Mining Metal: Abest, Christian Cosentino, Dawnwalker, Kraanerg, Liminal Shroud, Morbid Evils, Sigh, and Trhä

Langdon Hickman and Colin Dempsey
·10 min read

The post Mining Metal: Abest, Christian Cosentino, Dawnwalker, Kraanerg, Liminal Shroud, Morbid Evils, Sigh, and Trhä appeared first on Consequence.

Mining Metal is a monthly column from Heavy Consequence contributing writers Langdon Hickman and Colin Dempsey. The focus is on noteworthy new music emerging from the non-mainstream metal scene, highlighting releases from small and independent labels — or even releases from unsigned acts.

The urge to pick up an object and set it back down is what makes us human. That’s why there are multiple markets that generate billions of dollars every year by capitalizing on the recesses deep within the homo sapien cortex that links serotonin release with moving weight. Don’t let scare statistics fool you: Civilization is the fittest it’s ever been. Obviously, Mining Metal is not a fitness column, but it’d be a disservice not to investigate the “metal” in the title. Any genetic freak in a slingshot bench suit knows the reason why it’s called pumping iron, and nearly anyone who’s stepped foot into an independent or old-school gym can tell you that there is no sweeter sound than the metal plates rattling on either side of the bar.

However, that rattling can’t empower us to smash plateaus alone, which is where music comes in. A Cannibal Corpse album will do the job, but there’s always room for improvement. If you search “meathead” on your preferred streaming service then you’ll find playlists with pictures of Guts (which should usually be a good sign) that are, disappointingly, filled with songs that fail to activate fast twitch muscle fibers. Therefore, while reputable lifting podcasts like Stronger by Science may throw out decent recommendations a la Tool and Mastodon, it’s as likely that you already know about these groups as it is unlikely that we are scientists. What we are, though, are two folks who crave the metal that lines the subcutaneous sinews connecting bone to muscle.

The point here is that while metal can encourage you to lift through its ferocity, any genre with beefy production can do the same. As such, it’s necessary to look beyond the beef, beyond the meat even, and deeper into the Nietzschean abyss. Metal, by and large, loves said abyss. The point is, you don’t have to listen to Pantera just because WWE wrestler Eric Bugenhagen does. It’s possible to listen to metal that represents the metaphorical tension felt at the bottom of a squat while you’re in the bottom of an actual squat.

This month’s collection of under-the-radar releases isn’t entirely dedicated to metal fit for the weight room as some of our picks demonstrate, but it’d be silly to downplay their visceral power. Plus, with Kentaro Miura’s passing last year, meatheads must continue to seek an artistic outlet. Think about it… how else will they experience a tragedy to spur their hypertrophy? Where else can they find the will to take a set beyond failure? Is there truly no paradise for them to escape to?

These are all questions that the meathead must answer for themselves. What we can answer for them is, “What should I listen to now?” There’s a smattering of everything this month, from progressive metal to sludge metal to black metal to black metal so raw it could give you Listeria. No matter what you fancy and regardless of if you even lift, there’s something here for you.

— Colin Dempsey

And an addendum from me: I learned recently I lost a friend in January to fentanyl. Rest in peace, Crow. May all people be safe, may Narcan become common, because users deserve to live and not to die. Oh, and another bonus for those of you who read these: the new record from Maul, which dropped last month, because one from last month got bumped to an August release. Keep this between us.

— Langdon Hickman

Abest – Molten Husk

There’s always something fascinating about music that twists inwards rather than expanding outwards, exhibit A being Germany’s Abest. They categorize themselves as post-metal, and while they have the gruff vocals and gamey texture to match, in actuality they bear more resemblance to a death metal band. Their songs circulate internally around grooves rather than building an atmosphere as if they’re trying to get the most out of their limited recording time. On some occasions, this leads them to compress what could’ve been a lengthier excursion into a distilled bourbon shot to the senses (“The Twitched Veil”). There aren’t so many peaks and valleys on Molten Husk as there are optimizations and efficiencies. Abest ask what the point of building towards a riff is when they could just supply and manipulate said riff. Much like how eating a curry without rice or naan gives you an unfiltered and at-times overwhelming sensation, Abest cut all the fat to leave only intricate, grizzled, and charred cuts. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Colin Dempsey

Christian Cosentino – High Rising Times

Here is a wonderful player and composer that splits the difference between black metal, triumphant Euro power metal, and the resplendent grace and beauty of neo-progressive rock — the kind spearheaded by groups like Marillion, Arena, and Pendragon that took a greater hold in continental Europe than it did over here. The breaking of the ground here is of black metal as a sign of youth, especially a particularly Western male youth, soaked in misanthropy and misplaced social grievance, giving way to these more beautiful and graceful types of music representing not only love and trust but also social and mental integration. As someone who’s walked a similar path, having discovered socialism as a kind of life raft in psychic darkness that taught me to love the world and its people even in our thrashing and pain, this speaks to me; this is, in miniature, what music has been for me, not just metal. That it’s a rich progressive metal record and fitting followup to its equally brilliant predecessor Lawn is all the better. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Langdon Hickman

Dawnwalker – House of Sand

Grief is a spiral, an Escherian maze, recursive, a palimpsest, old notes half uncovered by the new, the mouth repeating the same words at different volumes and jumbled order forever and ever. Dawnwalker scratches open these scabs without effort, clearing away the foliage of the heart to express the hidden wound. Think Opeth, Katatonia, but with a bit more of an alternative or shoegaze bent, Emma Ruth Rundle-style. This stuff cuts me to the bone; when I first heard of this record, I hesitated to press play, feeling it too good to be true but, lo and behold, it reaches effortlessly into my ribcage to cradle my tender heart. We lose people, or they lose us, and we accumulate loss like ghosts pacing the expansive manse of the psyche over time. It is good to walk with them sometimes to something like this, to communicate with bones in these houses of sand. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Langdon Hickman

Kraanerg – Of Matter

We throw around terms like “Red-era King Crimson” a lot (or at least I do), but few groups exemplify exactly what this means quite like Kraanerg. While it might be tempting to liken their abstract and abstruse approach to progressive and extreme metal to a group like Portal or Mitochondrion, I see much more similarity in the improvisatory avant-rock of the ’70s. Imagine, for instance, if SUMAC’s wild free improvisation experiments caught fire in the extreme metal world or if The Great Deceiver, that mighty ’70s King Crimson live improv tome, were required listening before forming a new band. Bursts of noise, overdriven bass hammering home tritone-based rock riffs, and vocals that sound like a toilet trying to flush a nailbomb as it begins its fatal blast: This is rock music. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Langdon Hickman

Liminal Shroud – All Virtues Ablaze

Vancouver-based black metal trio Liminal Shroud have a distinctly USBM sound that takes from Cascadian acts and the airiness of those acts’ compositions. However, on their second album, the group streamlines these influences for a melodic experience. There’s an earthy tinge to All Virtues Ablaze that isn’t common on black metal with this solid of production quality. These three elements — the melodicism, the rustic hue, and the clear production — are testaments to the success of majoring in the minors. Liminal Shroud reinvigorate rather than remake. For instance, though there’s plenty of dynamic variance along the four lengthy tracks, Liminal Shroud rarely stray from their metallic core. The quieter opening of “Transmigration I – Pelagic Voids” skulks with a premonition in a stretch where they easily could’ve paid post-rock lip service. Thankfully, they’re laser-focused on a nothing-but-the-black-metal album, resulting in a record that soars across its four 10-plus minute tracks. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Colin Dempsey

Morbid Evils – Supernaturals

Keijo Niinimaa of Rotten Sound fame uses Morbid Evils to explore longitudinal compositions. Supernaturals, his third album under Morbid Evils, has only a quarter of the songs of nearly every other Rotten Sound record and you can hear traces of his primary group throughout, meaning that they still slap the proverbial horse on the ass to make it giddy up. Yet that’s only a fraction of Supernaturals’ gargantuan scope. Laborious sludge dominates the record. The brief moments when the pace hastens don’t offer a reprieve as much as they represent Morbid Evils pivoting to another dimension. Thus, for a record that’s this uniform in tone, Supernaturals is surprisingly varied. Morbid Evils have the freewheeling spirit of a grindcore band but extend it to its breaking point. The result is an album with limitless energy and unbreakable patience. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Colin Dempsey

Sigh – Shiki

On the 12th album in their three decades-plus career, Japan’s weird black metal extraordinaires Sigh continue to astound in the strangest ways. Shiki is a reflection of sorts for Mirai Kawashima, as he inspects his passage through time (like the changing of the season) and how death looms closer as we age. As such, Mirai weaves a foreboding air into Sigh that breathes through even the most open-faced moments like the opening death march on “Kuroi Kage.” Yet, seeing as how they’re Sigh, part of that comes from their embrace of the absurd like the ghostly introduction to “Mayonaka No Kaii.” Peculiar moments like these are cut between some of Sigh’s most violent moments, instances where they adopt a rudimentary approach to get this point across; death comes for us all. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Colin Dempsey
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Trhä – mã Héshiva õn dahh Khata trhândlha vand ëfd datnen Aghen Ecíës drhãtdlhan savd

At long last: a blast of trve elfen Christmastime snowglobe black metal. In all seriousness, while we can discount some of the artistic fluff that comes with a project like this, the development of a musical aesthetic that combines neoclassical components with a truly snowy raw black metal is a delightful one. It seems fitting in its way that a project based out of Texas would develop its euphoric fantasias around that of elves and snow, given both the deplorable state of politics there not to mention the boiling heat under global warming. The charm here is admittedly less the black metal, which is still solid, and more the shocking bursts of what feels like Tchaikovsky or the sort. Despite appearances, this skews quite far from the avant-rock one might expect given the abstruse titling and toward a keenly melodic and harmonically consonant work. Any black metal record that reminds me of Tori Amos is a success. Buy it on Bandcamp – Langdon Hickman

Mining Metal: Abest, Christian Cosentino, Dawnwalker, Kraanerg, Liminal Shroud, Morbid Evils, Sigh, and Trhä
Langdon Hickman and Colin Dempsey

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