Today, Ektro Records sets January 4th, 2019 as the international release date for Neonderthal Death’s visionary debut single, Neonderthal (Nightmare Begins), on 7″ vinyl format.
As mankind proceeds towards an inevitable ecological apocalypse, a force both from the past and future comes to herald its doom. Neonderthal Death is a collaboration of two Swedish music legends known as Morbid & Angel whose genius combination of caveman death metal and futuristic retro synthwave is unlike anything the world has heard before. Their first single, Neonderthal (Nightmare Begins) / Skeletal Brain, unites a pulsing drum beat and uplifting synth melodies with bludgeoning riffs and deep death metal growls. It is truly the ultimate form of music. The SYNTH WAVE OF SWEDISH DEATH METAL is here to stay!
Stay a while with the single’s B-side, “Skeletal Brain,” HERE at Ektro’s Soundcloud.
Doomstar Bookings and Effenaar are proud to present the first headliner for Bloodshed Fest 2019. After years of trying, we finally managed to persuade USA’s neo-crust giants From Ashes Rise to come over to Europe for one exclusive show, at our humble little festival in Eindhoven! Next to the already confirmed grindcore legens SOB from Japan who’s performance is also a 2019 Europe exclusive, the bill is already shaping up quite nicely. Of course we aim to please fans of all the DIY music disciplines and other art forms as much as possible so a lot of work is still being done to complete the full program. So far, this is the full line-up:
From Ashes Rise (USA)
S.O.B. (JP)
Coffins (JP)
Dopethrone (CAN)
Brucexcampbell (USA)
Appäratus (MY)
Hellripper (UK)
Completed Exposition (JP)
Lifespite (NL)
Bad Luck Rides On Wheels (UK)
Defy The Curse (NL)
More updates and info soon! Early bird tickets are now still available for a reduced price through the following link:
Today, Hells Headbangers sets December 21st as the international release date for Witching Hour’s highly anticipated third album, …And Silent Grief Shadows the Passing Moon, on CD, vinyl LP, and cassette tape formats.
Witching Hour came to life in 2006 and are currently based in the southwest of Germany. Although their discography is relatively sparse the past dozen years, it is of uniformly high quality. Their two albums for Evil Spell Records – 2009’s Rise of the Desecrated and especially 2011’s Past Midnight… – are prized artifacts of the deep underground, confidently portraying a unique and highly idiosyncratic form of blackened thrash. Now, with the long-awaited …And Silent Grief Shadows the Passing Moon – the band’s first album for Hells Headbangers – Witching Hour shall prove that they’re some of the black metal scene’s most gifted songwriters.
Sequenced like a story and flowing with almost dream-like ease, …And Silent Grief Shadows the Passing Moon is the album whereby Witching Hour move from sepulchral blackthrash magick towards ancient metal mysticism. The transition is an enviously fluid one, as the characteristically high songwriting standards the band have held from the beginning are now transposed onto more nuanced, dynamic, and timelessly HEAVY METAL creations. It all sounds as old as time itself, yet breathes and heaves with a positively invigorating freshness. Glorious and gloomy melodies gallop forward into the fog-choked night, instilling an atmosphere that’s simply impossible to shake, but also latching their claws into the deepest, most emotional corners of the soul.
For Witching Hour create an experience here, one that honorably straddles the divide between traditional metal’s rigorous foundation and black metal’s orthodox / unorthodox duality. Put another way, …And Silent Grief Shadows the Passing Moon is a 43-minute, absolutely addicting journey from which you’ll never want to return.
Hear for yourself the first example of such with the previously revealed track “Sorrow Blinds His Ghastly Eyes” HERE
Cover and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for Witching Hour (Germany)’s
…And Silent Grief Shadows the Passing Moon
1. …And Silent Grief Shadows the Passing Moon /
Once Lost Souls Return
2. From Beyond They Came
3. Sorrow Blinds His Ghastly Eyes
4. Behold Those Distant Skies
5. The Fading Chime Of A Graveyard Bell
6. As I Walk Among Sepulchral Ruins
Two Temples conjure, Two Circles conjugate: on December 11th, W.T.C. Productions is proud to present a special split album between Inferno and Devathorn. Titled Zos Vel Thagirion, a newborn spawn arises from the very depths of dementia, materialized upon this plane and beyond.
The Circles of Devathorn and Inferno call upon the maddening rays of Zos Vel Thagirion and the dementia of Sorat, materializing the trance of Drakon into a sonic amalgam of raging, hysterical mystagogy.
Extending to a total length of 33 minutes, the spiritual endeavor of Zos Vel Thagirion features the heinous collaborations of Michael Idehall on the Devathorn side and Acherontas V. Priest on the Inferno side, respectively, while crafted and mastered at Necromorbus Studios and Emissary Studios to become an undisputed aural vessel to the fields above the mundane specters.
Black metal as spiritual development, black metal as spiritual warfare: the intrepid listener shall find both across the vast landscapes of Zos Vel Thagirion, at the skilled hands of Inferno and Devathorn collectively. With artwork penned by the fabled Jose G.A. Sabogal and manipulated by the infamous Mentalporn, this split album is indispensable arsenal in both bands’ grand, girded canons.
In the meantime, see & hear a special trailer for Zos Vel Thagirion HERE
Cover and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for Devathorn & Inferno’s Zos Vel Thagirion
1. Devathorn – Azazyel Iscariot
2. Devathorn – Omphalos
3. Inferno – The Solitary Immersion into Autarchic Silence
4. Inferno – Zos Vel Thagirion
Zos Vel Thagirion. Zos Vel Sorat. Zos Vel Drakon.
A Typhonian dissolving formula and a clavicula animis to the primordial Qliphothic worlds of Ilan Hizon. Within this blazing Sun-shell of Tagaririm, Man becomes Beast and the Beast becomes Man, forged, unified and embodied to become God and beyond God, to surpass the messianic curse and the karmic cycles alike. A Draconian formula that acts and reacts, the golden scimitar of Iblis drenched into the desert madness of Sutekh, flaying the layers of reality and Self to unearth despicable truths. The topaz emerald of the Boddhisatvas, the pyre of the Seers and the palm of the Prophets, the abode of Daemon and the totemic manifestation of Kténos, where the realization becomes consciousness and all dialectics become a sinister, animalistic Glossolalia. An atavistic, bestial incantation of dispute and revolt, a call upon Ba’al-Phagor to lead the path to inner volcanic realms. The assemblage point of apokténosis to apotheosis, the Sun above all Suns, the Eye of DRAKON.
Finnish death metal outfit FESTERDAY are premiering the first track of their new album ‘iihtallan’. The band’s debut full length is slated for worldwide release on January 4, 2019 via Season of Mist Underground Activists
The cover artwork was created by Christophe Moyen and can be viewed below together with the track list.
Track-list
1. Intro – The Last Night Of The Earth
2. Edible Excrement
3. Tongues For Rotten Kisses
4. Kill Your Truth
5. Control Not Your Soul
6. Dreaming For The Dead
7. Vomiting Pestilence
8. Flowers Of Bones
10. Into The Void
11. Constructive Decomposition
12. Gravelove
13. The Human Race Disgrace
14. Your Saliva My Vagina
15. Let Me Entertain Your Entrails
16. Let Me Entertain Your Entrails
Following FESTERDAY’s first EP ‘Cadaveric Virginity’ on Season of Mist, comes the bludgeoning debut of these cult death metallers, titled ‘iihtallan’. The album, to be released on January 4th, will ensure that 2019 kicks off with a loud bang for (old school) death metal fans.
Starting out in 1989, Pietarsaari, Finland, FESTERDAY was inspired by early, classic death metal acts and named their band after a song on ‘Reek of Putrefaction’ by CARCASS.
Early on in their career, the death metal formation released three demos, in truly laconic Finnish style simply entitled ‘Demo I’ (1991). ‘Demo II’ (1992), and ‘Demo III’ (1992) that gained cult status. ‘Demo II’ was also released on a split with CARNIFEX. In 1993, the group disbanded.
This could have been the end, but FESTERDAY regrouped in 2013, remastered all their previous material with Sami “Jämy” Jämsen at Studio Perkele in November 2014, and released everything on ‘…the Four Stages of Decomposition…’ (2015). Since then, the Finns have continuously worked on their craft, by releasing various splits, compilations and EP’s.
It may have taken some time for FESTERDAY to realize their debut full length, but now that it’s here, the metal scene is in for something wicked. Merging their old school death metal roots with black metal and punk, the veteran musicians aren’t afraid to push the borders of extreme music and refuse to conform to what is standardized in death metal. Brace yourself for ‘iihtallan’!
Today, W.T.C. Productions sets December 11th as the international release date for Adaestuo’s highly anticipated debut album, Krew Za Krew.
Appearing like a bolt from the blue in 2016 via W.T.C., Adaestuo’s debut EP, Tacent Semitae, was a startling and profound introduction to this otherwise-unknown band. Adaestuo was formed as a covenant between three wandering souls at the unhallowed crossroads where the darkest elements of ambient, black metal, and spiritual praxis conjoin. Being a series of audial sigils cast by VJS and P.E.Packain and led in evocation by Hekte Zaren, with Tacent Semitae did Adaestuo transcend the modern homogeny found among the lower caste of musical initiates. Now, the pan-continental trio eclipse that feat with a towering full-length monument titled Krew Za Krew.
To begin to understand the spiritual immensity of Adaestuo’s Krew Za Krew, one need only look to some of the album’s English-language song titles for keys to their cosmic creations and times: among them, “Subterranean Fire,” “Shadow Pilgrimage,” “Death Transition,” and especially “Transcendental” and “Monument.” Indeed, Krew Za Krew is a transcendental monument, threaded together like a fever dream collapsing in on itself, expanding outward and downward simultaneously. Black metal is undoubtedly the foundational language here, but by no means is it the dialect. The black metal surges and swirls, grimly aware of its inherent power, heaving in its brute physicality, but often disintegrating into nightmarish ambience that’s equal parts modern classical, musique concrete, and nuclear fallout…only to be rebuilt again, back into blacker metal.
It’s this very duality that renders Krew Za Krew a work of actual artistry rather than pale lip-service paid to conservative traditions ripe for slaughter: true mavericks embark upon the path, while all others never even see the path to begin with. Which is all to say nothing of the seamless sound layering required to make flesh these disintegrations/implosions/nightmares; the sound itself is a frightening thing to behold, especially when the listener drowns within the headphone experience.
If Tacent Semitae ripped asunder the thin veil between the flesh and The Otherside, then with Krew za Krew do Adaestuo rein as monarchs within that Otherside. In this fleshly existence, this Planet Earth, these sorcerers rule supreme – behold the sinister spell of Krew Za Krew!
The first spell can be found with the new track “Shadow Pilgrimage” HERE
Cover and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for Adaestuo’s Krew Za Krew
1. Red Moon
2. Transcendental
3. Monument
4. Subterranean Fire
5. Death Transition
6. Escaine
7. Shadow Pilgrimage
8. Krew Za Krew
9. Hurmeen Tahrima
Today, Into Endless Chaos Records sets January 7th, 2019 as the international release date for the striking debut album of Germany’s Veiled, In Blinding Presence, on CD, vinyl LP, and cassette tape formats.
Otherwise known as (The True) Veiled to avoid confusion with the myriad other bands with the “Veiled” moniker, this brazen quartet from Leipzig appear like a bolt from the blue after a teasingly short split 7″ with Abysmal Wounds earlier this year through Into Endless Chaos. Fully formed, shockingly confident, boundlessly inspired, In Blinding Presence indeed approximates its title with gleamingly obsidian brilliance.
Some steps lead to saintly aisles, others to the deep chasm of your inner self. The psychotic black metal of (The True) Veiled on their full-length debut does both and forms the last part of the triunity to ruin your perception. Clanging with unsettling clarity, heaving hypnotically down corridors strangely alluring yet eternally damning, In Blinding Presence brings black metal into harshly austere focus: simultaneously monochromatic and kaleidoscopic, its angularity throws rude-yet-refined shapes, all with the deft touch of masters. Yearning ‘n’ yawning riffs burrow deeply into the subconscious, warping the listener’s parameters of comprehension but emerging uniquely enlightening all the same; vocals are maniacal in their hysteria, their urgency, yet exude world-weary wisdom. Or, perhaps we could just simply say that (The True) Veiled here display how to push black metal toward adventurousness whilst retaining its core values.
Dispel your mind with the healing atter and get lost in the weave of the three norns. Drink and sup voraciously upon the bounty of the future’s ancients. Here, (The True) Veiled shall reveal to you truths In Blinding Presence.
Begin seeking truth with the new track “The Healing Atter” HERE
GAAHLS WYRD and VREID will kick off their Scandinavian tour dates with ENSLAVED on November 3rd, in Oslo. The ‘Army of the North Star’ continues to hit several stages throughout Sweden and Norway, until a final curtain at the Byscenen in Trondheim on December 1st.
VREID and GAAHLS WYRD
+ENSLAVED
03 Nov 18 Oslo (NO) Parkteateret
15 Nov 18 Hamar (NO) Gregers
16 Nov 18 Göteborg (SE) Musikens Hus *
17 Nov 18 Stockholm (SE) Slaktkyrkan *
23 Nov 18 Kristiansand (NO) Kick
24 Nov 18 Stavanger (NO) Folken
30 Nov 18 Bergen (NO) USF Verftet
01 Dec 18 Trondheim (NO) Byscenen
Only GAAHLS WYRD and ENSLAVED*.
VREID have previously released their new record ‘Lifehunger’. The coverartwork can be viewed below, with the album details below.
Track-list
1. Flowers & Blood (1:50)
2. One Hundred Years (5:39)
3. Lifehunger (5:36)
4. The Dead White (4:59)
5. Hello Darkness (4:39)
6. Black Rites in the Black Nights (6:26)
7. Sokrates Must Die (3:29)
8. Heimatt (6:01)
Total playing time: 38:39
Season of Mist has previously announced the signing Norwegian extreme metal band GAAHLS WYRD. Over the past months, the five piece, fronted by legendary vocalist Gaahl, have recorded their debut album in the Solslottet Studios with producer Iver Sandøy (ENSLAVED). The record is set for release in 2019.
Finland death metal band CORPSESSED have released the video for “Graveborne,” the latest single off the band’s upcoming album Impetus of Death.
Featuring animantion by Jussi Kandelin, the video for “Graveborne” is streaming here
CORPSESSED will break a four-year silence this fall with the release of Impetus of Death. Featuring eight crushing tracks of obscure death metal, the album is due out November 23 on Dark Descent Records.
“With ‘Impetus Of Death’ Corpsessed has continued its destructive path with another fleshy, feisty and at times frightening composition best suited to nights when the windows are battered by howling winds and the demons of the mind are unleashed.”
Today, W.T.C. Productions sets November 26th as the international release date for Valkyrja’s highly anticipated fourth album, Throne Ablaze. A work forged in the fires of the ancients with deadly intent to raze the present, Throne Ablaze precludes a full European tour of Valkyrja supporting the equally legendary Marduk and Archgoat (dates below).
Valkyrja was founded in 2004 with the earnest intention of channeling violence, deprivation, and loathing through means of extraordinarily potent audio emissions. Their ideals were permeated by passionate and boundless perversion – a sickly urge festering ever so vibrantly in the essence of its members, a will to cast off the manacles of societal enslavement and leave a dying world behind. While the brotherhood took shape, opposition and defiance surfaced from the deepest recesses of the mind: a fierce hostility towards the laws and morals of their surroundings, notions which felt entirely alien to the band’s core.
As part of Valkyrja’s philosophy of ridding themselves from limitations, no specific genre was ever chosen since it would only serve to establish a framework of useless expectation. The artistic output created under the flag of Valkyrja defies all earthly shackles, including those of commercial categorization. With ideology as lodestar, venturing into darkness without a backwards glance, they took their first fledgling steps on a road staked out by the night itself.
Valkyrjaz’s debut album, The Invocation of Demise, was recorded in Necromorbus Studio during March 2007 and then released in physical form by Northern Silence Productions six months later. Valkyrja quickly gained their reputation as a ferocious live act: a display of carnal lust leaving each stage with the foul scent of death. Drawn to the stench of putrid bereavement, Metal Blade Records contracted the band in 2009. The Invocation of Demise was treated to a re-release by their new ally, thus spreading the curse even further. The same year also saw a return to Necromorbus Studio for the recording of their second album, the most aptly named Contamination. The new tracks would prove to be a crucial part of the band’s live setlist as they, the following autumn, embarked on their first European campaign.
Forged and conceived to reflect blood and fire, the third Valkyrja album, The Antagonist’s Fire, set the world aflame on the eleventh day of the eleventh month in the year 2013. The opus also marked the beginning of Valkyrja’s long-running collaboration with elite underground label WORLD TERROR COMMITTEE. During the past decade, facilitated by Massive Music and accompanied by titans of extreme metal, over 100 different European cities has been forced to swallow the bitter wine of sonic violence. Furthermore, 2016 and 2017 saw two extensive North American tours with Valkyrja as co-headliner, during which 22 different states were soaked in rotten blood.
Five years removed from the third opus, Valkyrja return under a new guise. The past few years have seen the band subjected to several crucial lineup changes, igniting a period of utter despair that would sow the seeds for what has now come to pass: Throne Ablaze is set for worldwide release on November 26, 2018. The album reflects the passion and dedication of everyone involved, those who face every storm – past and future – with weapon in hand. It will forever stand as a monument of continuous struggles – so right there, in the core of this strife to conquer every obstacle, kneel and obey the fires of the blazing throne!
Kneel before “Crowned Serpent,” the first track to be revealed from Throne Ablaze, HERE
Cover art, courtesy of Nestor Avalos, and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for Valkyrja’s Throne Ablaze
1. In Ruins I Set My Throne
2. Crowned Serpent
3. Opposer of Light
4. Tombs Into Flesh
5. Halo of Lies
6. Transcendental Death
7. Paradise Lost
8. Throne Ablaze
VIKTORIA EUROPA Part 2
Marduk + Archgoat + Valkyrja + support
Nov 30, 2018 (SVN) Ljubljana @ Winter Days Of Metal
Dec 01, 2018 (ITA) Brescia @ Black Winter Festival
Dec 02, 2018 (SUI) Aarburg @ Musigburg
Dec 04, 2018 (FRA) Paris @ Le Machine
Dec 05, 2018 (BEL) Bruges @ Het Entrepot
Dec 06, 2018 (NED) Hengelo @ Metropool
Dec 07, 2018 (GER) Leipzig @ Felsenkeller
Dec 08, 2018 (CZE) Plzen @ Bozkov
Dec 09, 2018 (GER) Ludwigsburg @ Rockfabrik
Dec 11, 2018 (GBR) London @ The Underworld
Dec 12, 2018 (GER) Trier @ Mergener Hof
Dec 13, 2018 (GER) Essen @ Turock
Dec 14, 2018 (BEL) Arlon @ L’Entrepot
Dec 15, 2018 (NED) Eindhoven @ Eindhoven Metal Meeting
Dec 16, 2018 (GER) Bad Oeynhausen @ Druckerei
