Mining Steel: Agenda, Cloudkicker, Lord Gore, Orm, Polemicist, Stressed Ghosts, Sleep Terror, Swordwielder

“Mining Steel” is a month-to-month column from Heavy Consequence fixating on noteworthy new music rising from the non-mainstream metallic scene, specializing in releases from small and unbiased labels — and even releases from unsigned acts.

Summer season reaches its wonderful conclusion and we put together for the chilly great thing about autumn: bonfires, colourful leaves and, after all, the ultimate push for large metallic releases. After July’s embarrassment of riches from well-established labels (even the underground has its titans) comes a short reprieve as these shops plan for the autumn harvest. As such, August seems like a deep inhale and a pause.

However what a fantastic pause it’s. August 2019’s relative silence from well-oiled machines opens up alternatives for a lot smaller bands. This month, we’ve got new releases by bands thought lengthy lifeless, first EPs by promising unsigned acts, and two instrumental masterpieces by resolutely label-free dwelling tinkerers.

Agenda – Apocalyptic Wasteland Blues

Norwegian label Fysik Format persistently releases a few of that nation’s best hardcore data, from the outre and experimental to the easy and aggressive. Agenda are the latter. Their second file, Apocalyptic Wasteland Blues, doesn’t waste any time on intro tracks or style digressions — as a substitute it’s a half hour of livid D-beat, simply the best way the band’s forebears in Tragedy, Wolfbrigade and Disfear meant. The latter’s a selected touchstone; vocalist Hans Olaf Myrvang sounds greater than just a little like Thomas Lindberg of At The Gates, who helmed the microphone on Disfear’s beloved 1008 album Dwell the Storm. On songs like “Save Your Reward” and “Highway to Hell,” Agenda riffs with the identical sort of invigorating piss and vinegar. Purchase it on Bandcamp. — Joseph Schafer

Cloudkicker – Never-ending

Cloudkicker’s seemingly everlasting goodwill was constructed largely on the again of a single album, 2010’s Immaculate Beacons, one of many really nice prog-metal data of the last decade. Never-ending comes out after a four-year hiatus, the longest most important man Ben Sharp has ever let these fields lie fallow. As soon as extra, the brand new Cloudkicker is concise, seven tracks and slightly below a half-hour, however he has all the time erred extra on the aspect of high quality than amount. Never-ending performs like a longform composition, largely as a result of its comparatively temporary run-time and Sharp’s consideration to creating every file maintain a selected timbral form. This in flip provides the listening expertise far more form than one would possibly count on earlier than the inevitable emotional sucker punch, leaving you hunched over and crying as tear-jerking and intensely emotive melodies wash over you. The run-in with Intronaut appears to have rubbed off, leaving extra post-metal within the prog and giving us among the best prog data of the yr. It’s obtainable at “identify your worth,” in true web-first musician custom. Purchase it on Bandcamp. — Langdon Hickman

Lord Gore – Scalpels for Blind Surgeons

Within the early 2000’s, Razorback Data supplied up a slate of maximum metallic bands united by one theme: gory horror films. These bands, together with Splatterhouse, Normal Surgical procedure and Lord Gore, centered on this aesthetic lengthy earlier than the practical-effects increase of the ‘80s grew to become retro-chic, and consequently lots of them don’t exist any longer. Lord Gore, for instance, returns after a 15-year hiatus for his or her third album, Scalpels for Blind Surgeons. Now as earlier than, their music is an ever-so-slightly-sloppy mixture of old-fashioned demise metallic and grindcore: quick songs filled with riffs and gurgling vocals. Like final month’s Wormed, it’s high-level musicality within the service of low cost thrills, the place ridiculousness is all the level of the train. Purchase it on Bandcamp. — Joseph Schafer

Orm – Ir

Longform black metallic is a stunning factor. False, for example, gave us among the best black metallic albums of the yr within the model and Moonsorrow’s Viides Luku – Hävitetty is a traditional of the shape. Orm be a part of superb firm with Ir, an album comprised of two lengthy cuts totaling slightly below 50 minutes. The group is aware of that these longform compositions having sustainable energy comes from a mix of modifications married to a repeatable, glacial physique, conceiving of actions as extra additive and subtractive fairly than a collection of quick stark modifications. The items don’t really feel like collage or lazy mixtures of riffs, as a substitute carrying the identical sort of fervor and energy than songs jammed out within the apply room have earlier than the editor’s hand comes wielding scalpels. Because of this, the album brims with a primal and fierce power that compels not simply to the top however to the repeat button. Purchase it from Indisciplinarian. — Langdon Hickman

Polemicist – Zarathustrian Impressions

Polemicist could also be from Philadelphia, however they sound positively Scandinavian on their debut file, Zarathustrian Impressions, streaming solely under. Folks-inflected and prog-aligned, their combination of black and demise metallic traffics not a lot in indelible songs however in sweeping actions. These nonetheless lacking the band Opeth was 10 years in the past will discover a lot to love right here. The album offers solely with the writings of famed German existentialist thinker Freidrich Nietzsche, and whereas it’s not arduous to search out references to his pondering in arduous rock music — 9 Inch Nails used his “God is lifeless” quote for the refrain of “Heresy” to call only one instance — one should admire Polemicist’s dedication to the idea. They even listing which translations they referenced within the writing. That mentioned, my guess is that for the individuals who jive with this file it’s the dual guitar riffing of Josiah Domico and Lydia Giordano to which they are going to eternally return. Domico had this to say concerning the file: “Present process the method of making these riffs/items/tracks was overcoming in a real Nietzschean sense. We collectively and as people overcame illness, profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, and when all gave the impression to be going unsuitable even the ‘wretchedness of the vanquished.’ We endured. And as a band we will proceed to endure and develop. That is solely the start!” Purchase it on Bandcamp. — Joseph Schafer

Stressed Ghosts – Stressed Ghosts

Born in California however based mostly in Berlin, Julia Neuman has been cruising beneath the floor of the metallic underground for a while, most notably throughout a sting in German doom band Albez Duz. With Stressed Ghosts, her ostensible solo challenge (Sara Neidorf performs drums however in any other case it’s all Neuman), her potential as a composer involves the fore. Someplace between Alice in Chains, Agalloch and Auf Der Mar, her debut EP is 4 slices of outre riffs and cryptic singing, fantastically recorded by Ghost producer Jaime Gomez Arellano. There’s priority for her mix of darkish metallic and singer-songwriter sensibility — that is the period of Chelsea Wolfe, in spite of everything — however Neuman has a pedigree in old-fashioned heavy metallic, typically nailing covers of classic Ozzy Osbourne tunes on her instagram web page, and that classical reverence involves the fore on songs like “Chiaroscuro.” Purchase it on Bandcamp. — Joseph Schafer

Sleep Terror – Abreaction

Luke Jaeger has been plugging away from years in one-man instrumental jazz fusion/demise metallic group Sleep Terror. The group began a decade and a half in the past, releasing tracks on MP3.com within the earliest years of streaming. Even in these days, his mix of jazz fusion and demise metallic was clearly the signal of an ardent fan of each, not making music to attraction to music college chops fetishists however an exploration of the jazz/metallic relation embodied in teams like Cynic, the earliest/thrashiest Meshuggah data and teams like Coprofago. Abreaction is his most achieved file so far, incorporating parts of surf and mariachi on high of the already heady combination of jazz-fusion, black, thrash and demise metallic. And regardless of the breadth of this combination, Jaeger avoids a way of ironic deployment of those style digressions, managing to make the work really feel honest, holistic and legible. An underrated mainstay of instrumental metallic. Purchase it on Bandcamp. —Langdon Hickman

Swordwielder – System Overlord

It was a toss-up for this spot between the unimaginable debut EP of demise metallers Putrescine and this Swedish Amebix-styled metallic crust band’s sophomore file. The previous appears destined for extra protection; demise metallic is booming proper now and they’re going to rightly get the rub from venues, and in all chance have an album signing on the horizon, which tilts this underground column’s eye again to Swordwielder’s significantly nasty album, System Overlord — so underground you may’t even purchase a bodily copy anyplace however their exhibits, that are (naturally) solely held of their dwelling nation. That is pure primal heavy metallic, from the quilt to the guitar tone to the excess of solos and harsh shouted vocals, prefer it was ripped out of 1983 when demise, thrash, energy and black metallic had been all bedmates on the identical dusty over-copied demo tapes. Take a whiff of that; that’s the stench of demise. That is heavy metallic. Purchase it from Profane Existence. — Langdon Hickman