing), the band of course would’ve been no strangers to the tumult, the violence and the sheer unsettled-ness of the atmosphere of their home nation. Among Ireland’s rich histories is one of protest music, and Primordial represent that as well, in the lyrics of “As Rome Burns” and “No Nation on This Earth” and “Empire Falls” specifically, and coupled with the folk lyricism of “Gallows Hymn” and the triumphant touring chronicle “Heathen Tribes,” To the Nameless Dead cast itself from its leadoff fade-in to its final fadeout as a tale of defeats and victories, of battles fought, won and lost.

Averill‘s performance is striking on the record and many of his declarations carry a sense of stage drama. The language is grand and poetic — see, “And winter mocks me though he does not need to call my name/He thinks my bones are brittle” in “Failures Burden” personifying a season as an oppressor — and the vocalist’s delivery designed to suit, but the complexity on display across To the Nameless Dead is about more than one aspect. It’s everything on this album. The atmosphere is cold like that winter being described, and the feeling of struggle writ large in the guitars and the melancholy but insistent groove of “Gallows Hymn” and the decidedly progressive jabs amid the later chug in “Empire Falls.” Though “Gallows Hymn” is the shortest inclusion on To the Nameless Dead at 5:55 — the 90-second drone interlude “The Rising Tide” ahead of “Traitors Gate” notwithstanding — and plays as part of a back and forth between songs on either side of six minutes and songs longer than eight, no matter what mode Primordial seem to be working in at any given time, and no matter which side of their aesthetic is in the foreground, the material never sounds bloated in terms of structure or pompous. To be sure, there is an elaborate affect happening across the entire span of the release, but the manner in which that’s manifest is efficient, and all the parts of all the songs feel as though they’ve been evaluated to determine whether or not they serve the record’s overarching purpose.

“Heathen Tribes” is perhaps the most direct engagement of audience on To the Nameless Dead, as Averill‘s lyrics take the listener sightseeing on tour, noting monuments like the “spires of Sofia” in Bulgaria and “Senatus Populusque Romanus” in Italy. The band signed to Hammerheart Records for 2000’s third album, Spirit the Earth Aflame — a landmark in their progression — and their first two outings, 1998’s A Journey’s End and 1995’s Imrama had backing from Misanthropy Records and Cacophonous Records, respectively, but one can’t help but wonder if maybe there was an element of self-introduction happening too. Seems strange for a band’s sixth full-length, sure, but considering the band’s earlier works (2002’s Storm Before Calm preceded The Gathering Wilderness) had yet to see the reissues they’ve since been given, To the Nameless Dead would’ve arrived as Primordial‘s second long-player with the breadth of Metal Blade‘s distribution, and maybe served as a point of entry for international listeners as a result. They had momentum behind them with The Gathering Wilderness just two years before, but no question To the Nameless Dead would take their recognition to another level. It’s fortunate, then, that the sensibility throughout “Heathen Tribes” is welcoming.

It was four years before Primordial issued a follow-up in 2011’s Redemption at the Puritan’s Hand (review here), and 2014’s Where Greater Men Have Fallen and 2018’s Exile Amongst the Ruins (review here) arrived behind that, but in some crucial ways, To the Nameless Dead became the stylistic model from which their growth would continue, and even now its resonance and relevance feel as sharp as they did 13 years ago when it was released.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

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Cold this morning, and dark. Alarm was set for 3:40AM and that’s when I got up — yes, that 20 minutes makes a difference — and as I didn’t go yesterday because I was working on the Quarterly Review, I just went for a run after finishing the above. Left at 5:45, got back at 5:58, so that’s pretty good. Felt like I was keeping a decent pace for someone old, fat, tired and who just put an entire pot of coffee in his belly. It may not be the last one I get to today.

But winter, as the saying goes, is coming. Mars is out and big as the summer haze has dissipated. Orion’s out. It’ll be back to sweatpants before I know it.

It wasn’t my original intent to close out the week with Primordial. I had the back end set up for a whole different post, but it’s fitting that To the Nameless Dead should butt its way into my consciousness at the last minute like it did, since that’s also how it wound up as my pick for the best album of 2007. Like a few other bands I seem to insist on writing about every now and again, I don’t ever get a huge response to talking about them from social media or anything, but as far as I’m concerned if you don’t listen to the above long-player in its front-to-back entirety today, that’s your loss and not mine. I’m glad I did.

Oh, and I didn’t note it earlier, but Enslaved totally shared my review of their album from last week, which officially — YES OFFICIALLY — means I’m a big deal like Obamacare. In all seriousness, that one did mean a lot to me. I don’t know if they do their social media or someone on their management team handles it, but whoever it was thanked me for my years of support, and that was a pretty special moment to my week.

Otherwise, rough week in a series thereof. My wife’s schedule this semester is a cruel thing. Conflict continues about the dog. The Patient Mrs. is taking her to a training/boarding place today. I don’t know what the endgame is. I know nobody’s happy. Not her, not me, not The Pecan — whose new thing is grabbing the dog’s skin as hard as he can to make her bite him then getting upset when she bites him and hitting her so she bites at him again and he gets upset and then kicks and grabs and hits and she bites and by then they’ve probably been removed to separate rooms again — and not the dog, who stays in the kitchen all day and whines. I’d let her in the living room, but just about every time one of us does so, she pees on the rug. Fortunately we have a robust system of gates in place for The Pecan already, or we’d be sunk. In urine.

I have been beset with Russian-language spam the last few days. Hundreds of emails from the contact form, then corresponding hundreds of Mail Undelivered notices when the autoresponder bounces back. I know it’s a moving target, but the internet’s been around one way or the other for like 50 years now. Can it really be so hard to solve this most basic shit? This is why humans don’t deserve to go to other planets.

The Quarterly Review, which consumed my being this week as only it can, continues on Monday. I could easily do a seventh day — well, easy in terms of filling out 10 records; probably less so in terms of the actual writing — but I have two premieres-with-announcements set for Tuesday and so that put the kybosh on that. Maybe next time. I’ll have plenty left over either way. Would you believe I haven’t reviewed the new Kingnomad? Or Faith in Jane? Or the Conan and Deadsmoke split? Hell’s bells. What have I been doing with my time? Can feeling-bad-about-yourself really take up so much of one’s day?

I should roll out. The Pecan will be up shortly and will want three yogurts or whatever it is this morning for breakfast. He likes the strawberry & rhubarb kind, the mixed berry kind and the vanilla with freeze-dried crunchy blueberries added that turn it purple. I think it was Wednesday he had one of each. Siggi’s, the brand we get, is pretty low sugar, so whatever. I try not to give him bullshit. I do, however, feel like leftover pizza breakfast every once in a while is good for the soul.

Have a great and safe weekend. Have fun, wear a mask, stay hydrated. So important.

FRM.

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