A few months ago, a killer emerged. Its name is Split Cranium, and their debut album did, indeed, mash skulls. It was full of punk, hardcore, metal, even some unexpected Southern rock, and the collection is just a mangler.

The folks behind that band, you know well. Aaron Turner (ISIS, Old Man Gloom, Mamiffer) on vocals, electronics, guitars; Jussi Lehtisalo (Circle, Pharaoh Overlord, Steel Mammoth) on guitars; and his other Mammoth mates Jukka Kröger on drums, and Samae Koskinen on bass, didn’t all work in the same room together on these songs— Lehtisalo and his other Finnish mates worked on the songs, sent them to Turner to finish, and so on—but you wouldn’t know if from the kinetic and organic energy of these cuts. Simply put, it’s one of our favorite albums of the year so far, and we wanted to get a little more detail about this band, these songs, and their ideas. We also wanted to know if more was ahead from the band, so we talked with Turner and Lehtisalo about their experiences.

Turner’s and Lehtisalo’s answers are quite different in length, but that’s because of how the interviews were handled. We talked with Turner by phone and were able to go in and dissect stuff a little more, while Lehtisalo offered his input in an e-mail interview.  So Turner gives you the bigger story, and Lehtisalo pops in to add more color and insight from his perspective. Here’s what we learned.

Meat Mead Metal: I guess to start, let’s talk a bit about how Split Cranium came to be.

Aaron Turner: I guess there’s a long and a short of it. I guess the condensed version would be ISIS and Circle toured together. Jussi and I particularly hit it off and started talking about doing music together, and Split Cranium just happened to be the first thing that came up. I don’t know that this is what we both had in mind. Jussi just sort of recorded the music with Jukka on a whim, and Jussi didn’t feel comfortable doing vocals for it. He thought of me, called me up about it, and I said yes after hearing a couple tracks. The longer version of it would be that I guess there has been sort of a long-distance mutual appreciation between Jussi and I, and I think it just took us spending some time together on the road for things to evolve further and for us to develop a personal chemistry. So everything sort of came out of that, the Split Cranium record, Circle doing a record with Hydra Head, Pharaoh Overlord doing a release on Sige. I’m surprised it took this long for us to do something, but I’m just glad it happened at all.

Jussi Lehtisalo: I am very active with music. We do different kind of sessions with different people and we want to see what will happen. I started this project with the drummer Jukka Kröger and we recorded the music here in Finland. We didn´t have vocalist for it, so I wanted to ask Aaron.

MMM: How long are we talking from the idea to this taking place?

AT: I probably encountered Circle’s music about 10 years ago, maybe longer, and I liked it immediately. Maybe about 7-8 years ago we started talking about it, and nothing ever came of it. But like I said, it all kind of came together after spending some time on the road together. And it’s weird, because long-distance recording projects often render dubious results and sort of has a lack of personal connection that somehow stunts the music, and even though we did file trading to get the record together, the fact that we got to know each other beforehand added to the overall process.

JL: We work very fast. Composings and recordings will take a day or two.

MMM: Talk a bit more about the recording process.

AT: Well, Jussi and Jukka had been doing some recording together on some other projects, and they had time left over and ended up doing some speedy punk tracks. They got Samae to do some bass on them, and then Jussi sent me the rough mixes. I did all my vocals at home. Kurt (Ballou) did the mixes, we sent them back and forth and talked about them, talked about what we liked and disliked, finessed all the details, and that was that.

MMM: Aaron, did you do anything other than vocals?

AT: I did some guitar work. I did the intro to “Black Binding Plague,” like the noise thing. Then there are two tracks, the longer noisier tracks (“Blossoms From Boils,” “Retrace the Circle”), that I did the electronics for.

MMM: It would seem obvious you would release the record on Hydra Head, but did you consider putting it out anywhere else?

AT: Not really. We weren’t even thinking about who was putting it out.  When we were working on it originally, we did it and thought about what we were going to do with it afterward. Hydra Head wasn’t the first choice, or it wasn’t the immediate decision, partially because Hydra Head has such a busy release schedule. Throwing an unplanned release into the mix isn’t always viable. But after talking about what the other possibilities were, it just seemed like Hydra Head was the best idea. Plus, I knew if Hydra Head released it, I could have a little bit more say in packaging and could have some control over the production process.

JL: We were really happy that Hydra Head put it out. My Ektro Records was very into material too, but we choose the better label!

MMM: The one thing that I always really like about Hydra Head releases is all the add-on stuff, like the plates with the Big Business release. You guys did the one-eyed ski mask with this one. How did that come about?

AT: (laughs) Yeah, that was my idea. I’m not sure where that came from exactly. It just seemed like an appropriate thing to go with Split Cranium. I was talking about it at lunch one day with some of the other Hydra Head employees, and our friend J Bennett (well-traveled music scribe, guitarist for Ides of Gemini) mentioned we should do a one-eyed ski mask. It was already ridiculous enough, so I figured why not go with it.

MMM: Yeah, I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be missing an eye or the eye was swollen.

AT: (laughs) I’ll leave that up to interpretation.

MMM: As far as the style of the music goes, obviously it’s more punk, a little looser. Was it cool to just kind of jam out on this one?

AT: Yeah, I know with the Circle guys, they think a lot about what they do, but there’s also a lot of spontaneity in what they do. The way I understand it, the record Jussi and Jukki had been working on was more contemplative. It was more abstract and sort of a minimal art rock record. I think by the time they got through that they felt like having at it doing something that was a lot more visceral. I think that’s sort of what gave birth to the sort of more fiery energy of the music. I had dabbled in heavier stuff with Old Man Gloom. Some of the other stuff has been on the slower side and developed over longer periods of time with a really meticulous process. I figured maybe I would give it a go and let the beast out. I have to say it was really liberating and it reminded me, without sounding really clichéd, of what I love about punk and hardcore.

JL: I think the music is still rock and roll, but maybe little bit faster than we have done before. I have been into punk and hardcore in late ’80s and now I am even more. I have always made music without any pressures.

MMM: Aaron, lyrically, what are these songs about?

AT: The lyrics were written physically for these songs. It’s hard to say how directly a song or riff will influence me, but it often affects the kind of lyrics I write. Instrumental music might have an atmosphere but it doesn’t have an explicitly implied meaning, at least for me when I listen to stuff. I guess I was just trying to think more of the energy of the overall thing and stuff I could write that could further fuel that. (laughs) I’ve dodged this bullet many times and have chosen not to talk about my lyrical content, and in a certain way maybe there are some aspects that should be talked about because it’s not just deeply personal stuff that pertains only to me. At the same time I don’t really feel all that comfortable talking about it, so maybe I’ll just leave that to other people to figure out. I will say it has a lot to do with personal struggle, and that’s one of the things that was really liberating to me about punk and hardcore. I think a lot of the lyrics for ISIS got really impersonal for a time, and maybe I was trying to be too intellectual or something. I lost my direct connection to what I was really writing about, so with this I was like, fuck it, I’m going to write about exactly what I’m going through right now, what I’m thinking about, what I’m dealing with, and not hold anything back.

MMM: Jussi, you chose to have Aaron handle the vocals rather than doing them yourself. Why?

JL: I love his attitude, voice, and point of view. This was a good starting point to make music together.

MMM: I really dig the song “Blossoms From Boils.” There’s that cool little Southern rock thing going on with it. Where did that come from?

JL: I am into Southern rock. I love Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Atlanta Rhythm Section, Grinderswitch, Molly Hatchet…and I love boogie stuff too. One of my favorite tracks is “Poor Moon” by Canned Heat.

AT: Yeah, we were just talking about Jussi and his adventurousness, and he seems pretty open to do just about anything. I think it would be really hard for him or me to do a record that was narrow in its scope. So I think there has to be moments where other things just came up and were sort of just dropped into the mix. When I first heard it, I was thinking that I had never sung anything over something that was remotely that rock-oriented, and I was not sure what to do. But at the same time, it wasn’t really that unexpected when I heard that song.

MMM: Another interesting track we talked about, the closer “Retracing the Circle.” It’s a much longer song, it’s more melodic, it even has some clean vocals. It’s a really powerful closer.

AT: It’s one of those songs where, the first time I heard it, I noticed there was this really long section in the middle where it’s the same thing over and over. And that’s one of the things I really like about Circle is the repetitive nature of their music. I knew I couldn’t take the same approach to that as I did to the other songs, like a relentless barrage of yelling. I felt I had to become a little more abstract. The idea of the electronics came to me because it’s something I always enjoyed doing in my own music, and the one thing I always liked about Circle’s music is there are those parts that sound like they kind of exist outside of the songs. I felt like a six-minute rock part of this song needed to be subverted somehow. So it was another one of those fun aspects of working on this record. An idea came to me and I kind of just ran with it.

JL: Hats off to Aaron. He got this song to (come) alive. It is an open closer for the record.

MMM: Do you see the Split Cranium album as a one-off, or do you plan to record again?

JL: We are going to continue it for sure, as soon as we have a chance to meet each other again!

AT: I certainly hope it’s not a one-off, and we’ve already talked about doing another record and even starting some of the recording this summer. We also talked about doing more of it in person this time around. I can’t say for sure yet whether that’ll actually happen, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t the end of Split Cranium. I’m also pretty sure we’ll end up doing live shows at some point. We may never get to the point where we can tour, but I can definitely see us doing a handful of shows here and there. I would really like to make that happen.

For more on the band, go here: http://splitcranium.bandcamp.com/

To buy the album, go here: http://www.bluecollardistro.com/hydrahead/categories.php?cPath=4

For more on Hydra Head, go here: http://www.hydrahead.com/

For more Ektro Records, go here: http://www.ektrorecords.com/

Sometimes it’s worth waiting a really long time for things that end up being really good. Right? What’s better than that? Torturing yourself with anticipation, hoping the thing that’s potentially in your future ends up being worth all the frustration. And really, when you’re talking about music, it isn’t life or death, but it still means a lot.

I’ve had a good bit of experiencing waiting things out. I use a lot of sports comparisons on this site, but whatever. I remember when the Steelers won Super Bowl XL, the first NFL championship my hometown team captured in my adult life, and it was ridiculously incredible. After waiting all that time, it totally lived up to its awesomeness. Same also with the Pirates, who have their best record in 20 years. It’s sickeningly great, and I live in total fear the bottom’s about to drop out if it.

Maybe I didn’t fret like I did over the Steelers winning a Super Bowl, but I’ve been pretty excited to hear new stuff was coming from Old Man Gloom, the hardcore/metal/sludge/noise supergroup currently consisting of Aaron Turner (ISIS, Split Cranium, Mamiffer), Caleb Scofield (Cave In, Zozobra), Nate Newton (Converge, Doomriders), and Santos Montano (also Zozobra). They last reached us in 2004 with “Christmas,” and then everyone went on to their other bands to make some pretty heavy, important albums that would go on to define various aspects of extreme music and make their main projects unstoppable forces. Yet, OMG seemed to be lingering in the back of people’s minds. Eight years later and here we are, the band is back doing live shows, and a new record finally surfaced called “No.” Would you expect a more mysterious, complex title from these guys?

Naturally, people now will compare the work done by ISIS, Converge, Cave In, and the other bands in which these guys play to the new OMG music to determine if it holds up, and the answer is it does in a huge way. But why compare? The music doesn’t batter you philosophically, though it certainly does musically, and it’s one of those crushers you can put on and let devastate you without you having to consider world events or what life means if you don’t want to. These guys always are thinking big though, and their album title is as much a reaction to all the bullshit that floods our lives than anything, but you never feel beaten about the head and torso with their reactions.

Turner’s monstrous wolf growls make up a large portion of the vocals, though the rest of the guys pitch in a great deal as well. Musically, it’s like the sum of all of their other parts, just in case you never heard an OMG record before. The guitars are crunchy and meaty, dreamy and atmospheric in other parts, and the pockets of noise and ambiance help you breathe and the songs set up shop in your mind. The quaking is unmistakable, and it makes for a really satisfying, explosive listen.

The record begins mysteriously on “Grand Inversion,” a noisy intro cut that spits noise and feedback and eventually a ringing noise that sounds like a hearing test. That leads into the mammoth “Common Species,” a track that aims to split open your chest cavity with its heaviness, doomy vibes, and experimental haziness. “Regain/Rejoin” is fairly compact and has a nice melody, and “To Carry the Flame” is a flat-out bruiser that’ll help you get your ass kicked at a live OMG show. “The Forking Path” sounds like the second half of “Flame,” as it rises right out of it, and it’s blistering and weird at the same time.

“Shadowed Hand” kicks off the second half of the album, one that’s awash in strange passages, ambiance, and fields of noise, as the cuts are less straight-forward and demand more of your patience. Trust me, you’ll be rewarded. “Hand” takes a great deal of time to develop, as it sounds like a multi-part piece where things change and shift, and no parts of the song resemble each other. “Rats” opens with an unsettling hum before melting down into sludgy riffs, siren-like emissions, and throaty, violent vocals; “Crescent” is the oddball, as it has a Western feel, clean singing, and a bit of reflection; and 14-minute closer “Shuddering Earth” opens nakedly, with Turner growling over no music, before the full band kicks in, leads you through hellfire and brimstone, calms their approach, and eventually drowns everything in noise and shrieks. It’s a really effective epic that puts a gigantic exclamation point at the end of “No.”

So the long wait certainly was worth every moment, and while many people’s lives have changed significantly since we last heard from these guys (including the band members’), it’s nice to know some things can be relied upon no matter what. OMG are steady and true, and I can’t help but continually say yes to “No.”

By the way, we have way more on Turner and another one of his projects come Monday. Please make sure to return for this exciting piece that’s been a while in the making (pretty much because of me).

For more on the band, go here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Old-Man-Gloom/41173493966

To buy the album, go here: http://www.bluecollardistro.com/hydrahead/categories.php?cPath=4

For more on the label, go here: http://www.hydraheadlines.blogspot.com/

Many people seem to mellow with age. It’s only natural that as you get older, the angst and fury that once burned in your heart would calm as more important matters take precedence. Or you just get tired and don’t feel like being a ball of rage anymore. Whatever’s to blame, there’s no big mystery why porch sitting becomes more popular with folks as they age.

And so it often goes with music. Bands mature and ease into their lives, embrace different styles of music, and as a result change things up a bit. Wait until you hear the new Baroness record. You’re in for a surprise. Even a band like Metallica, who have tried so hard to prove they can thrash again, just don’t have that organic energy. They grew out of it, or at least that’s what I always figured.

Then you get to Nile, the long-running, ancient Egypt-themed death metal band and their progressive, virtuosic brand of carnage. You typically know what to expect from one of their records, and while that’s never disappointing, there’s little mystery as to what they’re going to do. You’re going to get classic-style death metal with a few Middle Eastern musical flourishes, great guitar work, a whole lot of stuff to research, and that’s about it. Not a bad package, to be honest. But as far as listening to one of their albums and being totally surprised, not likely.

That held pretty true until their album “At the Gate of Sethu” arrived. This, the seventh full-length document from the South Carolina-based band, threw me for a loop right away because, holy shit, is this thing aggressive and heavy. Yeah, their previous work obviously was heavy, as death metal is wont to be, but this is many, many notches more explosive than anything they’ve done in some time. Slowing down? Calming with age? No way. If anything, they’ve got their venom glands restocked and have set out on a mission to poison the earth. This record also has stayed in my daily musical rotation, something I couldn’t say for their last two records “Ithyphallic” and “Those Whom the Gods Detest,” albums I liked just fine but that didn’t really push all my buttons. I haven’t enjoyed a Nile record this thoroughly since 2002’s “In Their Darkened Shrines,” and there’s a real sense that these guys have gone back and recaptured some of their youthful energy, as they sound reignited and reborn.

The band long has been fronted by Karl Sanders, guitar great and co-vocalist, who also is the spark for the band’s immersion in ancient Egyptian themes. Joining him as always is guitarist, co-vocalist Dallas Toler-Wade and drummer George Kollias, and new bassist Todd Ellis also has been thrown into the mix, and he even grabs some vocal duties. It’s all hands on deck for Nile, and they really hit on something with “Sethu” that helps this record reach greatness. In case you haven’t noticed, I am gushing over this album and everything it brings to the table.

Obviously the guitar work is phenomenal — it always is — but even that is stepped up more than ever. The leads are searing, the fast stuff is mind blowing, and even the insertion of well-times acoustic bits help the whole thing breathe. The vocals are just menacing as well, as each line is howled, growled, shrieked, or, in the case of the chorus of “The Fiends Who Come to Steal the Magick of the Deceased,” sung, like these guys are hungry dudes with something to prove.

There are many highlights on this album, and it has great momentum like each songs tries to top the one before, and usually succeeds. The 11-track album has a stunning start with “Enduring the Eternal Molestation of Flame,” an oddly named song with a ton of crunch, some sweeping tempo shifts, and excellent guitar work. “The Inevitable Degradation of Flesh” has furious drum blasts, a true dose of nastiness, and ominous lines such as, “All those who live will die, all those who die will rise.” “When My Wrath is Done” opens with majestically strummed sitar before igniting into a firestorm of destruction. It’s a perfectly constructed piece of carnage.

“Slaves of Xul” and “Ethno-Musicological Cannibalisms” are interludes that allow for breathers and also pace the second half, that peaks on “The Gods Who Light Up the Sky at the Gate of Sethu,” a nasty song that has a lot of classic Nile traits; “Natural Liberation,” a storming song that maintains the incredible intensity of the record; the sludgy, trudging machinations of “Tribunal of the Dead”; the classic metal and slide-guitar dressing of “Supreme Humanism of Megalomania” and closer “The Chaining of the Iniquitous” that opens with Middle Eastern woodwinds before delving into a final salvo that’s heavy, bruising, growly, and muddy. The horns that send it off? Purely Apocalyptic.

Nile really have nothing to prove to anyone. They’ve carved out an impressive career and slot as one of the modern era’s most important and respected death metal bands. They could have coasted and still pulled in tons of accolades. Instead, they reignited the flames and made a beast-like statement that Nile is not a machine that is to be taken lightly. “At the Gate of Sethu” is a fire-breather, one of the most punishing, uncompromising efforts in this band’s history, and one of their best albums ever.

For more on the band, go here: http://www.nile-catacombs.net/

To buy the album, go here: http://store.nuclearblastusa.com/Search/nile

For more on the label, go here: http://www.nuclearblastusa.com/en/

If you don’t like music that’s occasionally irritated and pissy, might I suggest you stop listening to metal. This is the perfect medium for lashing out, finding a target and honing in for the kill, doing what one can to do as much psychological damage as humanly possible to its target. It’s part of what makes metal so damn cathartic, and if you’re too sensitive for that part of it, get out now.

Before he went off the deep end and sunk into the ocean, Dave Mustaine was always a fun guy to hear rip apart his victims, and early Megadeth material is as awesome to hear for its thrash goodness as it is for Mustaine’s diatribes. Withered always has done a fine job taking on societal woes and putting a vicious crunch behind their message. While his targets may be different, Leviathan’s Jef Whitehead always has been masterful blistering his own personal opposition, and you come out of his songs with no mystery what he plans to do to satisfy his wrath. These approaches may be dangerous to an extent, but the music should help you relate and adjust.

One of my favorite miserable bastards ever is Paul Speckmann, who has been fronting Master seemingly since the dawn of time and never is at a loss for words. Be it societal, religious, or political oppression, Speckmann always takes on his distaste with a clenched fist and deathly howl, and now 11 albums and nearly three decades into his career with this band, he’s hardly slowing down. The band’s latest album “The New Elite” follows 2010’s excellent “The Human Machine,” itself a pretty direct hit against the powers that be that he sees as ruling our every step. Speckmann refuses to have his wrists be put into chains and his motives questioned, and he’s absolutely blistering on this new record.

I imagine this is the point where we address that, “Hey, these guys have been around a long time, and isn’t it amazing they’re so furious,” thing. Look, Master never let up at all. Through their various trials and tribulations as a band, they’ve kept things pretty nasty. Maybe not every record has been a home run, but their intensity and anger never could be questioned. So if you merely want to judge “The New Elite” compared to other bands of their era, there’s pretty much no contest. But if you want to throw Master into the pool of young death metal artists who are trying to carry the genre, those kids mostly be eaten alive by the veterans. These guys remain that hungry and punishing.

While they don’t get nearly enough credit for this, Master is one of the original bands that helped develop the death metal template. Their sound remains grisly and rough around the edges, and there’s also some punk and thrash blended in just for good measure. Speckmann’s vocals are full of spite and protest, and his undeniable charisma as a frontman is part of what keeps him so refreshing to hear. The other part is his lyrical content, that never pulls punches or kicks and certainly would not be taken so kindly by government officials or clergy.

The same lineup that’s been recording as Master since 2004’s “The Spirit of the West” is back for “Elite,” that being Speckmann (vocals/bass), Zdenĕk Pradlovský (drums), and Alex “93” Nejezchleba. They sound as tight and hammering as ever, and on a production note, this record sounds as good as anything they’ve ever put out. They erupt with the menacing title track, that grabs you right out of the gate and drags you to “Rise Up and Fight,” a thrashy, throaty puncher with some sweet dual guitar work; grindy “Remove the Knife”; “Smile As You’re Told,” a cynical, pissed off look at how life’s great atrocities play out in our very living rooms, with Speckmann sneering, “Sit back and watch with your remote control!”

“Redirect the Evil” opens with a bit of a shuffle before exploding into a lightning fast assault, and that takes us into “Out of Control,” a song that laments the world’s dangerous power struggles and war mongering, with Speckmann warning, “There will be no one left alive.” “As Two Worlds Collide” and “Guide Yourself” get into thrashier territory, while “New Reforms” adds some mud and sludge into the pot; “Souls to Dissuade” opens with a thick bassline that bubbles over into a Prong-like assault and some beastly, catchy melodies; and closer “Twist of Fate” is a total storm, with relentless blast beats, some cool loopy lead guitar work, and Speckmann wrestling over the emotions of someone facing execution, knowing only death will silence his inner voices and turmoil. It’s a pretty heavy note on which to conclude the album.

Master’s always been a really reliable source for open-wound, angry death metal, and they’ve never buckled under the pressure to get glossier or more accessible. Their scars and warts are there in public display, their message is ominous and sobering, and their metallic assault is unforgiving. Let’s hope Master never change a bit, and knowing their history, it’s pretty certain they won’t.

For more on the band, go here: master-speckmetal.com

To buy the album, go here: http://pulverised.bigcartel.com/product/master-the-new-elite-super-jewel-box-cd

For more on the label, go here: http://www.pulverised.net/

If our modern crop of metal bands do not slow down, I soon am going to have no more money left and will have to ignore all of my bills. Is that what everyone wants?

OK, so that’s a pretty ridiculous thing to say. First, I never could go broke buying all the new music I really want because I have some pretty stubborn tastes, and second, buying music isn’t all that expensive. But nonetheless, I have found myself investing my money in way more new bands lately, and that’s a sign that creativity is at an apex, and my attention span is at an all-time high. It’s a great problem to have. The fact I am paying this close of attention to anything is a miracle.

I now have another new band that’s gotten me excited, this time on the death metal side of things. U.K. trio Binah have a fairly unexciting name, but that doesn’t matter since their infernal, bizarre, and suffocating death metal is such a hellish blast to witness. From my first visit with their debut album “Hallucinating in Resurrecture,” I was captivated by their sound, as it’s uglier, meaner, and far more deadly that much of what other bands claiming to represent death metal pull off these days. With each subsequent listen, my excitement for this band bubbled to the surface, and they’re one of the freshest, more promising new groups I’ve heard this year.

Binah is comprised of Ilia R.G. (vocals, guitars, synth), Aort (guitar, bass, synth), and A. Carrier (drums), none of them newcomers to metal, and their music sounds more like the bands that helped birth this genre. You can hear some Entombed, Morbid Angel and Demigod, as well as hints of other bands such as Portal, Autopsy, and Hooded Menace, and yeah, while there are plenty of other bands going back in time to try to revive the genre’s roots, Binah don’t sound like they’re doing this as some sort of calculated cash-in. This shit is for real, and it’ll leave you in a pile of your own bones when it’s done picking away at your flesh. But on top of simply sounding legitimately influenced by the early days, they inject a sense of weirdness that’s fairly subtle but definitely is present.

The album has a really strange intro with “Into the Psychomanteum,” an instrumental that sounds like the lead-in to a magic show, but then things get ugly on “Morbid Obumbration,” a muddy, doomy, slowly delivered piece that lurches along. The growls are effective and vicious, and eventually the leads guitar work sets in with a fury, and pace kicks up a few notches. “A New Rotten Dawn” has some creepy synth work behind the chaos, and it folds in some excellent crunch and fiery growls, making it one of the most satisfying tracks on the album. “The Emissary” tears out of a doom-encrusted open, and its muddy make up eventually leads to some fast, aggressive playing that is just flooring. “Absorption Into the Unearthly” and “Dissolution” are pretty fast songs, with devastating drum work, and they’re more to the point than the other songs on here. The title track appears to pay some homage to Celtic Frost with its calculated and monstrous display of blackened death, and it maintains an utterly ominous feel through its 7:22 running time. “Crepuscular Transcendence” is the other epic cut at 7:16, and it’s heavy, sludgy, and crushing. It’s an example of how good these guys are at maintaining a sense of savagery and destruction over a longer piece and never running into monotony. They utterly kill the entire time.

I don’t know that Binah are going to become leaders of the underground death metal movement, but this debut album certainly seems to indicate they’re capable of serving in that role. “Hallucinating” is a rock-solid effort from a new band, and it deserves your attention if you’re into the wormiest, most gut-wrenching and uncompromising of death’s minions. Binah is off to a great start, and hopefully things just get deadlier from here on out.

For more on the band, go here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Binah/304245586256643

To buy the album, go here: http://www.darkdescentrecords.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=2017&zenid=ao2emhlh5ue8gjufqq0hc0pp07

For more on the label, go here: http://www.darkdescentrecords.com/

And here: http://www.mesacounojo.com/

It’s been one of those weeks. Quite busy. No rest at all. The more you get done, the more it seems you have left to do. I’m physically and mentally exhausted right now, but that’s also a good thing because it means some real, tangible work has been completed. And a lot remains to be finished.

When I have a week like that, I need to hear something that both soothes and stimulates me. I don’t normally turn to testosterone-driven music or black metal or something vicious, because it’s almost too much. I need my brain coated in something adorned in creativity that lets me open my mind, focus, and handle the work in front of me. It can’t be distracting. I’m already racing, and that just makes me panic. But something that works alongside of me, that’s the elixir.

So it was a nice week to get a slew of releases from Land of Decay, a label that is awash with music that can help you escape, chill out, lose your mind, or handle your business. Their most notable band Locrian (who recently signed with Relapse, and whose members own Land of Talk) is one I often turn to when I’m facing a heap of work and want music that’ll keep me motivated and excited but not ready to take off someone’s head with a chainsaw. Another band of that ilk is Toronto’s Nadja, whose dreamy transmissions would sound right at home on Land of Decay. The three releases Land of Decay have ready for you, all in cassette form, can be labeled ambient and drone, but all approach that unique style in a completely different way.

I’ll start off with my favorite of this trio of albums, that being “The Hagiography of Baba Yaga” by the mysterious shadow creatures that are Cultus Sabbati. Like bands such as FALSE and Bosse-de-Nage we talked about last week, this band prefers not to tip their hands, show their faces, and utter a word about themselves. They claim influence such as dark forests, empty spaces, decaying churches and more of that type of thing, and hearing their music, it’s impossible to doubt these things. In fact, it often sounds like the band creates their dark emissions in those spots.

The six-track album is dark and nightmarish, with simmering growls lurking beneath the surface like a growling ghoul in the woods, noise and feedback storms, static drums, and completely hellish fog. The second side of the cassette is a bit more spacey and wooshing, but it’s no less scary and effective. The whole thing feels like some sort of séance or mass a regular human could not comprehend or recreate, and I found most of the music quite unsettling. That’s all a positive for me, because every time this music took a terrifying turn, it kept me on edge and alert, as I knew I couldn’t let my guard down. I’ve enjoyed all of this group’s work, and I’d put up these witching tales along with anything else they’ve done (that you can download from their site, listed below).

For more on the band, go here: http://cultussabbati.org/

To buy the album, go here: http://www.landofdecay.bigcartel.com/product/lod-0-cultus-sabbai

I mentioned Nadja before, and that band’s Aidan Baker has collaborated with Eric Quach, the Montreal-based musician who comprises Thisquietarmy. Under this moniker, Quach has released a pretty hefty collection of music (his site has a really comprehensive list of what he’s done), and his Land of Decay release is a four-track helping called “Phantom Limbs” that is probably the easiest to digest of these three new releases. But that doesn’t mean what Quach does here isn’t intense and totally noteworthy, and much of what TQA accomplishes seems to originate in the cosmos.

The other thing that ties this effort together are the song titles. “Phantom Eye,” “Phantom Brain,” “Phantom Voltage,” “Phantom Pain” not only sound really poetic when spoken in list form, but they also acts as a pretty cool little story that spits fuzz and hisses noise throughout its duration. The guitar often stabs and pokes at you, pockets of melody arise and eventually fade into the ether, things go off-hinge and the music sounds like it’s thinning into nothingness, like on the closing moments of “Brain,” and the whole thing ends with a claustrophobic sense of being strapped into an alien spaceship for a land you do not know and probably do not hope to visit. It’s a really neat listen, and it helped that my first experience with this effort was during morning fog, when nature itself seemed quite disoriented. I haven’t heard much of TQA before “Phantom Limbs,” so it’s time for me to dig deeper into that expansive, impressive back catalog.

For more on the band, go here: http://www.thisquietarmy.com/

To buy the album, go here: http://www.landofdecay.bigcartel.com/product/lod-0-thisquietarmy

I love a nice avalanche of uncompromising madness, which is why I identify with and often enthusiastically embrace bands as thorny and bizarre as WOLD. Some people furiously hate them, and I get why, but I can lie down and relax listening to them. I think they help what’s going on in my head find places to live. I felt the same way when taking on “Eintram” from Gates. This thing aims to suffocate you, and the force over you is so heavy and impossible to conquer that you have no choice but to submit to the darkness. You might be wondering how music I described in this manner can help me do my work. It makes sense to me. Trust me. I sort of look at it like no matter what I have in front of me, it cannot be more immersive and drowning as what Gates unleash.

The three-track album is the loudest of the three. Yeah, Cultus Sabbati are heavy, too, but they’re scarier and more inclined to burn you alive, while Gates are satisfied collapsing your chest with immense power. The swirling of drone and guitar-based fire completely ignite into a volcanic eruption on opener “Glimpse of Overlapping Dimensions,” clobbering your senses and dumping a truck full of angry bees and cement  on your face. “Forest Passageway” bristles at first, but with an eerie calm, before some melodic black metal-style clashing takes center stage, and a chewed-up razor goes overtop to mar any beauty. Closer “Birds Plunging Through the Wall of the Ocean” kind of sounds exactly like that. You probably have to achieve a dream state to see such a thing, but they do their best bringing that syrupy noise vision to life. This is a killer collection that’ll do a fair amount of damage to both your hearing and your psyche. As for me, it’s too late for both. So I forge ahead with my work.

For more on the band, go here: http://gatesritual.bandcamp.com/

To get the album, go here: http://www.landofdecay.bigcartel.com/product/lod-0-gates

To get a package with all three at a discount, go here: http://www.landofdecay.bigcartel.com/product/june-2012-releases-cultus-sabbati-gates-this-quietarmy-cs

For more on the label, go here: http://lndofdecay.blogspot.com/

It’s time for us to briefly touch on two topics from last week: weirdness and the French. Those topics came up when discussing the latest releases from Bosse-de-Nage and Gojira, and actually, both could be used to talk about each of those bands. See how that works?

One of the bands mentioned last week was weirdo, experimental black metal band Deathspell Omega, a French group that’s been making some of the most unsettling, strangest sounds for years now, typically to much acclaim. Their albums are sprawling with normally epic-length songs, a lot of bizarre goings on, and plenty of spiritual (in the dark sense by way of metaphysical satanism) and philosophical ideals swirling in their cyclone of chaos. They are not an easy band to get to know, because their sound takes some adjustment for most people since it is so unconventional. They also aren’t easy to know personally as they operate in the shadows.

Yeah, we know the creative names of the people behind Deathspell Omega, but that’s about all. We don’t have press photos, very many interviews, live shows or anything like that. It seems their recordings serve the purpose of being the band’s entire statement, and nothing beyond that is a fitting vehicle for what they have to say or mean to the universe. That also helps add to their intrigue. The fact they also treat their satanic beliefs in the metaphysical sense and approach this area of thinking seriously and not, like, some circus sideshow also may be unsettling to some people who fear such subject matter. It no doubt can be both moving and frightening. Take a record such as their masterpiece, 2004’s “Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice,” and the choral chants and furious emissions contained on it, and it no doubt can chase you down a dark hall, begging for mercy.

But that’s not all the band does well, and their new EP “Drought” aims to prove that. When compared to the rest of the band’s massive discography, this is pretty bare bones, a cut-and-dried, stripped-down collection musically, though it still will send you into dizzy spells and hysterics if you’re not accustomed to their style. If you are a longtime listener, this will seem like the band just throwing down and showing what they can do when they drive straight ahead, with only a few minutes devoted to each song. It still sounds unmistakably like Deathspell Omega, just a shortened, reeled-in version. Sure, you could argue there were shorter songs on their last full-length “Paracletus,” but the tracks all worked together to form a whole. These all work as singular entities, thus why they seem so different from a compositional standpoint.

The EP’s also awfully good and just flies by in no time. My first visit, I was stunned when the thing faded so quickly, and I was sitting there like an idiot waiting for a sixth track that didn’t exist. But that’s the sign of quality, too, so yeah, less is more here. “Fiery Serpents” is your opener, and you’ll find something here that’s typically foreign to a Deathspell Omega recording: discernable, catchy melody. No really, it’s there, and it feels a little punk rock/post-rock in its glory, never taking away from the band’s savagery. “Scorpions and Drought” is a little trickier, as the drums just blow up in your face, the fury is allowed to bubble over, and words are practically spat out along with snake venom. “Sand” is more calculated, with added melody, weird guitar stabs, and moaned vocals that sound both pained and desperate. “Abrasive Swirling Murk” has a misleading title because while you may be expecting a tonado of sound, you instead are met with hammer to the temple and outright violence. Closer “The Crackled Book of Life” is the purest Deathspell track on here, as it rides on off-kilter rhythms, horns, fucked up strings, spiritual chants, and pure sickness. Then, as quickly as they arrived, they’re gone.

This isn’t a wholly representative Deathspell Omega offering, though it may be a good starting point for a newcomer who needs to get up to speed with the sound and philosophy before tackling one of the band’s full-lengths. I find it a fun, satisfying little effort that doesn’t quite rack your brain like their other mini-releases (last year’s “Diabolus Absconditus” still has me dissecting text) but also gives you a nice Deathspell fix. Psyched to hear something fuller from the band soon, but this will do for now.

For more on the band, go here: http://www.deathspellomega.com/

To buy the album, go here: http://e-shop.season-of-mist.com/en/bands/deathspell-omega/2901

For more on the label, go here: http://www.season-of-mist.com/

You’d like to think that we’ve come far as a society, as a people, when we consider that most parts of the world do not hunt down women and try them for witchcraft any longer. But really, when you consider the entire lifespan of our planet (people who think it’s only a couple-thousand years old and that there were no dinosaurs, you views are not included), it wasn’t all that long ago that women were put up on a stake and burned to death for really ridiculous things that were chalked up to witchcraft. I wonder how some of accusing throngs would react to, say, the Kardashians. Burn the witches! Actually…

Not to go all socio-political on your asses, but, at least in the United States, we still prevent people who love each other from marrying, we’d still prefer to see some classes of people not be able to be treated if they come down with medical conditions, and we’d still like to ban people from our neighborhoods based on their country of origin or religion, so have we really come all that far? We still call out witches on a daily basis. We just call them something different now.

When U.K. doom band Witchsorrow emerged in 2010 with their self-titled debut album, they probably left some people amused by their fixation on the history of witches in our midst and the trials that led to many of their executions. I’m sure all were contested fairly. Just like I’m sure every law enforcement officer in Arizona who pulls someone over because he/she suspects a person may be an illegal immigrant will do so purely on professional and security reasons. So yeah, they drew upon a rather hate-filled, weird era of our history, but if you take the trials they recreate and retell, you can apply them today. Who would be the modern-day version of Elizabeth Clarke? Maybe it would take more than one individual to fill that role, but it can apply. Therefore, Witchsorrow’s content was quite relevant to what’s going on today.

The band is back with their second record “God Curse Us,” a collection that remains loyal to the Electric Wizard/Cathedral/Black Sabbath path, but also adds a bit more of their own personality to the mix. Also, while their songs still grasp topics such as persecution and death, it sounds like they’ve shifted toward our own as a race, and not so much those of the witches. This is a dark, no-nonsense affair that seems to have demise lurking at every turn, and Witchsorrow certainly do not weave a sort of happy-ending, overcome-all way out that lets you breathe a sigh of relief. We’re pretty much going down, with no helping hand to lift us from the abyss.

If you were along for the ride on Witchsorrow’s debut, what you’ll find here is basically the same, only with more refined songwriting and some musical twists and turns. This thing is delivered slowly and brutally, and vocalist Necroskull typically delivers his words in an unwavering tone that doesn’t exactly bristle with life but fits the music nonetheless. When he growls, that’s when he really comes alive as a monstrous singer, though I don’t have any issues personally with his clean vocals. They’re rather plain, but they work just fine. His guitar work is bluesy and smoking, and the rhythm section of bassist Emily Witch and drummer David Wilbrahammer keep the low end muddy, bruising, and thick.

Tearing open this record is “Aurora Atra,” a buzzing, foggy serving of doom that keeps things sludgy and calculating, as you’d expect from this band and genre, but eventually they snap into a gallop, throatier vocals erupt, and a slick supporting melody line travels underneath. That leads into the killer title track, constructed in much the same way with a slower intro and that eventually erupts into heaviness. The chorus is simple but should put a smirk on your face as Necroskull takes Tiny Tim’s innocent, hopeful words from “A Christmas Carol” and drives them to hell as he yowls, “God curse us, every one.” “Masters of Nothing” follows the same suit as the first two songs, taking its time to sink into your pore and then ripping things apart about six minutes in. It hits a pretty nasty groove, with Necroskull shouting, “The kings are dead!” “Ab Antiquo” lets you breathe a bit, as it’s a ghostly, lurking interlude, and it trickles nicely into “Megiddo,” a hulking track soaked in Armageddon, as its Sabbathy, nasty drubbing tempo grounds you into pulp. Then “Breaking the Lore” pops out of nowhere, bursting wide open with a fast, violent pace, a real sense of urgency, and mad dash across the rocks. “Den of Serpents” brings things to a naturally bloody, mucky conclusion, with trippy guitar work, shouts of, “You are cursed!” and a storm-bringing jam session that lets the song and disc burn out nicely. The track doesn’t even seem half as long as its 12-minute running time.

Witchsorrow’s sophomore album certainly builds on the promise of their debut, and they’re growing enough as musicians and songwriters to indicate they have quite a future ahead. I’d still like to hear them add even more personal touches to their music and put their own unique stamp on this style of doom metal, but they’re doing an admirable job establishing a strong early catalog. I think this band has a masterpiece in them, and I look forward to them figuring out how to make that come to life.

For more on the band, go here: http://www.facebook.com/witchsorrowdoom

To buy the album, go here: http://www.indiemerchstore.com/item/14953/

For more on the label, go here: http://www.metalblade.com/english/content.php

And here: http://riseaboverecords.com/

Having a deep level of mystery is something absent from today’s society. We live in a 24-hour news cycle that’s even too slow for some people. Everyone else’s business is our own, unless it’s our own lives that are being compromised, then it’s a crime at the highest level. How dare someone look at me? Great me! And chances are that, barring a major catastrophe that knocks us all off the grid, this is only going to get worse.

I said similar things last year when I discussed the debut album from FALSE, a Minnesota-based black metal band that, to this day, doesn’t have a whole lot circulating out there about themselves. Their preference to hide in the shadows was admirable and added to their intrigue, and as I said then, I hope they keep it that way. Why do we need to know their shit? Another band of that ilk is Bay Area black metal psychotics Bosse-de-Nage, who have kept their shroud over themselves for three records now. They don’t do interviews and participate in photo shoots, and it’s a rarity when they do a live show. Their whole aura is self-contained, and the fact that they make such fucked up music that can scar even the sickest of individuals just amplifies that mystery. They seem to be the type, based on the music, that when police drag a serial killer out of a dank basement, that you’d expect it to be one of the people responsible for sounds such as these. But it’s never the people we suspect, is it?

For their third album “III,” that follows their self-titled debut and last year’s “ii,” both released on Flenser Records (they’ll also handle the vinyl version of this), the band jumped to Profound Lore, probably the only other logical spot for their music. They holed up wherever it is they dream up this stuff and came out with a six-track album that’s like nothing you’ve heard before. You can say the exact same thing about their other two albums as well, as they’ve always found a way to create a unique unholy abomination, burn it down, and reanimate it in a different form from the ashes. They’ve always been black metal to a point, as that’s kind of their base, but they always shoot out in other directions so that no label can properly explain them.

While Bosse-de-Nage always were sort of angular and mentally progressive, they really up the ante on “III.” You’ve probably heard the Slint comparisons, and they are pretty accurate, but the guys just kind of go like a runaway car down indie rock’s unpaved, ramshackle highways, not trying to sound pretty or trendy, but instead taking a style that’s largely gone more mainstream, and beating it with a claw hammer. There are many parts on this record where, when you hear the compositions, you expect some throaty clean wails to come forth, but they keep things deadly and maniacal. Vocalist B. still has the knack for classic screamo bloodletting and emotionally unbalanced metallic shrieking, and every time he opens his mouth, you want to call someone to get him emergency medication. The vocals are that penetrating and convincing. I’ve felt this way about every one of the band’s records, really, and musically I’ve always been surprised and stimulated by what they produce. There is no band that sounds remotely like Bosse-de-Nage. No one else could pull off something this deranged and real.

One thing I noticed right away from “III” is that Marie is nowhere to be found. She was in a cage on “ii” and pissing upon a count on their debut, and unless she’s worked into the lyrics somewhere instead (I haven’t seen them yet and sure as hell can’t by ear decipher every word uttered on this album), she’s oddly missing. But that’s the only thing I miss, because the rest of this is so great, so emotionally draining, that I can’t imagine why Marie’s absence would be a hang-up.

“The Arborist” is our first taste of this odd new concoction, as the band launches into a spacious, exciting journey that’s hammered home by the tortured, howled vocals that emanate from B.’s mouth. “Desuetude” goes even more for the off-kilter rock sound, and it even folds in some proggy sections and cascading melodies, and it’s a track that should capture and keep your attention front to back. “Perceive There a Silence” is even more interesting as the music equals the passion emitted in the vocals. It’s also a really strong indication as to just how good these guys are as players, and the fact they have a really effective singer is a giant, flashing red arrow pointing out why this band is so special. “Cells” has some noise drone, military drumming, and spoken vocals, and it should be pointed out that if you spend time with lyrics to any Bosse-de-Nage album, they read like deranged poetry. Eventually this claustrophobic monster detonates with anguished vocals that show signs of a mental breakdown, and it leads to a pair of closing epics.

“The God Ennui” runs 10:21 and starts inauspiciously enough, with a quiet tone and a sense of calm that you just know isn’t going to last. And it doesn’t. There is more recitation of poetry that sounds dark and foreboding, and unlike a lot of other bands that try this sort of thing, it comes off as unsettling and not silly. Eventually, the song bubbles over and an emotional outpouring comes forth. “An Ideal Ledge” sounds like it’s going to start as serenely as “God,” but it’s just mere moments before that idea is thrashed and bloodied, as the whole thing ignites and blood rushes to the surface. But the whole thing has such a weird ending. About halfway through, the band hits on a progression that sounds like it’s building toward a volcanic, cathartic finish, but it never happens. The band keeps on that same repetitious pace until the whole thing kind of fades to black. Some may find it dissatisfying, but I think it’s so Bosse-de-Nage. You never know what’s coming or what they’re thinking. It’s unconventional but totally logical for them.

The damaged, scarred imaginations of these four shadows shouldn’t make you feel good and really won’t calm your nerves if you’re on edge. Bosse-de-Nage are not here to care for you or nurse you through your woes. They’re here to exploit them, dissect them, and piss them across your body, forcing you to endure the torture. This band is the embodiment of a meltdown, and while you might be safer far away from it, you won’t be able to resist experiencing the drama.

For more on the band (and their sweet web site), go here: http://bosse-de-nage.com/

To buy the album, go here: http://www.profoundlorerecords.com/products-page/plr-items/bosse-de-nage-iii/http://www.profoundlorerecords.com/products-page/plr-items/bosse-de-nage-iii/

For more on the label, go here: http://www.profoundlorerecords.com/

I don’t know what goes on in France that makes them a little more whacked out than the rest of the world. That’s at least as far as their metal is concerned. It seems like just about everything that country puts into play when it comes to extreme music is pretty out there, no matter what sub-genre it concerns, and you never get anything from that land’s artists that can be labeled conventional.

When it comes to black metal, how can one easily explain or digest bands such as Deathspell Omega, Blut Aus Nord and Glorior Belli, whose last album was kind of pulled back considering their past work but probably sounds pretty messed up to virgin ears. If you want to go with more mechanically minded musicians, how about the blasphemous industrial noise churned out by Blacklodge, one of the weirdest, loudest, and patience-challenging bands in any genre anywhere? There’s also Gojira.

Now, when we tackle the progressive death metal band that grabbed its name from one of the pronunciations given to the mighty Godzilla, it’s not quite the same confusion stew as those other bands. For one, they are massively more digestible on first listen, and apparently Metallica wasn’t too scared of these guys to take them out as a tour opener. Their melodies and hooks are there up front, and Gojira are far easier to understand than, say, Deathspell, but they are by no means conventional. Their work is heavy as hell, their tempos can be pretty violent, and they can be tricky, mathy and confusing, certainly rendering more than one listener with a titled head. Their music always has been wildly interesting and innovative, and on their fifth record “L’Enfant Sauvage,” they open things even more than before and come up with one of their best recordings yet.

I wasn’t entirely enthralled with “The Way of All Flesh,” their last album released way back in 2008. I can’t believe it’s been that long, actually. It’s not a bad record at all, really, but it never excited me the way “From Mars to Sirius,” their third record, did. It always seemed like this band — guitarist/vocalist Joe Duplantier, guitarist Christian Andreau, bassist Jean-Michel Labadie, drummer Mario Duplantier — was capable of a higher gear, but they never really seemed able to snap into it. That all changes on “Sauvage,” easily their most explosive album yet, a record that should catapult them from interesting mind-benders to metallic dominators.

You can hear that fire and hunger in their playing, especially when Joe Duplantier howls, “Go!” moments into opener “Explosia,” a tricky, ultra massive slab of power that builds to a strong breakdown that sounds like it could split open the Earth. The title cut is fast and aggressive, eventually becoming a little proggy and calculating, but even the scientific stuff going on here doesn’t undercut the quaking. “Liquid Fire” is more robotic, but not in a dull way at all, as the vocals are gruff but melodic, and eventually group singing is channeled through a Vocoder, transforming the song from machine-like to extraterrestrial (think Cynic). “Planned Obsolescence” goes back to being gut-busting and massive, with a fairly downtuned chorus and some cool programming to keep you guessing.

“Mouth of Kala” is one of the doomiest songs in their history, and it’s dressed with Apocalyptic horns and darkness; “The Gift of Guilt” has a sweet finger-tapped opening and eventually goes a little off the deep end with the weirdness; “Pain Is a Master” is practically its partner in sci-fi, boiling beaker madness, and it’s still taking some time to warm up to this track; “Born in Winter” pulls back a bit, with deeper vocals and a pretty interesting melodic progression that stands apart form the rest of the record; and “The Fall” spills string gloopiness, feedback, thick bass, and all-out heaviness into one pot, bringing this record to an end in the proper manner. It feels like head-bursting destruction.

A couple of just-OK songs aside, Gojira seems to have found their footing and are ready to make their statement as being one of metal’s go-to bands. They’re weird enough to satisfy those who don’t like run-of-the-mill independent metal, and they’re approachable enough that they’re bound to turn heads on the upcoming Lamb of God/Dethklok tour. “L’Enfant Sauvage” is fine work indeed, one that satisfies the hunger left over from “The Way of All Flesh.”

For more on the band, go here: http://gojira-music.com/

To buy the album, go here: http://gojira-music.com/buy

For more on the label, go here: http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/