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June Gloom hits Southern California every year like a smothering curtain, bumming out millions of people until summer finally arrives and we can all go surfing, or sunbathing, or whatever it is people like to do in the summer. Call me crazy: I prefer the grey. Grab yourself a few of these new releases and carve out your own little slice of gloom.
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SHOULD RULE HARD
Candlemass are . . . done?! According to the band—and I never trust these announcements (see: Ministry)—Psalms of the Dead is the end of the line so the band can focus on “touring”. (I don’t trust them to tour either.) But the new album is classic doom done right—organs bleed into Sabbath riffs lending a welcome throwback charm to the record, and it is good. If these guys are truly done, they will be missed.
Billy Anderson gives Witch Mountain a proper filth-bath, scuzzing up the already scuzzy riffs and vocals, pushing into darker, rougher territory. Profound Lore continues its winning streak: we reap the fruits of their labor.
Confidence goes a long way in metal, and Ihsahn’s brimming with the stuff at this point. Eremita delves further into prog with even more horns and left-handed hooks. This style might be a hard sell from a lesser talent, but Ihsahn knows what he’s doing—and he’s only getting better.
Deathspell Omega has a new EP. The name of the lead single is “Abrasive Swirling Murk”—which is all I know, and all that needs to be said.
Candlemass – Psalms of the Dead (6/5) [Preorder]
Deathspell Omega – Drought EP (6/22) [Preorder]
Ihsahn – Eremita (6/19) [Preorder]
Witch Mountain – Cauldron of the Wild (6/19) [Preorder]
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Witch Mountain – “Beekeeper”
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Ihsahn – “The Paranoid”
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MIGHT RULE HARD
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Fans of eclectic black metal rejoice! (Fans of death metal: be sad.) Bosse-de-Nage dredge up ghosts of ’90s screamo on their Profound Lore debut while maintaining their mystique. Brume d’Automne share members with Forteresse and sound like it—all clattering hellfire and Quebecois indignation. Darkspace takes the emptiness of space as inspiration and sonic blueprint—featuring Wroth/Wintherr of Paysage d’Hiver, the new EP is a re-recorded demo—judging by their last three albums, it looks promising. Where Dødkvlt storm through angular black metal with occasional clean breaks (and kick ass at it), Skagos flip the ratio—they bookend the single-track of their Anarchic EP with a lengthy stretch of clean singing and atmospheric pulse—both are strange, both are strong. And Gnaw Their Tongues continues to excoriate with mindfucking noise with his latest archival release, an unreleased album from 2009 available on Bandcamp for $2. Do it.
Blast from the past! The original Hydra Head supergroup resurfaces from nowhere—Isis, Cave In, and Converge dudes reconvene to blow the dust off the ape-obsessed/noise-worshipping collective known as Old Man Gloom. In the old days music journalists described them as “experimental hardcore”; nowadays we call it sludge. The old stuff was ahead of its time and the new stuff still feels new. Neat trick, that.
I’m not as versed on latter-day Rush as I could be (should be?), but the new single sounds really well done. It’s very . . . Rush-y. Rush-ian? I’m guessing you either find that impossibly exciting or you already stopped reading once I mentioned Rush.
Bosse-de-Nage – III (6/26) [Preorder]
Brume d’Automne – Brume d’Automne (6/12) [Info/Streaming Trailer]
Darkspace – Dark Space -1 (6/6) [Preorder]
Dødkvlt – III: Domîni Ascensionem (6/6) [Preorder/Info]
Gnaw Their Tongues – Eschatological Scatology (6/6) [Buy now/Stream]
Gojira – L’Enfant Sauvage (6/26) [Preorder]
Kreator – Phantom Antichrist (6/5) [Preorder]
Marduk – Serpent Sermon (6/5) [Preorder]
Merrimack – The Acausal Mass (6/22) [Preorder]
Old Man Gloom – NO (6/26) [Preorder]
Rush – Clockwork Angels (6/12) [Preorder]
Skagos – Anarchic EP (6/21) [Buy now/Stream]
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Dødkvlt – “Abysmal Mausoleum”
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Old Man Gloom – “To Carry the Flame”
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Rush – “Headlong Flight”
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SWEET REISSUES
You might notice there’s no new death metal in this list. You might be depressed about it. I say unto you: Look to the past to fill the void in your heart. Gorefest reissue their second and third albums in a single 2-disc set—both are minor classics of Euro death, well worth owning. False is stronger overall with killer harmonized leads spicing up definitive mid-tempo Dutch death metal; Erase is weirder, with slower songs fixated on Prong-like grooves set to ultra-dry production.
Wormed are legendary in brutal tech-death circles (imagine the sweatpants-to-cargo-shorts ratio in those circles—eesh!) for their sole full-length, 2003’s Planisphaerium. It’s hard to listen to, but that’s the point—it’s alien and unrelenting to the extreme.
Fainter hearts (like mine) will dig the Morbid Saint reissue, which sits on the fence between thrash and ’80s death. Back in the day, these guys were perennial openers for Death; their reunion set at MDF a few days ago was supposed to be incredible—general rippingness abounds on the album, here’s hoping they grace us with a new one.
Speaking of Death: if you want to hear a bunch of kids inventing a genre as they go, check out the Mantas reissue to hear Chuck Schuldiner’s rough-but-pure beginnings in his pre-Death trio with Rick Rozz and Kam Lee.
Gorefest – False / Erase (6/5) [Preorder] (Note: The mp3 version is not remastered)
Mantas – Death by Metal (6/19) [Preorder]
Morbid Saint – Spectrum of Death (6/19) [Preorder]
Wormed – Planisphaerium (6/5) [Preorder]
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Gorefest – “False”
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Morbid Saint – “Lock Up Your Children”
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Header image by Funeral French.
very much looking forward to witch mountain, the track that streamed somewhere a few weeks ago was great.
but that’s about it for me this month, might pick up the gorefest reissue as i have somehow sold off my copies of both albums. even though erase was a bit weak, i want to urge “open minded” metalheads to check out gorefest’s next album “soul survivor”. very unique, very excellent.
Seems I had better check out Witch Mountain, I havent heard them yet (I really only listen to a handful of bands at a time), but I’m seeing them all over the place.
Probably most excited about the new Ihsahn. Further proof that I’m a nerd is the fact that I was happy to see Rush on this list. I don’t think I’ve listened to a new Rush album since _Roll the Bones_ (when I was in high school), but I caught them on their arena tour a while back, and they sounded great to me. I’d imagine they’re much more likely to put out something new worth listening to than, say, the reunited Van Halen.
Fuck yes Rush! That warms my heart. They’ve been on an upswing for the better part of a decade.
I got the Old Man Gloom album at their shows they just did. Sludge caked in with noisy hardcore. I don’t recall much ambient stuff at the moment. Interesting lyrics.
I only own the Christmas MCD so I don’t have a lot of other reference to their past catalogue.
I’m going to reifnorce the story that Morbid Saint absolutely slayed at MDF.
Good to see excitement over Witch Mountain. It is indeed excellent. Fans of that should also check out Castle – Blacklands (Ván). They’re a San Francisco band, but on a German label. It came out end of April, and is taking a while to get distributed in the U.S.
Also rules hard for sure:
Orcus Chylde (World In Sound) Jun 15
Hour Of 13 – 333 (Earache) Jun 5
I’m looking forward to:
Mammoth Mammoth – Volume III: Hell’s Likely (Mammoth Mammoth) Jun 1
SardoniS – II (Meteor City) Jun 26
Ahab – The Giant (Napalm) Jun 19
will check out that castle band. and YES for Hour Of 13, looking forward to that one too.
The new Ihsahn is going to be ace. After was my favorite of 2010 by far, and is probably one of my favorite albums of all time. I almost got excited after seeing Darkspace, but I’m baffled as to why they’d bother re-recording a demo album, when they intentionally make their albums impossibly lo-fi anyway. Oh well, hopefully this means they’ll get some new material out soon.
I got excited since the original demo sounds especially terrible, and the last record sounded (comparably) great. But we’ll see how it turns out.
So, what genre is Gojira if not death?
You could probably argue it 10 different ways, but I think of them as more progressive metal than anything else (progressive groove maybe?) Genre distinctions are in the eye of the beholder, methinks.
My observation was more, “Wow, there’s a lot of good black metal coming out, and not so much death metal.”
The Kreator and Candlemass albums are both great, looking forward to hearing Ihsahn and Deathspell Omega too. Rush is as Rush is, always enjoy a new album but quickly find myself going back to their pre 82 material.
Of the rest there…I really like the sound of Dødkvlt, that track rules.
Unless something has changed, I’m pretty sure the Skagos release is just the first half of their next album, put up on Bandcamp to fund a physical release of the whole thing.
Good to know. I hadn’t seen any details beyond its listing as an EP. But if the proceeds go towards making more music, all the better.
The album I’m most looking forward to in June is the new Manowar. And I don’t care what anyone thinks of me for saying so!!
The only sample I could find of that (at least as of several weeks ago), was of a collection of music journalists standing inside a mixing room listening to playback through the studio monitors. It probably sounded great in the room, but the mic on the camera did a piss-poor job of translating the epic wonder of Manowar to those of watching from afar. Pretty hilarious way to leak content to your fans.