terraasymmetry Features

SYNCHRONY: Music News, Week in Review & Upcoming (8/16/2019)

SYNCHRONY is a weekly feature focusing on relevant heavy music news, new releases, upcoming releases, as well as a week in review to help folks keep up with all of the content on GrizzlyButts. This’ll also include a list of upcoming releases and some preliminary notes on upcoming reviews or coverage. Some Seattle, Washington area live shows will be intermittently featured. If you have New Releases, show announcements, or important heavy music news that’ll be relevant or interesting to folks contact me at: grizzlybutts@hotmail.com Priority to PR/label submissions and straight up if I can’t hear it, I won’t cover it.

THIS WEEK IN NEWS

  • Mexican thrashers STRIKE MASTER return with the first single from their upcoming EP ‘Death Based Illusions’. “Strong As Hell” builds on the foundation of their self-titled 2017 full-length with their brand of swinging, sinister thrash. They’re planning on releasing a video with each single from the album so check out their YouTube and keep an eye out for their EP in November. Watch “Strong As Hell” here: [Click/Tap HERE for more info]
  • Greek old school death metal band ECTOPLASMA have completed their third full-length (and second for underground deathgods Memento Mori) and it’ll be in your hands on October 31st. ‘White-Eyed Trance’ sounds filthy and thrashing as ever and even features “Souls of Sacrifice” a cover from Devastation’s killer ‘Idolatry’ record. Vinyl version will be on Repulsive Echo Records, primary issue on Memento Mori. ‘Cavern of Foul Unbeings’ (2018) was pretty underrated last year so here’s hoping more folks jump on this band later this year. From what I’ve read the focus is on ‘death metal songwriting’ this time around so, keep an ear out for standout moments. Check out the first preview track on YouTube “Psychomanteum Immolation”: [Click/Tap HERE for more info]
  • Olympia, Washington death/doom metal band MORTIFERUM have risen from the moss and the soil unto bubbling decay for their debut full-length, ‘Disgorged From Psychotic Depths’, which finds them on Profound Lore Records. If you don’t know this band, think along the lines of Spectral Voice and/or Gorement — something Finnish death inspired but also barbaric in spirit, and you’ll likewise see why I’m hyped for this. Buy the album on October 11th and hey, for now check out the goddamn maniac groove of the opening track (those last two minutes!!) “Archaic Vision of Despair” over on YouTube: [Click/Tap HERE for more info]
  • You hear the drums of war marching their apocalyptic storm in the distance and as they approach your mind spirals into chaotic fear, the end is coming and the hand that’d strike the drums of the end is that of NIGHTFALL. The second single from this thunder mountain of a record, “No Life Leaves Here”, is a hundred pounds of quick-dry cement upon your tomb. You will never rise from its permanent suffocation. ‘A Sanity Deranged’ releases September 13th on 20 Buck Spin and oh, unholy Hell I cannot wait for its full power. Listen to the opening track here: [Click/Tap HERE for more info]
  • Chilean brutal thrashers RIPPER are back with a new EP for the venerable and always thrashing Unspeakable Axe Records and hey, this one offers a new sound. ‘Sensory Stagnation’ has this incredible fretless bass presence that should immediately conjure comparisons to Atheist’s ‘Unquestionable Presence’ and Sadus’ more progressive years (beyond their debut). Ripper are still thrashing madness always on the verge of pure death/thrash but this time with a bounding 90’s progressive extreme metal sound that I’m a thousand percent on board with. Vinyl version will be on Dark Descent, all other formats from Unspeakable Axe and it’ll all be out on September 30th. Check out the major vibe of “The Unreal” on YouTube: [Click/Tap HERE for more info]
  • Blasting death-thrashers MORTUARY have been a staple in the French death metal scene since 1989 and on November 8th, 2019 they’ll release a sixth full-length entitled ‘The Autophagous Reign’ on XenoKorp Records. No previews yet but expect something brutal because they’ve recorded, mixed and mastered it all at the infamous Hertz Studios in Poland. Check their Facebook page for updates in the meantime: [Click/Tap HERE for more info]
  • Joel Grind‘s thrash revivalist crew TOXIC HOLOCAUST have announced their latest album, ‘Primal Future: 2019’, will arrive on October 4th through Entertainment One. What to expect? Well, Grind is doing everything himself this time around besides the artwork so you’re gonna hear that old The Exploited meets Venom feeling of the older records. The first single they’ve released “Chemical Warlords” straight up sounds like an old Running Wild song circa ’84-’85 so, I’m way optimistic about where this record is coming from. Check out the song here: [Click/Tap HERE for more info]
  • Gore metal’s bloodiest clot EXHUMED have announced their latest full-length, ‘Horror’ will release November 4th on Relapse Records. Sounds like Exhumed, thrashing stuff, drum sound is a little bit compressed but doesn’t hurt the experience. Should remind folks of their ‘Slaughtercult’ days just less ‘loud’ in terms of production. Will wait for the full thing to see how it all sorts out. There is a great limited boxed set for the record that sounds amazing: [Click/Tap HERE for more info]
  • You won’t hear the full thing until 2020 but to celebrate their signing to The Artisan Era new details and a single from Riverside, California technical-brutal death metal band ARKAIK have arrived. The single “Supernal Flame” is available on Bandcamp, pretty intense stuff with ultra-colorful album artwork. Definitely the right home for the band and a pretty good song. Check it out for yourself: [Click/Tap HERE for more info]
  • Born of hallucinations of rot and decay, a lust for the stench drives BLOOMING CARRIONS, a primitive blackened death metal artist from Finland who prepares their November 28th debut, ‘Sisters in Blooming Flesh’, for release through Iron Bonehead Productions. The preview track they’ve put up on SoundCloud is hypnotic, intended as an intense seduction by way of rhythmic eddy and warm burliness. “Sisters in Blooming Flesh” is gorgeously atmospheric and worth adding to your mountain of ‘to try’ list for the coming end of this horrendous year: [Click/Tap HERE for more info]
  • Swiss thrashers ALGEBRA have returned with a third full-length, ‘Pulse?’, their second for Unspeakable Axe Records who’ve posted the title track for preview on YouTube. Though they’re a shred-worthy and technical group I’d say you’re better off looking to late 80’s German thrashers like Deathrow and Despair (or ‘Extraction from Mortality’-era Believer) when approaching ‘Pulse?’, which is stacked with riffs and the attention to detail you’ve come to expect from their releases. This preview track is a bit frantic, but sounds like a reasonable progression beyond the previous record. Listen to the title track for yourself and watch for the release of ‘Pulse?’ on September 30th: [Click/Tap HERE for more info]
  • What do you know of the Danish black metal scene? Scour the last three decades for classics and those choices will be personal and deeply underground at the very least. Here we are treated to a reinvigorating hallucination by way of Amor Fati Productions with the announcement of the September 2nd re-release of MUZPELLZHEIMER‘s ‘Raukn’. Originally self-released in 2018, it is the band’s third album and a point of great maturation for the project. : [Click/Tap HERE for more info]
  • Seven years and a thousand deaths separate Australian dissonant death masters IGNIVOMOUS from their second album ‘Contragenesis’ and the announcement from Nuclear War Now! Productions that November 15th will see release of their third, ‘Hieroglossia’. The press release indicates influences from pessimistic philosophy citing Ligotti, Gnostics, and Cioran which is far up my own alley. Though I found their prior album somewhat shapeless at times, I’m looking forward to this one based on the clip they’ve released — A cacophonous spell of torment awaits with the abrupt spine-scouring “Thalassophobia” on Bandcamp: [Click/Tap HERE for more info]
  • Iron Bonehead Productions has set November 28th as the release date for the latest mini-LP from Greek black/death metal act DISHARMONY. ‘Messe de Minuit’ was released on cassette last year specifically for the first inaugural Never Surrender Fest. The release has been expanded here and finally finds its way onto CD and 12″ LP formats. Not sure what this band is all about? Think of ancient Greek black metal and you’re there, otherwise listen to the incredible lumbering grace of “Corpus Christi” and exercise your own free will: [Click/Tap HERE for more info]
  • There is blood in the crystalline waters of Greece and VULTUR have fallen prey to Memento Mori‘s capture and release of ‘Drowned in Gangrenous Blood’ this October 31st. This is their second album and I guess I’d missed their debut on Sevared Records in 2018 but here we have a sort of slightly more brutal counterpart for Ectoplasma, with whom they share members. Here’s hoping we get another Resurgency record soon, too. Check out how primitive and deadly “Groans of Excruciating Torture” is on YouTube: [Click/Tap HERE for more info]
  • HYPE ALBUMS AT PRESS THIS WEEK FROM: Warish, Darkened, Nightfell, Graveyard, Ignivomous, V, Algebra, Muspellzheimer, Drugs of Faith, Screamer, Netherbird, Creeping Death, Ether Feather, Aegrus, Ripper, Dead Neanderthals, Morast, Mefitis, and several more. Look for coverage in the near future. Don’t see your album listed? Send it to me!

GRIZZLY BUTTS‘ WEEK IN REVIEW (8/10/19 – 8/16/19)

WEEKLY FEATURES:

  • Ten From the Tomb 8/12/19: Howl for the whip that no longer cracks.
    • This week I chose to cover a bunch of crust punk related records from 2019 that I felt were overlooked or that I wanted to write about but never got around to a full review.
    • Must hear: Victims, Hive, Friendship, Swordwielder.
    • Next week’s theme will be ‘out of the ordinary’ doom & sludge!
  • Thrash ‘Til Death #33: Morbid Saint (United States) 1984-1994
    • Morbid Saint are like a really fancy loaf of white bread that’d already collected a hint of mold by the time it was ready for sandwiches. Although they’ve been resurrected and touted the Wisconsin fellows that started this band have been revered for decades thanks to their association with Death. I never found them worthy of such hype but ‘Spectrum of Death’ and ‘Destruction System’ are two of the better demos that became albums from the late 80’s death/thrash underground in North America.
    • Next week (8/20) will feature a look at one of my all time favorite bands death/thrashers Insanity from 1985-1994.
  • The Messenger (2019) REVIEW
    • I don’t do video game reviews regularly anymore but when a game strikes up enough thought or just good times I find that writing about it can help clarify its place in my own personal collection. In the case of The Messenger I’d say this is one of the better ‘retro’ aimed concepts and whole packages of the last 3-4 years. There was a good two months this year were I pretty much couldn’t stick with any game and it looks like this and Bloodstained have gotten me back in the swing of it.

REVIEWS: The big releases this week were Cerebral Rot, Bastard Grave, and Here Lies Man for my own tastes. Good thoughts on Reign in Blood, Shock Narcotic, and Devourment but still finalizing any ideas I have for coverage. If you’re into hardcore punk’s mutant forms maybe check out Lifetime Shitlist‘s record as well. If you’re more into the Revocation side of ‘thrash’ than I am, check out Anticosm who’ve put out a memorable debut today as well. Behind on reviews in general and will catch up on August once I’ve sorted out the next two weeks of releases. Big death metal records coming at the end of the month but also some black metal and stoner stuff you don’t want to miss. Next month all of the ‘end of year’ stuff starts to come into view, so get ready for tons more releases.

UPCOMING SHOWS: [That I’ll likely attend]

  • DARSOMBRA 9/04/2019 Cryptatropa – Olympia, WA
  • ACID KING w/Wizard Rifle, Warish 9/21/19 @ Highline – Seattle, WA
  • VOIVOD & REVOCATION w/Skeletal Remains 9/25/19 @ El Corazon – Seattle, WA
  • ELIMINATOR FEST 2019 w/Deceased, Morbid Saint, Witch Vomit, R.I.P. & more 9/27/19 @ El Corazon – Seattle, WA
  • HIGH ON FIRE, Power Trip, Devil Master & Creeping Death – 12/02/2019 @ Neumos – Seattle, WA

RELEASED/OVERLOOKED THIS WEEK (8/10/19 – 8/16/19)

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NOTE: This small sample includes overlooked releases that are not yet reviewed or covered but are recommended. Some of these will still be featured in other coverage. An asterisk (*) indicates that a review is drafted or in preparation. Click/Tap on RECORD LABEL name for preview, stream, or store.

UPCOMING RELEASES (8/17/19 – 8/23/19)

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NOTE: This is not a comprehensive list, some titles are already reviewed and/or covered and some have yet to enter the final queue for consideration and processing. An asterisk (*) indicates that a review is drafted or in preparation. Click/Tap on RECORD LABEL name for preview, stream, or store.

Did I miss something important this week? Send me an e-mail and tell me about it. It is always worthwhile to speak up for the lesser known stuff. Please remember you can donate to help keep me in front of the computer writing about metal. Thanks.

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