Into the Void: The Month in Experimetal

Winter is coming, of that there is no doubt. While we have always maintained a no rules policy based on the subjects covered throughout these pages, it’s fair to say that the world of metal hasn’t been one that has featured regularly since the site’s inception over three years ago.

As always, if something sparks the senses, then it’s our duty to write about it. And metal, a very loose term in this instance and perhaps better defined as “experimetal”, has prospered more so than anything else over the past four to six weeks.

Out-there sonics led by the likes of Great Falls, TORPOR, Marthe, False Fed, Adzes and, of course, the return of Kristin Hayter. Releases that will be in our calculations for our Top 50 albums at the year’s end.

We try our best to cover everything that we believe is worth highlighting, however as the site grows and our resources and publishing schedule remains the same, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to get across it all. It’s why a feature like this, while perhaps ad hoc, is the best way to give a voice to some of those artists who struggle to be heard elsewhere.

With our weekly program stacking up as we enter the final juncture of another excellent year of new music, we felt this was the best way to unearth several more gems. There is an argument that these releases could have been included in our next Weirdo Rippers or Albums Quarterly features set for next month. However, such as the current surge of excellent metal-based releases, it felt right to create a separate enclave of sorts.

Adzes Interview “I was heavily influenced by early Mastodon and Kowloon Walled City”

Bodies of Conceit: Bodies of Conceit
Verydeeprecords

Unlike the bludgeoning squat sonics of Dead Times (more on them in a bit), Bodies of Conceit penetrate the borders of noise with a chisel rather than a sledge hammer.

With laser-beam synths and haunting field recordings, on their self-titled debut, the Leipzig-based duo featuring Dennis Blumenstein and Benedikt Demmer create the kind of creeping noisescapes that are like a soundtrack to being led through a haunted house.

On Bodies of Conceit, the duo blend minimalism with varying doses of harsh noise. While perhaps more immediate than most in this arena, oddly enough there are also slight echoes of another band that once plied their trade under similar name: the Liverpool dungeonwave legends, Bodies on Everest.

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Bonnacons of Doom: Signs
Rocket Recordings

Last Friday, hypno-psych-rock masters, Bonnacons of Doom, dropped their much-anticipated follow-up to their 2018 self-titled debut in Signs.

Led by vocalist Kate Smith, whose chants and shrieks separate the Bonnacons from just about every other band across the terrains of psych-rock and alt-metal, Signs is like a thin crack of thunder rolling down the hell-forsaken skies. A thrilling cosmic storm of doom-laden psychedelia that launches you into another orbit.

With the addition of several slick electronic passages, these new dimensions see the band guiding us through new sound portals in what is another transcendental experience. A wonderful boon for the band who are one of the leading forces on the Rocket Recordings label.

(As an aside, stay tuned for a bumper interview with the band later this week).

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ChiaraOscuro: Rancor: Succor
Nefarious Industries

With Kristen Hayter retiring the Lingua Ignota project for a new chapter as Reverend Kristen Michael Hayter, albeit briefly, a void opened up which needed to be filled.

Enter ChiaraOscuro, whose debut album, Rancor: Succor, is one of 2023’s most complex journeys across the avant-metal terrains. Whist there is a lot to untangle through these 10 compositions that go beyond the hour mark, once underneath the surface, the results are equal parts frightening and spellbinding.

It’s the meticulous attention to detail that is Rancor: Succor’s greatest feat. ChiaraOscuro is an artist who is simply uncompromising, going to great lengths to strive for perfection. And on Rancor: Succor, she just about reaches that point. The world simply needs more artists like her.

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Modern Technology: Conditions of Worth

Dead Times: Dead Times
Thrill Jockey

Those craving new music from The Body can rest a little easier with the knowledge that one half of the band, Lee Buford (also of Sightless Pit), joins forces with Muslin’s Steven Vallot as Dead Times.

Both vital cogs in the machine of Providence, Rhode Island’s DIY scene over the past three decades, the pair unite for the debut self-titled Dead Times LP in what is a record that would even haunt your worst nightmares.

Working alongside sound master Seth Manchester, Dead Times unleashes the kind of rip-and-tear sound erosion that forms the morbid backdrop fit for these times. Fraught with tension and brimming with conflict and sonic extremism, through aggressive textures and multi-layered hellscapes, Dead Times is an album that all the noise merchants out there will hold close to their hearts.

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KOLLAPS\E: Phantom Centre
Self-released

Released in January this year, Swedish post-metal four-piece KOLLAPS\E landed in our orbit the same way a lot of material does: a simple message that doesn’t include the generic PR spiel. While it’s difficult to wade through every single release that lands across the desk, this one not only did, but we are glad of it!

On their debut release, Phantom Centre, KOLLAPS\E take the remnants of Panopticon-era ISIS and bend it into obscure new shapes.

At seven songs clocking in at 36 minutes, alongside Adzes’ recent release, INVER, Phantom Centre is must for anyone who has spent this century inhabiting the post-metal broadchurch. While Cult of Luna may have fallen short on their last album, KOLLAPS\E fill the void admirably right here.

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Mila Cloud: Long Way Back from the Familiar Place We’ve Never Been To
Self-released

Said to be “the ghost of a housewife” Warsaw’s Mila Cloud is immersed in a world of ambient, doomgaze sonics. And the results are beautiful.

While perhaps considered an EP, Mila Cloud’s latest release, Long Way Back from the Familiar Place We’ve Never Been To, was simply too good not to rate a mention. A string of compositions that sees the artist recounting those tender moments of Boris’ Pink, for those also yearning to remain in the sound world creating by the aforementioned Bonnacons of Doom, it’s essential to follow up Signs with this.  

Majestic, spatial, and atmospheric, Mila Cloud creates the kind of slow-motion drone that draws you into its clutches. And once you’re in its control, there really is no better place to be.

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Weirdo Rippers #9

Ragana: Desolation’s Flower
The Flenser

Oakland, California’s Ragana have been sending tremors through doom’s underground for a while now, and on their latest Desolation’s Flower (their follow-up to 2018’s collaboration with Thou, Let Our Names Be Forgotten), the fault lines widen.

The duo (Maria and Nicole) unleash a series of brutal compositions throughout Desolation’s Flower, they also reveal several tender moments. On Pain and In the Light of the Burning World, it’s where the particles of doom and dream metal morph into some new primal beast.

Brimming with raw emotions, Ragana produce the kind of cathartic experience BIG| BRAVE have given us over the last three years or so. “We live in the light of the burning world,” are the final words parted by this dynamic duo, and it’s a fitting end to something that feels as relevant as ever.

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Senestra: Senestra
Self-released

Earlier this month, Nancy, France doom-metal behemoth, Senestra, were another who blasted onto the scene with their self-titled debut album.

Like Marthe’s wonderful Southern Lord debut, Further In Evil, Senestra takes the origins of traditional metal and runs it through the grinder, with protracted doom-based rhythm sections and the primal roar of black metal exploding across the canvass.

With politically undercurrents bubbling underneath the surface, this menacing journey is made by vocalist Kali. She steals the show with a performance packed with fire and brimstone – her powerful shrieks rising from the pits of the stomach like thick clots of venom. It makes for the kind of highwire drama all good metal albums should possess. And Senestra is just that.

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Throat: We Must Leave You
Svart Records

Svart Records hit it big with the latest JAAW record, and they unearth another rough diamond with Throat’s latest, We Must Leave You.

The Turku, Finland four-piece have been around since 2009, and on We Must Leave You they produce some of their best work yet. Think of The Cult doing metal and you might not be that far off the mark. Songs like Heaven Hanged and Tiny Golden Murder are dynamic synth-based metal with the kind of melodicism that opens up the heart.

We Must Leave You is an album that contains the nostalgic echoes of why we chose to fall in love with music in the first place. It’s also a record that feels pertinent, effortlessly pivoting between past and present.

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