Category: news

Crypt Monarch – The Necronaut (2021)

Hailing from Costa Rica, the power trio of Crypt Monarch are making their debut with this three-song, thirty-six-minute album, recorded (according to the liner notes) “live in a cabin in the woods.” Thanks to their name and some woodcut cover art (especially that fine shade of purple), they’ve got a good sense of character from the start. That’s especially welcome, since for the most part, the vocals aren’t the focus on this album.

The evocatively titled “Morning Star Through Skull” opens things up, leaning into some heavy, hard-landing beats and long-sustain riffs to build up an atmosphere of rumbling aggression. As the song plays on, the violent aspects get more life, from bellowing vocals to fuller body on the guitar’s ringing chords, and while the finishing moments don’t quite pull out a solid conclusion, it still has enough appreciable moments before then to have stoner doom fans nodding along.  “Rex Meridionalis” (your guess is as good as mine on the meaning; ‘King of the middle,’ maybe?) picks up in a similar style once “Morning Star Through Skull” winds to a close. Once it hits its stride, though, it brings in some winding riffage alongside some metallic percussion for a nicely creepy serpentine vibe. As they lay in some heavy distortion and lean further into the riff, the rhythms hit fantastically, making for a real dark groove tune.

“Aglaophotis” keeps up the mystery titling, and finds the band taking more of a fuzz feedback tone for the guitar, feeling a bit like a lost B-side from Come… My Fanatics, at least instrumentally. The vocals get pushed way down in the mix, leaving the yells as muffled periphery. A late-song shift into more melodic focus helps put a nice capper on the album, with the circling low notes feeling like a sliding comedown. Throw in a distorted sample at the very end, and what you’ve got is a confident, well-realized album of deep-submersion stoner doom. Sure, there are rough spots here and there, and the length of the songs leads to some filler, but for the first album from the group, and one that was recorded live, it’s more than satisfactory. Check this one out if you wish Demon Head had continued more in the vein of their original demo.

~ Gabriel

For Fans Of; Candlemass, DoomLord, early Electric Wizard, Pilgrim, Reverend Bizarre

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Crypt Monarch – Rex Meridionalis (320 kbps)

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Fell Harvest – Pale Light in a Dying World (2021)

Following up on their self-titled EP from last year, the power trio of Fell Harvest have made their return with a solid forty minutes of forceful doom metal. Peppering in a little bit of spoken word samples here and there, the main focus remains firmly on the strength of the instruments’ impact, moods that lean more towards rage than sorrow, and pressing ever onwards.

With “Titanicide”, the opening track, the band sets a powerful first foot forward. Pounding percussion, strident vocals, and insistent strings come together in punchy chords and hooky riff arrangements. Some sharp guitar work gives those hooks all the more ability to lodge in the back of your brain, and the speed with which the band rams through their ideas makes the four-minutes-and-change practically zoom past. As the title track follows up on that initial salvo, expanding into an eight-minute rambler, the band finds more room for slow melodic focus. It should be noted that, in spite of the song names, there’s fairly few moments of sorrowful calm to be found in the album; funeral doom, this is not. But the times when it does arrive (as with the extended bridge in the title track) are well-used, making the inevitable returns to thunderous pummeling feel more impactful.

Thankfully, the interplay of the band members is reliably interesting and inventive, shifting focus around the trio’s talents to strong effect, and keeping the songs feeling that much more vitalized as a result. In particular, when they unite around a main driving riff, things really kick into gear (see “The Lark at Morning” for a strong example). Similarly, when they give attention to grinding down a particular rhythm (as in “Thy Barren Fields”), the results are some of the album’s heaviest. All in all, it’s a very strong album from the band, and one with enough twists in the compositions to reward return visits. Here’s hoping that their next album finds a little more time to spend in the melodics and sorrow, though.

~ Gabriel

For Fans Of; Candlemass, The Fateful Hour, Heavydeath, Opeth, Pilgrim

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Fell Harvest – Thy Barren Fields (320 kbps)

~

Fell Harvest – Pale Light in a Dying World (2021)

Following up on their self-titled EP from last year, the power trio of Fell Harvest have made their return with a solid forty minutes of forceful doom metal. Peppering in a little bit of spoken word samples here and there, the main focus remains firmly on the strength of the instruments’ impact, moods that lean more towards rage than sorrow, and pressing ever onwards.

With “Titanicide”, the opening track, the band sets a powerful first foot forward. Pounding percussion, strident vocals, and insistent strings come together in punchy chords and hooky riff arrangements. Some sharp guitar work gives those hooks all the more ability to lodge in the back of your brain, and the speed with which the band rams through their ideas makes the four-minutes-and-change practically zoom past. As the title track follows up on that initial salvo, expanding into an eight-minute rambler, the band finds more room for slow melodic focus. It should be noted that, in spite of the song names, there’s fairly few moments of sorrowful calm to be found in the album; funeral doom, this is not. But the times when it does arrive (as with the extended bridge in the title track) are well-used, making the inevitable returns to thunderous pummeling feel more impactful.

Thankfully, the interplay of the band members is reliably interesting and inventive, shifting focus around the trio’s talents to strong effect, and keeping the songs feeling that much more vitalized as a result. In particular, when they unite around a main driving riff, things really kick into gear (see “The Lark at Morning” for a strong example). Similarly, when they give attention to grinding down a particular rhythm (as in “Thy Barren Fields”), the results are some of the album’s heaviest. All in all, it’s a very strong album from the band, and one with enough twists in the compositions to reward return visits. Here’s hoping that their next album finds a little more time to spend in the melodics and sorrow, though.

~ Gabriel

For Fans Of; Candlemass, The Fateful Hour, Heavydeath, Opeth, Pilgrim

Facebook • BandCamp

Fell Harvest – Thy Barren Fields (320 kbps)

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Heck yeah! It’s another dose of massive pop-punk from Danger Den, who’ve just shared their …

The post DANGER DEN // Drop New Single ‘Too Much To Ask’ appeared first on Hysteria Magazine.

Roaring out of Newcastle comes Volatile Ways, an aggressive 4 piece blending elements of deathcore, …

The post VOLATILE WAYS // Newcastle Group Drop Thunderous Single ‘Times Up’ appeared first on Hysteria Magazine.

Inner Missing – Deluge (2021)

On their first album since clearing the one-decade anniversary of their first release, the Russian group of Inner Missing have put together eight tracks of gothic doom metal, blending melancholic reflections with powerful rhythmic work and aching tones from their strings.

“In the Haze” gets things off to a strong start, showcasing the band’s skill with nimbly sliding from one exploratory movement to the next, carrying listeners along through rousing action and somber focus. While that lush songwriting style persists throughout the album, as does the general mood of regretful introspection, the band has clearly taken pains to distinguish the tracks, to excellent effect. From the broad-buzzing guitar timbre affected for “Daybreak”, to the hard riffing of “Locusts” and the staggered beats of the title track, the songs find ways both immediate and more subtle to stand apart while cohering to a recognizably persistent musical personality.

The work put in by drummer Dmitry Kim deserve special mention, as it does a fantastic job of shaping the emotion and energy of the songs, even when just providing a backbeat to more elaborate guitar tonality. The band plays wonderfully together, building off of each other’s heat to reach some blow-away crescendos, and accenting the more emotive parts of the songs without getting treacly. Ultimately, it’s an excellently crafted set of songs, and one from which fans of textured, heartfelt doom will get plenty of enjoyment.

~ Gabriel

For Fans Of; Below, Devastating Light, Earthling, Heavydeath, Pilgrim

Facebook • BandCamp

Inner Missing – Daybreak (320 kbps)

~

Inner Missing – Deluge (2021)

On their first album since clearing the one-decade anniversary of their first release, the Russian group of Inner Missing have put together eight tracks of gothic doom metal, blending melancholic reflections with powerful rhythmic work and aching tones from their strings.

“In the Haze” gets things off to a strong start, showcasing the band’s skill with nimbly sliding from one exploratory movement to the next, carrying listeners along through rousing action and somber focus. While that lush songwriting style persists throughout the album, as does the general mood of regretful introspection, the band has clearly taken pains to distinguish the tracks, to excellent effect. From the broad-buzzing guitar timbre affected for “Daybreak”, to the hard riffing of “Locusts” and the staggered beats of the title track, the songs find ways both immediate and more subtle to stand apart while cohering to a recognizably persistent musical personality.

The work put in by drummer Dmitry Kim deserve special mention, as it does a fantastic job of shaping the emotion and energy of the songs, even when just providing a backbeat to more elaborate guitar tonality. The band plays wonderfully together, building off of each other’s heat to reach some blow-away crescendos, and accenting the more emotive parts of the songs without getting treacly. Ultimately, it’s an excellently crafted set of songs, and one from which fans of textured, heartfelt doom will get plenty of enjoyment.

~ Gabriel

For Fans Of; Below, Devastating Light, Earthling, Heavydeath, Pilgrim

Facebook • BandCamp

Inner Missing – Daybreak (320 kbps)

~

We’ve all got a different story about the moment we were introduced to Heavy Metal, when its sound and fury lit the blue touch-paper on a passion that in most cases has lasted the rest of our lives to date. Central to this has been escapism – an ability to transcend the everyday and offer a world of mystery and imagination beyond the mundanities of our surroundings.

You might even argue that the last eighteen months have given us plenty cause to be looking for escapism, and with this in mind here at Iron Fist we’ve done everything in our (considerable) powers to summon the most thunderous sturm-und-drang, the most demented geniuses, the most inspiring madmen, and the most furiously potent of metal protagonists we could possibly throw together.

Who better to lead the charge than King Diamond, the banshee-shrieking legend whose aural nightmares and moonlit serenades have haunted the darker quarters of our imaginations for near as dammit four decades now. Obsessed as we are always with the genesis of this kind of visionary work, we delve into the very early days of Mercyful Fate and the origin story of this particular metallic supervillain.

Needless to say it wasn’t only the King who was pushing boundaries in the ‘80s in Denmark, and there’s a uniquely Danish flavour to this issue – unsung speed metal heroes Evil tell their tales of their days as prophets of the underground, and the zine report gets the lowdown from old school stalwarts Blackthorn zine, who chronicled the glory days of the mid-80s with style and aplomb.

Elsewhere in Scandinavia, Chris Chantler brings us a history of the first wave of Swedish metal, mapping out the terrain between the rough-hewn Viking charm of Heavy Load through to the epochal rackets of Bathory and Candlemass. Bringing all the way up to the here and now, we also chat to Swedish twenty-first century upstarts and iconoclasts Enforcer and Tribulation

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Moving westwards, we talk to Fenriz on the uniformly excellent new Darkthrone album and the perils of life as an artist and visionary in these treacherous times. In fact, there’s no shortage of cult heroes in our manor, as we catch up with lunar traveller John Cyriis of Agent Steel as well as getting the lowdown on the new Cirith Ungol journey on the metallic space-time continuum.

Here at Iron Fist we make it our business to keep tabs on all and every band keeping the metallic fire ablaze, and there’s plenty of cans of petrol to hurl on the pyre this time around, from heads like Irish leviathans Dread Sovereign, monolithic broadsword-wielders Eternal Champion, new lords of gloom Unto Others, high energy rock merchants Haunt, Colombian blasphemers Witchtrap, not to mention diehards of the calibre of Pounder, White Void, Barbatos, Mork and Possessed Steel.

Rounding it all off, we rifle through Max Cavalera’s record collection, delve into the fevered imaginings of artist David D’Andrea. and – thoughtful types that we are – get a motivational chat from our old mate Ryan Waste.

Come, come to the sabbath, down by the ruined bridge!

Iron Fist is coming for your soul, and you’ll thank us for it.

To celebrate their 20th anniversary, BIGSOUND has announced one stacked lineup. This years event will …

The post BIGSOUND // 2021 Lineup Led By Henry Rollins And Tarana Burke appeared first on Hysteria Magazine.

ICYMI: Welsh metallers Bullet For My Valentine have announced their forthcoming self-titled seventh album and …

The post BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE // Announce Self-Titled Record, Drop New Single appeared first on Hysteria Magazine.