This month’s best metal on Bandcamp includes kaiju-hailing death/thrash, occult folk metal, brutal technical death metal, and much more.
Oxygen Destroyer
Guardian of the Universe
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Guardian of the Universe Oxygen Destroyer
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Compact Disc (CD), Vinyl LP
On Guardian of the Universe, Oxygen Destroyer’s third and best album, the kaiju-obsessed death/thrash band pays homage to the trilogy of Gamera movies directed by Shusuke Kaneko in the ’90s. Among kaiju fanatics, those films are considered some of the finest in the genre’s history, and the band makes the case for them with a diehard zeal. Vocalist, guitarist, and primary songwriter Lord Kaiju revels in conjuring not just Gamera, but the trilogy’s gallery of rivals: Gyaos, Legion, and Iris. (On “Banishing the Iris of Sempiternal Tenebrosity,” he flips between vocal styles to recreate the final battle between Gamera and Iris from Gamera 3. It’s invigorating stuff.) Oxygen Destroyer are at their best when the tempos reach inhuman levels, when Lord Kaiju’s picking hand becomes an indistinct blur and drummer Chris Craven has to fight for his life to keep time. Guardian of the Universe has a few off-speed pitches in its arsenal, but for the most part, it’s a showcase for the stamina and dexterity of thrash’s nastiest fireball throwers. Hail the kaiju.
Grendel’s Sÿster
Katabasis into the Abaton / Abstieg in die Traumkammer
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Katabasis into the Abaton / Abstieg in die Traumkammer Grendel's Sÿster
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Compact Disc (CD), Vinyl LP
Grendel’s Sÿster feels less like a band than a parallel world, one whose veil can only be stepped through during the playing of Katabasis into the Abaton. On the Stuttgart quartet’s debut album, they unearth an intoxicating mix of Fairport Convention-style folk rock, melodic proto-metal, courtly Mittelalter rock, epic doom, and classic prog. But simply naming the styles that Katabasis pulls from sells it short. Grendel’s Sÿster are gifted storytellers and weavers of atmosphere, and each one of their songs is a richly realized universe in miniature. “The Plight of a Sorcerer” is the diary of a failed Merlin figure whose ignominious path has led to “ogres sucking marrow from a greyish human bone,” while “Rose Arbor” is an enigmatic parable about a superstitious king and a miraculous rosebush. The medieval period in Europe was characterized by the mingling of old folk beliefs and Christianity, and Grendel’s Sÿster capture that fraught moment brilliantly. Our bard is the austerely commanding Caro, an unconventional metal vocalist whose German-accented lilt prizes clarity and precision over pyrotechnics. She is a storyteller, after all.
NILE
The Underworld Awaits Us All
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The Underworld Awaits Us All NILE
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Nile are back on their bullsh*t—or maybe, per “Chapter for Not Being Hung Upside Down on a Stake in the Underworld and Made to Eat Feces by the Four Apes,” they’re back on their apesh*t. Death metal’s preeminent Egyptologists are on their tenth album now, and it’s steeped in the same things all of Nile’s albums have been steeped in: The Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Phrygian mode, punishingly technical riffs, the gale-force drumming of George Kollias, bad-cop/worse-cop vocal trade-offs between bandleader Karl Sanders and a rotating cast of sidemen. With two new members (bassist Dan Vadim Von and guitarist Zach Jeter) making their recorded debuts on The Underworld Awaits Us All, Nile sound reinvigorated, and the best songs here are the fast and brutal ones. When the aforementioned “Four Apes” track goes straight into the sub-two-minute “To Strike with Secret Fang,” that swirl of dark energy on the album cover starts to look a lot like a circle pit.
Fulci
Duck Face Killings
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Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD), Cassette
Lucio Fulci’s gialli are among the scuzziest horror movies ever made, and his 1982 masterpiece The New York Ripper might be the most sordid of them all. It’s that film that Caserta, Italy’s Fulci pay tribute to on Duck Face Killings, their fourth full-length of gore-obsessed, neon-soaked death metal. In The New York Ripper, a perverted serial killer eludes the detective chasing him, taunting him over the phone with a bizarre Donald Duck impression. The duck voice is a strange grace note on what’s otherwise a vicious, upsetting film, and Fulci (the band) exploit that same imbalance. Much of Duck Face Killings is confrontationally brutal (“f*cked with a Broken Bottle,” “Human Scalp Collection”), but the band peppers in stylish synth parts, a louche saxophone solo, a guest verse by Non Phixion rapper Lord Goat, and yes, a few choice samples of that duck impression. Those detours don’t overpower what is still fundamentally a bludgeoning, brutal death metal album. It quacks like a duck, yes, but it hits like a sledgehammer.
Föhn
Condescending
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2 x Vinyl LP, Compact Disc (CD), Cassette, T-Shirt/Shirt
The music that the Greek trio Föhn makes on their debut album, Condescending, takes the unmistakable shape of classic funeral doom. There’s more than a little Skepticism and Mournful Congregation in the record’s four side-long tracks, which are glacially paced, achingly beautiful, and depressing as hell. Föhn work to differentiate themselves with forays into Bohren & der Club of Gore-style dark jazz, and the passages of slinking, atonal saxophone are among the album’s strongest moments. (By contrast, Condescending’s one major misstep comes on “Persona,” which bluntly and extensively samples an interview with a sex worker to numbing effect.) Even when they’re just executing the playbook, Föhn’s funeral doom has staying power. Consider them a band to watch.
Spectral Wound
Songs of Blood and Mire
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Songs of Blood and Mire SPECTRAL WOUND
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Compact Disc (CD), Cassette, Vinyl LP
Spectral Wound’s secret weapon has always been their ability to get a little rock ‘n’ roll with it. The Montréal black metal band may affect the dead-serious resolve of their grimmest Scandinavian heroes, but under the smeared warpaint and ritualistic black-and-white cover art, there’s a big, beating heart that loves a singalong chorus, a tongue-wagging guitar solo, and a roomful of hands, aloft, making the sign of the horns. Those proclivities come to the fore more than ever before on Songs of Blood and Mire, Spectral Wound’s fourth LP. It’s a refinement, not a reinvention, but the hooks and melodies that swam beneath the maelstrom that was 2021’s A Diabolic Thirst bob a little closer to the surface this time. “Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal” is Songs of Blood and Mire’s “Frigid and Spellbound,” a future live staple with a tectonic groove. “Less and Less Human, O Savage Spirit” is one highlight among many for drummer Illusory, who’s gifted at finding a pocket even when he’s blasting away at an ungodly tempo. “A Coin Upon the Tongue” has a couple of guitar solos that sound like they fell off Judas Priest’s private plane. The whole album is a blast, the way Craft’s f*ck the Universe and Immortal’s Sons of Northern Darkness are a blast. Get those horns up high.
Blues Pills
Birthday
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Birthday Blues Pills
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Vinyl LP
Sweden’s Blues Pills are at least theoretically metal-adjacent, through their longstanding (and now former) affiliation with Nuclear Blast and their psychedelic stoner-rock roots. But let’s be honest: Birthday sounds like a cross between Janis Joplin and Adele fronting an above-average bar band. The powerhouse vocalist who earns those comparisons is Elin Larsson, one of the finest rock singers working today. She’s the highlight of every song. Sometimes the band rises to meet her, as on the kaleidoscopic ballad “Top of the Sky” and the sultry “Somebody Better.” Other times, their blues-rock pastiche is a limitation she can’t overcome. Still, even on the album’s roughest songs, Larsson’s performance is worth hearing. If she ever decides she wants to make an Amy Winehouse-style neo-soul record, I have my wallet ready.
Pneuma Hagion
From Beyond
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From Beyond Everlasting Spew Records
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Cassette, Compact Disc (CD)
At a shade over 24 minutes, Pneuma Hagion’s From Beyond is barely long enough to qualify as a full-length, but it’s as dense as a dying star. The Texas duo plays sweltering, straightforward death metal inspired by mid-period Morbid Angel and Immolation, and they boil it down to its constituent parts. The riffs are simple, low on the neck, and frequently punctuated by Bob Vigna-like harmonic squeals. R. delivers his vocals in a dry, mid-range monotone, and S.’s drum patterns are efficient and rarely flashy. With its lack of atmospheric embellishments, From Beyond is oppressive in its starkness and its stillness. It’s a late August afternoon in San Antonio in death metal form, and there isn’t a cloud in the sky.
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