Abhorrent Manifestation is Ascended Dead‘s debut album, and it’s nasty! Their dissonant and fast-paced blackened death metal is sure to consume you inside out. Each of the ten tracks are relentless assaults on your senses, and they are so good! A resonant recommendation for this ugly album!
Nodwès‘ Anima is France’s newest take on progressive electronics, with a soul of ambidjent! The many breaks and different textures of this album makes it a very enjoyable and often surprising experience. For example, the 7/8 motif at the start of ‘Irrégulation’ and that follows through the song is very expressive without using a single word! A great EP that deviates slightly from the norm.
French retrowave band Jvne released their debut EP last October. シマン (Shiman) – which they probably meant to call ジユン (Jiyun) – is a remarkable throwback, with its pulsing synths and catchy hooks. The production of it is on levels we’d expect in today’s music, and the vintage sounds are of high quality and used well. A fantastic EP that hits hard with nostalgia and full of melodies stuck in your head!
The Russians behind Nonverbal Codes recently released their debut EP, 孤独死 (Kodokushi), which finally came to bandcamp. The four-tracker demonstrates quite a variety, with its very atmospheric opener, ‘The Key’, to the powerviolence-meets-djent of ‘Spatial’ and ‘Dried Ink Drawing’, to the ten-minute ‘The Trail’, which explores the sludgier side of the band’s music. Though less than fifteen minutes long, the EP has a lot to say, and it says it well! Check it out!
Entheos‘s sophomore release, Le Zahir, has some pretty deep shoes to fill, as a successor to 2015’s debut Ototeman. As a compromise between post and progressive black metal, this album is emotionally potent and is far from straightforward in its delivery and structure, both things that make it really enjoyable and valuable on repeated listens. Give this album, available for voluntary contribution, a shot, you won’t regret it!
Germany’s progressive black metal band Klabautamann will release their fifth full-length album, Smaragd, on June second. Unfortunately, there is no stream available yet. The album has an incredible range of dynamics, going from contemplative and emotional progressive rock to downright brutal black metal phases. This diversity is well exploited and supports the songs in their flow and narrative. Truly, an album to be on the lookout for!
We Are Legion, by Dorian Wallace is an experimental chamber music piece and choreography by the group Tenth Intervention, based on the hacktivist collective Anonymous. The setting is very interesting: everybody – musicians, dancers and spectators alike – wears the famous Guy Fawkes mask and is sat without distinctions; everyone is equal, anonymous. The compositions themselves are also very interesting, using various contemporary compositional methods like serialism and atonalism to give various feelings of uneasiness. It’s a very good piece to listen to, but it must be something else to witness it!
Upgrade is French melodic progressive metal band Alpha Brutal‘s newest release. Their 2015 self-titled EP was pretty awesome, mixing chiptunes seamlessly into the genre’s sound, but they take things to another level (upgrade), here! While Alpha Brutal was mostly instrumental, Upgrade welcomes singer-keyboardist Aude Brisson as lead singer. The general mood of their compositions is uplifting and somewhat pop-ish. It’s very melodic and full of odd time signatures, just how we like it! Good job!
Released last year, Gnarwolf‘s Abandon EP is an interesting hardcore release. The four songs tell two tales, one of which has to do with Robert Oppenheimer’s famous – and somewhat overused – quote ‘Now I am Become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds’, taken from the Bhagavad Gita. The band definitely knows their stuff; the songs evolve in interesting structures and their riffs hit hard! They will soon release their second album, so I’m quite excited to hear that!