Necrolust: Valentine’s Day Edition
I love Valentine’s Day, and I love metal, and I love most of you, so instead of roses, I’ve gone the nontraditional route and gotten you something original: a bunch of horrendous nihilistic noise! Who said romance is dead?
NIGHTFELL
This band (not to be confused with Philly punx Nightfall) is jaw-droppingly good. Despite my general exuberance for loud, ugly stuff, it’s hard to impress me the way this Portland duo have. The Living Ever Mourn seems to be their debut release (due out on LP/tape by the always prescient Parasitic Records), and as my other half would say, is f’kin’ mint. Nightfall is inherently melodic death metal, balanced by a perfectly crusty guitar tone, midtempo churn, and dusty atmosphere, and as strange as it may sound, reminds me of a mix of Autopsy and Nux Vomica. Do not sleep on this band!
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INNSMOUTH
More melodic death metal, with a big fat emphasis on the “death.” Think Sacriphyx, not Gothenburg. Innsmouth are Australian (which immediately helps explain the high quality of their output) and have just released their debut full-length Consumed by Elder Sign via Abysmal Sounds. A little bit of black, a little bit of doom, a couple punky d-beats, and a whole lot of old-school death combine to create one dangerously addictive strain of extreme metal excellence.
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SHACKLES FOR THE CROWN
My friend Adam from UK label Exitium Productions and various bands he’d get mad at me for mentioning turned me on to Shackles for the Crown, and I definitely owe him a few pints for it. There’s fuckall information about them out there, but the music speaks for itself. From what I can gather, Shackles for the Crown is a one-man project based in the Netherlands, and joins countrymen Urfaust and Nihill in pushing the black metal envelope right over the edge. This 2013 demo is ominous, claustrophobic, and depressive, with flashes of mad brilliance. You can tell homeboy owns a few Deathspell Omega records and old USBM CDs, but then again, who doesn’t?
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GREY WIDOW
This UK collective floated into my consciousness thanks to Twitter of all things; they followed me, I found them on Bandcamp, and here we are. I’m dead glad they did, too, as Grey Widow heave up exactly the kind of black cancerous sludge I love so dearly. A lot of bands like to claim to be “nihilistic” (at least it’s an ethos), but these lot really fucking sell it. The band only formed in April 2013, but their debut recording ‘I’ is admirably well-executed and crushingly heavy in that caustic, feedback-drenched, utterly lightless sort of way. Fucking miserable.
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