Vorpal Sword - Pain (2016)

Rising Beast is out there busting its ass making every single mother out there with six children look like they are caught relishing a languorous work ethic. A DIY label to its core ran by a dude named James Brown aka 'Horus' – who I only just discovered plays in both Harassor and Moonknight, which are both bands I've been supporting through Rising Beast since I found Moonknight's 2012 release Ligeia. Rising Beast is the cream that is rising to the top in the realms of seedy underground black metal and death metal, keep up.

Vorpal Sword is the labels latest release, and I have Bandcamp to thank for turning me on to this one. I'm not sure why it matters, but the intro to the noisy deluge that is Pain is something to behold; No wide birth is given in building atmosphere, instead the crowing begins with a heavily distorted garbled sound that sounds like the disgruntled radio transmission from another life-form upon entry into earths atmosphere, it's overbearingly loud and feels like water hitting your eardrums. This noise is then pierced with the warm coursing of a black metal riff played at 25% speed and the shared duty of the snare and bass drum, if any symbols are being pounded, it's lost in the fray. The result is something I'm really into right now.

The entire 16 minutes is a whirlwind of tone, noise, reverb, delay, gain and hell with no discernible start and end to the tracks within the track, but take note at the 04:40 mark how this shit rips into itself with a stripped down punk and black metal ethos and the vocal layering resembling a tenacious howling wind. I am reminded of the 'Just Fuck off' era of Malveillance (posted here six years ago) with the bleak tonal accuracy of later Lunar Aurora despite the blatancy of a synth.

You can support this at bandcamp with a minimum purchase of $1 or if you're really feeling that Canadian dollar struggle input $0 for a free download and the intention of supporting these releases  at a later date when you're not too busy justifying why you vastly over-tip the pretty bar maiden rather than support underground music.

Vorpal Sword - Pain (bandcamp, name your price)