Mining Metal: Carnal Tomb, Ch’ahom, Cirkeln, Kvelgeyst, Panopticon, Spidergawd, Vastum, and Vestígio
The post Mining Metal: Carnal Tomb, Ch’ahom, Cirkeln, Kvelgeyst, Panopticon, Spidergawd, Vastum, and Vestígio 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.
It’s been a bad year. It’s hard not to feel impossibly frustrated sometimes that we appeared to come out of the lockdown era seemingly having learned nothing; or, if there was learning done, that it was, as learning always is, haphazard and unequally distributed over the plane, with whatever epiphanic compassionate response there was to be had by it hitting hiccups or rage, confusion and helplessness all around, beyond the far more obvious callousness and casual cruelty that have sadly been mainstays of human relation since time immemorial. Shame is a weapon and, like all weapons, its use is dictated not in the abstract but in its usage, not just who wields it against whom but also how it is used in that moment. I’d say this is a lesson that we forgot but it’s never really been a thing humanity has been very good at; the qualms around “cancel culture” on one end and repressive social structures on the other highlight this same underlying element, which is the way we can give ourselves over to rage and righteousness in ways that ultimately serve to cloud what we want them to do.
I say this because as I age, I tend less toward the blame of others and more toward, guiltily, the blame of self. I think, generally speaking, this isn’t uncommon for people who are broadly reflective; it’s harder to stomach for long periods the constant accusatory glare that people seem to so gleefully wield when we ourselves are stained by our histories and our shortcomings, but the fixated witness of those things is also endless, with our shortcomings seemingly effervescently refreshing the pool of sins we can castigate ourselves for. And so we build a strange and brutal circle: people gleeful in inducing shame, wielding it like a weapon, and people darkly gleeful in receiving shame, the penitent receiving their desired punishment to prove the stalwart righteousness at the base of their soul, beyond all wrongdoing and action. It’s a vicious and painful circle. One figure becomes the other; people overloaded by the punishment of shame become, given time, cruel themselves. I don’t have answers to this. It vexes me. I’m not alone there. It’s vexed people a whole hell of a lot smarter than me.
Music, and art in general, are as much meditations as they are solutions. The reality of the world is complex and eternally rich even in its dumb, mute simplicity. There is no art messy enough to truly capture the depth of it. This isn’t just a failing of art. Even nonfiction work, the meta-historical project of the academy and the interconnected network of every doctoral and master’s thesis on earth still, by definition, falls short of the complexity of the world they comment on. Which is a way of saying that we, at least a certain type of “we” here, ask too much of art. I’ve always loved a big dumb rock record, one that seizes up some romantic and passionate force in me at the same time it strips me bare of the cornucopia of language I’ve spent my entire life pursuing. There’s something potently Promethean in that divine theft, the way an electric guitar and a harrowed voice steal the Olympian fire of the brooding and confused mind.
Age, something I was not always certain I’d have given the state of my mental health for so long, has made something like the willful witlessness of Buddhism make more sense to me, the giving over of the mind to nothingness. Is this just shame recasting itself? A shame now of being human itself, of wanting to divest myself with the fruits of life lest they, too, go rotten in the hand? I don’t know. Maybe. Heavy metal is a balm. Richard Brautigan had trout fishing. I have death metal records. We all have our methods of coping.
– Langdon Hickman
Carnal Tomb – Embalmed in Decay
Heavy metal’s visual language continues to astound me even as I age. I look at the cover of this record, remembering again the wet/dry dichotomy of types of death metal, and I go, ah, wet death metal, yes, ripe in decay, heavy on tremolo riffs and mid-paced drum beats. Music to lift a mace dripping in blood into the air to, music to shake your greasy and wild hair about, music to have acne scars and bulging eyes (of evil). This is not a mockery. Heavy metal is beautiful precisely because it contains the capacity both for intense cerebral highs but also these nasty, guttural, almost hyperborean lows, the cruel barbarians of Conan and his ilk set to nasty and brutish riffs. This type of death metal is meat and potatoes to me, the firmament of what I love about the style. The esoteric and mystical riffing of more abstract bands is all fine and dandy to me (who doesn’t love The Chasm?), but it’s this simple and pure form that nestles closest to my heart. I love death metal. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Langdon Hickman
Ch’ahom – Knots of Abhorrence
I do not typically sample the wares of war metal, in part because of its often deeply reactionary politics but also in part just due to a general aesthetic distaste for it that is less a comment on its quality and more a comment on my ear. So when I saw friends hyping up this release as singles started to drop, mentioning how the band, who primarily sing about pre-Colombian American cultures, had recently gotten deeply into Yes and Genesis and wanted to incorporate that into war metal, I was confoundingly excited. This record has a breath and openness I associate with death metal with a vivacious and morose intensity that reminds more of early Sepultura than anything else. This is married against vast, complex song structures which err away from the techy end of progressive playing to instead embrace the linear and evolving song forms borrowed from psychedelic music. In short, it’s enthralling, the perfect heavy metal blend of high and low brow art, intensity and sophistication. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Langdon Hickman
Cirkeln – The Primitive Covenant
I spent most of November’s temperature drops and impolite winds delving into Immortal and Bathory’s back catalog, subconsciously priming myself for Cirkeln’s second full-length. Admittedly, The Primitive Covenant is closer to Bathory’s early thrash-meets-black metal work than Immortal’s frigidity, but it has the same attitude as the Norwegian titans — turning what’s inherently nerdy into unmistakable coolness. Cirkeln are high-fantasy, swords-and-sorcery personified, with all the machismo and rock ‘n roll necessary to pull it off. Rather than sounding antiquated, it’s tense. There’s an interesting contrast when tracks venture into silly realms (i.e. “Defiled and Satanized”) as Cirkeln oscillate between grin-inducing cheesiness and affecting guitar solos. You almost don’t know how to react, but that purgatory between stalwart craftsmanship and over-the-topness is endearing and ultimately sucks you back in. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Colin Dempsey
Kvelgeyst – Blut, Milch und Thränen
“Weird” black metal can include everything from atmospheric black metal with flutes to genuinely out-there bands like Grey Aura, so it’s imprecise to call Kvelgeyst “weird.” Even their self-generated “alchemystic black metal” description only goes so far, though it does a decent job at insinuating how drunken they sound. This is not step-dad-alcoholic-cock-rock but liquid confidence incarnate. There’s a total lack of abandonment on Blut, Milch und Thränen, evident in how Kvelgeyst will pair familiar black metal riffs and rhythms alongside drunken shouts and saxophones. It’s as heavy and accessible as black metal should be (meaning it’s not the virtuosic, progressive album that “weird” implies), but it’s loose and jaunty as if Kvelgeyst are playing under the influence. It plays like a natural progression from black metal’s rockist roots rather than an attempt to redefine black metal. The sheer amount of fun here while still sounding dangerous slates it as one of the year’s best albums. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Colin Dempsey
Panopticon – The Rime of Memory
Undoubtedly the vast majority of people reading this column already know and have a firm opinion on Panopticon. Austin Lunn’s newest album The Rime of Memory will not sway neither fans nor detractors from their position, which is a boon if you’re already on board with him. On the surface, The Rime of Memory is more weary and grey than previous albums, with the shorthand simile being that it’s like comparing God of War‘s post-2018 Kratos to PS2-era Kratos. While it’s true Lunn’s never sounded this grizzled, what’s more fascinating is how it fits into his larger arc. Over time, we’ve seen him transform from the raging youth anarchist to the bluegrass repatriate then recede into darkness on 2021’s …And Again Into The Light. Now, he’s a father in his 40s. Although The Rime of Memory isn’t relaxing, it’s the most at-ease Lunn has sounded with himself. That he can reflect on his mortality after making it this far and leaving behind the legacy he has is astounding. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Colin Demspey
Spidergawd – VII
A slight cheat: While this band is likely unknown to American and British readers, Spidergawd are quite big in Europe, even having won a Norwegian Grammy in 2015 after only their second nomination. But after polling a few friends, even ones with their ears to the ground musically, none of whom had heard this band, I knew I had to include this record. Less heavy metal in an extreme sense and more in the vein of hard rock and AOR, blending the muscularity of ’70s rock with the nimbleness of NWOBHM, this is a record that lays on the hooks as hard as they do the absolutely massive gang vocals and shockingly compelling lyrics. Spidergawd, loosely affiliated with fellow Norwegians Motorpsycho of psych/prog fame, blend saxophone into their hard rock, often taking the place that keys might in another group, typically thickening up the riffs in a way that feels, well, muscular. After listening to this exclusively while I drive for the past two weeks, it would be a damn lie to exclude it. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Langdon Hickman
Vastum – Inward to Gethsemane
Good god I love death metal. The last time this band released something, it was before the lockdown as we neared the end of those terrible Trump years. Well, things have only gotten worse, for women, for queer people, for brown people globally, for the poor. There’s something enriching about material like this, death metal which is as Ludditic and wicked in its riffing, often sounding like the bleeding and ugly cavernous realm between Cannibal Corpse and the more chaotic underground bands of the genre, as it is guided by a sharp pen. These lyrics remain shockingly good, drawing from a rich bed of theoretical material but rendered in a clear and compelling way rather than, well, nerdery. Sometimes death metal is for escape. Sometimes, it is for confrontation. This is the latter. In a worsening world, I need this. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Langdon Hickman
Vestígio – Vestígios
A black metal album with three tracks that each run over 11 minutes should not be as scalding as Vestígios. It should find solace in interludes and moments of levity, but those are few and far between here. Vestígios is an expertly-paced aggressive trance that maintains your attention throughout. Seriously, it’s surprisingly easy to focus on Vestígios, considering that it’s quite literally an atmospheric black metal album. The changes in tempo are minor yet the album has endless stamina. It’s a cardio machine rather than a monotonous slog. One such reason for that is likely because sole Vestígio member Caio Lemos offloads vocal duties to three different performers, each of whom claims a track for themselves. They’re free to interpret Lemos’ searing passages, giving each a marginally different personality. For these reasons, Vestígios triumphs as an exercise in attrition; its clear, nigh-transparent production gives rise to a stronger atmosphere than most atmospheric black metal albums. Buy it on Bandcamp. – Colin Dempsey
Mining Metal: Carnal Tomb, Ch’ahom, Cirkeln, Kvelgeyst, Panopticon, Spidergawd, Vastum, and Vestígio
Langdon Hickman and Colin Dempsey
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