Hello, longtime readers and people who accidentally clicked on this post, i.e., most of you. Here we are, once more, knighting the Metal Song Of The Summer. Last year, we asked you if metal could even have a song of the summer. Most of you said no. Naturally, we’re, uh, back for round two to tap a song’s shoulders with our poseur-smiting sword. Kneel as a song, rise as our canicular champion. Again, most of you said this was a waste of time! Ugh. So, what a great idea — exactly what everyone wants. Let’s do the column with no fanfare again. With that kind of insight into your wants and needs, The Black Market is truly the middle management of metal columns. Enjoy this pizza party, disgruntled workforce. Please don’t mutiny.

Alright, let’s get this over with. What went into data collection, you ask? (You didn’t ask.) If you remember the debut installment, the song remains the same: I asked readers to complete an anonymous questionnaire in order to ID the community’s favorite summer jams. That’s the only thing that remained the same because this year’s responses ran the gamut.

When I ran the numbers with the razor-sharp focus of the Oakland A’s advanced metrics intern minutes before taking a three-day weekend, I discovered that black metal made up almost 50 percent of the overall responses, which makes sense because when I think summer, I think black metal. Heavy metal in the trad vein and doom of the epic variety were the next highest vote-getters, suggesting that the battle-vest-bedecked parents manning BBQ grills still have a significant voice in the realm of metal, or at least out of the handful of people who decided to burn their mandatory 15-minute break filling out a stupid survey.

Speaking of the survey, here are a few highlights from the responses:

“Panic Attack,” the kick-off track from Judas Priest’s new album Invincible Shield, was chosen because “the Turbo-style electronic intro into that massive riff; it’s pure Priest, and it RULES.” As far as the feelings that song evokes, it inspires “the need to pump one’s fist and scream out the sunroof of one’s Trans Am.” Funnily enough, that’s how most of my manic episodes end following a panic attack. (Did my therapist answer this survey? Tina, I’m fine.) And what summer memories did Priest mint for this particular respondent? “The first time I heard it, I said, ‘Fuck, this song rules. I can’t wait for this album.'”

Crypt Sermon’s “Scrying Orb” from The Stygian Rose was another striking submission. Who up scrying they orb? This reader, taking great pains to explicitly mention the song’s contradictory classic modernity:

Besides a great chorus that feels it should have/could have been written in 1988, “Scrying Orb” feels like a distinctly modern metal hit. One glance at the “weird Twitter” of the last decade and you’ll know people love their orbs and other esoteric objects. Who up pondering, etc? Who among us can’t relate to spending too much time scrying for knowledge that will probably break our brains. The least we can do is get a massive slow head-banging sing-along. No phones, just orbs.

Take note, Apple. iOrb, when? It’ll probably be $500 more expensive than it should be and won’t be compatible with the aux cord in your robe and wizard hat. Anyway, commenting on the feelings, the reader notes that “The Scrying Orb” “puts the Doom back in Doom Scrolling, while also summoning the feeling of mystery/adventure/danger necessary for an old-fashioned RPG, and it makes me want to act like a dramatic drunken fool with other metalheads.” So, acting like a metalhead. Got it.

Lastly, let’s take a peek at the black metal by taking a gander at Gaerea’s “World Ablaze” off of Coma. That track has tasting notes of “desire, hope, and freedom,” and is “fantastic live,” which led to the enduring memory of snapping a “selfie with the guitarist post-gig in Dublin.” If you’d like to fly Wyatt and me out to Ireland to talk to you about whatever atmospheric black metal band you want (I’ll even pretend I like it), we’re now accepting applications.

So, there you go. Are we done? No! Rapid fire roundup! Why like a song? How about the synesthesia-y “different colors” painted by an album, such as “amber, dark gold, and bronze, all of which allow the listener to feel a sense of nostalgia, but with the confidence to accept the only way to move is forward.” That state of mind was, of course, forwarded in the renowned academic paper “Never Go Back” by the esteemed professor Dag Nasty. Feelings? How about this tetrad of trueness: “sadness, longing, yearning, and optimism,” or, chronologically speaking, how I feel while waiting for a deathcore song to end.

As for me, my Metal Song Of The Summer candidate comes courtesy of Angel Fury, a Los Angeles-located tradster that I caught live a few weeks ago in support of the always excellent Shadowland. Good show! There’s something about getting aurally sliced by heavy metal steel in the flesh that is undeniably summery. Of course, because this is my recommendation and nothing ever comes easy with me, there’s a…slight drawback: Angel Fury hasn’t recorded any of its new material since its 2023 demo, so you’ll have to settle for this live video capturing “Angel Fury,” a song that hopefully leads to a full-length trifecta.

The other song garnering plays when I’m pumping my fist out of a stolen Trans Am’s sunroof on a GTA-style three-star bender (Tina, I’m fine) is Scavenger’s “Nosferatu,” which we covered back in May. “While favoring a throwback style that’s glammier and sleazier than its former incarnation, nestling into a zone that’s like if Ratt invaded Dokken, the new quintet has no shortage of ripping riffs and scorching solos,” I wrote. Sure. That’s a sentence. Whatever, the hook in the chorus has been hummed more times than cellphones set in cup holders during the quiet part of whatever movie you’re trying to watch in the theater. Banger.

There we go. Your Metal Song Of The Summer is, drumroll please, inconclusive, just like everyone told me it would be last year. Oh, look: I can’t believe we blew the entire column budget this month on all of this confetti. Really, though, the winner is whatever has been the OST of your fondest 2024 memories. Look deep into your heart, remember the good times, and…find that song for yourself because I’m clearly incapable of making decisions. (Tina, chill. We’ll work on it next session.) So, yeah, like a real middle manager, I’m asking you to do my job for me. Drop your summer jams below and talk amongst yourselves. See you next summer! I can’t wait. You probably can.

OK! To ensure this intro doesn’t end with an admission that I did zero work producing it, we have a treat: Wyatt is here to say goodbye to the summer in style with an interview with the above-pictured Summer Haze ’99. –Ian Chainey

Summer’s heat hangs heavy, but its grip is loosening. You linger longer at sunsets until the encroaching dusk takes hold; soon, they won’t be the same as the inevitable comes to pass. Summer’s almost gone. 

A song of the summer is both anointed and ubiquitous, but the songs that soundtrack warm nights and lay claim to our hearts in different eras of our lives are rarely those. What exactly is a metal song of the summer? Maybe it’s a Summer Haze ’99 song.

Summer Haze ’99’s 2023 debut and only release to date, Inevitable, is a spellbinding album, a unique metal masterpiece with a midnight color palette of pinks and purples that blend into darkness. It will veer from black metal blasting to post-hardcore to lounge jazz within a single track, and across this fascinating spectrum of theatrical sounds, it carries a sense of acrobatic, rocketing guitar hero playfulness and a tender, heart-on-the-sleeve earnestness. With proclamations of love, self-discovery, and resolve shouted into maelstroms of furious, light-filled riffing, Inevitable is marked by youthful vigor and calls of destiny — and the anxious anticipation that accompanies the inevitability of the passage of time. The songs address big, grand feelings and dramas played out on the scale of individual lives, with love, triumph, longing, hope, restlessness, doubt, and loss, leaving scars that are carried into a wide-open future. 

Summer Haze ’99 is the work of Erech Leleth, who you may know from the epic atmospheric black metal project Ancient Mastery, the medieval romantic rock act Bergfried, and many other solo projects (see Sturmwächter below) that defy categorization along traditional metal lines. Leleth is a wide-ranging creative espousing an explicitly antifascist stance. Out of his stable of colorful bands, Summer Haze ’99 stands out — it’s a stunning achievement that would stand out in any metal artist’s collective works.

There’s the name Summer Haze ’99, for one, hardly metal on the surface and invoking a faded nostalgia. Leleth tells me the name and music are a tribute to the Ataris’ one-last summer hurrah song, “Summer ’79,” taken from the punk band’s So Long, Astoria, which chronicles an imagined summer of youth. 

“I like this form of constructed memory as it leaves space for pouring your own dreams and hopes into it,” Leleth writes about the name Summer Haze ’99. “So when people read the name, they might think of their own summer in 1999 or what could be classified as the summer of their lives.”

Summer Haze ’99 wasn’t named for Leleth’s summer of 1999 — he would have been seven years old. It more directly channels young adulthood and the transitional moments in life when you know you’re approaching a precipice and the future won’t look like the past. 1999 itself stood on the edge of a seemingly new, unknown era — reset the clocks, zero-zero. And while Inevitable evokes sunbaked days gone by, like the Ataris’ “Summer ’79,” there’s a nocturnal energy to Summer Haze ’99’s music, with endless yet numbered warm summer nights as the backdrop for formative events and memories. Humidity electrifies the air and sticks to the skin; everything seems possible, and the hours are unending, but minutes and days nevertheless move on at their regimented rate. And while, in retrospect, you can’t pin down individual moments in the rush of it all, they echo later in life in ways that are hard to explain.

“Memories of my youth are slowly becoming blurry and at some point, I don’t even know what really happened,” Leleth writes. “So Summer Haze ’99 is one possibility of what my youth could have been, but certainly not how it was.”

And so Summer Haze ’99 is full of recognizable jubilant highs and dejected lows, charging skyward and crashing downwards and doing it all over again. A defining characteristic of Inevitable, one of many elements that sets Summer Haze ’99 apart, is the vocals of Anouk Madrid, who offers a counterpart to Leleth’s shouting protagonist. Her portentous proclamations give voice to some of those formative emotions, and they are delivered in a stylish and cinematic baritone, introducing a kind of wondrous and cool gravitas that comes to play during quieter passages and those jazzy interludes. She serves as a kind of companion and narrator across the album, offering comfort and a sort of cosmic perspective to someone caught in the throes of change. 

“For me summer songs are about nostalgia. Because summer is the season that is filled with so many expectations, memories, hopes and dreams, but it all happens in a haze,” Leleth explains. “Anouk sounds like a summer haze.”

Leleth bottles that haze, a sniff of which induces a waking dream. Inevitable has an impressionistic, painterly quality — it captures the feeling, if not a photographic imprint. Smears of emotion and color mix and take on new shades and forms.

“Certain Fluisteraars songs are classified as summer songs, as well as the work of Sunrise Patriot Motion, or some of Trhä,” Leleth writes, listing bands that blast with rage but, like Summer Haze ’99, are full of an unmistakable prismatic brightness. “I think the title track, ‘Inevitable,’ has a certain gravity to it, which reminds me of a heat wave in the city when everything is loud and numb at the same time.”

Consider the intro track, “Someday,” too. A tender piano melody leads in before heroic guitars rush headlong into the unknown, with Leleth shouting resolute self-affirmations into the din of grating gears that push time forward. Madrid’s tender vocals offer a compassionate counsel. A strange but comforting warbling melody hovers like fireflies lighting a field. It all swirls together in a surreal, heady, and dramatic elixir, when consumed opening a gateway to heat-baked days. It sounds like a summer gone by, when anything was possible.

Summer’s almost gone, but Summer Haze ’99 will return, Leleth says. Maybe next year, when the heat blankets the city, the insects take to the fields, and the haze sets in. –Wyatt Marshal

FOUL EMANATIONS FROM THE VOID

10. Nervous – “Vermin Within”

Location: Poland
Subgenre: experimental blackened death metal

Nervous’s debut album sounds like the dystopian future that sci-fi has instilled in our collective minds. It’s overarchingly dissonant, with ominous programmed horns that blare like foreboding sirens from shadowy overlords, and a defining feature is a big skronking bass that chonks along indifferently, like the fire-spewing mechanical underbelly of a dark metropolis. Naturally, you’d expect rodents, and “Vermin Within” paints a picture of human dread in such an environment. Guitars are both big churning chugs and unnatural, discordant, and meandering leads that worm into the brain-like tendrils. The throaty, bellowing vocals are gruff and intimidating barks. These twisted elements all come together to form tight grooves, driven by that big plonking bass, channeling the overarching unease into pounded-out hooks. It’s all the work of Aaron Ciesielski, a true DIYer down to the artwork who, in his liner notes, along with friends and family, gives a shout to some vermin near and dear to his heart — his guinea pigs. [From Acquiescence, out now via the band.] –Wyatt Marshall

9. DUHKHA – “Heavy Screen”

Location: California
Subgenre: metalcore

In the interest of injecting some variety into the column so your ears aren’t solely colonized by our myopic tendencies to highlight atmospheric black metal and death metal and nothing else, here’s DUHKHA, a moshy metalcore quartet from California. Yes, it’s that time of year again. Welcome to our annual pilfering of “Let the Roundup Begin,” an exercise in shameless theft when we step on Tom Breihan’s toes like field mice scampering across the roots of a redwood tree. Big chungus chugs are Tom’s domain, and I don’t want to start a column war. But sometimes the heart wants what it wants, and that’s the kind of core that would be filmed by hate5six.

As DUHKHA has appeared in the column before, you may remember it has an interesting pedigree. On vocals, Cameron Miller of Seizures. On guitar and drums, respectively, Erol Ulug and Alejandro Aranda of Teeth and Tzompantli. (The new Teeth album, The Will of Hate, is real good, but it pushed the death metal density of this list into the danger zone, so check back for it next month.) On bass, Keith Barney of Eighteen Visions. Yes, that Eighteen Visions, which, I’ll say once again as a person who lived through that era, was stupidly heavy at one time. I promise. They, uh, also slid a breakdown into a cover of Guns N’ Roses’s “Paradise City.” It was pretty funny. Ah, the follies of youth. Actually, let me look within and dig into that line of thinking for a second.

Since I’m now a permanent resident of Old Fogeyville, I’ll spare you the yells-at-clouds reactionary rhetoric that DUHKHA’s debut full-length, A Place You Can’t Come Back From, takes the face-punching, pit-inciting form of metalcore back to its tough roots and whips ass because of it. I’m not going to do it. We don’t need to dial back a damn thing. Look, the scene doesn’t belong to us anymore. Kids need their own thing, and if that thing is Disembodied rip-off bands, so be it. Kidding! Kind of. But I will write that if you’ve ever had a passing interest in chugs and juds and became estranged, you can, in fact, come back to A Place You Can’t Come Back From.

The track you’re going to want to take for a test drive to prove that point is “Heaven Screen,” a big room-shuddering judderer that would’ve flattened a Hellfest. Heck, that riff at 2:44 would’ve kept the closest urgent care to the VFW hall or Unitarian church busy for the night. Indeed, DUHKHA dusts off some of that nostalgic, head-walking, maximum-output metalcore magic.

…kind of. Actually, the things that make A Place You Can’t Come Back From float in 2024 are the necessary firmware updates. Barney and Aranda play with more dexterity than the bygone breakdown beasts that once walked the land with the same stumbling wooziness as a concussed brontosaurus…or Rick Ta Life riding a horse. Like, just the fact that DUHKHA can blast well wasn’t really a frequently heard facet of this stuff in the pre-Dave Witte days. So, every swing of the rhythmic sledgehammer is on point. Same goes for the juds. Ulug thankfully frees many of these beatdowns from the stale tropes of yesteryear, retaining the most powerful elements and sharpening them into something more incisive. Remember when lesser riffs were the stale bread sandwiching the breakdown meat? The rest stops for weary spin-kickers? DUHKHA does not. Ulug always seems to have a good riff in his quiver. That commitment to killer over filler really plays when DUHKHA quickly shifts from one section to the next with the alacrity of a mathier band. That sets the table for Miller to scream with expert control. Even better, Miller’s vocal variety far surpasses the once endemic-in-the-scene replacement-level roars that couldn’t even match the power of infuriated gym teachers. (Personally, I think the lyrics skew a little too close to the Poison the Well eyes-paralyze school of cryptic emotionality, but your mileage may vary depending on which SSRIs you’re on.) All that comes together for another rarity for albums of this ilk: A Place You Can’t Come Back From is front-to-back solid.

So, yeah, metalcore…but modernized…but not modern metalcore? I don’t know. I think there’s a possible pessimistic view that DUHKHA hits so hard because minor tweaks to a stuck-in-its-era style can sound revelatory, similar to how it would feel if someone put a single goddamn thing to do in the video game Starfield. The more optimistic read is that A Place You Can’t Come Back From proves that some, ahem, middle-aged dogs can learn new tricks and release any album that still crushes alongside the younger cohort, the Vein.fms and Knocked Looses of the world that have set out like pioneers in search of new juds. That is to say, DUHKHA won’t be the opening slot on a We All Have Mortgages Now metalcore comeback tour. It’s vital, calibrated for the here and now. That’s…almost life-affirming in a way. Mantra worthy, even. It’s never too late. Learn. Grow. Start that band. Begin that label. Jud that jud. Dream big and go into horrendous debt. Whatever. You’re not getting out of here alive. Live it up because you can’t come back. [From the A Place You Can’t Come Back From, out now via Good Fight.] –Ian Chainey

8. Viscera Infest – “Macular Dystrophy (Stargardt)”

Location: Oita, Japan
Subgenre: brutal death metal

Have you ever been so overwhelmed with unexpectedly over-the-top stimuli that all you can do is laugh? That has to be a common reaction to Teratoma, the long-awaited third album from Viscera Infest, the Japanese goregrinding brutal death metal band. And that commitment to pushing the boundaries of batshittery makes sense because this trio loves to flex that it is obsessed with Disgorge (Mex).

What to say about Disgorge (Mex), the delightfully disgusting pathogrind-gone-rancid excreter of brutal death metal effluvia? For one, it is not Disgorge (US). For two, its early work, such as the not safe for normal people Chronic Corpora Infest, has been particularly influential on the wetter set of gorehound metallers. And then there’s Necrholocaust, the band’s masterpiece and final album with Antimo Buonnano, an unfortunate roster transaction that would set Disgorge (Mex) on a future path that can be delicately described as sucking mondo ass. But Necrholocaust does not suck mondo ass. No, it kicks mondo ass, and it does so because Disgorge (Mex) somehow tightened its compositions while also sounding like a shock-and-awe siege carried out by a full artillery of squelch cannons. It’s still a great album to test car stereos, provided you want to be escorted off the lot in handcuffs.

Anyway, that’s where we find Viscera Infest on Teratoma, blasting itself towards the Necrholocaust zone, and not just because it closes the album with a cover of “Goremassacre Perversity.” While still listing early Disgorge (Mex) as its primary résumé reference, Teratoma levels up like Disgorge (Mex) did, showcasing a comparative instrumental clarity and songwriting coherency — as much as malevolently moist, gooey brutal death metal can possess those qualities. Granted, this is still the same band that issued the ultra-ridiculous Verrucous Carcinoma, an album denizens of the danker realms of RateYourMusic rated one of the best brutal death metal albums of the last 10 years. But Viscera Infest is also mature now. Sort of. Maybe.

Yeah, maybe. Viscera Infest continues along its life’s path of taking every chance it can get to push the BPMs into ludicrous speed, especially if those hyperblasts don’t really make sense within the context of a song. Hey, if you got it, blast it. Not complaining. However, Viscera Infest also injects some longevity into Teratoma‘s songs, vastly extending their half-lives, because it has a keener understanding of building tension and crafting compelling material that rises about loud noises.

“Macular Dystrophy (Stargardt),” Teratoma‘s lead stream and, thus far, the only track Obliteration Records has deigned to digitize, shows those songwriting chops off. After a sample of some poor soul getting munched, Eizo Asakura (vocals, guitars), Harufumi Nomiyama (bass), and Yuya Yakushiji (drums) immediately spin up the BPMs to speeds that would destabilize a particle collider. I would also like to point you to the part of the song where Asakura starts singing like a duck. Go off. Be that as it may, it does feel like Viscera Infest is coloring within the lines on Teratoma more than ever, taking that boundlessly hyperactive energy and focusing it on flow and increasing the song’s heaviness. Sort of. Maybe.

Look, Teratoma is wild. Again, there are duck noises during a turbo BDM part. As much as I want to make the case that its elevated songwriting skills and production values have helped bottle Viscera Infest’s spillover tendencies, Teratoma is about as contained as a jar of jam in someone’s carry on luggage during a plane crash. That color-within-the-lines maturity? That wildness restrained within a songwriting enclosure? I don’t know what I’m even talking about. Teratoma is like trying to push a PCPed out hippo into a pen. Wild. Wild! And holy hell, does that wildness make me laugh, that giddily involuntary ‘what the heck did I just hear’ bout of giggles that is born in the same part of the brain that loses control during bravura gore sequences in D-tier splatterfest films. Duck noises! Haha. [From Teratoma, out now on Obliteration Records.] –Ian Chainey

7. Mesarthim – “Departure”

Location: Australia
Subgenre: atmospheric black metal

The anonymous duo behind Australia’s Mesarthim — the pair are both credited as “.” across their 20+ albums, EPs, and other releases — have been featured on this column about as much as any other act. Mesarthim draws on the wonders and horrors of deep space phenomena and exploration to produce soaring, anthemic works of synth-powered black metal that play like the soundtrack to a space opera or starship odyssey. On “Departure,” a 20-minute track that Mesarthim considers a single, the band takes you from the launchpad into the unknown. Cockpit-to-control chatter and building nerves and anticipation give way to the majesty of the journey at hand, sending you on a trajectory that promises both boundless possibility and things much darker — the synth-led melodies are grand, inspiring things, and they live in tension with passages of black metal blasting. In between, watery drops of starlit synths offer moments of awestruck gazing into the cosmos. “Departure” is a big, heroic track, quintessentially Mesarthim, and up there with the band’s very finest, a love letter to the night sky and the multitudes it contains. It soars, sparkles, and crashes, and in the end, even though it fades into nearly a minute of silence, it was gorgeous while it lasted. [From Departure, out now via the band.] –Wyatt Marshall

6. Evilyn – “Forgotten”

Location: United States / Australia
Subgenre: death metal

There was lurch, there is lurch, there will only be lurch. Ah, the death metal lurch, one of the style’s finest innovations. So, come as you are to the lurch church. Evilyn, a powerful power trio featuring a full complement of tech-inclined shredders, lines the pews with quite a few heaving heavies on “Forgotten,” the longest and slowest song on Mondestrunken, the international band’s full-length debut. And, jeez, do these lurches put in work, baptizing Evilyn in a puddle of greasy, grimy nastiness.

Without tipping into hyperbole, “Forgotten” and its album twin, the equally whiplash-inducing “Interwoven,” sound like the kind of tunes a lab-created virtuosic death metal mutant would make if it were reared on nothing but Immolation and Gorguts. Bassist Alex Weber (Malignancy, WAIT) and Robin Stone (more bands than a three-day festival; what happens when you’re a drummer and the scene finds your phone number) emphasize those herks and jerks like they’re exclamation points, giving “Forgotten” that undulating, seasick feel. Both musicians also let their instruments spill into the negative space between waves. And, hot damn, those waves emanate from the eruptions being spewed out of Anthony Lipari’s guitar amp. Lipari’s riffs feature a diverse set of walk cycles — lurches, grooves, wriggles, squiggles — outfitting “Forgotten” with a pleasingly discomforting sense of otherworldliness. That helps sell the song’s seemingly conflicting combo: a kind of orderly chaos. It’s an attractive oxymoron that hints at an underlying profundity, a peek at the grinding gears behind the universe that animate reality’s unpredictability. Fine. I’ll put the bong down.

Anyway, Evilyn demonstrated that it had a supremely promising lurch potential on Inside Shells, its 2020 EP. The band was initially conceived as a collaboration between Lipari and Jeanne Strieder from Coma Cluster Void, another band that loves itself a lurch. Following Strieder’s departure, Evilyn eventually hired bassist Jim Hildebrandt and the esteemed drummer Lee Fisher (Commit Suicide, one of the the great unheralded death metal bands of the ’00s) to fill out its rhythm section for that first release. While good, and receiving ‘why didn’t I cover this?’ plaudits from the idiot writing this blurb, Mondestrunken — “Moon Drunk” in German, and perhaps a nod to Arnold Schoenberg’s melodrama, Pierrot lunaire — is many, many evolutionary cycles beyond what Inside Shells indicated.

Take the track sitting in Mondestrunken‘s three spot, the coruscating and crushing “Limits,” a song suggesting that Evilyn has none. Now, I think it would be unfair to say Alex Weber and Robin Stone eclipse the performances of Fisher and Hildebrandt, mainly because they’ve been asked to do different things. One of those things is harnessing the exponentially advanced compositional complexity. I’m sure there’s a music theory reason that can untangle “Limits”‘s knottiness — a job for Calder Hannan, perhaps. But until school is back in session, I’ll simply say that the finale — with the time signature sabotage, staggering riff hammering, and spicy chords that feel like rubbing sriracha into an open wound — is the sound of a band that knows what it is and what it wants to become. The fact that Evilyn probably isn’t done growing is really something. Wherever it ends up, it’s clear that its life started with a lurch, and it’ll probably end with one, too. [From Mondestrunken, out now via Transcending Obscurity Records.] –Ian Chainey

5. The Flight Of Sleipnir – “Wanderer”

Location: Denver, CO
Subgenre: folk / doom metal

The Flight Of Sleipnir mixes folk, doom, and doses of black metal into groove-heavy, super-satisfying songs with an uncanny ease to them, lulling you into a kind of comfortable riff-induced hypnosis. It’s not that “Wanderer” doesn’t rip — it does — it’s that it’s so finely tuned and paced that hard-hitting, big riffs and black metal rasps feel as natural and welcome as a late summer breeze or gently falling snow. The acoustic instrumentation and general folksy approach help there, to be sure, as do the clean from-the-mountaintop vocals that serve as paeans to the natural world and humanity’s experience of it. So does the production, which the liner notes point out was done on vintage analog equipment. But the Flight of Sleipnir doesn’t just play folky metal. They have a masterful flair for the epic and dramatic, and lead guitar lines that by turns carry the melody or drop in for quick melodic flourishes impart timeless, sky-bound drama. It also holds a sense of fate to it all, and with melodies that worm their way into the heart and mind, it won’t fade from memory anytime soon. [From Nature’s Cadence, out 9/27 via Eisenwald.] –Wyatt Marshall

4. Emasculator – “In Resplendent Terror”

Location: Prague, Czechia / United States
Subgenre: brutal death metal

“In Resplendent Terror,” the first single from Emasculator’s debut EP, The Disfigured and the Divine, digs into the myths and stories that continue to reverberate today, the ones that feel as though they’re woven into our DNA and helped forge the cultures around us.

“‘In Resplendent Terror’ is from the perspective of ancient Mesopotamian goddess Inanna (also known as Ishtar),” vocalist Mallika Sundaramurthy writes in an email. “She starts by boasting of her power and her many victories. She is the most powerful deity, above all the gods. She is beloved by her people and feared by those who dare to cross her. She describes in detail how she lays waste to her enemies. I found it interesting while researching her that despite her great power and many victories, she still has much in common with mortal women.”

Sundaramurthy goes on to summarize Inanna and Sukaletuda, the nearly 4,000-year-old myth of the goddess and the gardener who raped her.

She was tired after traveling from heaven and she fell asleep under a tree. The gardener Shukaletuda found her sleeping and raped her, then ran away and hid in a populated city. When she woke up, she was furious and vowed not to stop until she could find and punish him. She sends three plagues to root him out. She fills the wells with blood so no one may drink; she sends storms and floods. Finally, she appeals to her father, the god Enki, who helps her turn into a rainbow. She travels into the sky and finds her attacker hiding in the mountains. There, she enacts divine justice, as she is known for. She knows his death will be an easy end, and that is a given. The worst punishment she will give is that she will make him immortal in shame; that he will be remembered forever as a coward and rapist, and the story told by poets and singers down through the centuries. Here we are today, thousands of years later, sharing it. The story is cathartic for women who have been abused by men. I myself have survived an abusive relationship. Women were never the ones to be blamed. You can be a beautiful and powerful goddess and still be defiled. All rapists at the heart are cowards.

The Disfigured and the Divine isn’t just about Inanna, though, as evidenced by the album cover, which Sundaramurthy painted, depicting the Hindu goddess Chhinnamasta. “Each new song centers around a different goddess and her mythology, mostly Hindu goddesses,” Sundaramurthy explains. “I relate them to my own life experiences and emotions. In them, I found power and inspiration, and I am passing that forward through our music.”

Emasculator’s music is similarly powerful. The brutal death metal quartet caught the ear of the venerable and scene-shaping label New Standard Elite for good reason. The Disfigured and the Divine finds the right balance between brutality, memorability, and instrumental ability, delivering an energetically potent pummeling. Sundaramurthy unleashes a robust arsenal of roars. Guitarists Teresa Wallace and Morgehenna rip through nimbly technical riffs that quickly transform into seismic chugs. And then there’s the outfit’s newest member, drummer Cierra White.

“We had been working with a drummer in the early days of the band but she was unable to commit due to personal reasons,” Sundaramurthy remembers. “We released our first promo, Depraved Disfigurement, with programmed drums, but we always envisioned finding the perfect drummer to complete the lineup. It was by chance we came across Cierra’s videos on Instagram. We wrote her out of the blue and luckily for us she was interested in collaborating! The difference in the writing process is now we are able to write with input from a drummer, which only makes the songs better, and the writing process more natural.”

White gives Emasculator a fluidity and natural quality over the programmed drums of the past. Thus, The Disfigured and the Divine sounds more human, unlocking that classic death metal rise-and-fall where speedy blasts give way to churning riffs and big, thudding slowdowns. Indeed, like all good extreme music, the EP showcases Emasculator’s adeptness at pairing kineticism and connectivity, maintaining a sense of unstoppable propulsion while painstakingly sewing segues together. So, what did it take to get these tracks into shape?

“We all live at a distance from each other, and we communicate online,” Sundaramurthy writes. “We decided that the easiest way to go about writing songs was to work on one song at a time. Guitars came first with riff ideas, selecting only the best ideas and reworking them as needed. Then we arranged the guitars with drums while giving feedback back and forth. Lyrics were being written throughout that process and once the instruments were arranged, I reworked the lyrics to fit and came up with the vocal patterns. Then we continued to polish the tracks until we were all 100 percent satisfied.”

That’s the other impressive thing about Emasculator, how it can juggle the riff logistics of musicians who are spread across the map. Clearly, the four-piece has overcome those obstacles, gearing up to debut as a live unit at Texas Domination Fest in September and nabbing a slot at the Nice to Eat You Festival in the Czech Republic next year. But, of course, no matter the miles between members, it always had to be this way for Emasculator. After all, searching the globe for the few fellow brutal travelers is all part of the death metal experience.

“Brutal death metal is the subgenre of an already very underground genre of music,” Sundaramurthy notes. “Since there are so few musicians making this type of music, it’s natural that we reach out to find like-minded collaborators. We are connected by great passion and love for this often misunderstood style of music. It’s beyond boundaries and languages; it’s universal.” It makes sense, then, that universality would be such an excellent vector for exploring the stories and myths at the heart of our humanity. [From The Disfigured and the Divine, out 9/25 via New Standard Elite.] –Ian Chainey

3. Sturmwächter – “Dunkles Geleit”

Location: Vienna, Austria
Subgenre: black metal

Erech Leleth, who features in the intro above, is the singular force behind Ancient Mastery, Bergfried, Summer Haze ‘99, and many more. His projects, which range from synthy epic black metal to romantic medieval rock to post-hardcore spliced with lounge jazz — and everything in between — reflect a restless creative drive that pulls in many different directions. But unlike most everyone who lets inspirations wither, Leleth takes those drives and channels them into album after album of stunning, high-polish metal that sounds like nothing else out there. A good bit of his work has found a home on Fiadh Productions, the antifascist black metal label with a big heart that has a knack for unearthing the kind of magic Leleth creates, and his medieval rock project Bergfried just signed to High Roller Records. 

The latest in Leleth’s stable is Sturmwächter, a rawish black metal entity on the surface that quickly reveals layers of rich melodies that pull from a medieval-ish palette. (The tendency towards melodies and instrumentation that might make you think of a castle or pitched battle is a recurring, but far from defining, quality in Leleth’s oeuvre.) “Dunkles Geleit” follows a slow to mid-tempo gait, laying down a regal and militant procession cloaked in melancholy. Ambient passages featuring racing horse hooves and hooting owls add to growing feelings of atmospheric dread. Across its eight minutes, you’ll hit many emotions — ”Dunkles Geleit” is wistful, heroic, and haunting in equal measure. And it’s pure Leleth, a melodic masterpiece that calls to another, perhaps imagined, era, is shrouded in mystery, and pulls the heartstrings. [From Klagelieder, out now via the band.] –Wyatt Marshall

2. Concrete Winds – “Infernal Repeater”

Location: Helsinki, Finland
Subgenre: death metal

“Infernal Repeater” is another step in Concrete Winds’s five-year plan to inflict “aggressive noise torment” upon listeners, a phrase the Finnish death metal duo, M (drums) and PJ (guitars, vocals), etched into its Google and Facebook user name in case you thought they weren’t committed to living that life. That three-word neutron bomb is also how the duo described its guiding principle in an interview with Terozin that was reprinted in Voices From the Darkside, a convo that likewise provided insight into the band’s progression following the split of its forebear Vorum, from which Concrete Winds derived its name (“On naked shores/ By concrete winds deformed” goes the couplet in Vorum’s “Current Mouth,” whatever any of that means). Check this quote out: “We’ve always strived to make faster, harsher, more chaotic noise torment, so it’s a natural progression, really,” the tinnitus terrorists said, leaning into the torment angle harder than a Cenobite back from vacation. And a 2021 Q&A with Invisible Oranges bestowed upon us this bon mot concerning Concrete Winds’s potential earworminess:

We are never actively concerned about making songs either stand out or stick in the head, mainly the objective is one of ear canal destruction, discomfort and to aggravate the listener. If this is the result however of course it is welcome. Even more if it leaves the consumer with a bitter aftertaste and claustrophobic disgust.

Perhaps you’ve noticed a theme. Concrete Winds’s third album, a self-titled nearfecta that might as well be the band’s ultimate statement of purpose, emphasizes and prioritizes its other oft-mentioned tagline, the “maelstrom of annihilation.” Over a fleet 25 minutes, M and PJ, with a solos assist from former Obscure Burial riffer and frequent live show filler outer Mika Heinonen, create a cacophony of metallic eardrum endangerment. It’s a hurricane of needles. It’s diving into a lemon juice sea after the beaching of a ship with an expansive cheese grater cargo. It’s listening to the Necrovore demo on 2x speed while someone squeezes your head in a vice. And if you’ve earned your sicko heavy metal stripes, that oddly hypnotic pummeling, which fully pays off the Concrete Winds’s song title “Hell Trance,” feels incredible.

And thus, here we are again, back to “Infernal Repeater,” another fitting title for Concrete Winds’s incessant desire to wage an all-out onslaught. Nestled into Concrete Winds‘s four-hole and batting behind a couple sub-two-minute speedsters, “Infernal Repeater” opens with PJ’s phlegm-flinging roar. Before you can even appreciate the stridency of that scream, Concrete Winds is off and blasting, blazing through several cyclonically circular sections that are like 20 Slayer stuck grooves playing simultaneously. Enter churning chugs that give the track something of a dynamic tempo in the same way that being thrown out a window during a car crash and then getting run over by another car might be a dynamic experience. Enter the solos, the epitome of steel-melting shred. They sound like having a panic attack over a panic attack. And then, the song is over. A brief outro of static sets up “Subterranean Persuasion”‘s pounding industrial-y intro before you get to do it all again.

While Concrete Winds might lavish listeners with absolute agony, the same evil eagerness to sow suffering that beats the hearts health insurance companies, the album sounds great, sporting the band’s best production. Lawrence Mackrory, the UK producer that beefed up Baest, is responsible for turning the knobs away from extreme treble terror. One might think that would negatively impact Concrete Winds’s propensity for misery, but it turns out a heavy thump does just as much, if not more, damage.

And that’s kind of the thing. Other styles might tout the pleasantness of their tunes; I don’t think Lacuna Coil is ever like, “Alright, idiots. Get ready to be annoyed whenever you hear the clink of a fork against a dish tomorrow.” On this side of metal, though, an unforgiving wasteland littered with the bones of weaklings, it’s all about the masochistic pursuit of punishment. Concrete Winds doles that punishment out, flaying the faithful with barbed wire whips of riffs, screams, and blasts. It’s the heavy metal equivalent of a runner’s high, the self-inflicted hell of chasing that next serotonin dump. You feel bad to feel good, one of life’s enduring ironies. So, once the body is broken and the spirit is squished, euphoria floods the brain. You might even ask your inflictors what strange suffering causes this beguiling sensation born out of complete and total brutalization. “Aggressive noise torment,” they answer before wanging your stupid face off with a whammy bar solo. [From Concrete Winds, out now via Sepulchral Voice Records.] –Ian Chainey

1. Sadness – “Damzamkeit”

Location: Texas, USA
Subgenre: atmospheric black metal

Like Mesarthim, the works of Damián Antón Ojeda have graced this column many, many times over the years — I’d venture he’s landed here more than any other individual. In Sadness, he paints pink-hued euphoric and cathartic blackgaze with a genre-defining brightness and buoyancy. In Trhä, he creates ripping, unusual, and grandly melodic lo-fi, arcane black metal. Across his literal dozens of projects, he traverses varied, captivating emotional metal landscapes and produces work at a nearly unbelievable clip. This month saw two releases from Trhä and three from Sadness. And they’re all amazing. You can see why he pops up in these parts so regularly, and it presents a certain conundrum — which Ojeda release should we be writing about? It’s always a toss-up. 

The new Trhä releases are incredible — dark, unusual, and spellbinding shredders that must be heard; start with ∫um’ad​∂​ejja cavvaj. But Sadness gets the listing this month, partly because the three releases represent a new chapter for the prolific project — one set in the giddy highs of love. The cover of the three new releases — i want to make something as beautiful as you, your perfect hands and my repeated words,  and the most beautiful girl in the world — is an edited, faded photograph of the woman that’s at the center of the trilogy. The 10 songs they contain are sonic manifestations of the rush of love, sounding like mantras or hymns that then find searing, soaring, ever-cresting crescendos that fly above clouds. It’s gorgeous stuff, and “Damzamkeit” is one of many highlights, a beating heart work of wonder that constructs walls out of resplendent guitars and exuberant shouts that shimmer in the sun and come crashing down. [From i want to make something as beautiful as you, out now via the band.] –Wyatt Marshall

HYMNS OF BLASPHEMOUS IRREVERENCE