OPHIS ~ Spew Forth Odium ( Album Of The Month October 2021)

20 years on and Ophis, the Greek word for snake, like a dark cloud drifting across a full moon, has lost none of its ability to bring forth gloom where there was once light.Six lamentations of morose doom death contagion shroud the new album Spew Forth Odium in a sallow, sickly pallor.Six Pallbearers hunched under a leaden casket

Ophis occupies the middle ground of funereal doom with leanings toward Evoken but without the chilling misty layer of keyboards, and My Dying Bride minus the black lace veiled riffs of the band from West Yorks. Instead, Ophis delivers a more straightforward (viral) strain of doom, the tracks are lengthy and varied and the guitars are in the main full and heavy, matching a punishing rhythm section and, of course, carried along by the obligatory growling vocal delivery.

Recommended ~ Each song seamlessly blends funeral paced heavy with dark disconsolate melody. 

DEATHRATTLE PODCAST ~ Dirty Dozen (October 2021)

 

Here are the top 12 albums released in October according to Deathrattle Podcast. Doom was particularly strong but there were a couple of thrash based albums that caught my eye (and ears). My top death metal album was the ferocious 'Majestic Dissolve' by Conjureth.

OPHIS

Raw, old school nihilistic Death/Doom Metal. No light, no destination, no compromise!

WORM

Foreverglade’ is suffocatingly heavy, filled with shimmering gloomy atmosphere and a reeking foul humidity that superbly embodies the mysteries and monstrosities of the murk. To that end Worm reach a new apex of creative sorcery while signaling it has only begun to unleash what lies beneath the mists.

CRUZEIRO

First release of this Galician quartet of Stoner/Doom psychedelic and lysergic in the way of titans of the genre such as Electric Wizard, Acid King, Monolord, Reverend Bizarre, Black Sabbath or Cathedral.

DAMNED TO EARTH

Southern sludge from Savannah, GA

CONJURETH

Ferocious Death

PLAINDRIFTER

They venture into uncharted, psychodelic territory, under the heavy influence of scene giants like Truckfighters or Elder.

FEAR CONNECTION

FC can be described as Death Metal with Thrash/Punk/D-Beat with shot a of melody

AGGRESSION

Dirty and corrosive Thrash Metal with Crossover hints. 

Slôdder

Misanthropic sludge

CROP

Kentucky sludge

HELLPIE

Hellpie makes heavy music for people that eat pie. Specifically evil pies. Not like apple pie, but really tormented, sadistic pies...

DRUNE

Suns of Sludge.

Friends of Fuzz.

Fueled by many Ales and Herbs.

CROP ~ Crop (2021)

 I've always had a soft spot for Kentucky, it's a conveyor belt for awesome underground band after awesome underground band and I'm extremely happy to report that the band Crop continues that fine tradition with their new album simply entitled 'Crop'

The band has tagged itself as experimental on Bandcamp which is something that usually leaves me with a sense of trepidation but the term 'experimental' here means a mish mash of Southern style blues held together by a clag of sludge then held over a flame until charred and crispy. The vocal delivery works perfectly with this type of metal scarred blues, pained but not screaming as to drown out the slow moonshine saturated groove that abounds throughout this album. 'Crop' never really crawls above a snails pace, in fact the final track Na closes out the album in a wave of caustic doom. Pick away at the fuzz and delve among the various barbed riffs on this album and you will come across hints of drug addled melody with hints of anguish like a user desperate for a fix but unable to find a dealer.

Recommended ~ An original slant on a tried and tested sludge formula and the band has succeeded perfectly.

DARK REDEEMER ~ Into The Deep Black ( September Album of the Month )

 In 2018 the Italian band Aleph was put to rest, staked through the heart and buried in unconsecrated ground but now the band has risen, more terrifying than before.Whereas Aleph, as brutal as that band was concentrated on a more oppressive atmospheric form of death metal, Dark Redeemer is pure death metal coming across as the bastard child of Entombed and Skeletal Spectre so don't assume that 'Into The Deep Black'  is just another HM2 clone because Dark Redeemer has reincarnated into a chainsaw wielding slayer, riffs shredding flesh and bone into bloody chunks.

Italian extreme metal is synonymous with a love of adding keyboards into the mix and Dark Redeemer carries on that tradition with unobtrusive organ moaning like a lost soul in the background giving this album an extra layer of gothic creepiness with a dank zombified atmosphere split between a '28 days later' frenzy and the catatonic shuffle of 'Night of the Living Dead'

RECOMMENDED ~ The creepy atmosphere adds an extra dimension to a tried and trusted death metal sound.

DEATHRATTLE'S DIRTY DOZEN ~ Best of September 2021

 

Death Metal ruled the roost in September with seven of the twelve spaces taken up by various denominations of death metal bands including a form of the genre that is finding increasing space in the Deathrattle Podcast, technical death metal. Another form of heavy that has found it's way into the show more and more recently is post- metal and the album Absence by Suneater is represented in this 'Best Of' selection for September. Last months surprise package is Coma by the band Lurcher, four tracks of excellent doomy grunge.

So take a bow ~

DARK REDEEMER

An album with 9 old-school sick, dark and violent tracks which will satisfy the fans of Obituary, Morbid Angel, Autopsy, Dismember, early Entombed and Celtic Frost.

 

 DEFORMATORY

 

A maelstrom of maniacal death metal

LVCIFYRE

Dark and suffocating death metal sorcery from the innermost bowels of the European underground. “The Broken Seal” is a unique fusion of musical worlds, concocted to plague the reality of flesh.

ETERITUS

Old School death metal

 

 LURCHER

Encompassing four tracks of powerfully atmospheric, hook laden heaviness LURCHER’s mind-bending virtuosity is underpinned by riffs and rhythms that swell and crash. Effortlessly combining classic tones and song sensibilities with forward-thinking riff craft.

TARPITORCHESTRA

Low tone rockin’ blues and doomy mood hard hammering rock music from Oulu, Finland.

FAMISHGOD

3rd album by this heavy, dark, rotting and gloomy Doom/ Death Metal band featuring Dave Rotten from AVULSED on vocals. For lovers of stuff like DISEMBOWELMENT, EVOKEN, RIPPIKOULU, MYTHIC, WINTER, OPHIS, INCANTATION...

CENTENARY

Pure Detroit Chainsaw Metal from Detroit, Michigan

SHADECROWN

Shadecrown (founded in 2012) is a melodic death/doom metal band from the heart of Finland.

SUNEATER

Debut album from Australian post-metal/sludge band

BOGWIFE

Formed in Aalborg, Denmark in 2018, Bogwife blends elements of doom, stoner rock and psychedelic to create their sound. The band is named after an old Scandinavian folktale about a mythical creature that lives in bogs and creates a thick mist that encapsulates the area around it.

CULT OF SCARECROW

CULT OF SCARECROW reveal their prophecy of doom : the destruction of our planet, the extermination of mankind and the takeoff into the cold blackness of space. Be forwarned by this experienced metal band with musicians from different bands and backgrounds.

STHENO ~ Wardance (2021)

Wardance is the 2nd album by Greek band Stheno. I stopped listening to it a minute or two ago and my heart has just about slowed to it's normal rate but my eyeballs are still rattling around my skull. You'll see many references to the band being under the banner of blackened grindcore but to my admittedly tinnitus affected ears, Wardance is essentially a manic, rabid, old school black metal album in which the band has deviated from the blasphemous anti Christian ravings of many of its peers in favour of  war obsessed subject matter. 

The album opener 'Bestial Batallion' begins with an air raid siren warning of approaching danger before the carpet bombing, aided by staccato, military style drumming begins the onslaught,shrapnel flying in all directions There's nothing technical about Wardance, Stheno's only objective is scorched earth policy with no prisoners taken, keeping things simple but remaining vicious all through the album.

The final track is called 'Bellum Internecinum' and this is what you've signed up to if you purchase this record.....a war of mutual extermination.

Recommended ~ Uncomplicated blackened devastation.

7 Degrees records for vinyl

https://www.7degrees-records.de/

Chaos & Hell Productions for CD/MC

https://www.facebook.com/chaosandhellproductions

XENOSIS ~ Paralleled Existence (2021)

Paralleled Existence is the 4th album from Connecticut deathsters Xenosis and continues the tech death evolution of Devour and Birth ( 2018). Staccato riffs scuttle among frenzied passages of hugely complex yet intense song structures, often morphing into punishing brutality before being torn apart again and again.

So much is going on in this album. I've listened several times and I'm still coming to grips with how Xenosis has managed to combine technical death metal wizardry with mind expanding progressiveness and yet somehow keep those hooks leaden as bent and twisted as they sound. There are eight tracks on Paralleled Existence, each one sounding only vaguely familiar from the last, all eight a nexus of death metal styles creating an atmosphere of delirious mania from which there is no escape from the turmoil. 

Paralleled Existence is Xenosis' musical version of 'Alice Through The Looking Glass,' a warped, illogical nightmare. 

Deathrattle Podcast recommends Paralleled Existence ~ Highly technical, progressive death that doesn't detract from the overall brutality of the album.