New Spins: 15th February 2021
A nice and varied New Spins this week featuring three very different artists from wildly different areas of the heavy spectrum. All of them though have a certain mesmeric quality which makes them hard to stop listening to.
Hammada - Atmos
Sometimes you hear stoner doom described as psychedelic or spacey just because the guitarist uses a phaser pedal on occasion, but Germany's Hammada are a stoner doom band who really delve into the other-worldly nature of psychedelic sounds. Their album Atmos was released last year, and combines the heavy riffing and grooves of Kyuss and Orange Goblin with the 60s psychedelic sounds of Quicksilver Messenger Service and Iron Butterfly and the spacey jam sounds of Hawkwind and Pink Floyd. There's some fantastically catchy riffs and melodies throughout the record, but it's the stunning atmosphere and soundscapes which these riffs are portrayed against which makes this album really special. There isn't a standout track as such, but the fifteen minute closer Domizil is quite magnificent, and as a whole this is a brilliant album that I'm a little gutted I slept on last year.
Sjálfsmorð af Gáleysi - The Ruins Of Eden
Although Icelandic is not always the easiest to directly translate, my limited knowledge of Nordic languages tells me that this name roughly means 'suicide from neglect', which should give you an idea of the the kind of sounds you're going to hear. Sjálfsmorð af Gáleysi is a solo act that produces a terrifying style of blackened death metal. The instrumental tones and the vocal depths are so suffocating that at times it reminds me of Portal, only with a little more distinctness in the melodies. Degenerator is the latest release, but there are several other releases from last year on the artist's Bandcamp page, and it's the full-length album The Ruins Of Eden which has really struck me. This is not music where you'll find memorable and catchy hooks per se, but if you want to be pummelled into oblivion with dark riffs and and ferocious beats while simultaneously, and sometimes alternately, be forced to re-live your bleakest nightmares, then this is probably your kind of music.
Sjálfsmorð af Gáleysi on Bandcamp
Tears Of Fire - Virtue Signal From Rotten Culture
Despite the theme and the title seemingly not being related, this new release from Tears Of Fire is quite something. Originating in Iran in the late 90s as a black metal band in the heavily oppressed underground scene, they have since relocated to Germany, and as of 2016 have re-formed. Now also featuring members of Berlin psychedelic doom band Black Sadhu (who released one of my favourite albums of last year), Tears Of Fire play a style of funeral doom that still maintains much of the evilness and mystique of black metal. This demo combines studio and live recordings, and encompasses a love song theme in a particularly enigmatic way. The sound is certainly raw so don't expect the kind of huge chords and crushing riffs of Ahab or Tyranny, but it still has a droning quality that is rather hypnotic, and the black metal elements and middle-eastern instruments that are involved really give this demo something unique.
Virtue Signal From Rotten Culture on Youtube
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