Salt Lake City

Sacrilegion, From Which Nightmares Crawl (Chaos Records 2022)

Wayne Edwards, , , , , ,

The debut album from Salt Lake City death metal band Sacrilegion will darken your dreams: From Which Nightmares Crawl.

Sacrilegion is but four years old. They dropped a demo early, then worked diligently in the intervening years honing sound and craft to create their debut full-length album, From Which Nightmares Crawl. Provisioned against mediocrity, the music blends and alternates death metal with groove, melody, and dark vileness, achieving results not often heard elsewhere. The band is Connor G. Carlson (vocals, guitar), Geronimo Santa Cruz (guitar), Alex Seolas (bass), and Ashton J. Childs (drums).

The curtain opens on “A Terrible Pilgrimage To Seek The Nighted Throne,” a sideways and sour squeeze that straightens out and drives directly to your brain. The steady clomp gets banged around by surprising entrants, tossing the groove to the floor then picking it up again. It is a bruising death metal piece enhanced with edges and weight. “Puritanical Dementia” crashes through the door next, bringing a rampage with it. Like an explosion that won’t stop, this song runs you ragged. “Tainting The Sky With Red” is more of a scheduled degradation in that it hangs onto linearity a bit more – but not completely by any means. By the time the title track arrives, you feel like you are being hunted. No place to run, no escape. This song is a shaggy, croaking masterpiece.

Already taken and overcome, you might need a break before finishing the record, but finish it you must. Songs like “Legacy Of The Impaler” await you, where the infernal is exposed and let loose on an unprepared world. The chop of the middle riff is terminal. “Creaking Shadows” tastes of black metal and touches dark poison to your lips. Great song, this one, but then none of them go wrong. This album is a killer, front to back. Recommended.

From Which Nightmares Crawl is out on Friday, December 9th through Chaos Records on digital, CD, cassette, and vinyl. Check it out at the links below.

Links.

Sacrilegion website, https://www.sacrilegion.com/

Bandcamp, https://sacrilegion.bandcamp.com/album/from-which-nightmares-crawl

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

Chaos Records, https://www.chaos-records.com/

© Wayne Edwards

Sacrilegion, From Which Nightmares Crawl (Chaos Records 2022)

Chelsea Grin, Suffer In Hell (OneRPM 2022)

Wayne Edwards, , , , ,

Salt Lake City deathcore band Chelsea Grin releases part one of the suffer pair, Suffer In Hell.

Chelsea Grin started out around 2007, releasing their first EP the following year. The band experimented with different approaches to the heavy and sharp music they were creating over the years, and there were a couple of schisms leading to major line-up shifts. Indeed, no founding members remain in the band today. Up to now they have released five full-length albums to go along with the pair of EPs, the most recent long-player being 2018’s Eternal Nightmare. The new project is coming out in two pieces, the first of which can be had now: Suffer In Hell.

“Origin Of Sin” offers a dramatic introduction to the album. Sinister and dark, it sounds a bit like a battle in a medieval fantasy movie is about to begin. Almost like a Danny Elfman soundtrack, except meaner. The hissing and gravely vocals are what really send the music over the cliff into the land of cruelty – you get a genuine feeling that there is going to be no respite to the dread, and that terrible, terrible things are about to happen. Very creepy. “Foreverbloom” follows and does not brighten the atmosphere at all. The music is more actively brutal, and there is a playful brutality wherein you get the feeling that whatever horrors are being perpetrated are indeed intentional and well planned out. “Deathbed Companion,” in contrast, inspires a sense of deep hopelessness more than fear.

This album, then, has a deliberate and calculated wickedness. The most obvious expression is in the singing, but don’t overlook the ravaging percussion that rears up periodically to the forefront, and the maniacal guitars that have their own irregular gravitational pull. The songs are all on point and brand, yet they purvey delightful differences. Notice, for example, “Floodlungs” with its aquatic oppression and “Mourning Hymn,” an unfathomable divinity. “Suffer in Hell, Suffer in Heaven” is the final track and is perhaps a bridge from this beginning to the second album where we will reach the end. At the finish, which is the middle, I felt a little sore but I still wanted to know how it will all turn out. Recommended.

Suffer In Hell is out on Friday, November 11th through OneRPM Records. For the record, part two, Suffer In Heaven, will be released on March 17, 2023.

Links.

Chelsea Grin website, http://www.chelseagrinmetal.com/

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

OneRPM Records, https://onerpm.com/

© Wayne Edwards

Chelsea Grin, Suffer In Hell (OneRPM 2022)

Druids, Shadow Work (Pelagic 2022)

Wayne Edwards, , , , , , , , , ,

A new cauldron full of conjuring boils forth with Shadow Work, the next Druids album.

I would not necessarily have thought to look toward Des Moines, Iowa for ritual doom metal, but that is where you will find it with Druids. Drew Rauch (bass, vocals), Luke Rauch (guitar, vocals), and Keith Rich (drums) are purveyors of more than simply doom. For almost fifteen years, intense, spellbinding sounds have been emanating from the continental middle ground, and later, the mountain west. After three previous long-players, including 2019’s Monument, they have now laid down their most impressive tracks to date with Shadow Work.

Comprised of six long songs and two shortish tracks, the ruminating starts on “Aether.” I get the ritual feel here, from the very beginning. It is not an ayahuasca situation, at least not in my head. There is a meditation and there is also an offering. As the music continues on “Path To R,” “Ide’s Koan,” and especially “Hide,” the mantra is there if you will only hear it; the sentience is present if only you will avail yourself of it. The percussion, driving bass, and illustrious guitar work channel the mainsource and the vocals are guiding calls, relatively rare in the scheme of things but absolutely necessary.

The second half is every bit as pulverizing. “Dance of Skulls” is perhaps my favorite track on the album because of the way it opens your mind, opens into your mind. It is transportative in its declarations and repetitions, imploring you simultaneously to let go and to embrace. “Othenian Blood” is the scariest track, and “Traveller” is an excellent transition to the final movement, “Cloak-Nior Bloom.” It would be bestial to listen to only part of this record. There is meaning in each individual bit, and, while that meaning is preserved within the fullness of the complete experience, it is also enhanced. If you miss this album, you will be diminished. Highly recommended.

Pelagic Records releases Shadow Work today, Friday, June 3rd. Investigate at the links below.

Links.

Bandcamp, https://druidsiowa.bandcamp.com/album/shadow-work

Website, https://druidsiowa.com/

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

Pelagic Records, https://pelagic-records.com/

© Wayne Edwards

Druids, Shadow Work (Pelagic 2022)

Deathblow, Insect Politics (Sewer Mouth Records 2020)

Wayne Edwards, , , , , , ,

Salt Lake City Thrash Metal atomizers have cooked up a searing slab of crooked speed just in time for the holidays.

The band is Holton Grossl (guitar and vocals), Paul LaChica (bass), Rob Larsen (drums), and Adam Kelly (guitar). In 2014 they released Prognosis Negative, a high speed recantation of the extant world. The following year we got an EP, The Other Side Of Darkness. Now there is Insect Politics, which is a little bit of a divergence from the earliest music, heading down the side streets of heavy music while maintaining a cynical attitude. It is still clearly Thrash. The subjects of the songs have the superficial impression of seriousness, but when the band and the first album are named after made-up movies from a TV sitcom, you have to know that this music is about having a good time while you are complaining about the world.

“Brain Bugs” gets things going, and its opening is very dramatic and theatrical, with a ninety second lead-in that is a misdirection for the chaotic hailing that is to come. The lead inserts are blistering and the vocals are frenetic – just like if your brain was filled with scrambling insects. The next track, “Accelerated Decrepitude,” has an almost military persistence to it, and some fantastic bass lines to go along with the wildfire guitars. Every song has a different take on one thing or another and they are all high energy metal.

There is no slowing down, and the turns come hard and fast. The riffs and leads are cleverly arranged, some sounding like a dramatic insurgence and others more like a fire-snorting dragon with a leg cramp. You can read into these songs as much or as little as you like, experiencing whatever level of satire you suits you. The killer music is there and it straight up rips, no matter what your level of social and political engagement. Recommended.

Insect Politics is out today. Bandcamp is the first call for CDs, vinyl, digital, and cassettes. You can have your Thrash any way you like.

Links.

Deathblow Bandcamp, https://deathblow1.bandcamp.com/music

Deathblow Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/deathblowofficial

Sewer Mouth Records, https://www.facebook.com/sewermouthrecords/

Deathblow, Insect Politics (Sewer Mouth Records 2020)

Yaotl Mictlan, Sagrada Tierra del Jaguar review (American Line Productions 2020)

Wayne Edwards, , , , , , ,

Salt Lake City Metal band Yaotl Mictlan take us on a savage journey with their third album, Sagrada Tierra del Jaguar.

The band is brothers Yaotl and Tlatecatl joined by Tenoch (according to The Metal Archives). The press release reveals: “The brothers shared a mutual passion around their Mexica and Mayan culture. Their lyrics focus on the belief that after Christians colonized Mexico, their people lost their identity and succumbed to a colonized way of life; the lyrics are inspired by the unfortunate way in which at the present time their people live in extreme self-hatred. Ultimately, they would like to see the end of the colonized way of thinking and for their people to embrace their roots.” Knowing the background and inspiration of the composers sometimes gives listeners additional insight into the music, thereby making it more impactful. I definitely think that is true in this case because the motivation is so powerful.

The music is extremely heavy, even with the gentle opening of “Entre lluvias Fuertes.” Well, gentle – I mean quiet, but it is very unsettling with eerie wind instruments and rattles, and voices in a lilting disembodied elemental frame. The first guitar riff drops about a minute and a half in and pushes you over as if you were made of dry reeds. When the vocals begin, you have started to become part of the object that is the layered, ambient, dark energy surrounding you everywhere and penetrating.

The music on the album has a living mysticism to it in sound and narrative, and a feeling of melancholy – and often hopelessness. In that sense it lies in the land of Doom Metal, but the feeling of it is more like Black Metal, or what I have heard called Dark Metal. And then there are rising moments of power and what might sound like hope, furthering the complexity of the music and the message.

The songs are typically riff heavy, with many, like “Ba’alche’o’ob” and “Tezcatlipoca – Espejo Relumbrante,” riding on driving, punishing percussion, and others, such as “Nuevo Fuego,” with long, ethereal moments surrounded by the rising walls of harsher sound. The closing song, “Sombra del Mictlan,” is the longest, running about eleven minutes and beginning with an invocation in voice and what sounds like a wooden flute. Doom riffs follow with harmonic whistles and rattles broadening the musical vista. It is an amazing piece. The heavy sound of Yaotl Mictlan truly is unique. Recommended.

Out now through American Line Productions and available through Bandcamp. If you are looking for something other than the digital, check out the band’s website at the link below for CDs and other merch. If you have never heard the band before, this album is a great place to start.

Links.

Band website, https://yaotlmictlan.com

Band Bandcamp, https://yaotlmictlan.bandcamp.com

Band Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/yaotlmictlanband

Label website, http://www.alprods.net

Label Big Cartel webstore, http://www.alprods.bigcartel.com

Yaotl Mictlan, Sagrada Tierra del Jaguar review (American Line Productions 2020)