The most interesting releases of the week!
What a horripil name for an album, and the music is top notch. Horripilating Presence is Void Witch‘s debut release, brought to life by Everlasting Spew Records. This death/doom release will, in fact, make the hairs on your skin stand on end. For people who wish that Worm sounded grittier, or that Hooded Menace sounded slower and sleazier, Void Witch are the band for you.
The production on Horripilating Presence makes this release sound even more guitar-focused than most metal somehow. The buzzy tone of the guitars sounds fantastic, so this works out great. The band’s riffs contain some nice, out-of-place arpeggiating, and the solos are frayed around the edges in the exact way you want from a sound like this. The dark, deep vocals match the rest of the sound, the bass rumbles menacingly and creates a nice contrast between the more empty and more hectic passages, and the drums thump along with a more relaxed and swingy approach to death metal than I’m used to. All in all, Void Witch have made a jagged, heavy, and excellently performed album, and it’s the best release of the week.
Age Of Unreason starts with a slow build featuring some spooky vocals and a tom-drum-based beat. ColdCell‘s fifth full-length, released on AOP Records, is a dark and depressing black metal affair. The riffs feature plenty of dissonance, not to create anything weird or avant-garde but because that’s the sonic space that matches the band’s lyrics the best. The songs on Age Of Unreason last for quite a while, moreso because that listener needs this much time to get lost in their feelings than for any other reason.
ColdCell do an excellent job with the quiet moments. Sure, when they go all out and scream over blast beats and tremolos they sound admirable, but many bands can do that. When the music quiets down to conflicting guitar lines with a soft drum beat, though, ColdCell prove that they can evoke powerful and interesting feelings with sparse instrumentation and slow-moving notes. This makes their crescendos even more powerful. Age Of Unreason won’t be for everyone, but anyone who feels like brooding in a dark room while plotting for revenge against the world that’s wronged them will find this music to be a worthwhile soundtrack.
Smog is the latest EP from suffocating death/doom band Absorb, released on Hypaethral Records. This band’s music is thick and feels slow even when they pick up the pace. Smog is only 25 minutes long, but you’ll feel exhausted by the end. This sounds like the energetic portions of a funeral doom album mixed with a zonked out sludge band playing in a dive bar with a band sound system in front a crowd that’s too tired to mosh but trying to anyways.
Absorb‘s riffs are slow. The upsize of this songwriting approach is that they get to stretch out the tone of their instruments to an absurd degree. When the vocals scream out in front of the riffs, you stop experiencing the guitars as a melodic instrument and just feel the crunchy pulse. In general, melodies on Smog take a backseat to building an overwhelming mountain of sound. Absorb pull this off while shifting tone and rhythm around just enough to remain interesting. As an EP, this is short enough to check out even if you’d usually avoid music of this style.
