Clandestine Cut Of The Year - Metal Storm Awards 2022
Total votes:
222
222
The Plague Ship is Ancient Enemy's first EP and features five lyrically connected songs that depict the outbreak of the Black Death on a doomed sailing ship. Dirty midtempo thrash metal provides the musical backbone, but the riffs are heavier and the basic mood is darker than one would expect from conventional thrash metal, so the additional tag "doom" on their Bandcamp makes perfect sense. The fact that the Californian quartet masters many varieties of heavy music becomes clear at the latest by the third track, which starts at slow pace but quickly builds up into a stomping banger with fast blasts and tremolo picking, only to turn into a groovy melange of heavy metal and hard rock towards the end. Also the vocalist seems to feel comfortable in many genres; he could easily front a death/black metal band with his throaty, hoarse voice, and he also doesn't shy away from epic clean vocals, lending the last track a surprising but very welcome traditional heavy metal note.
Bandcamp
Denali is a new death doom metal band featuring members of Countless Skies and Everest Queen, and whose music is sure to satisfy fans of the Peaceville Three, early Katatonia, Swallow The Sun, October Tide, and Shape Of Despair. Their influences don’t stop there, and you can get a taste of those in this playist. According to guitarist and main songwriter, James McGrenery, the world of Denali is “lush with mournful reflections on loss, desperation and madness”. Indeed, the music of this self-titled EP is sombre and melancholic with very heavy riffs, but also full of heart-wrenching melodies. The songwriting and musicianship are very mature and well-worked, and Denali sound like they are just one step before widespread recognition in the death doom world. When they do achieve it, remember that you read about them here first.
Bandcamp / YouTube (full album)
Invoking suffering and the relationship with higher powers on Leidensweg, Dornen match the intensity of their lyrics with a fierce instrumental attack on their debut release. Bringing together black, sludge and post-metal in a grim and bleak package, the Germans unleash venomous blackened frenzies, lock into dirty sludgy grooves and explore dynamic fluctuations across this dense EP, with songs that will appeal to fans of the likes of Regarde Les Hommes Tomber, Au-Dessus, Schammasch and related acts. A fiery and captivating debut outing, Leidensweg has made Dornen a name to pay real attention to going forward.
Bandcamp
Clocking in at just shy of 30 minutes, Keres is one of the longer records featured in Clandestine Cuts in 2022, but Greece’s Euphrosyne use all of those 30 minutes to show just why they are a band that you need to keep your eye on going forward. They’re classed as post-black metal, basically because there’s nothing more obvious to label them as; there are shrieked vocals, tremolo’d riffs and blasting drums, but there’s plenty more beyond that. At one end, there’s dense, venomous low-end riffs boldened by emphatic drumming, but at the other end, the melodic inclinations of Euphrosyne are far more compelling than the usual blackgaze delicacy. The clean vocal sections across the album, but particularly in “Pale Days” and “When My Fear Conquers All”, are incredibly powerful and well-crafted, vocalist Efi Eva backing up her hellish extreme vocals with an excellent clean singing voice. There is depth, variety, intelligence and conviction in this record; there are bands you occasionally encounter in Clandestine Cuts that are producing early-career demos and EPs of a calibre that makes future success seem inevitable, and with Keres, Euphrosyne are definitely one of those bands.
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Imparted I: The Age Of Comparison is a patient, tender slow-burner, right from the off with mellow yet subtly heavy opening epic “Age Of Comparison". With evocative vocals reminiscent of Marillion, as well as lush guitar leads and solos that give off early Riverside vibes, there lie churning guitars and bright synths underneath to flesh out the mix. Riverside is probably the most obvious ‘for fans of’ comparison for Gob Ribbons, but anyone who likes music that lurks on the dark-yet-warm border between prog rock and prog metal (think bands like Antimatter, Pain Of Salvation and Porcupine Tree) should make sure to check this one out. There’s a healthy variety on this 3-song EP, with the dainty piano and melancholy of “Impart The Impartible” countered by the dark Anno Domini High Definition-era aggression of “Erratic”.
Bandcamp
Laere’s end-of-year treat, the two-song EP Coagula, is a fitting follow-up to their 2020 debut EP Solve. Ostensibly black metal, Laere have the capacity to blast furiously, but it is with their guitar texturing and dark melodic inclinations that the Germans really make their mark. “Larvae” is, fittingly given the name, slightly more prototypical in terms of what Laere can accomplish, with lots of emotionally intense dark atmosphere capped off with some captivating semi-melodic guitar work that are almost reminiscent of mid-era Mastodon, but it’s “Aurorae” that is the true star here. Casually throwing a frenetic guitar solo into the fray amidst a wall of blasting about a minute in, there’s subsequently muscular headbangable mid-tempo riffs, sullen ominous contemplation, and finally a darkly majestic melancholic conclusion to a 12-minute experience that rivals the finest efforts in black metal in 2022.
Bandcamp / YouTube (full album)
This little EP is a marriage between black metal and synthwave, and, as different as these genres are, there are many metalheads that enjoy both. Can they be enjoyed when put in a blender though? One cannot be certain whether Night Of The Vampire’s Eternal Night has been influenced by The Night Eternal, the vampire horror novel by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, but what can be said with certainty is that it is a very successful mix of styles that doesn’t sound forced or gimmicky at all. Imagine a mash-up of Nosferatu and Knight Rider, in which Count Orlok is driving K.I.T.T. playing this EP in the cassette player. Or it could have easily been part of the score of American Horror Story 1984. If you are into ‘80s horror films, darkwave, post-punk, and catchy black metal, this is made for you.
Bandcamp
Quite often, there are some rough edges to records featured in Clandestine Cuts articles, but not every beginner band is confined to lo-fi bedroom recordings; Portugal’s Phreneticis announce themselves to the world with a very professional sound, one that provides both weight and clarity to their techy prog-death sound in equal measure. These convoluted compositions offer up everything from frenetic, complex attacks to meaty grooves, and features its fair share of impressive melodic solos. On top of all that, there’s room for emotionally stirring clean bridges (“Halved Corpse”, probably the pick of the bunch on Maze Of Time), weird jazzy detours (“Haunted Temple”) and slow, emphatic climaxes (“Kingdom Of Isolation”). With Phreneticis first founded in 2015, Maze Of Time seems to have been a fair few years in the making, but it very much has been time well spent based on the final product.
Bandcamp / YouTube (full album)
Valir, Seira, Yusuf and Xosé are young musicians from Lviv who came together in 2018 to create music that is very evocative, but pretty difficult to classify. Somewhere between post-metal, atmospheric black metal and post-hardcore there was a gap in the musical landscape, and Pušča fill that gap with an energetic mixture that occasionally reminds of L'Homme Absurde, but the four Ukrainians take it up a notch in terms of intensity, and that's especially due to the vocal abilities of their female vocalist. Seira, who sings and growls in French, takes us on an emotional roller coaster ride of deep despair and seething rage, providing a whole series of goosebump moments for each of the five songs featured on the band's impressive first EP. On a side note, if you happen to have seen the Icelandic movie Metalhead, the last track may sound familiar: "Svarthamar" was originally composed by Pétur Þór Benediktsson and is part of the soundtrack.
Bandcamp
The ‘Telesterion’ served as an initiation hall and sanctuary in Eleusis, one of the primary centres of the Eleusinian Mysteries. The band Telesterion is quite a mysterious one, since it impossible to find any information about them, apart from their Bandcamp page. The music on the EP An Ear Of Grain In Silence Reaped brings to mind the latest album of Wolvennest, or last year’s The Nest debut. It is hazy and foreboding, swimming in ritualistic ambience, oriental rhythms, choir-like vocals, and dramatic drums. It feels at the same time subdued and triumphant, dense and ethereal, and has a brooding and grandiose progression. Diving into post-metal, doom, stoner, and shoegaze, Telesterion’s debut EP makes for an unconventional listen, with a vast musical scope and a primitive appeal.
Bandcamp
Wings Of Steel are newcomers, but this self-titled debut EP of theirs is a release that belongs to an accomplished band. The variety amongst the songs is quite surprising for the style they play, since you get some ‘80s heavy and U.S. power metal in the first couple of tracks, a bluesy hard rock, arena-filler in “Rhythm Of Desire”, an acoustic beauty in “Khamsin Riders”, and a sensational mid-tempo rocker/power ballad in “Black Out The Street”. The vocals are particularly pleasing; they are soulful, expressive, and have a great range. The guitar work is also exquisite, showing off some great riffs, but it is simply breathtaking when the Malmsteen-like solos kick in. The production and mix are flawless; it is unbelievable that Wings Of Steel was written and recorded in a bomb shelter turned studio. This is a superb introduction for the band, and a full-length is on the way.
Bandcamp
The first 25 seconds of the EP opener “Pillars Of Solitude” are barely over and already a broad grin spreads, because the vocalist of Wrathbearer lets you forget for a moment that Trevor Strnad is no longer among the living... Parallels to The Black Dahlia Murder's Nocturnal era are also evident on the instrumental level, but this resemblance is more of a coincidental nature, because unlike TBDM, the black metal elements on Leaving The Mortal Realm are more than just an unconscious influence; they represent an equivalent and integral component of the band's black/death metal background. The quintet, founded in Löhne in North Rhine-Westphalia in 2020, compiled three songs for their first EP, and each track impressively demonstrates the band's intention: to create music that is always brachial and usually served at breakneck speed, but remains catchy and memorable.
Bandcamp