DRAGGED INTO SUNLIGHT “Hatred for Mankind” LP (2009, Mordgrimm Records)
This music can’t be classified in one defined genre but the main influence comes from Black Metal mixed with the most insane elements of every genres that exist in extreme music.
Especially insane, oppressive, extremely dark: The total depravity. Really impressive.Launching straight into the sludgey start of ‘Boiled Angel‘ they force together trashy drums, Portal style guitars and liberal amounts of feedback by mixing the best elements of Eyehategod, Entombed, Coffinworm and early Mayhem. Dragged Into Sunlight manage to create a lumbering monstrosity of sound that picks and chooses it’s influences without ever really crossing the border into disjointedness. Even the appearance of Charles Manson’s famous ‘Sneaky-ville Speech’ feels entirely necessary, alongside the inhuman vocals of a man known only as T, it brings the whole song to an unnerving level of reality that feels way too close to home.
“Buried With Leeches” and “Volcanic Birth” take a slight different approach in that much of the time is focused on faster tempos with elements of both black and death metal vying for space. The use of blastbeats is more along the lines of the swirling tempest that accompany the faster sections from bands such as Mitochondrion or Ulcerate, however Dragged Into Sunlight manage to set themselves apart from those bands not overdoing it. Large sections of both tracks could easily have become a blur but drummer J toys with styles that bring to life both slow swamp trudges and monotone blasts.
Cover artwork made by Justin Bartlett.
Hatred for Mankind in 3 words: Insane, Tortured, Brutal.
€ 12
EAGLE TWIN / POMBAGIRA “Grimm Eighteen” Split LP (2010, Mordgrimm Records)
Released for their tour across Europe and as far as Italy (if you are lost find the review here), this record is a good compendium of long, slow songs, worthy mate of cold winter nights or walks in foggy and leafless woods during lonely afternoons.
The duo led by guitarist Gentry Densley (former of Iceburn and now playing in Ascend) has the intelligence not to try the same mode of expression of their live set, but to develop a discourse closer to the song form, although sui generis. More gaunt than the debut on Southern Lord, these two tracks have a more compact form and leave more space to the cavernous voice of Densley, who engages with lyrics more structured than before.
This is electrified doom folk telling stories of ancestors and ghosts of past peoples, set between still wild rivers, forests and mountains, a not distant imaginary from Steve Von Till’s solo project.
Guitar-drums duo are also Pombagira, half English and half American, occupying the whole of their side with a monumental piece Neurosis-sounding fell into a seventies atmosphere. In a circular pattern of guitar riffs and volumes rising and falling, here’s an evocation of a black sun rising from the west which is bringing suggestions with it ranging from Cathedral to Om, until the Ozzy of good times. A song that doesn’t disfigure in sight of their quoted fellow adventurers.
€ 11
NINE COVENS “… On the Coming of Darkness” 2LP (2011, Mordgrimm Records)
Do you know what I like about Britain’s Nine Covens? They don’t give a fuck. Who are these guys? Why are they wearing cloaks? The Candlelight Records press release gives us the mysterious “current and former members of some of the key extreme bands from the last decade.” That’s cool!
“…On the Coming of Darkness” is an unassuming, bitingly unfocused landscape of genuine black metal.
This record is a promising debut from some clearly talented musicians. If you’re a fan of Sargeist, or fellow labelmates Krieg, this album is definitely recommended. Despite sometimes straying into typical black metal convention, there’s something intriguing about …On The Coming of Darkness.
€ 16
POMBAGIRA “Iconoclast Dream” LP (2011, Mordgrimm Records)
Fuzz drenched psychedelic heaviness, alternating between the intense heaviness of Acid King/Electric Wizard/Sunn O))), and a mellower 60s style psych trip, with Satan on vocals.
‘Iconoclast Dream’ is a logical continuation along the dirt-track that Pombagira have been journeying down these last four years, in sound and in spirit. It takes the primal, monolithic bludgeon of ‘Baron Citadel’ and all that came before it and lays it wide-open, allowing for a greater scope and a more organic ebb and flow to the music. Being, as it is, one track spread over two sides of vinyl, there is a LOT of territory for the dynamic duo to explore…and explore they DO. Over the course of the forty-three minute duration of ‘Iconoclast Dream’, Pombagira move from massive, tree-trunk-thick, glutinous yet propulsive riffs and tumbling, gliding drums to a twilight abyss of cavernously strummed guitar and chiming, watery reverb and back again, and from a lurching, severely fuzz-infested doom groove into a shimmering sixties-psychedelic melancholic reverie as effortlessly and naturally as a bird moves between the ground and the sky.
€ 11
GOTTESMORDER s/t 12″ (2011, Absurd Creature Records)
Guitars like drones, primitive drums, bestial throat. The Gottesmorder Ep aim to be the dark age sound in which contemporary human being will find frosty/obsessive atmospheres as well. The two tracks record is almost a concept, talkin’ about the deafness of nature. It boasts the collaborations of K11/Pietro Riparbelli and Lee Baughn (Ghost Empire). If you like bands like WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM, ALTAR OF PLAGUES and FALL OF EFRAFA, don’t miss them!
It has been recorded at Orange Recordings Studio with Stefano ”Zven” Doretti, mixed and mastered at Locomotore Studio with Lorenzo Stecconi (Ufomammut, Lento, ZU, Dälek). The artwork has been done by the graphic/musician Mories (Gnaw Their Tougues, Aderlating, De Magia Veterum).
€ 10
