🎶 2022-03-28 15:40:49 – Paris/France.
BEST METAL Best metal on Bandcamp: March 2022 By Brad Sanders 28 March 2022
The best metal on Bandcamp this month includes traveling doom from Italy, medieval black metal from France, progressive death metal from New Jersey and more.
Trade fair
Close
In the gap between 2018's dark jazz-infused stunner water festival and the recording of its follow-up, Close, Messa guitarist Alberto Piccolo taught himself to play the oud. The fretless string instrument would end up playing a central role on the band's new album, both for its sonic contributions and its ability to serve as a kind of totemic passport that allowed them to travel from their home in the north. from Italy to the Middle East (and beyond.) Messa are a doom band, nominally, but they've never been limited by the tropes of the genre. Every song on Close illustrates their exploratory spirit. 'Hollow' and 'Pilgrim' showcase Piccolo's oud playing, which to those inexperienced ears sounds like the work of an old pro rather than a relatively neophyte. “Suspended” opens with a buzzing Rhodes piano, while “Orphalese” leads with a smoky saxophone, two remnants of water festival, both even richer in texture this time around. “Leffotrak” is a hardcore 45-second palate cleanser, nestled between two dark epics. Singer Sara Bianchin is the album's MVP. His powerful voice is flexible enough to go brilliantly with any stylistic detour his band wishes to take, and it can go from a diaphanous whisper to a resounding roar in a split second, and back again. It's the best vocal performance on a metal album so far this year.
Vehemence
Ordeals
Hey, did you see The last duel (2021)? It's basically Akira Kurosawa's Ridley Scott remake Rashomon (1950) is set in medieval France, and it whips up massive amounts of ass. Its only glaring flaw was that Scott had not asked Vehemence to do the soundtrack. Véhémence is a Paris-based black metal trio dedicated to reviving the majesty and brutality of their homeland in the Middle Ages. Their third album, Ordeals, is their most vivid evocation of that bygone world to date. Part of that comes from the band's seamless incorporation of flute, nyckelharpa, and hurdy-gurdy, but even more so thanks to the enormous and grandiose melodies that anchor their songs. There's a certain majesty to the way the guitar lines rise and fit together, and the way they merge with the pounding drums to build towering edifices of medieval black metal splendour. As The last duel, Ordeals drops you in the middle of a 14th century battlefield. The dread you feel before your almost certain death is only offset by the damn freshness of everything.
A
All that was promised
In 1995, Death released their groundbreaking sixth album, Symbolic. That same year, Opeth debuted with the folk-inflected Orchid. Both versions offered parallel paths for progressive death metal – one with eyes fixed on an unknowable future, the other with one foot planted in the progressive traditions of the past. At All that was promised, the second album from Hath of New Jersey, you can hear the promise of both paths coming true. Hath isn't purely in the grip of Death or Opeth, but they push and push to some of the same limits. All that was promised is a dense record, abundantly populated with fat blackened riffs and whispers of wasted melody. The band uses tempo shifts and time changes not so much to mix things up as to heighten the feeling of suffocating disorientation. Too often, death metal bands that hang their hats on technical acumen lose something in the atmosphere department. That's no worry for Hath, whose ability to simultaneously dazzle and deter echoes UK powerhouse Akercocke. Songs like the Anaal Nathrakh-style exorcism "Kenosis" and the monolithic closing track "Name Them Yet Build No Monument" open another new path for gradual death, one that Hath, at least for now, walks alone. .
wandering gods
Storm the walls
Iron Maiden is one of the hardest heavy metal bands to emulate, not least because they're damn good. Try ripping off “The Trooper” without bringing the right level of heat and you'll sound like a Wednesday night dive bar band. A complete album like Storm the walls, the first feature film by the Greek group Stray Gods, requires courage to try and even more talent to succeed. The ever-prolific Bob Katsionis (Warrior Path, ex-Firewind) wanted to start a project "based on his undying love for Iron Maiden", and that's exactly what he did. Sometimes it's downright strange how Storm the walls sounds like Maiden, but with a Portuguese-accented Bruce Dickinson on the mic in the form of Artur Almeida, frontman of the Attick Demons. Katsionis and his bandmates aren't just aping the canonical classics, either. “Black Horses” sounds like “Tailgunner,” a single from the much reviled No prayer for the dying album. 'Silver Moon' could be a 2006 release A matter of life or death. "Love in the Dark" splits the difference between Fear of the dark deep cut 'Wasting Love' and maritime epic 'Ghost of the Navigator'. What shines through in every song is Stray Gods' deep reverence for their musical heroes in London. If you're reading this column, chances are you have the same heroes, which means you owe it to yourself to hear this loving tribute.
Rauros Falls
The key to a dying future
The key to a dying future is a bit of a departure for Maine black metal stalwarts, Falls of Rauros. Its songs are shorter, on average, than any of their previous five albums; they're also deceptively proggier, a product of the band having to jump from idea to idea faster than they did on their earlier, more repetition-focused work. What is unchanged is the strong emotional resonance of the material. It's been there since their raw, nature-obsessed debut album Hailstorm and hewn oak, and it's definitely there now, as the music (and lyrics) have gone deeper inward. All along Key, guitarists Aaron Charles and Jordan Guerette channel David Gilmour's lyrical and emotive playing, letting the bends and sweeps of their main work drive the songs just as much as the riffs. Everything the band tries to do on the album culminates in the final track "Poverty Hymn". It's one of the best songs Falls of Rauros have ever written, precisely because it's shorter, more conversational, and more emotionally direct than much of their work. After six albums, they discovered an exciting new side to themselves.
defiled father
Crowned in Veneficum
Justin Stubbs is an extreme metal lifer. He's spent the better part of two decades tearing up the underground with a dozen different bands, but Father Befouled, his Incantation-worshipping death metal project, has always felt like the brightest star in the crowded firmament. of his discography. Crowned in Veneficum is Father Befouled's first album since 2017's excellent album sorry gods. He quickly sets out to prove that it was worth the wait. Stubbs has perfected the dark and murky (but still intelligible) death metal guitar sound that budding John McEntee dreams of. It makes his chaotic, woeful solos even crazier and makes his already out of tune riffs sink to hell through the floor. In deference to his heroes in Incantation, most of Stubbs' work in Father Befouled is in one of two basic modes - extremely fast or extremely slow. Crowned in Veneficum provides shining examples of each. Salivating Faithlessness is a frantic ripper, all lean muscle and forward momentum. “Utter Abomination” is an agonizing exploration through the hell of death/doom. Both make the hairs on my neck stand on end.
Mantahungal
By Krijger
Indonesia currently exports some of the most exciting raw black metal in the world, and Jakarta's Mantahungal is a prominent player in its burgeoning scene. The anonymous duo released a pair of under-the-radar rippers last year, and they've outdone them both with their scorching new EP, By Krijger. The title, which translates from Dutch as "the warrior", evokes the period when the Netherlands held Indonesia under the heel of the boot of colonial rule. As such, the fury of the four compositions can be understood as an anti-imperialist fervor. (Without a lyric sheet, it's hard to prove it, but it sure is feels true.) The EP is topped off with a pair of squeaky vintage samples, and every riff between them is fast, vicious, and buried in the darkness of confrontational lo-fi production. The Krijger can stand alongside Nansarunai Ultimate Rule and Pure Wrath's Hymn to unhappy hearts as one of the best black metal releases to come out of Indonesia in recent memory.
Convention
call the sun
Anything heavier than anything else will be the whole law for Konvent. The death/doom band from Copenhagen fades away with a single goal. Their second album, call the sun, gives the impression of standing directly in the path of a solar flare. Vocalist Rikke Emilie List's guttural growls are so deep they sound almost inhuman, and her bandmates move with martial step behind her, guitar, bass and drums combining into one overwhelming sound wave. . The punishment never ends at any point in the album's 45-minute runtime, but there's something perversely enjoyable about how relentless it is. When you need to crack your head, don't settle for second best.
SOURCE: Reviews News
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