Alright, friends, it’s the first Friday of the month again. That means it’s Bandcamp Friday, when the service waves its revenue share to let the money go directly to the artists. That means today you have a chance to make an extra contribution to the lives of the artists you worship.
And this week, there’s plenty of solid tunes to choose from. Lots of crushing death metal and frosty black metal.
Always a good sign.
Check it out.
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DUNWICH – Tail-Tied Hearts
According to the band, “DUNWICH is an attempt to dive into the bottomless ocean of your emotions. This is an unexpected call in the desert of your consciousness. This is a walk through the dark forest of your mind.” If you miss the spooky sounds of Subrosa, but wish they took things in a more raw direction, this is the haunting you’re searching for.
Stream: Apple Music
Foretoken – Ruin
The mid-’90s are alive! Virginia’s Foretoken have sworn clear allegiance to the varieties of Swedish metal experience with their extremely epic, busy and soaring variant of blackened-melodeath. This a sound rooted in the classics: Dark Tranquility, Dissection, Dawn and perhaps a touch of symphonic power metal flair as well.
Stream: Apple Music
The Glorious Dead – Into Lifeless Shrines
Speaking of bands steeped in the classics, The Glorious Dead knows their stuff: Bolt Thrower, Grave, Obituary, Incantation, Purtenance, and so on. One of the coolest things about this excellent record is its ability to evoke feelings of doom while still playing fast and blistering death metal. The band as a whole is comprised of experts, but the star professor of death here is definitely the drummer. Those blasts are just so perfect.
Persekutor – Permanent Winter
Excuse me, sir? Can you feel the frost of dawn? This is some true black heavy metal here: heroic, raw, totally ridiculous, totally radical. Lots of cold riff action to be found here, but played through a prism of classic ’80s heavy metal attitude, rather than say, Battles in the North.
Stream: Apple Music
Unholy Vampyric Slaughter Sect – The World Trapped in Vampyric Sway (Darker and Darker)
Ok, so graded on a curve, this is the most accessible and well-produced release ever put together by Unholy Vampyric Slaughter Sect. All of Kane’s previous material, or at least the stuff I’d heard, was seriously raw and grating, palatable to only the most tolerant ears, eager for the aural assault. This release, on the other hand, preserves that feeling but brings the quality up just enough to make it hit that goldilocks “just right” balance between listenability and total contempt for typical sensibilities. The electronic and punk-influenced bits are pretty sick too, by the way.
