Obscuring Veil - Fleshvoid to Naught (2019)

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This album has me floored currently. A monolithic slab of avant-garde black metal with a personality crisis and a gargantuan amount of enigma wafting around itself. Obscuring Veil is wholly comprised of venerable musicians from around Europe all cut from varying fabrics of musical cloth, and the musicianship is starkly reflected on each harrowingly twisting track. Obscuring Veil combined is the minds of Wormlust, Death Fetichist, Gnaw Their Tongues, Nattsol, Ævangelist, Ljáin, Craft, Chaos Moon, etc. etc. There is notably some accounting for taste to be made, and yet something created that is bigger than the sum of its parts.

I can throw a bunch of adjectives your way, but I'll distill it all down to this, Fleshvoid to Naught is suffocatingly abrasive, tragically heavy, magnificently eerie, devastatingly hard to digest and devoid of all commonality. I'm all in.

Obscuring Veil - Fleshvoid to Naught (bandcamp)

Fuming Mouth - The Grand Descent (2019)

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Fuming Mouth comes in swinging haymakers on their debut, The Grand Descent, and for the most part, most strikes are a critical blow in the arena of metal/crust/doom/hardcore. This is a sound you have heard before, a formula followed by many already with wistful flourishes of their own style - some much bolder than others - Fuming Mouth have landed somewhere in the middle, if not slightly on the more original side of things with The Grand Descent, and I appreciate the fervour in which this characteristic seeps through. This isn't heavy the same way Thou or Floor is heavy, it's heavy in its aggression and cadence. Think of Nails, Black Breath, Hooded Menace, Gatecreeper, etc.

Fuming Mouth - The Grand Descent (bandcamp)

Heresiarch - Incursions (2019)

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Heresiarch, man, pure filth. New Zealand's Heresiarch sticks its hand back in the pot of fetid death metal, and I care again, after what felt like a long pause between Death Metal that maintains my interest. It would be a be a bit preemptive of me to say that this is the best Heresiarch have sounded, but this is the best Heresiarch have sounded. Calloused riffs gestating in a cesspit of war-tuned drums and an antediluvian vocal belch that does nothing to diminish its ferocity. I'm still in the getting to know you phase of this album, but I have no doubts this one will garner plenty of spins.

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And then Jesus said "Let thee who doubt my turbulence wake up to moths devouring their only garb, let their words of blasphemy turn into dust in their mouths, let sustenance do nothing to satiate,  and please let night remain night until they beg for the sun to forgive them."

It's up for 1 Euro on bandcamp, so roll up your nickels and pay up.

Heresiarch - Incursions (bandcamp)

One Step Closer - From Me To You (2019)

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Evidently this month has turned up hardcore here on SHOM, and that's very much okay from my perspective and if you don't like it start your own music blog dinker. I bought a new Rega Planar turntable yesterday and I'm all diamond hard about it as I currently have my CPC Gangbangs record locked and loaded on it sounding like the perfect example of punk being more rock n' roll than 99% of rock n' roll.

But this post is about One Step Closer not CPC Gangbangs, and this short but emotionally charged album (EP?) of hardcore affected by the heart strings will do the trick if you're into listening to something that plays out like Have Heart, Bane, Verse and hues of Shai Hulud with a heart on the sleeve approach. Brings me back to my salad days.

One Step Closer - From Me To You (bandcamp)

Moloch - Love Songs (2019)

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Moloch and Severed Heads Open Minds have a long and consistent history throughout the inception of this blog, in all of its gestation periods, I have posted up Moloch albums on here a few times since 2012 and even interviewed a few of the members a long while back. For some reason I'm always reminded of Meth Drinker, and I'm not too sure why the two bands are always in the same conversation with me, but it's likely to do with the absolute immensity each of their songs have while retaining this crust of pure filth draped over each song; Completely fetid and bloated sludge, no strings, no gimmicks, no frills and certainly no regard for your well being.

With that being said, here's a measly two-track EP from Moloch for you to suck on, until there is more.

Moloch - Love Songs (bandcamp)

Deflect - Mass Delusion (2019)

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Found these Deflect a couple years back when they released the EP Downward Spiral and wasn't entirely sold upon first spin, I remember that much… something about the vocal cadence and delivery was off-putting, which is funny, because it's exactly those things that I like most about Deflect now. First Impressions are wolves in sheep clothing and should be questioned rigorously before entering the gates to poison your well. The vocal cadence and off-kilter howl is the refreshing take against the backdrop of Deflect (much like Unified Right), which plays a blend of hardcore, pulling stylistically from 80's thrash and punk with a sound and approach that still lends itself to sounding unique and interesting in a musical arena where the walls have been battered and pounded by copycats.

Deflect - Mass Delusion (bandcamp)

Ekulu - Half Alive (2019) [EP]

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Second EP is by Ekulu, and man do these guys know how to draw salivary molecules out of your tongue through the power meat and potatoes alleyway hardcore, which is a convoluted way of saying, Ekulu of New York hardcore pride, bring the floor stomp, and if you had to share a house with these wild boars, you'd better pray to the gods of riffdom that you live upstairs and not below them otherwise, because there is no way in shits hell that each member of this band doesn't walk around like a gang of agitated minotaurs in steel-toe boots carrying sledgehammers and chains around their necks… They are that heavy, and they swing that hard.

NY Hardcore without a single flaw. Every element firmly in its rightful place, executed by a group that understands the inner and outer facets of what makes raw hardcore and thrash such a likeable sound. Listen to their flawless self-titled EP released in 2018 back to back after this one, and make sure none of your grandma's breakable ceramics from Romania aren't around when you do. Enjoy.

Ekulu - Half Alive (bandcamp)

Triumvir Foul - Urine of Abomination (2019) [EP]

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Going to throw up a few EP's into the blog piss pot for you slugs to sip on and Urine of Abomination is the soup de jour for today. Unfettered death metal filth as grimy as a pigeons basement and as loving as a cornered wolverine high on PCP is this 16 minute blast from Triumvir Foul, a band that seriously succeeds in serving up death metal deep from within the sewer gutters of the sonic atmosphere. The totality of its intensity is bolstered by how raw and unpolished it all sounds as if its been floor reordered deep within a salt cave. It goes without saying that I've been enjoying this one, and how about the drummer loving to ride the bell on his cymbals… slimy.

Triumvir Foul - Urine of Abomination (Bandcamp)

Kaleikr - Heart of Lead (2019)

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Icelandic metal has garnered the attention and reverence of many, predominantly in the underground bestial arenas–most likely, I would imagine, due to the intellectually impetuous execution of the sound and the brazen Icelandic ethos when it comes to writing music (I've had my ear to the ground with Icelandic music since my visit in 2010 and have attended multiple Iceland Airwaves festival since) and their unmatched ability to amalgamate between sounds and influences in a way that remains true to its purist form while pushing boundaries in a way that fails to be contrived.

Let's quickly pay heed to all of Iceland's impressive successes within the last few years;

Sinmara, Svartidauði, Misþyrming, Kaleikr, Wormlust, Ljáin, Carpe Noctem, Naðra, Zhrine, Mannveira, Örmagna, Almyrkvi, Auðn, Skáphe (partially)

Notable company for a windswept country of only 300, 000.

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Kaleikr were instantly interesting for me, being that they are another metal band from the quiver of Iceland, a new metal band to sink my teeth into and digest and judge, to enjoy or condemn, etc. In summation, once I noticed the progressive tag slapped to the pigeon-holing process of applying genre tags to music, I winced and cringed, mostly because most pieces of progressive music I'm turned onto never really strike any chord with me or are too farcical to take seriously. That being said, I am still no stranger to the genre so I kept my closed-mind open-minded.

Kaleikr's take on fusing death metal, doom, black and flourishes of the grandiosity of atmospheric pagan metal with the tumbling structure of progressive metal has been thoroughly enjoyable. Heart of Lead manages this concoction with an expertly ease, an acumen in genre melding; At times i'm reminded of something like Panopticon and Saor (mostly akin to the drumming nature), to Be'lakor and the psychedelic tinged moments of Wormlust, etc, etc.

Before I get to verbose with my keyboard fingers, I'll leave this post with this and only this; Though things of this sonic nature are slightly under my own personal radar these days, I dig almost everything in and around Heart of lead, a very tight debut, at the very least. 

Kaleikr - Heart of Lead (bandcamp)

Teitanblood - Purging Tongues (2011)

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This is just a friendly reminder that this EP is still out there in the ether, and if you're not privy to it you're missing out on some seriously heinous death metal; brittle to the bone, bestial to the core and downright barbaric in its sonic assault.

This still might be my favourite thing Teitanblood has ever released, as a whole, a 15-minute slab of nefarious death/black metal with a strong foothold on a sound that is bigger that the sum of it's parts; It's just downright feral in sound and unequivocally dense and heavy, especially from 04:45 - 06:15 into the song, that's insane. All while paranoid sermons weave in and out in Spanish like its been sampled out of some raw Spanish horror flick. I'm not sure why, but it just really floats my boat.

Here is that translated excerpt over at Anvil of Doom. Read on my wayward sons.

Teitanblood - Purging Tongues (bandcamp)