Mining Metal: Astral Lore, Aureole, Chapel of Disease, Deadyellow, Hulder, meth., Pestilength, and Skeletal Augury
The post Mining Metal: Astral Lore, Aureole, Chapel of Disease, Deadyellow, Hulder, meth., Pestilength, and Skeletal Augury 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.
A few weeks ago, I saw Thantifaxath and Knoll perform at a local bar familiar to anyone enamored with Scott Pilgrim. Thantifaxath have played so much in the past year, at least in my area, that one could justify skipping their show by saying they’ll catch the group when they come back around. Let me say this; anyone thinking they can “catch Thantifaxath when they come back around” are mouth breeders because Thantifaxath are astounding live. Occasionally, they cover TLC’s “Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls” during soundcheck. Almost always, they flaunt their technicality while brooding — two contrasting goals that coalesce under their spell. Knoll, meanwhile, are insidious in a live venue. They blend atmosphere and music in a manner that earns them their mantle of “funeral grind.” (Also, their third album, As Spoken, was released at the tail end of last month and thus slipped through our grasp. Please rectify our mistake by listening to it as soon as possible). For $20, you could not have found better entertainment that night.
Or, maybe you could, because the venue is not just a concert venue but a bar that regularly hosts Y2K-themed dance parties, emo nights, and Friends trivia. It’s not far from student residences and sits across the street from cheap clubs with multiple floors. On weekend nights, it’s common to see a dozen young and well-dressed undergraduates lining up while awaiting the warm embrace of alcohol and sweat-lined walls, even in the middle of winter. All of this is to say that the crowd at the concert that night was not the typical metal one, which, honestly, was cool. Some concert-goers were dressed as if this was emo night or that the closest they’d come to black metal was thinking Metallica’s self-titled coined the phrase due to its cover. I want these people at concerts. I want metal shows to convert those who have never dove into metal or to reshape their opinion on what’s going on in the genre in 2024. I want noobs as badly as I want trucker dads who have listened to more death metal demos than I’ve listened to albums.
Sadly, not all who bravely entered the domain that night survived. Some quickly vacated after Knoll plunged into their act or, if they arrived later and didn’t catch Knoll’s trumpet and theremin witchery, only made it two minutes into Thantifaxath’s first track. Their ambitions (or assumption that “metal night” meant Deftones cover band) were commendable, but their patience was thinner than their bloodstreams, so they ventured elsewhere to drink. Fortunately, the majority of the crowd stayed and were rewarded with a phenomenal night. So, while I could disparage those who left early as not being tough enough, I’d rather analyze it as a sign that metal is still heavy and weird to those not accustomed to it. Thank god.
February’s finest underground metal albums exist on this axis of heavy and weird, with our picks charting all across the spectrum. Read about the month’s best black metal, blackgaze, and atmospheric black metal (I’ll try not to stretch myself thin with so much diversity). There’s also a heaping of death metal, some of which harkens to oddity’s extremities while others are more blood and guts and meat and potatoes. Proceed onwards and treat yourself to something new.
– Colin Dempsey
Astral Lore – Astral Lore
After an extensive health check-up involving a comprehensive physical and mental exam, Colin determined that my decision to cover a fairly straight forward black metal record did not indicate a sudden loss of my faculties. Granted, on glancing at the tracklist of Astral Lore’s self-titled debut, you’ll quickly see the draw for someone like me: Three lengthy tracks, each landing between 15 and 20 minutes in length. Despite these expanses, this is not an atmospheric black metal record; there are blasts and frenzy, there are winding motifs that remind me of Morningrise-era Opeth, and there are even little medievalist flourishes. This is a record that is progressive more by arrangement than funny time signatures or crazy virtuosic solos. The keys on here are particularly tasty; a lot of black metal bands are, to be frank, bad with keyboards, selecting chintzy patches and mixing them in a way that either drowns out the guitars (sacrilege!) or just kind of whine in the background. Here, they gel with the strings and vocals, thickening but not overpowering the sound. See? I do like raw black metal. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Langdon Hickman
Aureole – Alunarian Bellmaster
Darkspace released their first album in 10 years this past month, so it should stand as some notable measure of endorsement that another cosmic, atmospheric black metal album earned a place in this month’s column. Most Darkspace records qualify as black metal even without the atmospheric elements, but Aureole’s Alunarian Bellmaster thrives in that atmosphere. There’s maybe a riff or two here. Probably. Likely, there was a blast beat included in the demos, but none made the final cut. A genre-traditionalist would likely assert that Alunarian Bellmaster isn’t even black metal because it misses those core elements, but they’d have no follow-up when told that the album is all the more terrifying because of it. It conjures the horrors of transdimensional space travel with neither form nor words, echoing the universe’s apathy for human existence. It’s the fear of being trapped in a spaceship on the other side of the galaxy, which isn’t a universal sentiment, but Alurnarian Bellmster conveys it so well that you’d swear it’s a phobia everyone has. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Colin Dempsey
Chapel of Disease – Echoes of Light
Some artists do a tedious thing where they say comparison is a lazy critic’s insight. Ah, so you don’t like being enmeshed in the living, breathing flesh of the eternal world of art? Too bad! Chapel of Disease clearly are a bit hipper to this issue, however; take, for instance, the Bandcamp tags on this record, including “Tribulation”, “Sweven” and “Morbus Chron,” an insightful set of touchstones that frankly does half my job for me. Like those brilliant groups, this record sits somewhere between a traditional progressive rock record and a roaring death metal album, like if death and roll was, well, good… but also based on something with a bit more songwriting and arrangement heft than four to the floor whatever. Does this break the mold? No. But does it satisfy? Hell yes. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Langdon Hickman
Deadyellow – What Was Left of Them
Graduating high school at the beginning of the 2010s meant growing up alongside internet music criticism and forums, which did plenty to disintegrate my sense of genre and led to armchair musician theory crafting where I’d hypothetically combine disparate genres and remark how great it’d sound. Little did I know that in 2024, Deadyellow’s sophomore album What Was Left of Them would be my envisioned record come to life. It’s firmly planted in the blackgaze camp, at times venturing into post-rock on the 16-minute “Fallen Trees,” but when it rages, it’s a firestorm. Deadyellow pull from more than just post-rock and black metal, operating with a thrashy bite, screamo vocals, and dashes of Midwestern emo. The first two tracks are muscular enough that they could beat most bar patrons in an arm-wrestling contest. They’re not stink-face heavy though, but robust and layered, smothering rather than pummeling. In a way, Deadyellow build upon an idea Deafheaven conceived but never mastered on New Bermuda — to take blackgaze back to metal. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Colin Dempsey
Hulder – Verses in Oath
Depending on who you ask, Hulder’s second album, Verses in Oath, pays homage to Aeternus, Dimmu Borgir, Immortal, or any other second-wave black metal band with production values. If you were to be so negative, you could say Hulder sounds like everyone, showing a lack of innovation. Or, if you were to think about it for more than a second, you’d realize that Hulder’s extensive web of influences shows that she pulls not from a single artist but congeals the overlapping framework of multiple second-wave artists into a distilled, nigh-romantic reflection on the genre — a sincere send-up to its original themes of natural worship and individuality. It’s a loving tribute in sound and spirit that carries forward the scene and makes them more palatable without diminishing their impact. She is black metal’s mighty aggregator and Verses in Oath is a summary of its lineage, combining the brightest aspects of many of its stalwart acts in a way they themselves didn’t. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Colin Dempsey
meth. – SHAME
Black metal about Satan, death metal about regurgitating bile, doom metal about weed; it all has a place. Then, a record like meth.’s SHAME comes about, and you’re reminded that metal’s fury can do more than reflect fantasy: it can document trauma with photorealistic results. SHAME’s track titles are not artistic but behaviors associated with compulsive disorders like alcoholism. The music exists inside an indifferent universe and vocalist Seb Alvarez writhes inside webs of noise rock and sludge, two punishing subgenres with a penchant for flattening positive emotions. SHAME is February’s most personal metal album because it’s a barren outlet for Alvarez’ well-punctuated demons. There are no metaphors on SHAME, as its title implies, but the album would suffer if it relied on them. They’d rob its urgency, which exists between the hard parameters of feedback and mathcore riffs meth. set. Occasionally, those parameters are invaded, like on “Give In” when Alvarez yells, “It’s coming inside.” meth.’s urgency decays as feels like everything they’ve been outrunning has caught up to them. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Colin Dempsey
Pestilength – Solar Clorex
It will not surprise some of you to learn that I have been writing a psychedelic horror novel filled with speaking worms for the past year. Look at the psychedelic, progressive and metal of death that I cover: The truth of this world makes itself known. It’s records like this that stoke my imagination so. Their playing is, on one hand, replete with psychedelic and progressive flourish, but it emerges through a hazy, musty cloud of filth and scum, like a bleak noxious cloud attacking your lungs. Everything from the cover to the titles plays into this sense of elusive murk, a tantalizing image of beyondness that, to me, feels like worms pouring out of the sun like unholy rain. It’s hard not to go full imagistic with a black/death metal record like this; heavy metal, for me, is at its best when it’s either big and dumb or, as done here, at the bleeding psychedelic edge in the midst of its hyperbolic heaviness. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Langdon Hickman
Skeletal Augury – 尤瑞卡
This was battling it out with the newest record from Arkaeon which, for those of you who read these blurbs, is a stealth ninth pick this month. This one won out for a couple reasons, however. First, that crazy punchy mix, which feels more like a classic thrash record than a death metal album; second, its origins in Beijing which allow us to highlight the international shape of extreme metal a bit better; and third, I love death metal. I won’t lie: Black metal had my beloved genre on the ropes this month, with a great deal of underground raw and experimental BM releases that really socked me. But this stuff, the sci-fi tinged thrashy and surreal wings of death metal, are where my heart is. This record is impossibly fun. Welcome back, Skeletal Augury; it’s been a decade since you’re last, so don’t make us wait as long next time, okay? Buy it on Bandcamp. – Langdon Hickman
Mining Metal: Astral Lore, Aureole, Chapel of Disease, Deadyellow, Hulder, meth., Pestilength, and Skeletal Augury
Jon Hadusek
Popular Posts
11-Year-Old Guitarist Goes Viral with School Performance, Wows Rock World: Watch
Roger Daltrey: It's Become Too Expensive for The Who to Tour America
Roger Waters Fired His Son from His Band, And Now He's Playing Gigs with a Pink Floyd Tribute Act
Half of Vinyl Buyers in the US Don't Have a Record Player, New Study Shows
The National and The War on Drugs Announce Co-Headlining Tour
