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New Seamount music!

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Phil Swanson lent his fine pipes to two fine doom albums this year: Hour of 13’s The Ritualist and Briton Rites’ For Mircalla. Both are in the traditional melodic style; Hour of 13 has more atmosphere, while Briton Rites has more riffs. You can hear samples from both below.

[audio: HOUROF13_NAKEDSTAR.mp3]
[audio: BRITONRITES_THERIGHTHAND.mp3]

The End is taking orders for the Hour of 13 CD; All That Is Heavy has the gatefold import LP on colored vinyl. Relapse and Dark Descent have the Briton Rites album on CD. Hour of 13 will make their live debut September 18 in Dublin. (Full details here.) Their live lineup will include members of Nightbitch, whose demo some of you liked, and which is still available for free download here.

What has me really excited, though, is the news that Seamount, Swanson’s collaboration with some German doomsters, has nearly finished its new record, Sacrifice:III. (Full details here.) 2008’s ntodrm (discussed here) was easily one of the best doom albums of the past five years. (The free download link in the post no longer works, but the album is probably still floating around the Internet.) It was everything metal should be – heavy, memorable, soul-stirring. Unfortunately, follow-up album Light II Truth was a dud, going more stoner and less epic.

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[myspace]http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=105870043[/myspace]

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But I believe in redemption, at least in metal, and the video trailer above for Sacrifice:III indicates possible redemption for Seamount.  These old-schoolers probably aren’t hip to newfangled technology, so their trailer is no cinematic masterpiece. Skip the opening 52 seconds of low drones to sample bits from the new record. Promising, no? And that Boris Vallejo artwork up top is killer. No release date has been set yet.

— Cosmo Lee