Stream The Bitching New 7″ by NYC Old-Schoolers Shadowland

It’s easy to rewrite speed metal as all pizza parties and mushroom clouds, but New York’s Shadowland are an awesome reminder that the genre’s early incarnation used to have broad horizons, and usually sported a rad-as-fuck arcane side to it. The five-piece, featuring among their ranks genre illustrator Tanya Finder on vocals (whose work you might have seen on albums by bands like Malleus and Dead Hunt) and Saint Vitus Bar soundman Jeff Filmer on guitar, create music whose backbone of gallopping riffs is excellently colored by overtones of goth, death rock, and groove. The result is steepled, toothy heavy jams that’ll have fans of acts like Idle Hands and Magic Circle chomping at the bit.

While 2019’s The Watcher EP showed the band working towards a more cohesive sound, the two songs on their new Lost City 7″ show a massive leap forward for Shadowland. There’s no fat on these tracks, just tight, surging heavy metal that never loses its momentum. “Lamia” is packed with late-’70s black magic vibes that only sharpen the spikes on its speed-freak gauntlets, while “Lost City” stomps tirelessly and features Finder snapping through her vocals with a command she’s only been building up to in the past. Both tracks are goddamn difficult to not headbang to, and make on wish they were pulling on their fingerless gloves to ride a dirt bike to a desert show in 1981.

Strap it on and stream Shadowland’s Lost City 7″ below.