Alphabetical Discovery - Week D, Day Three: Demolition Hammer

I wouldn't call Demolition Hammer criminally underrated because they're not. Like a lot of just-under-the-surface bands they haven't received the widespread attention - like the Bay Area bands or the Teutonic trio - but that's not to say they've been neglected. At a brief glance - at a time when Metallica and their friends had watered down their sound, at a time when Pantera shook off their glam-rags in favor of fuck-off biker-garb and at a time when Sepultura moved towards their nu-metal roots - perhaps the aggressive and pummeling thrash had lost steam and chugged to stagnancy. But, as there always is, bands like Demolition Hammer along with the likes of Morbid Saint, Exhorder, Dark Angel, Solstice, Sadus and many more, continued - even intensifying - the thrash sound that sent shock-waves through the 80's.

With three albums, 1990's Tortured Existence, 1992's Epidemic of Violence and 1994's (not so good) Time Bomb, Demolition Hammer - straight outta Com...The Bronx - steamrolled into the 90's turbocharged, leaving grunge and groove and arena-rock mediocrity in their wake, choking on the fumes. Their sound is thrash with the chunkiness of death-metal, a hybrid fueled by a complete fuck-off D.I.Y no-nonsense approach - their awful album artwork, a tradition in thrash, particularly good thrash for some reason, is testament to this.  Epidemic of Violence, the best of the three, is one of the most headbang-able albums, with mostly throttling riffs mixed up with the occasional death-metal chug and mid to fast-paced groove. Lyrically it also leans more towards the gory and ultra-violent, more Carcass and Autopsy than Metallica.

The vocals are, as screamed in 'Skull Fracturing Nightmare', gruesome tools of torture; once again the death-metal hybrid is brought to the fore, the vocals inherently more gruesome and nasty. The drumming is just one of the great things about this album; Vinny Daze's (who died in 1996 after being poisoned by a globefish - I presume after eating one - after attending a tattoo convention in Japan) drumming is a frenzied and unmerciful assault that never lets up. The solos are also great and I like that they retain a certain melody rather than spiraling into noisy wailing (Slayer). I don't know why I keep comparing them with Carcass, but the solos have a much more thrashy Bill Steer-esque quality in my opinion, which is a great thing. Most importantly, Demolition Hammer had an intensity, aggression and mad energy that the best thrash bands had in abundance. 

Alphabetical Discovery - Week D, Day Two: Darkspace

In space no one can hear you scream but Darkspace belong to a more terrifying galaxy, a dark space that moans and creaks for light years in all directions. Their music deals with  space, the cosmic void, and the mystical mysteries of the vast dark universe. Their music is dense and smothering and incessant, a neutron star crushing inwards. Formed in 1999 in Switzerland by Wrothe of Paysage d'Hiver and Zhaaral of Sun of the Blind, they've released four full-lengths - the equally ambiguous Darkspace 1, Darkspace II, Darkspace III and Darkspace III I. Everything about their sound seeps darkness. 

The keyboard ambiance is key to their cinematic sound and the movie sample of Hal 9000 from 2010  in '1.1' intensifies the atmosphere that is created throughout their first album and the three albums - pretty much direct continuations - that follow. Darkspace are a difficult band and there isn't a vast amount of differentiation or jarring change in their sound; their music is purposely incessant and repetitive, yet there are subtleties in most songs that, although maybe hard to notice, are captivating - from a change in tone or key of the keyboard  to a slight riff-change, from moments of completely suffocating noise to airy transitions into ambient dark-wave. I suppose it's the ambient black-metal equivalent of funeral doom yet there are more than a fair share of great riffs - from the expected black-metal tremolo riffing to blocks and chugs of reverberating noise. Their music really rewards close listening. It does ask a lot of its listeners but their music creates a stifling atmosphere like no other. 

Alphabetical Discovery - Week D, Day One: Demilich

Finland's Demilich formed in 1990, releasing only one full-length, 1993's Nespithe, before breaking up and fading into the swampy coldness of the Finnish landscape. Finland produced some rather unnerving and left-of-centre death-metal bands in the 90's - the likes of Demigod, Adramelech, Convulse, Funebre, Abhorrence, Depravity and many more meshing technical flavorings with razor-sharp old-school death and abhorrent and often weird morbid themes.

Spasmodic, rhythmically irregular, jarring with gurgled  vocals  tremble beneath the music like something  slimy disfigured creature from the deep, Demilich were truly an anomaly. There's a bizarre angularity to their sound that sounds genuinely alien - a slimy, crushing, pulsating approach oozing eccentricity. Masked underneath this unearthly multi-dimensional monstrosity are flecks of muddy old-school death-metal - the occasional dissonant solo and spurts of intense blasts and quick fire riffs and melodies. Nespithe doesn't shy away from melody either, although the melodies travel through more unconventional wires. The jarring rhythmical approach resulted in some of the most mesmeric riffs and repetitions I've heard - every songs seems to share a particular thread or pattern that runs from the beginning through to the end, the album has an incredibly satisfying flow. 

Conceptually, the album artwork and lyrics are a perfect extension of their sound - with hyper-detailed song titles like 'The Planet That Once Used to Absorb Flesh in Order to Achieve Divinity and Immortality (Suffocated to the Flesh That It Desired...)' and 'The Sixteenth Six-Tooth Son of Fourteen Four-Regional Dimensions (Still Unnamed)' and 'The Putrefying Road in the Nineteenth Extremity (...Somewhere Inside the Bowels of Endlessness...)' basic cavemen-death grooves and themes are nowhere to be seen or heard in this ultra-weird vomit-infested sun-crushing alternate universe.  

Nespithe is one of the albums I can listen to over and over again and never get tired, there's always something odd - be it a stray bass-line, a partiular riff-pattern, or a particular noise that rises from the tangled 'fourteen four-regional dimensions' - that hooks me in. Part of Demilich's cult status is gathered from how they faded away right after Nespithe; they're touring again now and I'm sure their shows would be incredible. 

Alphabetical Discovery - Week C, Day Seven: Converge

Converge belong to the true sect of metalcore with bands like Earth Crisis, Botch, Coalesce, Zao, The Chariot taking direct influence from the gritty violence of hardcore and punk and the complex heaviness of extreme metal. Chaotic, complex and most importantly heavy, Converge are definitely metal. There is more than a fair selection of completely overpowering grind, crust, black and thrash-metal moments - guitarist Kurt Ballou described their first album, 1994's Halo In A Haystack, as 'a bunch of hardcore kids playing leftover Slayer riffs' - to attract even the purist of extreme-metal fans.

I'd describe them as Pig Destroyers hyper-active, higher-pitched, supersonic twin (they released a split with Scott Hull’s Agoprahobic Nosebleed, incidentally). Converge's music from the early 1990's up to 2001's Jane Doe is a relentlessly sharp attack of shredding shrieks, intense tempo-changes and progressions, chaotic riffs and incredible drum work. Ben Koller's drumming is some of the best you'll hear, an unrelenting force of nature. Their third album, 1998’s When Forever Comes Crashing, is my particular favourite: a melting-pot of chaotic hardcore, mathcore, and thrash with slabs of industrial noise. 2001's Jane Doe is their pinnacle - a skin-shredding 45-minute assault that also experimented with suffocating industrial and doom-like sections. Converge are probably one of the most energetic and visceral bands, but their approach, particularly from Jane Doe onwards, is not purely an all-out assault - there are many moments and songs that morph and change from chaos to slow and sludgy, trance-inducing doom in the vein of Godflesh and more contemporary bands bands like Indian and Thou ('The Lowest Common Denominator' is a good example of this). There is a great diversity to their sound and pigeon-holing the band doesn’t do them justice.

I wouldn't say that black-metal is a direct influence on the band, or something that has been purposely utilised in their music, but their sound is an intensification of hardcore, punk and - to a certain extent - speed and thrash, four styles that were partly merged to form the evil atmospheric sounds of the first and second-wave black-metal bands. I'm sure that if Converge really wanted to be a black-metal band they'd be a very good one, but their sound is closer to the US hardcore-punk scene of the 80's and 90's.

So many bands get derivatively labelled and grouped as being one thing, although Converge have managed to break out of the derogative metalcore/mathcore rubbish heap. Often – in metal circles - people who speak of metalcore, or hardcore even, are shunned from the circle as lepers are from the populace. Perhaps such repulsion is partly to do with the fan base that these ‘genres’ attract, but there really are some great bands with great riffs and a great sound buried beneath watered-down bands like Killswitch Engage and Hatebreed. I’m going to stop here because I’m just ranting about things that have been said over and over again for years. Converge are good.

Alphabetical Discovery - Week C, Day Six: Cryptopsy

I'm just going to jump right in and talk about None So Vile, Cryptopsy's second - and best - album, and arguably one of the best extreme metal albums. Many bands have attempted to perfect that art of the unruly, the schizophrenic, the chaotic, but none come close to the 32-minutes of complete and utter freakishness that 1996's None So Vile manages to ooze.

None So Vile opens with a roaring demon dinosaur type creature welcoming us into the mad-world; indecipherable lyrics - including a notable selection of references to anal play - and inhuman vocals layered above rapid drumming and unstable guitar sounds that happen to contain both a brain-numbing difficulty and an incredible level of groove. There is so much groove invisible behind the cacophony as in 'Grave of the Fathers' for example. This is unconventional brutal-death, the parameters of straight-forward death turned on its head, floating in a bizarre space defying gravity and the laws of conventional music. This is all incredibly dramatic and hyperbolic but I think a cautious approach does the album no justice whatsoever - sometimes you have to go a bit crazy. 

Lord Worm's vocals are made up of some of the most disgusting sounds known to man: diseased and frothing gargles, spewing gurgles, razor sharp snarls, excruciatingly painful groans, piggish snorts, heart-wrenching shrieks, cannibalistic growls - not many other vocalists touch the complete madness of his vocals; they are unstructured and loose, but this unruliness is more of selling-point than a weakness. The vocals are like the cries at an exorcism, some brutal demon pouring from the portal of the throat; this is how the closing sections of 'Benedictine Convulsions sounds. Lord Worm now teaches English - those poor children.

Combining and controlling all of this chaotic unruliness must be a difficult task, yet there is a cohesive unstructured structure to the album; there are immensely good riffs that never linger too long, that always mutate and move on to the next - the band must have sold their soul to the devil for a bottomless pit of riffs because almost every transition is mesmeric. This is attenuated by the maniacal drumming of Flo Mounier - it's difficult to really put my finger on what it is so I'm just going to be completely hyperbolic about describing this too: it's a multi-dimensional, warped, multi-armed piston-heavy explosion of blast-beats, hat-riding, and bellowing rhythmic annihilation. It's an acquired sound; the snare is pronounced, at times sounding hollow, but it works with the album, it's purposely not meant to sound clean or fluid.

The bass is the same; it's played with the panache of a classical or flamenco guitarist - fingers and bass strings stomping and swinging about with such incredible energy. It doesn't really sound like a bass - it transcends the boundaries of sound, curving and warping as the waves tumble through the air. There are also moments of beauty and semi-conventionality carried through brief solos and spurts of rhythm - 'Slit Your Guts' is an example of this. 

Cryptopsy's first album Blasphemy Made Flesh has a much grittier production, it perhaps does not contain the overly-spasmodic tendencies of None So Vile but from an outsiders it's just as unconventional; the bass seems to ping with even greater clearness due to the production on Blasphemy Made Flesh, the vocals are maniacal if slightly more conventional and the drum-work once again pummeling. Their third album, Whisper Supermacy, is also worth checking out despite no Lord Worm on vocals, the instrumentals are still mind-boggling. After that album my knowledge is a bit more hazy - there was that one album that shall not be named. Their 2015 E,P The Book of Suffering was actually decent, but it lacked something, it dropped pretty quickly onto the ever moving conveyor belt of good but not incredible music.

Brutal Bandcamp: Interesting New and Upcoming Releases #3

I haven't done much deep-web trawling of new and upcoming releases for quite a while, so I dedicated some time to scouring Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Twitter, Facebook and all other bastions of extreme metal to present some interesting new and upcoming releases.

Altarage

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ALTARAGE/

Bandcamp: http://altarage.bandcamp.com/album/nihl 

What toxic chemical has been secretly drained into the Spanish waters producing such dense death-metal? . Like Wormed, Altarage are a gargantuan and oppressively-heavy: it's planets colliding, incessant pounding, monsters emerging dripping acid from the deeps. Similar in ways to earlier Portal. An assault on the ears. Nihil, their debut full-length, is released on the 26th of February. Or if you want your brain mushed from the force of their sound you can listen to their album at cvlt nation, link here 

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Solacide

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Solacide
Bandcamp: http://solacide.bandcamp.com/

The Finish Line is the upcoming second album by Finnish band Solacide, set for release on the 28th of Februray. Their sound is a sort of progressive-melodic-tech adorned black-metal with equal moments of brutal intensity and melancholic melody.  There's a good mix of styles here that interplay nicely. Mixed with clean vocals too that initially brough to mind an Enslaved/Borknagar/Strapping Young Lad hybrid. There are interesting guitar lines and moments crammed in to the record. The album is being streamed in full here. 

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Krater

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/abstrusekrater

Krater have a blackened-death sound, mixing heaviness with sudden ambient and choral layerings. It's a really interesting and well-done sound. Riffs are not overly complex yet they maintain a viciousness and an intensity that some bands neglect. Urere is the German bands third full-length, scheduled for release on the 26th.

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Cult of Erinyes

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cult.erinyes
Bandcamp: http://cavernaabismal.bandcamp.com/album/cult-of-erinyes-transcendence-tape

Really nice abrasive and  riff-based black-metal from Belgium. Good riffs, evil vocals and evil atmosphere - what more could you want from black-metal? No pretense, no showing off, it's the music and nothing else. Their upcoming 3 track EP contains two original songs and a cover of Mayhem's 'Pagan Fears'. Worth playing loud if you want to frighten off vvimps. 

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Begrime Exemious

Bandcamp: http://begrimeexemious.bandcamp.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/begrimeexemious/

Grit.  Gritty production for in-your-face death-metal: riffs galore, churning sound. mud and flame and lightening and guns and blasts and death...everywhere. Begrime Exemious's sound is a monstrous and grotesque thrashy-death. The Canadian bands third album is scheduled for release on the 4th of March.

Alphabetical Discovery - Week C, Day Five: Cirith Ungol

In 1972, riding dragons arising from the sandy vistas of California, Cirith Ungol breathed their first eccentric flames. They didn't release anything until 1980's debut full-length Frost and Fire, a more conventionally heavy-metal record that flaunted elements of the eccentricities - croaking, higher-pitched, goblin-throated vocals and an engulfing bass lead sound - that would catapult Cirith Ungol into power-doom-progressive realms with their three later releases.

'Atom Smasher' opens 1984's King of the Dead album - its bubbling, warped bass lines ensnaring as strained vocals welcome the listener to 'the brave new world' and guitars progress and solo into an atom-smashing oblivion: this is just the tip of the iceberg, an example of things to come. Perhaps jarring at first, the odd production and idiosyncratic vocals, for me at least, grow more endearing and ultimately work in harmony with the fantastical themes. Yet underneath the quirky soundscapes are incredible instrumentals - there are speed-riffs, doom-riffs, psychedelic-riffs, punk-riffs, jazz-riffs, jazz drumming, thrash-drumming: riffs to satisfy all your needs! Cirith Ungol's sound is ultimately a power-doom hybrid - part Sabbath, part Rush, part The Grateful Dead. 

And the doomier elements - not to say the other aspects are sub-par - are strikingly good: the seven-minute 'Master of the Pit' a particular example of quirk mixed with an aggressiveness and a bluesy-progressiveness; 'King of the Dead' a downcast journey; 'Finger of Scorn' a conflict between folky-prog and expansive doom. 1986's One Foot In Hell and 1991's Paradise Lost are equally as interesting, with songs about doomed planets and  trolls (a song about the internet way before its time) and even a cover of 'Fire' by Arthur Brown. First reactions might be 'what the hell am I listening to?' but after the initial tumult of banshee wails, pulsating solos and crazy progressions you'll be sucked into a memorable and endearing world.