Profound Lore Records

Kruelty, Untopia (Profound Lore 2023)

Wayne Edwards, , , , , , ,

Kruelty brings its message of metallic hardcore to the masses once again on Untopia.

Coming together in Japan six years ago, Kruelty took the path of many hardcore acts before it, choosing to release a large number of demos, EPs, and splits. It is a lot of fun for collectors as it creates a kind of treasure hunt that becomes increasingly more difficult the later you get on board. Their first long-player came out in 2019, A Dying Truth. Their latest might only be their second full-length album, but the band has done a lot of groundwork prior to this new one and you can tell when you hear it.

A chime starts the set in motion. Chants, as in Gregorian, follow. “Unknown Nightmare” is quite creepy. The guitars land with a massive doom slap, and in the next stanza have begun their rampage. The croaking vocals hover over the rumbling riffs and the clip slows and accelerates at unpredictable turns. “Harder Than Before” sounds like a tagline for a new ED treatment and, given the vibrant energy that the song opens with, it could be used in an ad for a new blue pill. This one is a flesh ripper, speeding and slowing and grating its way to your bones. The shrieking ending is startling. Excellent metal. “Burn The System” is a high-tension mission ender. The killer percussion and rhythm will give you a well-earned rash. “Reincarnation” is surprisingly peppy. I wouldn’t call it a happy song, with all the screaming and what not, but its early attitude is less dense than the previous songs. It does turn less than a minute in, though, and the savage, chewing metal is at you again.

“Maze Of Suffering” made me feel like I was drowning in its crushing doom and ominous death summoning. “Manufactured Insanity” goes the other way, starting out as a rollicking cracker and laying in the heavy later on. The record finishes on the title track, and this one will eat you alive. I haven’t followed Kruelty very closely over the years, but this new album has inspired me to go back and listen to everything they have done before. Recommended.

Untopia is out on Friday, March 17th through Profound Lore Records. Have a closer look at the links below.

Band photo by Seijiro Nishimi.

Links.

Kruelty website, https://www.kruelty666.com/

Bandcamp, https://kruelty666.bandcamp.com/album/untopia

Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/krueltyjphc/

Profound Lore Records, https://profoundlorerecords.com/

© Wayne Edwards

Kruelty, Untopia (Profound Lore 2023)

Tithe, Inverse Rapture (Profound Lore 2023)

Wayne Edwards, , , , , , , , ,

Tithe’s second album is an earthshaker: Inverse Rapture.

Created in the Pacific Northwest enclave of Portland, Oregon, Tithe has been forging dooming grindcore for the past six years. Infusing elements that could be described in a number of ways, Kevin Swartz (drums), Matt Eiseman (guitar, vocals), and Alex Huddleston (bass) are a trio that wakes the primordial and fashions it into their own dark designs.

“Anthropogenic Annihilation” is a swirling grind up front – perhaps the perfect opening for an album with this title and content. Doom is minced and mixed by the dominating weight of the riff and rhythm. Eiseman’s vocals are a threatening promise presenting an accusation. The hammering percussion is the tie that binds. Excellent. The title track follows, digging deeper into the gloom. It is a wailing of detached souls, lost for so long they no longer search but merely exist in a gyre agony. “Demon” is a short, ravaging piece that flays your exposed flesh. The tempo is blistering and unrepentant, leading into the funereal “Parasite.” These first four tracks are an enmeshing perfection of metal that squanders reason.

The longest song on the record is “Killing Tree.” It is ponderous at first, opening eventually into adjacent lands of dark wonder in the black metal wilderness then moves on to canyons of doom. “Luciferian Pathways Of The Forked Tongue,” coming where it does, is a kind of dismantling meditation that shucks the crust that has accumulated with it dervishly ways. The final notes are uttered in “Pseudologia Fantastica,” recalling “Demon” to some extent, but living its own crushing existence. The album has a relatively short running time yet packs a lethal punch at every turn. Recommended.

Inverse Rapture drops on Friday, February 17th through Profound Lore Records. Listen and buy at the links below.

Band photo by Taylor Robinson.

Links.

Bandcamp, https://tithepdx.bandcamp.com/album/inverse-rapture

Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/tithepdx

Profound Lore Records, https://profoundlorerecords.com/

© Wayne Edwards

Tithe, Inverse Rapture (Profound Lore 2023)

Black Math Horseman, Black Math Horseman (Profound Lore 2022)

Wayne Edwards, , , , , , , , ,

Regathering after more than a decade, Black Math Horseman release a new album.

Black Math Horseman is a band from LA comprised of the musicians Sera Timms (bass, vocals), Ian Barry (guitar), Bryan Tulao (guitar), and Sasha Popovic (drums). They originally got together in 2007 and released a demo. More importantly, their debut album, Wyllt, came out in 2009 and cast an entirely different light on the heavy music scene with the way it created hypnotic expressions in such a chaotic space. A few years later, they parted.

In 2020 the group came back together. Sera Timms says about the re-meeting, “At first, the conversation was about how we were all in different places now, and could we even go back to being that band that we were? … Maybe we’d write completely different music now—and we were all open to that.” Instead, “When we started jamming again, we didn’t sound any different. We discovered that the music that comes from us four together is something that we have no control over. It just happens. It’s a recipe that’s beyond us.”

Fans know what to expect from this new album. It is composed as a single musical piece. Although it is split into four parts, it is meant to be heard all at once. It does work best that way. “The essence of the album is overcoming a great enemy, a great adversarial force, and reaching a place of harmony that has never been found before,” Timms says. “You go to a dark place and destroy relationships that you love, all based on ego. Eventually, you have nothing. And when you have nothing, you have to find a new way of doing things. That’s where we’re at now as a band and family, and that’s also the theme of the record.”

The four movements are “Black Math Horseman,” “Boar Domane,” “The Bough,” and “Cypher.” As described by Timms, this is indeed a journey. The music is trance-inducing post-rock, and it has a clear ritual feel to it at times. I hear elements of black metal come through, especially in the lead guitar passages, while the vocals are beautifully lyrical. The coexistence of these near-opposites is an important aspect of the music and its achievements.

The entire cycle runs about twenty-five minutes, and while the separate movements do have their own feel and structure, you are missing something if you do not listen to it all straight through from the beginning. Let the music envelope you and get lost in the story and emotion. Recommended.

Black Math Horsman is out on Friday, October 21st through Profound Lore Records.

Band photo by Travis Shinn.

Links.

Bandcamp, https://blackmathhorseman.bandcamp.com/album/black-math-horseman

Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063492333782

Profound Lore Records, http://profoundlorerecords.com/

© Wayne Edwards

Black Math Horseman, Black Math Horseman (Profound Lore 2022)

Hissing, Hypervirulence Architecture (Profound Lore 2022)

Wayne Edwards, , , , , , , ,

Hypervirulence Architecture is the new album from Hissing.

With three EPs and a long-player under their belt, Seattle’s Hissing brings out a new full-length album, Hypervirulence Architecture. Having begun only in 2015, this is a notable record of musical creation from the highly respected death and black metal band. The musicians are Zach Wise (bass, vocals), Joe O’Malley (guitar), and Sam Pickel (drums).

This new record is noticeably different from their debut album, Permanent Destitution (2018). The press release gets it right when it notes that, on Hypervirulence Architecture, “the trio take their sound into more nightmarish, trance-inducing, mercurial, and mind-altering sonic dominions.” They achieve a delicate balance between what we might think of as death metal and black metal, while making concerted use of ambient/noise moments constructed sometimes almost ritualistically. It is a sinister blend.

“Cells of Nonbeing” is the first of seven tracks. It sounds for all the world like a frantic casting about in a dark cave that might very well be an abyss. The farther in you go, the more mysterious it becomes. The guitars lean toward dissonance part of the time, and the vocals are not meant to be reassuring. “Hostile Absurdity” further loosens the moorings you thought were secure, leaving you to drift into dangerous regions. “Operant Extinction” is then unleashed, and it is the most impressive track on the album. An epic piece, running over ten minutes, it is fascinatingly doomy and filled in every space with dark and frightening looks.

The second half of the album starts with a transition piece, “Hypervirulence,” then kicks in the door with “Intrusion,” a song that builds tension to the bursting point. “Identical To Hunger” and “Meltdown” are reflected images – visions distorted by a warped onyx glass. Listening to these last two tracks, I began to feel appropriated by some existential object that could not be clearly discerned. This album will affect you. Recommended.

Hypervirulence Architecture is out now through Profound Lore Records. Have a look at the label’s website and/or pick the album up at Bandcamp.

Band photo by Marena Shear.

Links.

Bandcamp, https://hissingseattle.bandcamp.com/

Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/hissingseattle

Profound Lore Records, https://profoundlorerecords.com/

© Wayne Edwards

Hissing, Hypervirulence Architecture (Profound Lore 2022)

Bog Body, Cryonic Crevasse Cult (Profound Lore 2022)

Wayne Edwards, , , , , ,

Bog Body brings forth their first full-length album, Cryonic Crevasse Cult.

Not your typical death metal band, Bog Body is made up entirely of vocals, bass, and percussion generated from two musicians. Putting out a demo in 2018, Through the Burial Bog, and a split with Primitive Warfare in 2020, The Gate Of Grief, you might wonder if they have anything else to say. It turns out that’s a yes.

Think about it for a minute. Bass and drums and vocals. Is that enough? It is certainly a lane, and the limiting choice of instruments narrows the avenues for expression. Then again, it requires the composers to be especially creative if they are to achieve anything fans want to hear. I think they have done it.

The music is death metal, heavy on the sludge, and it leans toward black metal sentience, metered down a bit. The bass lines are doing some heavy lifting here, as you might expect. Speed comes from the percussion first in the absence of guitar, and the bass line keeps up. The vocals exist in a muted blackened doom metal realm.

There is a welcome variety in the music as we roll through. “Ice Stained Kurgan” has a deep, mysterious formulation to it, while songs like the title track are high velocity poundings. The set opens on “Paralytic Pit of Swallowed Graves” and closes with “The Graveyard Of Dead Cratons,” two songs that, musically, stand well apart. Indeed, while “Paralytic” is a mood-setter and serves to orient expectations for the rest of the album, “Graveyard” is my favorite track for its firm stance on its own identity. The commitment to heavy music is present throughout, and I can say no other band sounds quite like Bog Body. Recommended.

Cryonic Crevasse Cult is out on Friday, May 20th through Profound Lore Records in digital and on CD.

Links.

Bandcamp, https://bog-body.bandcamp.com/

Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/bogbodyofficial

Profound Lore Records, https://profoundlorerecords.com/

© Wayne Edwards

Bog Body, Cryonic Crevasse Cult (Profound Lore 2022)

Haunter, Discarnate Ails (Profound Lore 2022)

Wayne Edwards, , , , , , ,

Texas death metal band Haunter pull out the stops on their new album, Discarnate Ails.

Centered in Austin, Haunter came together in 2013. The music they make is a fusion of black and death metal elevated by progressive percolations. Combining subgenres is not new, of course, but the level of success achieved depends on the way the mixing is done. Haunter always gets it right, and they are top-of-the-line experts if their last record, Sacramental Death Qualia (2019), is any measure. There is an arc to the band’s career that, given Discarnate Ails, appears to be heading upward. Listed musicians on the new album are Bradley Tiffin (vocals, guitar), Enrique Bonilla (guitar), and Cole Tucker (bass).

There are three long tracks on the album. “Overgrown With The Moss” opens the set with gentle discovery. It is as if you are wandering through a forest that slowly turns darkly magical as you pass through it. You notice a raised placed in the earth. You go over to investigate and, brushing aside the overgrowth, you unleash something unimaginable. The black metal is there, and the wonder of progressive ingenuity is too – that is what supports the ten-minute-plus running time and maintains your interest through all the valleys and crypts and plains.

“Spiritual Illness” clangs out brusquely, and has the feeling of an attack. “Chained At The Helm Of The Eschaton,” on the other hand, is filled with mystery and wonder in its opening melody and has a resonating cooldown that is beautiful to hear. All three tracks have their own unique postures and progressions, and they all are mesmerizing. Recommended.

Discarnate Ails is out on Friday, May 6th through Profound Lore Records. Take note also that Haunter is scheduled to perform at Fire In The Mountains this year, a unique music festival held at the Heart Six Ranch in the Tetons. If you can get there, definitely do it because it will be an experience like no other. Links to the record and the festival appear below.

Band photo by Oscar Moreno.

Links.

Bandcamp, https://hauntertx.bandcamp.com/

Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/hauntertx

Profound Lore Records, https://profoundlorerecords.com/

Fire In The Mountains Festival, https://fitmfest.com/

© Wayne Edwards

Haunter, Discarnate Ails (Profound Lore 2022)